The Goods Live Hard Sell Hard 2009

I’m Don Ready. I sell cars.

This 2009 comedy is part parody of secondhand car dealers and tv business turnaround shows.

I loved it.

It’s not for faint-hearted, mind. (“Blueberry Pancakes”)

Don Ready is “a hotshot, a weekend warrior … a mercenary”. He leads a crack team of failing car lot rescuers, “on the road 51.5 weeks a year”.

There’s a lot that solution salespeople will recognise with a squirmish giggle.

“sell the metal!”

There’s the pre-match psyching up. The razzling promos surrounding Go. And the launch rah-rah.

“like a mountain lion pouncing on an unsuspecting jogger”

One of Don’s team (“they call me The Magician”) fires up the “troops” with a chanting call-and-response;

to sell you must;  confine!  confuse!  conflict!

to close you must;  lie!  loan!  leave!

Ahem.

Then there’s several clips of selling skill scams.

The pinnacle of a “Nigerian buyback”. Which “takes a customer’s trade-in, then 20 minutes later, sells it right back to said customer at a mark-up”.

The ‘creative financing’. Including the ‘security’ of a one-dollar house.

And general pricing sleight. “Really simple, boys”. An initial $6500 price sees Don turn the 6 upside down to become 9.

So then you’re negotiating with a buyer, “you flip it”. Back to 6. The customer revels in a three grand discount. Which is the price the car was all along.

The movie’s climax involves Don selling the final, unsellable car. He taps into the buyer’s true desires. How the ‘product’ can help him achieve his “dreams”. “We either cherish them or let them die on the vine”. It’s quite the scene. Pump, pump, pump, pump…