It`s a raw, rainy Monday morning in February. Steve Mistina is at his desk in the showroom of River Oaks Ford in Calumet City. A small electric heater on the floor at his feet fights the chill that seeps through the floor- to-ceiling plate-glass window next to the desk.
At 10 a.m., only one customer, assisted by another salesman, is inspecting the gleaming new cars displayed on the showroom`s maroon carpet.
Mistina, 40, who has been selling cars for two decades, is talking on the phone to a woman named Sandy who has called the switchboard asking what a Ford Tempo costs.
He is tall and slender. People have told him he resembles Steve Martin. It`s probably his gray hair.
Mistina quotes some prices, explains the differences among models and tells what`s available. He`s good on the phone-personable but not cloying.
He apologizes for his hoarseness. ”This isn`t my normal voice,” he confides. He says he picked up a touch of laryngitis working at the Chicago Auto Show, where he had to shout above a constant din to answer questions.
Then he makes his pitch. ”If you have some time, come out and see me,”
he says. ”You got a piece of paper and a pencil? Good. Write down my last name because there`s more than one Steve that works here. It`s pronounced mih- STEEN-ah. That`s spelled M-i-s-t-i-n-a.”
He takes a sip of orange juice from a paper cup while she reads it back.
”That`s right,” Mistina says. ”Thank you for calling, Sandy. Bye-bye.”
The pitch is low-key, but he has planted a seed.
You would have understood, however, if he had begged a little.
With more than half the month gone, Mistina has sold two vehicles. A Taurus and a Ranger pickup. That`s all.
In a year, he sells between 160 and 180 new cars, vans and trucks, an average of 13 to 15 a month.
Mistina`s slump is symptomatic of what`s happening throughout the auto industry. Indeed, the dreary weather on this February morning is a metaphor for the car business these days.
The recession and the Persian Gulf war have been a devastating one-two punch. New-car sales have declined for almost everybody. The country`s Big Three automakers recently announced record fourth-quarter losses and offered little hope for an immediate recovery.
Factories have been shut down, workers laid off. About 900 car dealerships closed their doors last year, and experts predict 2,000 will fail this year-10 percent of the total.
A polished exterior
To spend a day with Steve Mistina is to get a sense of how it feels to hold a job so directly affected by the peaks and valleys of the economy and the whims of consumers.
Like perhaps a large majority of those who sell cars for a living, Mistina is paid strictly from sales commissions.
If people don`t buy cars from him, he doesn`t buy groceries for his wife and two daughters, pay the mortgage on the family house in Orland Park or meet the private-school tuition bill for his older daughter.
Yet if his sales record this month has his stomach clenched like a fist and flopping like a hooked fish on the bottom of a boat, he doesn`t show it.
He seems cool, unrattled, utterly sane. ”I had a good January,” he says. ”I sold 15 or 16. February is always a bad month for me.”
He`s convinced everything will balance out. ”I`ll make this up. I`ll sell 20 or 22 every month this summer. People buy more cars then.”
Much of his confidence has to do with experience. Selling Fords has been his only occupation since he returned from Vietnam in 1971 at age 20.
Over the years, Mistina has developed a perspective and a set of maxims more soothing than Maalox. ”Pressure is not unhealthy,” he says.
He`s not oblivious to the perils of an economic downturn. The Ford dealership in Chicago that was his first and only other employer went belly up during the last recession in 1981.
Neither is he immune to anxiety. After all, he`s human. ”That`s where swimming comes in,” he says.
He swims 72 laps three days a week at a health club pool. ”You get frustrated because you lost a deal or you have a bad streak. You need something to calm your mind down. Some people turn to a bottle. I swim.”
He tries to think positively. ”If you spend too much time concentrating on what`s wrong, you`re not concentrating on what`s right.”
He takes another sip of orange juice. ”I`m not saying everything is rosy,” he continues. ”Business is slow. You have to stick to the basics. You do mailings, you do phone work. You do what it takes to sell cars. A benefit of longevity is you build a clientele, and you concentrate on meeting their needs.”
The nuts and bolts
Mistina writes past customers four times a year, offering them tickets to the auto show and informing them of new models or special incentives.
He scans the daily list in the service department to see if any customers have cars in for maintenance and if so, he`ll touch base to make certain they`re satisfied.
He contacts names on the company file of people who almost bought or were customers of salespeople who have moved on or retired.
His employer sets no sales quota. ”That`s unnecessary pressure. Management doesn`t have to tell you if you`re not performing. You know every Friday when your paycheck comes if you did your job, because if you didn`t sell anything, you walk home with nothing.
”When it`s slow, it just means there`s one potential customer instead of three. In the heyday of `87 and `88 you had six. But Utopia doesn`t last.”
Ah, but neither does a car. ”The great thing about an automobile is these things wear out,” Mistina says. ”So now you direct your energy toward those customers with older cars.
”For instance, I`m working with a man who has an `86 Bronco and is looking at a Taurus. Can he wait another year? Sure, if he feels he can`t get the deal he wants. But no matter what he does, he can`t stop the rolling ball. His car will wear out one day.”
