Car Sales Training

Quote:

Originally Posted by JacquesWerth

Do you run your sales operations in the standard ways that most new car agencies do?

Do our salespeople get to meet new visitors to your showroom in an orderly rotation?

Do you encourage them to make every effort to close the prospects that they meet with, before the prospects leave your showroom?

Are your salespeople required to do any other form of prospecting?

Are your and/or your sales managers involved in closing most of the deals?

Jacques

I’m always trying to be different in the way I run a dealership, the main way I do that is;

I have a sales process that both customers and sales people enjoy, (that is rare in the car business)
We act with honesty and integrity in all our dealings, (that is also rare in the car business)

Orderly rotation is achieved by running a MANAGED FLOOR AND PHONE SYSTEM. This works by putting my best sales people on either showroom or phone in the number one position and so increasing the opportunities that he gets to work. If he is number 1 of 10 sales people and we get 11 people walk in he will get 1 & 11.

We always try to agree a deal wherever possible but we are careful not to push too hard as that can actually cost us sales. This is a balancing act for sure.

Prospecting. This is mainly working the existing owner base, service drive etc. Just like any other business the sales people who can self generate opportunities are typically the top 10 – 20 %. If I train someone from day one of their career then networking and self generation is very high on the agenda.

Management involvement in closing. In about 70% of cases a double close is performed. The other 30% either buy a car and pay full price or close enough to it or we don’t have time to get to them. It is definitely advisable to double close all prospects. But not too hard, I don’t subscribe to buy or burn like many other dealers do.

Hope that answers your questions.

Tony

Tony,

You have a good start at being different and much better than the norm in the car industry. I am not saying that you should do away with the Rotation system. But, you might think about changing it.

If it were true that the Rotation system you are doing now puts too much pressure on your salespeople and your prospects, and reduces profits, how could you change it to make it better?

If your salespeople could spend more of their time with high probability prospects, and less with those who will not buy at a price you want to sell for, what difference would it make in units sold and in total profit? What would you have to change to make it happen?

If many more low probability prospects (the ones with a death pact not to buy today) were to come back and buy another time, how could you make that happen?

I probed those questions before I bought an insolvent car agency. It became profitable within a mater of months. Then, we taught our salespeople how to close without any pressure and their average prices were higher than when we did TOs (double closes). Therefore, we stopped doing TOs. Of course, I structured the pricing and commission plan so that we hardly ever took a short profit.

It meant taking some radically different actions including quickly and courteously disqualifying low probability prospects, especially during high traffic times. We rewarded the salespeople for doing that by putting them back in the front of the rotation.

A large percentage of those we disqualified came back and bought a car.

That was a long time ago. I don't know how it would work today.

Jacques

Thanks for your positive feedback. I’ve been working this way for the past 10 or so years, with both the dealerships I’ve run and the clients I have the results have been very strong, including dealer of the year with 2 different brands so I think it’s a little more than “a good start” but off course, like all good businessmen I’m always looking to improve.

My rotation system doesn’t put too much pressure on either customers or sales people it just puts my highest performing people in front of more fresh enquiry.

What advice do you have when it comes to working with more higher probability prospects, I could take any amount of those.

We try to agree a deal with everyone but not to the point where we pressure. My idea is to be trusted and professional in the customers eyes and if it takes 2 - 3 visits for the to buy then that’s fine.

I’ve turned around 4 struggling dealerships in the past 10 or so years so let’s keep this discussion going and share our thoughts and ideas.

All the best

Tony

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snowman

wrote in small part:
What advice do you have when it comes to working with more higher probability prospects, I could take any amount of those.

Tony

One way my agency got plenty of High Probability Prospects was with telephone prospecting. Back then, there were no Do Not Call (DNC) lists. You can still get residential prospecting lists now, complete with phone numbers of car owners of specific makes, models and ages in specific Zip Codes. A good list broker can automatically scrub out the names that are on the Federal and State DNC lists.

You should be able to get a list of Companies and Organizations that own cars and trucks with the same demographics. Only residential numbers are subject to the DNC lists.

We invited them all to try our quick, highly skilled service department and we gave them a substantial discount on an oil and lube job. We also told them that they could ask to test drive a new or used car while they were waiting – if they wanted to (no pressure). That program also increased our service and parts business substantially.

We had service discount mailers for the salespeople to send out to people they contacted by phone. The salespeople put their names on the mailers and the service writer notified the salespeople when their people showed up.

Salespeople who sold a car to someone they contacted by phone got a substantial commission bonus.

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