Cold Spears and Card-Index: How to Boost Car Dealership Sales

14 April 2026

As motoring became more accessible due to mass production in the 1920s and 30s, so car manufacturers became more conscious of the need to compete for sales.

In our Film, Video and Audio Collection we have a number of productions made for car salesmen by the manufacturers to encourage them to be more savvy and customer friendly, and hit those all-important sales targets!

One of the earliest is a 1937 Ford film called “For Dealers Only”. As is typical for this type of film, we see a shoddy, dirty showroom with its indifferent newspaper reading salesman not caring if sales prospects walk away. In steps an immaculate man from the Ford Publicity Team. Soon the showroom is smartened up, with specially designed Ford shelves to fit the Ford brochures. “Once you’ve got folk studying the catalogue, you’re another step closer to a sale”, says the beaming Publicity man.

The salesman now has a new card-index system for his prospects, and sales are through the roof, naturally!

An interesting point is that the Ford branding on signage at this time has to be hand-painted and a guide is provided for the signwriter to ensure accuracy.

We also have audio recordings in our collection, including this one with a rather telling cover design:

By the time we get to the 1960s, competition is even fiercer as the British car industry boomed. Correspondingly, sales techniques became somewhat sharper. In the 1966 film, “A Job with Prospects”, we are introduced to a range of suggested approaches that are increasingly ruthless.

The man teaching the useless salesman this time, instructs from an imagined trophy room, with the heads of sales conquests hanging on the wall and even as a rug. He says, “Prospecting becomes a kind of sport”.

“Spotting” has the salesman stalking suburban streets on Sunday mornings to take note of likely prospects “titivating” their cars. The salesman takes note of those with decent cars they would take as a trade-in. These are then targeted with a personalised letter saying they have a customer looking for just that make and model, offering tempting trade-in deals.

“Cold Spears” are opportunist moments in everyday life to compliment someone on their car and to plant the seed that a new one is better. “You spear your man in cold blood, in the street.”

“Bird dogs” are a network of spies in the community like barmen, and parking attendants, that you pay to tip you off if someone is having car trouble or talking about getting a new car.

Other recommendations are:

With aftersales, get any issues sorted “before he starts blabbing to the neighbourhood”.
Scan the small ads to target people selling their cars.
Put printed cards under wipers on parked cars.
Better still, leave an enigmatic handwritten note with a phone number so the (of course male) car owner thinks they have a female admirer and eagerly rings the number!

You can see why I have not said which car manufacturer issued this film, although I’m sure nobody uses these tactics today…