A submarine has individual compartments to protect itself from disaster. When attacked, the crew moves through each compartment, closing the hatch of the previous compartment behind them. Selling requires the same procedure: moving completely through each compartment, or step of the sales process, to arrive safely at a successful sale. We all know salespeople who skip steps to get to the close faster, without shutting the other hatches behind them. And chances are, their sale ended up dead in the water.Read post

We are directing our efforts to improve on acquiring used vehicles. We had a meeting about it where we all came with our top 3 ideas on where we focus. Some of our ideas are the following: -Staff a salesperson every morning in the service drive and work the service drive better. Make sure there are processes in place to where we can give them bids on the vehicle and convince them to trade their car in. -Pay our salespeople a spiff to look online and try to attract private party sellers to the dealership to sell us their car. -Get our used car manager to network better with other dealers and wholesellers in an effort to buy more cars from them. -Be willing to "stretch" more on a trade-in to make the deal and get their trade. Not to the point where we will be buried in the trade though. -Establish a campaign in our crm to where salespeople can contact customers with vehicles between x miles to x miles to come in and trade-in their car. We had some other ideas but I would ...Read post

We are looking at cutting one of our 3rd party vendors (I won't say who it is so I don't piss anyone off!) and want to replace them with someone else. We are currently closing 1% of their leads year to date and pay a good amount of money for those leads. We have a couple of ideas of who we would like to replace them with, but I wanted to throw this post out first to see if anyone has some solid recommendations. Just like any other dealer, we won't to receive a reasonably quality lead for the money we are paying and would be happy with around a 5% closing ratio. Any suggestions??? ...Read post

Each year at the start of football practice, Vince Lombardi, the coach of the Green Bay Packers started his season the same way. His opening statement to his players was, “This is a football.” Every year, John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach of the UCLA Bruins started his first practice of the season by demonstrating to his players how to properly put on their socks to prevent blisters. Pretty basic stuff, huh?Read post

Last night the new season of Mad Men premiered, the show that follows the tale of an ad agency on Madison Avenue NYC, garnered much hype last year after the Jaguar episode.Either way, this season opener caught my attention because of the message Don was trying to sell to Sheraton Hotels.    “I think we’re not selling a geographical location; we’re selling an experience, “ Don said when he was presenting his ad idea.   Don was sent to Hawaii on, “a work junket”. When he returned to the office from Hawaii he told his colleagues, “I had an experience. I don’t know how to put it in words.” The experience Don had in Hawaii was superb, even so much so that he kept thinking about it, couldn’t get the sound of the ocean waves out of his mind. The experience.  Now Don might be questioning his existence in this episode but that’s not the point I’m trying to drive home her...Read post

We are getting ready to do a used car event next month. We have partnered up with a dealerhsip next door to us and put quite a bit of money to promote the event. One of the things that is really important to both dealerships is having the lender that we had partnered with on site to buy deals. Due to staffing issues and other disagreements, they couldn't staff the event for us and ultimately backed out. Upon meeting with other lenders to replace them, most banks don't have the staff and don't see the value of having buyers on site for the event. Maybe we are old school or something, but I really feel like having a buyer there makes a difference to us and the guest. Does anybody else agree? Are we being unreasonable to ask for a buyer to be on site and look at our deals? Also, I was wondering if there are dealerships that have faced a simalar dilemna and if they found a good solution. Let me know your thoughts.... ...Read post

You are who you decide to be at any given moment. It does not take money, a degree, a certain age, a certain appearance, tons of experience, knowing the right people, past success or any other qualifying factor that you may be currently using as a subconscious roadblock to your desired success. Your belief system creates your results both past and present. If your current belief system is not what it should be to support your success, you must fake it, till you make it.Read post

Are you the CEO of your company? If you’re a sales person, and you answered no to this question, think again. To be successful you must have a CEO mentality. All successful sales people view themselves as a business within a business. Never forget that the company you work for writes and signs your check, but you fill in the numbers. Always take responsibility for everything. You are the CEO.Read post