Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The dealership's customer service director, a young man called Jun, had taken an in-
terest in us. He had nobody to eat lunch with that day and offered to take us out. I noticed
that he drove a Nissan.
I don't make enough to buy an Audi yet, he said.
We had lunch at the Taotang Native Association, an ornate wonderland of executive
schmoozing. It was a recent building, set down on a stretch of land not far from the Yao
Temple and the Hua Gate, near the construction site of a huge shopping mall. We made our
way through a warren of courtyards and corridors, into a small ballroom with a stage, and
finally to a private room with a large circular table outfitted with a lazy Susan.
Jun ordered lavishly, without looking at the menu, and soon there were something like
fifteen dishes on the table, including foie gras, shredded rabbit with cabbage, tofu, fried
buns, garlic broccoli, and something Cecily translated as “specialized noodles.”
Jun was twenty-eight, with an attentive face and a crown of wiry hair bursting off
his head. He smoked between his measured assaults on the food, and atomized the con-
versation into small sections divided by the rings of his two cellphones—one white, one
black—sometimes stepping out of the room to talk. The white phone was for regular calls,
he said. The black one was for his most important customers. The black one he answered
twenty-four hours a day.
The guy was unstoppable. “Car sales depend on personal relationships,” he said, and
pushed the turntable so the pile of foie gras was in front of me.
He told us that, in sales, you have to put yourself in the customers' shoes. Anticipate
their needs. Become their friend. Then, when they have to choose a car, they will come to
you. “Competition is very fierce here,” he said. “You win not by price, but by personal re-
lationships.”
He had majored in car repair in college, but had been doing this job for four years now.
“So you went from servicing the cars to servicing the customers,” I joked.
He nodded. “That's correct.”
There was nothing Jun wouldn't do for his clients, whether it was helping them with
personal business, running errands, or doing other favors. For one customer, he had recom-
mended a stock pick—and promised to reimburse him if he took a loss on the investment.
And he told of having to talk one powerful client down from a drunken rage after a relative
received some minor injuries blamed on a faulty Audi air bag. Many of Jun's clients were
rude, he said. But no matter how rude they got, he couldn't allow himself to lose his tem-
per. In the end, the rudest ones ended up trusting him the most, because he tolerated their
behavior more than anyone else would.
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