More women are buying cars, and dealerships have kept up with the trend

Years ago when Dara Nielsen-Bock bought her first car, the sales person thought she needed help with the purchase.

Nielson-Bock, now the general manager for Lee’s Summit Mazda, remembers she felt insulted.

“I wasn’t treated very well,” she said. “They were pretty much telling me what I should buy. I needed my father and all kinds of stuff. They thought I needed someone with me to buy a car.”

Much has changed for women buying cars since those days in the 1970s and 1980s. According to several studies from 2013, women made 39 percent of all car purchases and influence more than 80 percent of the cars bought.

A December 2012 study by Pulse Opinion Research done on behalf of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers showed that women spend $300 billion a year on new and used vehicles and accessories.

It makes good business sense that whenever a woman walks into dealership showroom looking to buy a car, she is treated the same as a man.

“When you have a salesperson who has been in the business for over 30 years, they have had to evolve with the times and the technology,” said Heidi Kerbel, Internet manager at Olathe Kia.

“When you ask a female customer are you going to buy today, it makes her feel empowered. Instead of, ‘Do you want to talk to your husband?’ They will tell you upfront, ‘I am here to buy.’ I am looking for the best deal. I am ready to go. I saw this car online. This is the car I want.’”

Kerbel is nearing her fifth year in the car business. She started her career at a time when dealerships recognized the importance of catering to women car buyers with utmost respect.

Nielsen-Bock has watched it evolve in her 37 years in the business. She said she stumbled into it at a time when women were not in the car business. In college, she worked as a night auditor at a Holiday Inn.

“The gentleman who was building the Jaguar Triumph dealership right around the corner asked if I would work for him in the office when it was built, and I did,” Nielsen-Bock said.

At the time, she said, they wanted her in sales. She wanted to do finance even though there were not many women in management in the car business at that time.

“I was a little bit afraid,” she said. “I begged them for the job. I said give me 90 days. They said, ‘We don’t want to fire you. We like you.’ I said that is OK. It is my risk.

“It ended up working out just beautifully.”

In the 1980s, she started to see a change in how women car buyers were treated, and it has only gotten better since then.

“Let’s face it, both the man and wife works,” Nielsen-Bock said. “If a salesperson talks to a customer and they are not talking to both the woman and the man, they are going to lose the sale. She might not say too much, but she has done her research online.”

Because of her family-long involvement in auto dealerships throughout the Kansas City area, Lauren McCarthy has been immersed in this world most of her life. She is currently the public relations and spokesperson for McCarthy Auto Group.

McCarthy started a blog, www.laurenwantstoknow.com, which assists women looking to buy a car.

“It is directly talking to women and trying to be an advocate for them,” she said.

McCarthy adds that the sales people shouldn’t have one strategy for a man and another for a woman.

“My dad has been doing this for a long time and he would argue the business is still the same,” McCarthy said. “It is a people business. People are still going to come in and test drive a vehicle and walk off the lot with it.

“I still think there is still some reservations, men and women. It is a big purchase, a big deal. There are a lot of bad stories told about car dealers in the past, and maybe you had a bad experience. Like any other business, there is good and bad.”

The goal for every dealership is to make the experience as enjoyable as possible because repeat business and word of mouth only helps them.

It means evolving and changing with the times. In today’s economy, women work as much as men do. In Kansas City, automobiles remain the best form of transportation.

Women, like men, need a reliable, comfortable car to get them from home to work and back home again.

“When I started, I was new to the car business,” said Kerbel, who handles the inquiries made through Olathe Kia’s website. “It was a learning process for me. As I was learning, I was learning as a female and I am still learning things every day to increase the information that I would want to know as a female for our websites and messages to the public.”

Judging by Internet sales at Olathe Kia, Kerbel said exactly 50 percent of the cars bought are by men and 50 percent by women.

“The women you end up calling and finding what they are looking for, they know what they want. They have done their research,” Kerbel said.

“It is funny. The man will come in, look at the car, test drive it and then say, ‘I need to get with my wife.’ The wife will give it the thumbs up or the thumbs down. They will say, ‘I saw this online and it has this equipment instead of this equipment.’ The influence is there. The women are doing the research. They are feeling empowered with all the different resources they can go to for information.”

McCarthy said it comes down to common courtesy. Never degrade someone or assume that they do not know something about the vehicle.

“The perception is men know more about vehicles, and they probably do. It is more of a man’s toy or hobby, their passion,” McCarthy said. “However, women look at vehicles in a different way from men. Women may look more for safety and men for speed. It is different for every person. You should not act a certain way.

“I know a lot of married men and women, and the man takes the back seat. He is not going to make the decision without her input and nor should she make the decision without his opinion.”

The bottom line is auto dealerships want to sell a vehicle to everybody who walks into their showroom.

“The salesperson’s job is not to treat them any different than a male customer,” Kerbel said.

This story was originally published November 8, 2014 at 6:00 AM.