As I sat in my office with three selling days left in December, the only activity in the entire building were the thoughts chattering in my mind, "what in the world made you want to run a USED car dealership?" "You can't teach an old dog new tricks," "Mom was right, you should 've stayed in finance."  The excruciatingly painful month of December was coming to an end and I was the only one selling anything however the problem was, i'm not a sales person, I hired three people to do that, so WHY aren't they selling anything? Oh I know, how could I forget...not enough leads, no one is ready to buy today (regardless of the fact that they are on the freaking lot looking at cars, that has no bearing on the sales process apparently), and my all time favorite from my ever so clairvoyant sales staff "They aren't qualified," without as much as a write up or a credit app to verify said suggestion.

Instead of planning an early retirement ceremony for myself, I pulled myself together and thought, what would Oprah do? My answer, motivate. So I persisted. I opened up our CRM and looked for holes, instant holes, printed lists and had what I like to call a family meeting. At the impromptu family meeting I handed out each person's honey do list and told them the first to set an apt that showed received a spiff, the person who sold the most over the next 3 days received a spiff, the person with the highest gross gets a spiff and if the Heavens open and one person wins all three categories, they get a 3 day weekend with paid time off...

A tornado of motivation swept thru the room and the air became lighter and more breathable. I had never seen our team so focused, dedicated and most of all MOTIVATED. They were challenged and had direction with a laser sharp intensity possed by only the elite of athletic competitors. But would it yield results?

Cut to December 31st-

We ended up booking 7 deals in the the last 3 days of the month with grosses I could smile about. We paid on all three spiffs and would have gladly paid for the trifecta however it was not obtained and that's okay. The team came together for a bond that has stuck well thru January and it only cost a couple of bucks considering the results that were manifested. Instead of chewing tail we took the reverse approach and I must say, motivation over decimation saved the day.