Enterprise Rent-A-Car: When Sales Tactics Backfire

I just got treated (if that's the right word for it) to a hard-sell from the Enterprise Rent-A-Car at Los Angeles Airport. I'm blogging about the event because it illustrates exactly how NOT to sell if you want repeat customers.

Here's how their routine works.

When the customer agent checks out the driver's identification, he or she attempts to make a connection about the driver's place of residence. (I heard the exact same questions being asked at the other desks, with varying levels of success). Then, after this ham-handed attempt at rapport building, the agent personally escorts you to your car, pretending that you're getting the VIP treatment.

Then comes the hard sell. As you're walking the lot, the agent tries to get you to upgrade to a bigger (i.e. higher priced) car, with the implication that you're cheap if you don't upgrade. Then, once you get to the car that you actually rented, the agent tries to sell you a full tank of gas "because it's cheaper per gallon than the pump price." (Which is technically true, but only if you bring the car back completely empty).

Then comes the upsell on unnecessary insurance. My agent wouldn't let it go and kept pounding away on how I wouldn't be covered, most insurance companies don't cover everything, what's your insurance company, yada-yada-yada. Very annoying, because I'm well aware that rental car insurance is a huge ripoff: if you took the rate and extended it out for a entire year, it would usually cost more than the car that you're going to drive.

Annoying, to say the least, and enough to make me avoid Enterprise in the future. Not because I blame the sales rep, but because I figure that if Enterprise is stupid enough to use those kinds of old-school tactics, they've got to be poorly run in other respects as well.

What's ironic about it it that the formula -- build rapport, assess needs, provide solution -- is absolutely correct. But, at Enterprise, the sales reps have been trained so that the formula becomes formulaic. Let me explain.

I was in Los Angeles because my mother is very ill and frail and I wanted to see her before she undergoes a serious operation. If the agent had simply spent two seconds actually LOOKING at me, she'd know that I was in no mood for idle chit-chat about where I lived. If she had actually SEEN me as a real person, she would have seen that I was devastated and might have asked if I was okay.

Then, if I chose to share with her why I was in Los Angeles, she could have asked if I was going to be expected to take my mother to the hospital and, if so, I might want a larger car or some additional insurance coverage. I wouldn't have bought either (because I'm not responsible for her transport), but I would have appreciated the gesture.

And Enterprise would have had a customer for life.

As it was, though, this was a perfect example of sales process and technique getting in the way of actually selling and building a real relationship.

Whoever is responsible for Enterprise's LAX operation could have created a sales training program that emphasized looking at each customer as an individual and then trying to help them with their overall automobile transportation needs.

Instead, those idiots came up with a sales process that follows a patently ingeniuine script and then pushes upgrades that people don't need. It's incredibly short-sighted and stupid, and the sales executives who approved the process should be fired.