Jim,

As a trainer and speaker, I felt I should comment. Just to give you a little background, I've consulted across dozens of industries, including automotive, truck driver recruitment, and truck dealerships as training manager for Navistar before recently opening my own training company, as well as writing a book, focusing on the truck and automotive industries. I have found these industries to be mostly overlooked by traditional soft skills training personnel, particularly truck. Every dealer I've had the privilege of meeting, though, is hungry for soft skills content. They want to improve their customer's experience and are good people.

I agree with you that the process is not as much an issue as is the lack of training, in general. Even more to that point is the lack of training with teeth. Most training is simply too general--"Ask questions." Okay... Um, what questions? It is for this reason that most car salespeople pitch rather than probe. As someone who bought his first new car, a minivan, last summer, I can tell you it was not a good experience. Out of the four dealerships my wife and I hit, not one found out we were looking to purchase a minivan because she was pregnant with our second child and, at nearly 6'2", we couldn't fit a second car seat behind her in a car. It felt like we were expected to have done all the research online already, the staff then was only supposed to show us the gadgets and buttons in the vehicle and then we were to drive it and make a decision based on price. Our needs were anticipated instead of asked about. "It gets great gas mileage." Is gas mileage important to us? How do we define "great?" (No minivan gets great gas mileage under my definition of "great.") Simple questions like, "Do you have a make and model in mind already? Why?," "What three things can't you have in a vehicle?" and so forth, would have been very welcome. Additionally, simple observation needs to be taught better. No one brought up safety. People buying a minivan? Safety is probably important; however, we don't want to assume. "Is safety important to you?" is thus a great question. As a father, I would trade safety for "great gas mileage" in a heartbeat, if necessary.

Salespeople often opened with, "What do I need to do to put you in a vehicle today? I can come down in price on anything." This created more questions than answers--if you can come down in price, that means the price on the vehicles isn't an honest price, in my mind. So why even have it on the vehicle? And "what do I need to do..." comes off as us being there for you, whereas the salesperson should be there for us. The focus was the sale. The focus should be the experience. The customer won't always make a purchase but they will ALWAYS have an experience. Just because a customer buys doesn't mean they had a good experience. A customer who has a good experience will be come back, buy repeatedly (even if they didn't buy today), give us good word of mouth, etc. A customer who doesn't, won't return and will complain, even if they bought.

In short, items #2 and #3 on your list, both in what I experienced and observe as a trainer identifying areas in which to assist, often aren't happening. Your point about product knowledge is spot on. That rarely seems to be an issue and wasn't for us. Soft skills give us the ability to ask questions; technical skills tell us which questions to ask. So they have to be used together but the former tends not to happen. In our case, this resulted in us being shown a bunch of features we couldn't have cared less about. This made us feel like our time was being wasted.

I would suggest one modification to your list: Move negotiation under "Qualify." Objection handling, which is what negotiation on price is--an objection to price--should take place during probing ("qualifying" in your terminology). "What are you looking to spend? Your cap and ideal amount, please." Knowing that, and the customer's why, enables us to negotiate more effectively and show value. As you say, people expect to negotiate. It's the VALUE for what they get not the PRICE that makes them feel good about the negotiation. Take us. A negotiation by our salesperson might have started like this:

"Okay, we know safety and leg space for the driver are your top priorities. A car isn't an option because of the lack of leg space. You'd like the video screen options for your children when they get older, as you intend to be driving this vehicle for a long time and plan to take some long trips. You mentioned your price cap is $39,500. Our minivans with video screens start at $42,000. Can you come up to $42,000 to get the video screens along with the ideal leg room and safety? If so, I can also throw in (xyz - "stain resistant floor mats, which parents love," for instance)." Or, our salesperson might have been able to ask, "Have you tried (such-and-such) car? I think that might have the leg space you want and I can offer that with video screens for $37,000." That's where technical knowledge becomes so important. Guess what? My wife hasn't sat in every type of car in the world and we're not experts, so it's quite possible there was a great car purchase for us out there that would have been better than a minivan but we never heard about it because salespeople didn't ask questions. When it comes to negotiation, colleague Jay Hughes of Salesology puts it best: "When you're on the bomb squad, your job is to diffuse the bomb BEFORE it goes off." Love that analogy for objection handling! Once we have uncovered price, THEN we go drive the vehicles.

Additionally, whatever soft skills training is received tends to vary across different departments in a dealership. Soft skills should be consistent across the board--parts shouldn't have a different practice than sales than service. Different soft skills protocols lead to inconsistent customer experiences, which often end in frustration for our customers.