On the public address system, the switchboard operator announces another call for anyone in the new-car department. Mistina punches the blinking button on his phone. ”Excuse me,” he says. ”This could be money.”
Hit by the price
Mistina is among 13 salespeople-12 men and a woman-in the new-car department. Everyone works six days a week-all day Saturday and a combination of two weekday shifts-9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 3 to 9 p.m.
Mistina`s seniority entitles him to three days of the later shift, when business is heavier, and two days of the earlier schedule. Everyone either skips the 30-minute meal break or throws down soup or a sandwich in the snack room.
River Oaks Ford, observing its 25th year, is owned by Joe Hennessy, whose face smiles from a facsimile of a Time magazine cover that`s hung in the showroom at 281 River Oaks Drive, 25 miles southeast of the Loop.
The manager of new-car sales is Tom Julian, who is asked by a reporter to provide some statistics. ”Our people usually sell from 10 or 11 vehicles a month to as many as 20 or 25,” he says. ”It`s common for a salesperson to make $50,000 a year.”
In the early afternoon, a married couple who bought a $14,000 van from Mistina two years ago arrives to scrutinize the more expensive customized vans, which are like rec rooms on wheels.
After the inspection, he pulls up two chairs in front of his desk for the couple, then goes to an office where a computer crunches numbers that will more than double monthly payments on the trade-in, to almost $600.
”The reason we have chairs in the showroom is so people won`t fall on the floor when they hear what it`s going to cost,” Mistina says when he gets back to his desk. The couple hears him out and decides to wait.
”They were shocked by the payments,” Mistina says after the couple leaves. ”It often takes time and more than one trip before you make a deal. They need time to digest what the expense is. After people know what their bills will be, they tend to try to figure out how they can afford it.
”You give people alternatives. You never discourage them. Never. The husband asked how they could get the payments to $500. I told them by increasing their down payment to $3,000. Maybe $500 is their number.”
He takes out a piece of stationery with a River Oaks Ford letterhead and writes the couple a note: ”Hi, I enjoyed talking about vans. Let`s consider all the different ways we can trade. Hope to talk to you again. Thanks for your time.” He signs his name and staples his card to it. ”I do this for everyone,” he says.
Congenial pressure
Mistina is proud to be a car salesman, even though he`s aware that the public generally doesn`t hold members of his calling in the highest regard.
”I know people put us a step above a thief,” he says. ”I understand that. I don`t fault them. Some salesmen will lie and deceive and use high-pressure tactics.”
He`s sold on the soft sell, which he says is Joe Hennessy`s philosophy and a reason that River Oaks Ford withstands troubled economic periods so well.
”When people walk in here, we don`t act like sharks in a feeding frenzy,” he says. ”Buying a car should be a joyful experience. Sometimes I spend 45 minutes just getting my customers to relax. The secret of being a good salesman is to treat your customers the way you`d want to be treated. No high-pressure tactics. None of that if you don`t buy now, the price is going up $200 tomorrow. None of those added costs for freight or `prepping` after you`ve agreed on a price. That`s baloney.”
The pressure is there. ”We`ll keep implying you should buy the car, but we`re not going to twist your arm. I think the talent comes with knowing how to keep the pressure subtle and to let people enjoy buying.”
Mistina is convinced that intangibles are as important as performance and styling. ”Everyone builds an adequate product. Service, reliability and integrity are what will keep people coming back and will make you
successful.”
A buyer also needs to face facts. ”I want to make a profit. I won`t sell you a car without making a profit. But you also want to know that six months from now if you have a question, you`ll get an answer. If I`m there for you, you`ll be a repeat customer. I`m here for the long haul, not the quick hit.” No hovering allowed
Mistina says he loves cars as much as selling, so maybe he was destined to be a car salesman. As a teenager, he worked from 4 p.m. to midnight each day after high school as a stock boy at the Spiegel warehouse to earn money for a `63 Chevy convertible, red with white interior.
His parents didn`t own a car. His father held a series of menial jobs, the last as a cleanup man at a Midas muffler franchise. His mother worked for Spiegel.
When Mistina was a boy, the family lived in a public housing project in Bridgeport, then moved to the Brighton Park neighborhood when he was in high school. He met his wife, Cher, a childhood sweetheart, by delivering the Chicago American to her parents` house.
Mistina was a sales manager before he joined River Oaks, but after the births of daughters Tiffany, 7, and Marissa, 3, he prefers to remain a salesman. ”Managers work long hours, and I want to devote as much time as I can to being with my family,” he says. ”I`m not one of the top salesmen here because of this. I finish about in the middle of the pack in sales.”
At 2:30 p.m., Mistina takes a couple who called to inquire about Taurus station wagons to the back lot where the new models are parked, then returns to the showroom. ”I don`t want to hover. I leave them alone.”
A week later, Mistina reports that he has sold another Taurus and another Ranger. He has heard from neither couple. ”I`m looking forward to March,” he says. ”Should be a great month.”
