PROPOSAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part One

Benefits in addition to Features (2

About the Book (3

About the Competition (4

About the Author (5

About the Market (6

About Promotions (7

Outline (8

Part Two

Sample Chapters (12

Sample Illustration

BENEFITS AND FEATURES: Useful information will be sprinkled

throughout the story.

• What really happens when the salesman takes your offer to the manager?

• The Book will explain Archetypes of Customers: Sugar Daddy, Car Queer, Bee Back, Lot Trash, Jacker, Bogue, Holy Roller and Qualified Buyer.

• The Book also illustrates Archetypes of Salespeople: Greenpea, Misfit, Ninety Day Wonder, Washout, Psychopath, GQ and Holyroller.

• How do you know when you can’t push the deal any more?

• What is pack? How does it affect the cost of your car?

• How to calculate an estimate of dealer’s cost of a new car, or research an exact cost.

• What is the best day of the month to buy a car?

• The best time of day?

• What weather conditions are favorable to the customer with a trade?

• What is it with sales managers and giant inflatable gorillas?

• What are the ten steps to a sale?

• The Reader will learn different closes: Four Square, Assumptive Close and one salesman’s “Kneecap Close”.

ABOUT THE BOOK: Car Lot Confidential is a work of creative nonfiction that reads like a novel, with a three-act structure, character arcs, an inciting incident and a central character’s journey. The Book is also filled with information that will clear away some mystery and expose the inner workings behind the scenes of the car business.

Car Lot Confidential is the story of a twenty-nine-year-old, Paul Burke, who suddenly loses his job managing a comic book shop and is lured into the surreal world of car sales. The Book has humor mixed with the harsh reality of working in a confrontational industry.

The Book will educate the reader with behind-the-scenes information, showing techniques used to overcome customers’ objections. Also, professionals are trained to instill a sense of urgency and push the buyer to make a decision as quickly as possible.

The finished manuscript will be seventy-five thousand words. It will be ready nine months after receipt of the advance.

Car Lot Confidential is filled with anecdotes illustrating the sordid world of life on a car lot.

ABOUT THE COMPETITION: Based on a search of bookstores and the Internet, Car Lot Confidential will be unique. All the other car books found are dry instruction manuals written by consumer advocates based on what car buying would be like in a perfect world. An actual salesman with almost twenty years of experience writes Car Lot Confidential. The closest competition will be Kitchen Confidential.

ABOUT THE MARKET: Car Lot Confidential should appeal to the same group of readers that made Kitchen Confidential a best seller. As Stephen King says, everyone likes to read about other people’s work.

This book will also be valuable to anyone who is considering a purchase of a new or used vehicle or anyone who has ever been interested in what really happens when the salesperson leaves the office to “take this to my manager.”

In 2004 Americans bought fifty-nine million four hundred ten thousand new and used cars and trucks.¹ This is a huge potential market for an insider’s look at the process.

ABOUT PROMOTION: The author is eager to do whatever he can to promote the book. He has registered the domain name www.carlotconfidential.com and has designed a web page.

The blog has been up a few weeks and is already attracting hundreds of hits a day. We will be posting a newsletter to let the public read samples and update news about the book. There will be a link to purchase a copy of the book. Visitors will be able to ask questions about the car business and the car buying process. They will have the opportunity to make comments.

The author will be available for any book signing, discussion group, and reading in the United States.

OUTLINE

PROLOGUE: Sitting in his tiny cube one afternoon, Paul wonders how a temporary gig turned into fifteen years and counting.

Act One: Into the Shark Tank

1) After spending three years managing a freak-show comic book shop, the rug was pulled from under Paul’s safe insulated world.

2) Out of options and without a clue, he washes up on the shore of the car business.

3) Training sessions: Videos of sleazy men in disco era leisure suits make sexist jokes while telling you how to scam the public.

4) Paul is offered different jobs outside the car business. Low self-esteem holds him back.

5) Paul discovers customers and salespeople that defy all logic. There was a Chinese kid wrapped around an old salesman’s leg. The old salesman panicked, running across the lot with a kid stuck to his leg. The kid’s parents laughed, thinking this was a funny American ritual.

6) Paul’s sales log turns into a personal journal. He writes down funny stories, opinions and observations.

7) Sales manager cooks up a contest. Sales people get points for every customer who lies down in the trunk. There’s a chart showing everyone’s score.

Heartless bastards run the show. Nice guys really do finish last.

ACT TWO: Buried in the Business

9) Paul resists calling himself a car salesman for a while. With the passage of time he is slowly seduced by the promise of easy money. Drugs and alcohol around every corner. Paul has to flee the fast track.

10) He gets clean and sober and finds a home in a small Mom and Pop store.

11) He turns his journal into a story about a car salesman. He shows it to a few people at the car lot. They tell him he’s a fool. A middle-aged man trying to pretend he’s something other than a salesman.

12) Weird stunts and gimmicks. Clowns, Talking Frogs and Shriner races. A Tiny Elvis promotion causes a dwarf uprising.

13) Games and superstitions of Salespeople; Funnel in the Pants. Speaker Phone hi-jinks and other mean tricks. Why are there always pennies scattered around car lots? (Feeding the Lot Gods)

14) Paul’s been sober five years. His brain fog lifts, he puts his writing in order. He finds a writer’s group and shares his work with experienced authors.

15) Paul finds a few good friends among the vampires. There was Bob, a retired business owner. Small town deputies catch Paul and Bob pushing a giant pumpkin down a steep hill. Two well dressed, middle-aged men on the street in direct proximity to a rolling four hundred pound vegetable.

16) The owners sell the Mom and Pop store to a mega-chain. Depression sets in.

17) One morning Paul wakes up at three A.M. and realizes he has to be a writer. He pulls ten years of notes together and writes a novel about a car salesman engaged in spiritual warfare. He receives a series of favorable letters from agents and editors. They like his writing but they don’t know what category his book falls into. They suggest that he write a non-fiction book about the retail automotive sales industry.

18) Paul hits bottom. In his burnout he finds a calm peaceful part of himself. He realizes it’s time to get serious. Everyone wants to know more about life at the car lot so he puts together an idea for a nonfiction book about life in the business.

ACT THREE: Where’s the Exit?

19) Does Paul make it out?

20) Doesn’t look like it.

21) Like inmates in prisons and psychiatric wards, most salespeople have a plan of escape. Few make it out. After fifteen years of sobriety Paul decides he’s ready and capable enough to get out. He starts to plan his way out. He researches non-fiction.

EPILOGUE: Maybe there’s hope after all.

Appendix: Good advice and bad news.

• To lease or not to lease. Is that the question?

• What are the ten steps to a sale?

• The rosy scenarios sales trainers paint versus hard reality.

• What is it with sales managers and giant inflatable gorillas?

• Customers tell the same lies over and over.

• What do salesmen and managers talk about while you wait in the office?

Good news: Not everything you feared is true.

• There is no secret book of invoices.

• Why is it better to trade on a rainy day?

• Why should you buy on the last day of the month?

• Ad Cars, Would you buy a Burnt Autumn Tangerine colored car if the price were right?

Bad news: It’s worse than you thought.

• Half-truth in Advertising.

• Methods to keep you nodding ‘yes’.

• Payment switch.

• Is it too good to be true?

• Bait and switch.

Lingo, slang and bad language: a Glossary

1 Statistical Abstract of U.S. 2006