Carvana is not “The Amazon of Car Dealers” When Carvana (NYSE: CVNA) announced their initial public offering in 2017, Fortune.com heralded the event with the headline The ‘Amazon of Cars’ Has Filed for an IPO. Certainly, Fortune chose this inaccurate description because the company was then describing itself as the “Amazon of cars” – believing […]
Let’s Do This How Three Simple Words Can Move Your Buyer Through to the Sale The very essence of Assumptive Selling is knowing that everyone is a buyer… and that they want to buy from you… and that they want to do this today. Once you grasp this concept, internalize it and practice it with […]
Why “Wait & See” Wins with Shiny Objects Ten years ago, the consummate car-guy Charles Oglesby (then CEO of Asbury Automotive Group) told me, “In automotive retail, you cannot hold a creative competitive advantage for very long.” His point was clear: In the rare case that someone truly discovered some purchasable competitive advantage that actually […]
The Dreaded “Just Looking” – How to Overcome Objections on the Lot The number one objection car salespeople heard 30 years ago is the same objection they’re hearing today: “No thanks, we’re just looking.” Ugh, the dreaded “just looking” objection! It seems every prospect you approach is just looking! (Here’s a quick hint: If you’re […]
Your Local Car Salesman Just Might Be Helping in the Fight Against Childhood Cancer September is National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and $10 from every copy of ‘Assumptive Selling’ sold this month goes straight to the PaulieStrong Foundation Given nearly 16,000 children are diagnosed with cancer each year in the United States, you would think […]
Training Your Sales Team: The Dirty Little Secret to Great Training There’s a secret that some industry trainers don’t want you to know. It’s a secret about how to provide the best training possible for your team. They don’t want you to know it because it’s 100% free and available to you any day you […]
Wanna Sell 30+? Learn to Drive the Up Bus! Will McGinnis from vAuto posted the picture above on LinkedIn this week showing an unidentified Colorado Ford dealership with six salespeople sitting out front waiting on the Up Bus… in the middle of the day… on a Monday! Maybe the best part about the photograph was […]
The SEM Thieves Aren’t Even Trying Anymore! A Google Analytics map hit my inbox today that can only be described as mind-numbingly incredible. Incredible, in that it is simply not credible. The map, displayed below, shows where this anonymous dealer’s website traffic originated from last month. No, this is not the board from the game […]
Advice for Green Peas: How to be Successful at Selling Cars If you’ve recently started selling cars – and you’d like to be successful – I have some advice for you: Be all-in or all-out Love what you do Read Assumptive Selling As you’ll learn in this post, everything you need to go from Green […]
Carvana is Worth Every Bit of $2 Billion I have to admit it, Carvana (NYSE: CVNA) has captured the imagination of Wall Street investors, the likes of which I haven’t seen since the early days of Pets.com. They are, in my opinion, clearly a $2 billion company. Unfortunately for those who remain in the stock, […]
The Best Car Selling Book Ever! Whether you’re brand new to car sales or been around for a couple of decades, today’s prospects pose a unique challenge to those using traditional vehicle-selling methods. Specifically, the buyers have evolved… but, unfortunately, the average road-to-the-sale has not. Ten years ago, actual new car prices were near impossible […]
Want More Real Test Drive Appointments? Finally, Someone Brought Some Technology to the Table! I’ve written many articles and produced more than a few videos showing car dealers how they can set more sales appointments that show and buy. From creating an Appointment Culture to detailing the four steps of The Perfect Appointment, everything I’ve […]
Eight-Car Alan & Thirty-Car Theo: What Separates Top Sellers from the Rest While entire books have been (and continue to be) written on what it takes to be a top car salesperson, the fact is that nearly all the differences between your 8-Car Alans and your 30-Car Theos can be boiled down to two very […]
How to Spot and Stop SEO Fraud! Last week, we published some guidelines to help you uncover and stop the SEM theft we’re seeing in nearly every dealership visit. Today, I wanted to tackle the potential Search Engine Optimization (SEO) fraud that also appears to be fairly ubiquitous. SEO, as a quick reminder, refers […]
The Car Dealer’s Step-by-Step Guide to Getting More At-Bats First a WARNING and a DISCLAIMER: WARNING: This is a freakishly long article that’s chock full of valuable information, so give yourself plenty of time to digest it and be prepared to share parts of it with different people on your team. DISCLAIMER: There is […]
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 […]
Car Dealers Want to Know How to Attract and Sell the Millennial Buyer In 2015, I attended a meeting where I observed an “expert” on Millennial Buyers as he addressed a gathering of dealer principals. This “expert” was himself a Millennial, so the OEM who paid five figures to arrange for this “training” felt as […]
Craigslist Posting Basics for Car Dealers I’ve shared versions of these Craigslist best practices with clients and on the various industry discussion forums over the years, yet never thought of organizing these into an article until someone asked me recently if I had these tips all in one place. Hmm, good idea… so, here they […]
Before diving into this topic, I want the readers to understand why dealerships are so near and dear to my heart. While it’s true that I run a small company that provides technology and advertising services to lots of industries; I actually enjoy being in and working with car dealerships. You read that right: I […]
Did you know that there is a secret to setting firm appointments that will actually show up at your dealership? Not only show up, but actually arrive on time? There is. There is a secret; and most salespeople and managers have no idea what that secret is. The secret is this: You have to […]