Tesla Ranked Last in Survey of 34 Auto Brands for Quality of Salespeople

Elon Musk’s Tesla has ranked last in a survey of 34 auto brands in terms of helpfulness of their salespeople.

Business Insider reports that a recent survey of 34 auto brands evaluated the helpfulness of each companies sales staff. Of the 34 brands evaluated, Tesla ranked last. Audi came first in the survey with Lexus and Toyota ranking second and third.

Auto sales and service research firm Pied Piper hired 3,466 people to act as secret shoppers at dealerships across the United States between July 2017 and June 2018. The auto brands were evaluated on a 50-point criteria list which included how often salespeople compared their car to competitors, if they asked how customers planned to use the car, and why they should purchase the car from their dealership over another.

Tesla did rank highly in some criteria such as how often salespeople left a customer alone to speak with an unseen manager, and their prominent use of visual aids.

When asked for comment on ranking last in the survey, Tesla referred Business Insider to a tweet from Elon Musk in response to Tesla ranking last in a similar survey from Pied Piper in 2016

Tesla finishes last in being salesy! Good. Also, I can't believe there is a real Pied Piper.https://t.co/9Zzijxxyy4

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 12, 2016

Pied Piper CEO Fran O’Hagan said that there was a wide variance in Teslas dealerships with certain branches featuring “excellent, helpful salespeople,” but with many other branches featuring indifferent salespeople who did not seem to care whether or not a customer purchased a car.

In a 2012 blog post, Elon Musk discussed his philosophy for Tesla’s salespeople saying: “They are not on commission and they will never pressure you to buy a car. Their goal and the sole metric of their success is to have you enjoy the experience of visiting so much that you look forward to returning again.”