I don't think that forklift trucks are "sold" nowadays. They are quoted and then the customer makes a purchase. I personally haven't heard of nor have personal knowledge of forklift salesmen consistently lying through their teeth to customers as has been implied by many of the threads in this forum. I also hear a lot of jabbering about how much forklift sales people make, I doubt that. What other job can you think of that paid twice as much in the 1970's than it does today?
A typical scenario that I see is that a customer buys a used truck based on what is available and what he can afford but not based on what he needs. Then that customer grows his business to where he needs to replace the truck but now he only will buy new. What I've seen is that if he gets 6 quotes they will all be based on what he has for a current truck-not on what he actually needs. That is not salesmanship.
I just recently quoted a customer a 10,000# pneumatic and everyone else was quoting an 11,000# truck. Why, because he had 11,000 # trucks and that is what he asked for. But the point is that the trucks that he had actually derated down to 9,050# and that was without the side shifter.
I don't know if many dealer principals read or subscribe to this forum, if so do the math... For a salesman to consider themselves decent in this industry he has to sell at least $1,000,000 per year. Let's say they average 7% net profit on what they sell, they have contributed $70,000 to the company. How much of that are you willing to pay to the salesman? That is why there are not many GOOD sales people in our industry.
What I belive that the industry has devolved into is that since there is not enough profit on the manufacturers and the dealer level, once the customer buys they are treated as a captive audience and attempts are made to get back the profit that should have been made to begin with. That is not a great recipe for long term sucess.