Answering An Internet Sales Coordinator (Appointment Setter)'s Questions on How To Be Prepared For the Sales Call or Internet Lead...
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Master Your Craft
Do you want to be successful in Automotive Sales? Do you want to sell 30, 40+ units per month? Do you want to make $120,000 - $200,000+ selling cars? Well you can! All you have to do is MASTER YOUR CRAFT.
The key to being successful in this business is mastering your craft, being the absolute best you can possibly be. But why is it that EVERYONE wants to sell lots of cars and make lots of money and only a small percentage ever achieve that level? Same reason why there are so many people that want to be professional athletes and why there are only the few elite professional athletes making small fortunes while the rest of the population watches them on television or pretends to be them on Xbox 360.
Do you think Michael Jordan said to his coaches and managers “Uh, I am Michael Jordan… I don’t need to go to practice”! No way… he practiced harder than everyone else because he was Michael Jordan. That is why he has 6 NBA rings… and his own sneaker!
Tiger Woods says that he hits 1,000 practice balls for every 1 real shot in a live round. There is a difference between hitting a golf ball 144 yards versus 144 and a half yards. One puts you next to the hole and one puts you a foot and a half away from the hole. You want to be as accurate as possible, as close to perfection as you can possibly get.
Anderson Silva, Undefeated Ultimate Fighting Champion (UFC) constantly studies his own performance as well as his future opponents performance by dissecting video footage of past fights. Literally spending hours and hours reviewing video footage of angles, punches, kicks. Looking for patterns, opportunities, weakness etc…
Success is a few simple disciplines practiced everyday repeatedly. So if you would like to master your craft you must develop the following three disciplines: Dedication, Desire, and Diligence.
The definition of Dedication is the quality of being dedicated or committed, i.e. Devoting oneself, time, and/or efforts to a particular task or purpose; The definition of Desire is a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen; and The definition of Diligence is a carful and persistent work or effort.
So how does this all correlate to the subject at hand, Mastering Your Craft. Simply put, if you want to BE the best, then you have to BE the best. Will Durant, a prolific American writer, historian, and philosopher once said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."
Success is earned, not given people; No one is entitled to greatness; everyone in the past, everyone in the NOW, and everyone in the future will have or has had to have an outrageous amount of dedication in their specific field of expertise, an extraordinary burning desire to win, and must diligently execute their detailed plans toward their idea of success.
I want to give you some bullet points of things that you should focus on mastering if you want to truly be that absolute best automotive sales professional:
- Communication(s) – As a sales professional, you need to be an effective communicator. You need to be able to clearly articulate your message and you have to do so with passion and style.
How can you master this skill?
- I suggest mastering the “Science of Communication”… Knowing that 55% of communication is visual perception and body language, 38% is tone and inflection and only 7% is the actual words that you use. You can study this online, you can take a course, you can go to a “communication” workshop or seminar.
- You can join http://www.toastmasters.org which is an organization that is dedicated to helping develop communication and leadership skills for professionals. It is like a “gym” for speakers / communicators.
- Video Record (or audio) yourself with prospects in the showroom or on the phone or in the BDC. Record yourself engaging a prospect, working a deal, dealing with objections / rebuttals etc… Then REVIEW the Video / Audio footage. Study it, be critical of what you sound like, what your body language is, what your prospects sound like, what their body language is. Try to identify loss opportunity, identify areas that you can improve and or utilize a different strategy or approach in a particular situation.
- Product Knowledge–
- You should truly be a master of your product(s). At the very least you should be certified through your OEM as a sales consultant but… Most OEMs have advanced training and certification. I suggest you look into what curriculum, what training, what OEM resources you can utilize to enhance your product knowledge.
- Most OEMs have “Product Launches” or Special Seminars / Workshops on new or enhanced models within their line up. You should ask your management team to send you to any and all OEM opportunities that come along.
- Study, Study, Study your product. Take all vehicles on test drives, get familiar with them. Not just conceptually but literally know your vehicles inside an out.
- Competition Knowledge… Do NOT just study YOUR brand. You need to know EVERYTHING about your competition. For example if you are a Ford Sales Consultant and you sell a ton of Ford F-150s then you need to know EVERYHTHING about the Chevy Silverado and WHY your F-150 is BETTER than the Silverado etc…
- Mastering Objections and Rebuttals
- Stop playing checkers… Start playing Chess. Document all of the “expectations” and “objections” you come across on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.
- Identify the TOP 10 objections and or expectations and then create at least 5 POWERFUL responses for them. If you need help, get with other sales consultants, your closers, your managers, the owner whoever!
- Go online and search for the best objections and rebuttals. There are free sites out there like www.automotiveinternetsales.com that offer a tremendous amount of free information, word tracks, scripts, objections / rebuttals etc… use them!
- Practice them everyday… role play with your co-workers, with a friend, your spouse.
- Record them (video and or audio). Upload them to your ipod or burn them to a cd. Play them on the way to work and the way home, at the gym at night, when you sleep.
- Self Education –
- Read as much as you can about EVERYTHING related to your career as you can. If you don’t like reading, then buy the audio CDs. Here are some suggestions:
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
- The Secret
- From Good To Great
- The Purple Cow
- Who Moved My Cheese
- Execution
- Read Automotive Trade Magazines (Like AutoSuccess)
- Subscribe to FREE newsletters
- Subscribe to ALL your automotive vendors newsletters, blogs, email lists like:
- Autobytel
- AutoUSA
- Autotrader
- Cars.com
- Carsdirect
- Dealix
- Edmunds.com
- Your Dealership Website Providers
- Automotive Social Networking Communities like:
- Search Engines…
- You can and should be Googling or YouTubing Everything that is related to your profession.
- Read as much as you can about EVERYTHING related to your career as you can. If you don’t like reading, then buy the audio CDs. Here are some suggestions:
This is only a small list of things that you need to master to truly be the best at what you do. If you would like me to give you a more detailed list or some free strategies or ideas please feel free to email me or call me. It would be my pleasure to help you-
