We work in an industry that can come with many opportunities to earn certifications.

Programs like DealerRater's certification can help a salesperson gain more exposure on their dealerships inventory on cars.com and DealerRater. Your CRM most likely has a certification program as well. 

Google offers free certifications, you just have to put the work in and study cause it isn't easy.

The long and short of it is this. Certifications help you in more ways than you know. Certifications are great when asking your boss for money. Plus, they also look great on the wall. 

10 Reasons Why You Need More Certifications in Your Life. 

1. Certification demonstrates commitment to your profession. Receiving a certification shows your peers, supervisors, and, in turn, the general public how committed you are to your chosen career, along with how well you perform to set standards. Certification sets you apart as a leader in your field
    
2. Certification enhances the profession's image. Association certification programs seek to grow, promote, and develop certified professionals who can stand "out in front" as examples of excellence in your field.
    
3. Certification reflects achievement. A certified professional has displayed excellence in their field or industry and fulfilled set standards and requirements.
    
4. Certification builds self-esteem. Association certification programs create a standard for a particular profession, complete with performance standards, ethics, and career paths. You'll see yourself as a certified professional who can control his or her own professional destiny and find a deep sense of personal satisfaction.
    
5. Certification establishes professional credentials. Since it recognizes your individual accomplishments, certification stands above your resume, serving as an impartial, third-party endorsement of your knowledge and expertise. 
    
6. Certification improves career opportunities and advancement. Certification gives you the "edge" when being considered for a promotion or other career opportunities. Certification clearly identifies you as an employee who can adapt to changes in work, technology, business practices, and innovation.
    
7. Certification prepares you for greater on-the-job responsibilities. Certified professionals are aware of the constantly changing environment their profession faces, and they possess the tools needed to anticipate and respond to that change.
    
8. Certification provides for greater earnings potential. As a certified professional, you can expect many benefits, but in today's downsized, right-sized, topsy-turvy working world, pay increases speak for themselves.
    
9. Certification improves skills and knowledge. Achieving certification highlights your individual competence by confirming proficiency, knowledge, and career commitment.
   .
10. Certification offers greater professional recognition from peers. Hear that applause? It's all for you! As a certified professional, you can expect increased recognition from your peers for taking that extra step in your professional development.

“The more pessimistic your explanatory style, the easier it is to slip into learned helplessness.” ― David McRaney, You Are Not So Smart"

As an industry, we’ve stripped all accountability and responsibility from the people in our profit centers and in turn, have handed it over to a department that at its core, is a cost center. And we wonder why we can’t find good people.
 

Everyone is Passing the Buck

The automotive industry has become really good at passing responsibility to someone else — anyone else. As many unfamiliar processes and platforms crept into consideration, nobody wanted to be responsible for managing the unfamiliar. One, because they didn't know how to, and two, if your salespeople are doing work that isn’t sales-related (in their mind) then it wasn’t worth doing. But as with everything, times have changed. And the distinction of a customer being an “internet customer” or not, is gone.

The internet, smartphones, and social media; these technologies are ubiquitous now. So the idea that we need to have different departments handling different things is an idea that needs to be retired. These “new” things are just part of the job — consider them necessary skills of the trade.

In the past, it became easier to pay a smaller group of people to do a larger amount of work. The problem with that model is that at a certain point you hit diminishing returns and the only way to grow is to either hire more people in your cost centers or invest in the people that make up your profit center.

BDCs rarely have the mindset that they are each a special, unique snowflake, doing work that only a specially-trained assassin can do. The job of answering phones and replying to emails is not exactly rocket science. It’s rarely strategic if I am being honest. In reality, BDC staff have been doing the jobs that no one else has wanted to do.

Everything that a BDC department accomplishes is not ‘untrainable.’ Assassins aren’t born assassins. That being said, you can’t be an assassin without going ‘assassin college’ first. And they aren’t magicians either. (Magicians get to wear way cooler hats.)
 

Dealers are Wising Up

They’ve allowed the majority of their workforce to fall victim to learned helplessness and the only way to change this pattern is to adjust the way that they run their business.

We could start to see more dealers empower the people who really want to do a good job and begin to break down the wall that silos the BDC from the sales department because in reality, customer service is customer service.

The sales department of tomorrow doesn’t exist in silos. RIP Business Development Center.

Long live the Business Development dealership.

Finding yourself in a desperate situation is pretty much a guaranteed experience in the world of sales. What really matters is the way you behave in a desperate situation.

Allowing your customers to feel the desperation in the air only gives them a valid reason to doubt you and what you are selling and will most likely start reaching out to your competitors.

Desperation creates an atmosphere that suffocates prospects. In contrast, drive infuses the air with positive energy that builds trust and confidence.

Manage your time well.
Desperate situations primarily arise from gross misappropriation of time. Managed floor plans help you Stay productive by letting you know when you’re on deck and when you’re not.

