(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 […]
(Bubble It Up 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.) Bubble It Up Somehow, it’s no longer enough to demonstrate or […]
(Bring Your ‘A’ Game 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.) Bring Your ‘A’ Game Ugh, another sports analogy brought into […]
Priorities for the Modern Automotive Salesperson Are you an automotive salesperson managing not just Floor Ups, but also Phone Ups, Internet Leads, and perhaps Website Chats? If so, then you likely encounter times when multiple opportunities appear simultaneously, each requiring your immediate attention. The simplest idea, the one where you prioritize the person in front […]
Free Inbound Sales Call Cheat Sheet and Assessment for Car Dealers If you’re just here to access the free assessment page for use in your dealership, you can click here: Free Car Dealer Call Monitoring Cheat Sheet. If you’re interested in what each area involves and why these are the important areas to grade on […]
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 […]
Steve Stauning’s 100% Biased Gift List for Christmas 2020 2020 has been a strange year (to say the least). Though despite the on again/off again restrictions, your family, friends, and coworkers still expect a gift from you this holiday season. Instead of the clothes they’ll never wear or the ever-impersonal gift card, why not give […]
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 […]
Sell One Today For many valid reasons (too many other duties, too many subordinates, wrong pay plan, etc.) and some invalid reasons (lazy, apathetic, schadenfreude – look it up), automotive sales managers often struggle to properly motivate their charges to reach stretch goals. Of course, this should be their primary duty. That is, ensuring their […]
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 […]
Should I Cancel all Advertising? Marketing in An Uncertain Environment (This post is an updated summary of advice I provided my clients last month.) I’m getting a lot of questions from clients about what to do with marketing budgets during the current crisis, so I thought I’d share with you what I would do if […]
Automotive Retail Disruption: How Process Would’ve Made a Difference We all know good habits are learned in bad times, and bad habits are learned in good times. For virtually every car dealer in America, the good times started sometime around 2011, and ended suddenly in mid-March 2020. An industry disruption no one could’ve predicted. So, […]
Dealers: Beware Artificial Activity Targets I get it. The dealership sold zero vehicles on a Tuesday. Salespeople spent the entire day in the vaping circle or surfing the web. No one was making their calls. Fifty Calls Per Day! To combat the lethargy, someone on the leadership team demanded action. “I want each salesperson making […]
Playing Real Moneyball in Automotive Retail Carvana is playing Moneyball. CarMax is playing Moneyball. All the other publicly traded dealer groups are trying to play Moneyball (and a couple might actually figure it out). If your direct competitors start playing Moneyball, you’ll soon find yourself at a disadvantage you won’t even recognize. Besides stealing market […]
(Forgive the long post, but there are some important lessons in here. If you don’t have the patience to read 3,200+ words, then you’re going to have to learn to be happy with treading water this year. However, feel free to skip the first 300 or so words and jump to The Two “Secrets” … […]
Automotive Internet Sales: The Difference Makers I see all kinds of internet sales structures; from high-performing BDCs to cherry-picking internet sales teams to the hot-mess-convoluted-no-one-is-accountable combinations. To be clear, any structure can work (some, of course, better than others) if the store leadership drives the activities. That’s a big if. Some automotive sales managers, in […]
Call Me Crazy, but if it Was My Dealership, I’d Want the Tail Wagging the Dog The biggest problem nearly every dealership faces today (as they did yesterday, ten years ago, and five decades ago) is turnover. Virtually every dealership I work with asks me about recruiting, hiring, and training good salespeople, service writers, and […]
Texting While Selling? Even I Was Shocked by This Behavior! This one is hard to fathom. Sure, I’ve been in an Uber while the driver carried on an extensive (and dangerous) text conversation with his friends. Of course, he wasn’t trying to sell me anything (though, perhaps, he should’ve tried to sell me on leaving […]