Gerry Lane Buick GMC

Gerald Ray Lane didn't drive a new car until he was 24, and only then because he was selling it. He escaped the poverty of the Oklahoma Dust Bowl where he spent his childhood choking on dust storms so thick that day turned to night. Gerry fled to California to work in a defense plant after World War II; the day he arrived the plant closed down. That's when Gerry Lane became a car salesman. "I had no training. I had no story," he later wrote in his biography, Gerry Lane: $10 Billion Success. "All I had was the truth, so I told customers, "I'm a dumb Okie who will starve if I don't sell this car, so that's why I'll make you the best deal that can possibly be made." And the truth did set me free. I learned quickly that the car business is too mysterious to most people and to have any hope for customers to trust you is to simply tell them the truth, to treat them the way I wanted to be treated. Repeat business is all based on trust and trust is based on truth. All successful business people know this.