New from WV

Just wanted to say hello to everyone! I am new to the car business. I've been in sales for 10 years now but mostly retail. I've started off strong in the car business, but am always trying to improve. I was wondering if there are any car salesmen out there that have any tips to help me acheive greatness!

Hello RyanJ. Many of the members here dish out great tips regularly. I've asked a few car sales questions myself and the responses were awesome. One member here, Jacques Werth, wrote a book called High Probability Selling and it might help with car sales. Welcome to the forum.

Thanks for the welcome and the helpful input. What kind of sales are you in Thomas?

Quote:

Originally Posted by RyanJ

Thanks for the welcome and the helpful input. What kind of sales are you in Thomas?

Right now I'm in manufactured home sales but I want to move to real estate.

Ryan

Welcome to the forum. I am the general manager of a dealership and I will tell you that auto sales is a great, but demanding career. The first tip I will give you is this...
learn the product. By now you know that knowledge breeds confidence, which breeds enthusiasm and that is the force that sells.

Don't be too quick to think you are ready for your "dealer tag", another common downfall of people who enter the car business.

Best of luck

Thanks Masteri, I'm very confident with my product knowledge as far as chevy, nissan, and jeep go, however i am in the used car dept of the dealership, so when we get off brands i just go out, look at the car and learn what i can. Luckily most cars out there share a lot of the same features, and are pretty easy to demonstrate. I think the main thing holding me back is prospecting. I work 8-8 pretty much every day, and have a wife and kids at home, so that doesnt leave much time for me to go out to the store or whatever and meet people to tell them what I do and who I am. I started off selling 13 cars my first month, and average about 9 a mo, which is pretty good for the area i'm in and will improve as I build my client base and follow up to get repeat and referral business. Do you have any ideas for successful prospecting?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thomas

Right now I'm in manufactured home sales but I want to move to real estate.

From what I've heard those are both very rewarding businesses, good luck!

Ryan
Make certain everyone knows what you do and where you do it. For instance, at every restaurant leave your business card with the tip. Business cards are cheap and they are like throwing a rock into a pond, you never know where the ripple will touch the shoreline.

Do you work the service drive of your dealership? Lots of folks there have some major repairs they are facing and may want to trade up as opposed to sinking money into their older vehicle.

Are you a member of Rotary, Lions Club, etc? Do you attend a church? Are you kids involved in sport leagues? Are you in a sport league?

Have you looked into "orphaned owners" from your dealership? Lots of salespeople, unfortunately, come and go in the car business. Find lists from your service department or ask your sales/desk manager for some help here.

Does your dealership use any type of sales database program such as DealerUps, Contact Management, etc? If so, ask your mgr. to help you reassign orphans and send them a letter. If not, have you thought of generating a newsletter?

Lots of ways to let people know about you...keep digging...best of luck

Looks like I'm on the right track, I do work the service dept, and we use the reynolds and reynolds system, we just got it and are still adapting to the new system, but so far its helping a lot.

My kids are still young, my oldest is 6 and will be playing soccer and cheerleading next summer, I dont play sports anymore I dont even have time to golf or anything right now. I've got business cards in a few of the businesses in my town that I know the owners of. The only thing I haven't been doing is leaving my cards at resturaunts which will be easy to start, for some stupid reason I just never thought of it.

I became really good friends with a veteran salesman here who is always salesman of the month and he is helping me develope a newsletter now. I also helped organize a jeep show my 2nd month here and was given the list of everyone who registered and signed the spectator list and have kept in contact with this group of people.

I guess a lot of the business will come with time, and I should just be patient, but I am extremely enthusiastic about my career and have set very high goals for myself.

Thanks for all of your tips and keep them coming if you can think of anything else to help me get my buddy out of the salesman of the month position.

Ryan

Sounds like you are dialing in pretty quickly. Have you thought of calling the people in the newspaper who are selling their own vehicle? In a lot of cases they will buy something different when that one sells. A couple of cautions about this technique:

Most of them think their vehicle is in excellent condition and are asking way too much. You will find that people's asking price, in a lot of instances, is in direct correlation to their payoff. (By the way, here is a great technique for getting people to reconsider what they will accept for their trade if they are basing it on what they owe..."Mr. Customer, I appreciate you sharing your asking price with me. As you know, what you owe on a vehicle has no bearing on its current market value. For instance, if you owed nothing you certainly wouldn't accept nothing. So can we agree that the balance owed will have an impact on the payments, but not on market value?"...try that with the way you speak, its a great technique but be comfortable with it before you sound argumentative.

Second, do not do this before you discuss it with your management team. If you have someone you contact who would like to bring their vehicle to the dealership everyone needs to be on the same page about what happens next. Your used car manager is not generally in the business of giving people an opinion of what they can sell their vehicle for.

In my experience you will get a modest return from this, do not let it detract from your regular business.

Your phone call to the owner needs to be well thought out, don't just call and say "Hey, I see you have a car for sale". Have your manager help you with the verbiage. Also, under no circumstance, hide from the person you are calling that you work at a dealership. You are simply trying to perform a service to help them sell their car and they will see you more favorably with up front disclosure.

Best of luck

New from WV

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