Car Dealer Slang Every Salesperson Should Know Quick note: This quick list of slang terms car dealers use and other terms common to dealerships is not meant to be a complete dictionary answering every “what does the word _____ mean?” when it comes to working in car sales. It’s the glossary included in the sales […]
‘Assumptive Selling’ Creates a Better Car-Buying Experience (and This Month, it May Help Create a Better Experience for a Worthy Couple) $10 from every copy of ‘Assumptive Selling’ sold on Amazon in August 2018 goes straight to help Bryan & Tamarra Armstrong Tamarra Armstrong, wife of the consummate Car Guy, Bryan, suffers from a very […]
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 […]
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 […]
How to Sell Cars to Today’s Connected Customers (Edited excerpt from Assumptive Selling: The Complete Guide to Selling More Vehicles for More Money to Today’s Connected Customers – available for $49.99 on Amazon.com.) Either during the initial job interview or your first week in the car business, you were probably told (as I was) that […]
Repeats, Referrals & Reviews – The Most Profitable Sales for Today’s Sellers Every automotive salesperson I’d ever met who averaged more than twenty-five vehicles a month had one thing in common: they each depended on their repeats and referrals to hit their numbers and make better than average commissions. They treated their customers right, which […]
Has the Time Come for You and Your OEM to Find New Digital Marketing Partners? I spoke with a marketing manager for a good-sized group the other day and he lamented that many of their current digital marketing “partners” were wasting tens of thousands of dollars every month with no regard to actual dealership results. […]
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 […]
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 […]
Stop Memorizing Word Tracks & Start Setting Real Appointments that Show and Buy If you’ve watched my free sales training videos, then you know my advice for you is to be very direct with today’s prospects – especially when it comes to setting appointments. The inspiration behind this approach rests solely with the realities […]
How to Always Respond First to Your Internet Leads There’s a great study I like to quote from a company called CraftJack that shows contractors who connect with a prospect lead first convert those leads into customers 238% more often than those who connect second. 238% more often! Just like it does for contractors, connecting […]
Okay, so you know you need to employ a conversion button strategy on your websites, but did you know you can have too many buttons? You can. It comes down to choices for your site visitor; and research shows that when consumers are presented with too many choices, they punt. They make no choice. […]
Can we all agree that if we doubled our demo drive percentage, we could double our write up percentage? Great. Now, can we agree that if we doubled our write up percentage, we could double our closing percentage? Outstanding. Since we all agree on this, let’s shift our primary focus in the dealership away […]
As I wrote in the previous post in this series, a button strategy that drives leads is one of the simplest changes you can make to your website that will immediately drive more sales leads. So simple to get right… and so simple to get wrong. Buttons? Really? Buttons are so important to the […]
Newsflash: Car buyers hate the typical car buying process. Today, in their mind, they’ve already completed their own needs analysis. They’ve made their product selection. They know the car’s features. Everyone who submits a lead, calls you, or walks onto your lot is ready to test drive. In fact, because they’ve already come equipped […]
Slowing Sales? The First Expense You Should Cut Is Your Phone Training! Wait… what? Did I just read what I think I read? Yep. If you’re a car dealer looking for ways to save money in the face of current market softness, I honestly recommend (for most of you) that you eliminate your phone […]
There is no “rule” in your dealership more harmful to your long-term success than that asinine, unwritten guideline that basically gives half the deal for any previous customer to the salesperson who sold them the last time. Ugh. I wrote “rule” in quotes, because this isn’t so much as rule as a copout on […]
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 […]
Did you know that some of the nation’s best dealers have been closing their appointments that show at better than 80% for years? It’s true. Moreover, it’s actually not that hard to do – provided those at the top of your organization are truly committed to implementing a simple, repeatable process that works. The […]
When it comes to online vehicle specials, I’m flat out embarrassed for more than half of the dealerships I work with. There are even times that I actually want to ask: Why do you even have links to your specials pages on your website? If you’re a typical dealer, your specials pages can be […]