I am proud to announce January's Dealer of the Month award going to Tammy LeBleu from Orr Nissan in Bossier City, Louisiana. Tammy has been in the automotive industry on and off for 21 years, and after coming back as a sales consultant in 2009, she has had incredible success.
In her first year at Orr Nissan in 2009, Tammy averaged 20 cars a month, totaling 242 units sold. Her number grew to a solid 278 cars in 2010.
During her third year at Orr Nissan, Keith Orr, General Manager, set a personal goal for Tammy to reach 400 cars by December 31st. It was now December 1st and she still needed to sell 47.5 cars to hit the goal. Until that time, her personal best was 40 cars, and she had only hit that a few times. She had her work cut out for her.
On her son's birthday, Saturday, December 31st, she was 6 cars shy of her 400-car goal. At 9am, she sold her first car of the day, but by 2pm, she hadn't sold any others. She had to leave at 4pm to celebrate her son's birthday, and with 5 cars left to sell, she didn't think she would make it.
"I walked outside crying and praying and I said to myself, ‘If I don't sell these cars, I still had the best year of my life'. Well, I walked back in the door, and sold 6 cars!" She recounts the day's events like a scene from a movie. With applause, cars honking and her coworkers waving her on, she drove off to celebrate reaching 400.5 cars at her son's birthday dinner.
Her wild success of over 400 cars got her ranked as Nissan's #2 Sales Consultant in the nation in 2011, and she also got promoted to Internet Director. She now manages a team of women, training them (most of them have never been in the auto industry before), and they are consistently selling 70-100 cars a month.
In response to her extraordinary success, she responds, "I work for an amazing company. It's people like Steven Bell and Nathan Hansen that I even do what I do. And then I met people like Jim Zeigler, the Car Research Guys, you (Sean V. Bradley) and Paul Potratz. I didn't do this all by myself."
I asked her about her transition from Sales Consultant to Internet Director. I imagined it would be a tough move from working alone to managing a team. She took on the role as Director easily and with pride, saying, "I am not just a manager. I am a coach; I am a leader. And I want to lead my girls somewhere. You're nothing without your team. It's not about me anymore. It's about my team."
As a former Sales Consultant and an automotive internet sales trainer, I am blown away by Tammy's poise, passion and success.
Congratulations Tammy, on reaching incredible heights in the industry and for constantly showing the world what you're capable of. I cannot wait to see where you go from here.