Great article and great points; thanks for posting. I think the challenge for the industry is simply looking at the soft skills a little differently and getting creative. To your point, the key is QUALIFY - i.e. ASK QUESTIONS; don't assume. And learn the methods for knowing when to ask which types of questions, answering questions, controlling the conversation, and so forth.  

Thanks for the comment Ian & for connecting.  I have a unique skill set and background.  I began in the banking industry 36 years ago and then moved to the insurance business where I learned and honed my people skills and most thankfully my leadership/management skills.  I then moved into the automobile industry.  I am fortunate to have started in sales, moved to finance, then to sales management, to General Manager and even a Dealer Principal.  I have also spent 2-3 years as a full-time consultant and trainer traveling the country training in dealerships as well as doing seminars.  

All that said, I have seen the problem since I entered the car business - lack of consistent training and generally speaking no leadership.  In the insurance industry, it is certainly not perfect, but a license is required and then renewal of your license is conditional upon continuing education.  Also, industry certifications are very common for career individuals.  Because of these requirements, training is more consistent and leadership much more prevalent.  

My point is that the sales process or road to the sale has never been the problem.  I actually teach a 5 step process that allows for much more flexibility  - (1) Engagement (2) Fact Finding (3) Solution (4) Agreement (5) Delivery.  However, this simple process won't work without consistent training on process and product.  The people must be trained on people skills.  Our consultants must understand that everyone is different and that they must be able to discern the difference and then interact accordingly so that the experience is a good one for the customer.  

You mentioned your experience and what you ran into was a price driven culture.  Their belief is that price is the most important part of a customer doing business with them and that is the way they conduct business from the manager to the salesperson. They don't understand value and certainly don't get the principle that price only becomes a problem when cost exceeds value.

I do like your point about moving the negotiation and merging it into the qualification step.  That makes sense, but the customer in many cases would be resistant because of previous experience and would think we were trying to get something over on them.  Being honest and transparent with why and how it would benefit their experience would be the way to handle that, but ultimately we must be flexible while still completing all steps for the customer to have a great experience.  In my 5 steps - the engagement is still the meet and greet but recognizes that it is happening in many ways today and carries into the fact-finding which easily can include negotiation/price point discussions. Then the fact-finding leads us to the solution phase which includes selection, presentation, demonstration, and negotiation.  But until we have a solution we can't have an agreement.  The agreement step should be the shortest part of the process.  This is especially true if we take a lead from the real estate industry and recommend our customers get preapproved to save time and make it more convenient.  If that happens,  when the solution is found and vehicle agreed on,  the pricing and financial considerations are all but done.  Then we take delivery in the finance office and physical delivery of the vehicle.

 How this gets handled is absolutely dependent upon the product knowledge of the consultant, influenced greatly by their people skills and their great understanding of each step of the process.  So the process is not the problem and never has been.

Ha! That's funny. I started a little differently than most people in sales, too... standup comedian my first ten years of the career. Definitely get a different perspective. Totally agree the agreement phase should be short and that whatever your process might be, you need to have a process. I teach what I call the "Conversation Overview" in the greeting phase, which lets the customer know what will be happening, why, and how long it will take, ending with asking for their permission to continue. Takes care of any previous bad experiences. So seems like we are very much on the same page.

I think where we started lends itself to a key difference than the world of dealerships, truck, auto, bus or otherwise: We had to fish. With dealership product, the need already exists and the customer tends to come to us and/or need what we offer. The fish jump into the boat, so to speak. They need a vehicle. They need repair on the vehicle because it is not running. They need a part to keep their vehicle running. So the focus on developing people skills may not always be high on the priority list. Whereas, no one has to buy insurance or bank with us. In fact, as you know with some insurance (I've trained there, as well, myself) the state you live in sets the price and the features of the product. So you can't separate yourself from competitors on price or product; all that you're really left with is to give better customer service than your competitors. When I trained chiropractors and chiropractor sales reps, for instance, they had to go out in the field (grocery stores, zoos, workshops, wherever) and use soft skills to strike up a conversation, create the need for chiropractic care and then close the sale (schedule the patient for a clinic, taking payment on the spot to secure it). If you don't develop solid soft skills, you cannot survive beyond a few weeks.

I have seen some solid soft skills at dealerships. It tends to be intuitive more than trained, though. I have also seen solid soft skills that are unfocused--so the conversation rambles and the customer loses interest. The technique, as you relayed, needs to be taught and managed to, which results in honing. Again, especially in the truck world, dealer staff are hungry for soft skills. They ask for it and are eager to provide the best experience for their customers. It's hard to know who to look to for it, though, and not start something, only to have it replaced later with a different "flavor of the month."

Where soft skills training simply isn't a consideration, dealers need to consider soft skills development part of the sales process, a behind-the-scenes part, but part of it, or they probably will never give it the priority it deserves.