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By

James R. Healey,

Why do you get multiple callbacks from auto salespeople when all you wanted to do was casually check out cars at the dealership and compare some prices?

Simple.

Because they’re trying to make a living selling cars, and you may have been too free with your phone number or aren’t assertive enough about telling them you aren't interested.

“Car salespeople don’t like making calls any more than customers like getting them. But when it’s a matter of putting bread on the table, they make the calls,” says Jerry Thibeau, founder

and CEO of Phone Ninjas, based in Charlotte, N.C., which trains salespeople to use callbacks effectively.

Thibeau says it takes about seven calls to each potential customer who visited a dealership in order to connect with him or her, and nine calls is even better. 

“Salespeople don’t get paid by the phone call,” says Matt Jones, senior consumer advice editor at Edmunds.com, a car shopping and research site. “The reason for the callbacks is, the

salesperson doesn’t know if you’re the person who doesn’t want to be called back or not.”

Jones previously spent 12 years working as salesman and sales manager at three large Southern California auto dealerships.

“You don’t want to be the salesperson whose customer says, ‘Hey, I went to the dealership and never got contacted, so I bought from somebody else,’ ” Jones says. “Sometimes it’s just that

the [sales]person who seems most interested in your business actually gets your business."

Jones says the initial volley of phone calls is likely to come in the first three or four days after a potential customer visits the dealer. "At a dealership where I was, the goal was to

reach that person 10 times over the first week or so. The data show that typically, from the first contact to purchase is five days,” he says. After that, it’s unlikely more callbacks will

result in a sale.