It’s Time to Revisit Sales Processes Congratulations! You and your team have likely enjoyed the greatest run of net profitability in the history of your store! Of course, so has every other (non-Carvana) dealer in America. What a great (and weird) time it was to be a car dealer. Tight inventories created discipline at the […]
Best Automotive Internet Sales Processes: How to Perfect Your Trade-In Lead Handling It’s well known that many buyers are suspicious of the trade values your team provides them in-person; but, what happens when your online trade-in tool provides consumers a value? How can you both reinforce this unbiased, third-party number and keep a prospect engaged […]
Buckets and Your Internet Sales Processes For most automotive sales managers, the internet sales and other CRM follow-up processes their store employs can seem confusing on the surface. Some “computer guy” manages the whole “CRM thing” and creates these “complicated algorithms” that keep the processes firing as designed. Except that CRM processes – especially those […]
Automotive Internet Sales Processes: The DISC Test and the DIR Test If you’re involved in your dealership’s marketing decisions, you’ve probably heard about the DISC Test, right? Does It Sell Cars? For many dealers, every marketing decision comes down to this simple test. Does this or that sell cars? For some, it’s not just a […]
Instead of being an 11- or 12-part, 3+ hour ordeal where your salespeople treat the prospects like suspects, the best road-to-the sale is actually controlled buying process: Controlled, in that your salespeople must remain fully in control throughout; Buying, in that the customer must feel like they’re buying, not being sold; and Process, in […]
Stop Overthinking Your Emails! Between prepping for 20-Group presentations to serving our regular clients, we mystery shop scores of dealers each month – reading their emails and texts, and listening to their voicemails – and while we’ve seen definite overall improvement over the years, one aspect of the internet sales process that is beginning […]
What the Auto Industry is Getting Wrong About the Carvana Experiment Many in the automotive industry are not surprised at Carvana’s downfall. (I’ve been writing about the reasons they would fail and the absurd comparisons to Amazon since 2017.) A few, like Jim Zeigler, were vocal about their doubts very early on. Many, however, are […]
Turn Your Order-Takers Back Into Sales Pros Let’s be honest. Since about August or September 2020, your salespeople have had it pretty easy. Your cars, trucks, and SUVs have been selling themselves… often at prices above MSRP for new cars and at historically elevated prices for used. Most salespeople became order-takers. They quit making calls, […]
Digital Retailing: Lessons from the Winners Among my regular duties over the last several years, I’ve been working with OEMs and dealers to fine tune their digital retailing efforts. Throughout this time, I’ve seen everything from utter failures to smashing successes. The failures were most often due to a lack of buy-in and (believe it […]
It’s the Perfect Time to Start Leading Again Yesterday, I wrote about how the inventory shortages presented a perfect time to restart your sales processes. Because, of course, once inventories begin to normalize, you’ll want solid sales processes in place if you plan to grow market share and hold more gross than your neighboring dealers. […]
Just Don’t Screw It Up: The Key to Delivering a Great Customer Experience in 2022 I’ve written before about how Chick-fil-A’s reputation for delivering a great customer experience is not about solving issues, it’s about avoiding issues in the first place. Add in some manners, speed, and efficiency, and you’ve got Chick-fil-A’s secret recipe for […]
What’s Your Plan When Inventories Normalize? Today (if you’re like most dealers) you’re selling everything you stock and you’re making the highest grosses on both new and used vehicles that you’ve made in years; perhaps decades; perhaps ever. Of course, while many sales managers will chalk this up to their superior desking skills, the truth […]
(Show the Seams is an annoying business term and is just one of the 212 Most Annoying Business Phrases Managers Effuse, Confuse, and Overuse detailed in the hilarious must-have guide for every workplace: The 30,000-Pound Gorilla in the Room. Available right now on Amazon.) Show the Seams It seems some annoying managers are obsessed with […]
(This article was written for the Winter 2021 edition of Tennessee Dealer News.) The Cure in Any Market: Attitude + Activities Depending on who’s providing the forecast, vehicle sales in 2021 are projected to be somewhere between up and down. Given that we know so little about what the future holds, what can Tennessee dealers […]
We Were Killing It… Now What? For a variety of reasons (pent-up demand, stimulus checks, fear of public transportation, etc.) year-over-year sales increased for virtually all dealers in the third quarter. Moreover, because of tight supply, dealers were able to hold more front-end gross on the vehicles they sold. Even the publicly-traded groups – which […]
(Originally published in the Fall 2020 edition of Tennessee Dealer News.) The 5 Things Dealers Can Do Today to Stay on Top In 2021 While the forecasts change almost daily, vehicle sales in 2021 are not expected to be like 2019. What I can predict is that 2021, like 2020, will be a weird year […]
Ridiculously Simple Sales Management: The Blame Game (This post is one of 24 short and ridiculously simple chapters from Ridiculously Simple Sales Management. The book was written to help any sales or BDC manager quickly build and maintain a truly high-performing sales team. Each chapter concludes with Key Learnings and Chapter Exercises that make implementation […]
The Future is Not Online Car Buying; The Future is Omnichannel Digital Retailing I dislike the term “omnichannel digital retailing” because it’s a smash-up of buzzwords meant to make vendors sound cutting edge and smart. Of course, “omnichannel digital retailing” certainly rolls off the tongue easier than saying, “using a tablet or kiosk in-store to […]
Customer and Employee Safety Doesn’t Have to Equal a Bad Experience Despite the long post, I’ll start with a quick tip to businesses small and large regardless of the market conditions: Make it easy to do business with you! Oh, and to that end, your messaging should reflect this! Despite the continued, often confusing government […]
The Dirty Dozen – 12 “Secrets” of Successful Salespeople As we start to ramp up to our new normal, one thing that isn’t likely to change is the difference between the top and the bottom of any sales organization. While every industry has its relatively few true superstar sellers, a third of the remaining group […]