Prioritize the customer.
It’s not about you, it’s about customers. And it’s not about your problems but theirs. When you prioritize customer success, you ensure they get the experience they deserve, regardless of the speed at which they arrive at a decision. Don’t rush people.

Don’t wait until your pipeline is half empty.
Half-empty pipelines can cause real panic. Make sure you and your team keep your pipeline healthy and flowing. Reach out to past customers, run Facebook ads etc. there is always something you can do to increase your pipeline.

Fine-tune your lead qualification.
Avoid wasting time on poorly vetted prospects. Reduce the likelihood of engaging low- quality leads. This is why investing in tools like Conversica can be very helpful.

Do your prospecting research.
Conduct relevant research on customers you plan to engage. Make a strong case for your product instead of dangling huge discounts to trick prospects into buying. Solve their needs first.
 

At the end of the day, have some dignity.

Customers always deserve excellent service but that shouldn’t push you into begging, issuing false ultimatums and so on. 

Excellent service means you master your craft, perfect your pitch, and channel your drive to genuinely help customers and make them realize the value of what you are offering.

Most dealers understand the importance of making it easy for customers and prospects to find contact information. Websites often have prominent "contact us" sections, chat opportunities that pop up all over the place or send us a text etc, etc.  

The phone, despite the belief that customers don't want to talk or don't have time to call, offering a click-to-call option is a useful way to help customers reach your business.

And the technology is more trackable than it's ever been, with call data and click-to-call analytics helping marketers track, record, and optimize inbound calls.

Check out the graphic to learn more:
 

With the goal of becoming a better writer/blogger It’s just a personal accountability thing that I’ve decided to put myself through.

And just like with many other things. The only way to get better at it, is to do more of it.

Morning routines are probably the most important. They allow us to prepare our bodies for the tasks and responsibilities of the day.

Routines also allow us to accomplish things no matter how small in return giving us the ability to feel rewarded right away.

Being rewarded is a great way to start the day especially when you’re trying to keep it 💯

1. Get Up Early 

I get up every morning at 4:30

Did you know that getting up early will make you run faster? Actually I have no idea If that’s true at all. But getting up early has given me the ability to start my day with a stint of “me” time. Instead of waking up immediately into something chaotic I wake up to the sunrise every day.

2. Write Something

I use the WordPress app on my iPhone

Whether it’s a journal entry, a list of things you want to accomplish today or even a blog post. Whatever it is get that gray matter train moving. Chug a chug a chug a chug

3. Read Something

I use RSS readers

I use an app called feedly that stores all the RSS feeds I’ve collected for sites I like to follow. For stories that I want to save for further reading or for post topics later I’ll save those ones to instapaper from inside the feedly app. I try not to read until after I write because it’s easy to get lost in a sea of articles and never return to your writing.

4. Coffee/Tea

I use a Kuerig with self ground beans

I am a coffee drinker. Tried tea in the past and just can’t get into it. Coffee is my homeboy.

5. Workout

I do crossfit

The funny thing about this one is that in order to make it work for me I needed to get up even earlier than I was waking before. The coolest thing about that is I had total control in either making it happen or failing. I am 100% responsible for making this thing happen for me if I want to continue on my path of fitness. If I don’t make the 6:00am class I don’t get to do it plain and simple. Since I love doing it, I make 6:00 am work for me.

Routines build the habits that allow us to be the best versions of ourselves.

** What about you? Do you have any morning routines you want to share? 

Octane AI, a company that offers tools to create chatbots for Facebook Messenger, has developed a tool that packages a predefined message thread into an individual piece of content. Called Convos, these episodic conversations can be distributed as links outside of Messenger.

In November, Facebook provided a way for people, primarily bot makers, to add referral codes to Messenger links. These referral codes could be used to tell the bot something about where the person on the end of the conversation was coming from or what they were looking for.

Referral links remove the need for any introductory rigamarole, as well as any uncertainty as to why someone might want to converse with a Messenger bot. Instead of all the small talk, the links send them straight into a particular pre-programmed conversation.

Which means we now have context into our customers intentions. By knowing this information we are able to start the conversation exactly where it needs to be started without having to revert back to qualifying questions. Moving a conversation forward and in the direction we want it to go. 

All through automation and expanding or limiting the scope of the questions being presented.

Esentially taking those flow charts and scripts we use to train and turning them into a fully interactive experience.

Chatting up a bot is like carrying a conversation with a Westworld host, albeit one lacking a bicameral mind of course.

Convos can be straightforward: bot sends a message or multiple messages, person clicks on one of the predefined reply buttons that triggers a preset response from the bot, rinse, repeat.

In addition to text, responses can contain photos, photo galleries, videos, audio and buttons that people can click to visit a website.

Or Convos can be more interactive than a color-by-numbers conversation. People can be presented with multiple predefined reply buttons that fork the conversation into different directions. Maybe a convo goes into finding out the best scenic drives outside the city for example.

With the abilities of chatbots now and in the future. How do you see this new technology working in your dealership?

Is it possible that chatbots might be the BDC's of the future?