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http://www.internetsales20group.com
Car Dealer, Paul Sansone Jr. Will Be Conducting a Workshop on "Relationship Selling" At The Internet Sales 20 Group
LA Williams, national trainer for Dealer Synergy speaks on the upcoming Internet Sales 20 Group Workshop in Chicago, IL held on October 23, 24, & 25, 2012. Professionals such as Ralph Paglia, Robert Wiesman, AJ Rucker and Peter Martin are just a FEW of the automotive industry's finest, which will be guest speakers at this event.
http://www.internetsales20group.com
http://www.neilhuffman.com
http://www.internetsales20group.com
Automotive Digital Marketing Manager of Dealer Group in Kentucky - 17 Years in Automotive Sales
Quick interview with Joe Turner, Digital Marketing Manager with the Neil Huffman Auto Group. Joe has been in the industry for over 17 years and is a veteran in Automotive Internet Sales. Joe gives some advice based on his experience(s)
http://www.automotiveinternetsales.com
http://www.internetsales20group.com
3 Part Video Interview with Durran Cage, GSM of Alan Vines Automotive The September 2012 AutoSuccess Cover Story...
You can meet Durran Cage at the upcoming Internet Sales 20 Group in Chicago October 23-25th
http://www.internetsales20group.com Alan Vines Automotive from Jackson Tennessee went from 25 units per month online to over 95 units per month online and I broke down how they did it and how ANY dealership can do it...
From 25 to 95 Units per Month Online: How to Make it Happen For Your Dealership
http://www.internetsales20group.com
http://www.automotiveinternetsales20group.com
Dealer Principal, Paul Sansone Jr. Will Be a Speaker At The Internet Sales 20 Group in October 23-25
To sign up, goto www.internetsales20group.com
http://www.internetsales20group.com
Sean V. Bradley, CEO of Dealer Synergy is a Speaker at the CRM Convention, he will be speaking on Tuesday the 11th on "Unlocking the Secrets of your CRM"
You could stop at booth #309 to visit him or Karen Bradley
Sean V. Bradley & Karen Bradley At the 2012 CRM Convention in Las Vegas
Sean V. Bradley Gives Some Powerful Tips For Success - Automotive Sales - Motivation - Leadership
Sean V. Bradley Training On Automotive Sales, Phone Process, Objections & Rebuttals - Strategy
A General Manager of a Toyota Dealership with 35 Years in the Automotive Sales Industry Talks About Internet Sales
Did my first "One-on-One" phone training with LA Williams today and it's safe to say I'm hooked! It was nice to be the focus and have all of my questions/concerns answered without any distractions. I've always enjoyed LA's technique because it sounds so genuine yet effortless. His ability to connect with customers, people he's never even met before, blows my mind. Thanks for the motivation LA, I really appreciate it!
Now that we have a full month under our belt with our new E-Commerce Dept I wanted to give everyone a update on how great things are going!! We have been meeting expectations and what's even better we have exceeded the expectations that the owner had for our dept. I truly must say that the Dealer Synergy 10 step process works. Now, I know that you're asking yourself "J.R. how can you verify that the process really does work?" Well great question and guess what I have a answer for you; not only do we have the numbers to prove that the process works but even better we have mystery shopped the competition here in Kansas and I'll be the first to say that 99% failed with flying colors!!
The SWOT analysis that we have conducted proves as follows:
- the automotive internet sales in our market doesn't have trained phone ninjas
- the opportunity for us to steal business from competitors is open
- 99% of the stores that we mystery shopped had NO PROCESS in place for inbound and outbound phone calls
- we truly can say that we don't forsee any threats from other dealers (but we'll continue to train just in case)
- our strengths are not only do we have the best automotive brands but we will continue to be trained phone ninjas AND we have a process in place
We're really excited about what the future holds for us here at Dick Edwarsd Auto and we fully plan on maximizing every opportunity that is presented to us.
http://www.internetsales20group.com
$500 Discount Code For Upcoming Internet Sales 20 Group in Chicago - www.internetsales20group.com "DSIS20"
Can You Sell Cars Working 4 Hours A Week?
Can you imagine? Instead of working 60 plus hours per week, you show up at 9 AM on Monday and weekend is just four hours away! What would you do with all the free time? I would probably play enough golf to be on the PGA tour, lift weights and work out everyday, and then on Saturday, maybe go to Home Depot, buy some wallpaper, maybe get some flooring, stuff like that. Maybe Bed, Bath & Beyond, I don’t know.
For those of you who haven’t read The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, you’ll be really disappointed to know that I am not starting a revolt to reduce dealership hours from 9AM-9PM Monday through Saturday to 1 4-hour workday. However, I am confident that I will save you a ton of time and be able to help you make more money.
Let’s get started..
Stop checking your email every five minutes!
Prior to reading the 4-hour workweek I was super guilty of this. By checking your email every minute you can’t get anything done. What happens is you start to work on something important like an email blast, website analytics, advertising, etc. Then you get an email from your factory rep with daily sales update, while checking this email you get a SPAM email that you have to unsubscribe from, and then you get a bill emailed to you that you print out to authorize payment for and before you know it it’s been a half an hour and you completely forgot about your email blast.
Instead of checking your email every 5 minutes, set 2 times per day that you check email say 12 PM and 5 PM. I’m sure it’s your habit to check their email the first thing you get into work each day, but you must break this habit! Henry Evans in the book The Hour a Day Entrepreneur uses a sports analogy, rather than start the day on the defensive responding to emails you want to start the day on the offensive. Making stuff happen, making profit happen.
It is a difficult habit to break, but you must keep Outlook closed and even turn off the email notifications on your iPhone. Some of you might have managers or the owners above you whose emails you feel obligated to quickly respond to, however if you explain to these individuals that you are only checking your emails at 12 PM and 5 PM each day in an effort to increase efficiency and for them to call you with anything urgent. You will find that responses to most of their emails can wait and that they will call you if they truly have something urgent.
Single tasking is the new multi-tasking!
Poker is a passionate hobby of mine and I play in the WSOP main event most summers, but the majority of my play used to be online before it got shut down in the US. When playing online poker I had 3 22” monitors set up playing 12 tables
simultaneously (there are people who play many more tables than this!). While it was fun and exciting to play so many tables, I found that my win rate was much lower than if I played only 3 or 4 tables. The reason… playing less tables I was able to focus more on maximizing as much profit from the hands I was ahead in and minimize loss in the hands I was behind in.
The same principles can be applied in the dealership. At one point, I would have my email, Facebook, Twitter, CRM, website editor, vAuto and instant messenger all open at the same time. Why? Because it was awesome and made me feel really important to have so many windows open. Naturally all of this leads to little focus and a lot of distraction. Now, I’ll try to keep only the things open I need, for the most part this is just one program. However, there are times where I’ll need multiple things open like if I’m desking deals for instance that I may need multiple things open.
In terms of getting things done. I set 12 month, 6 month, and 1 month goals and funnel each of these goals to specific daily to dos. I use Evernote the night before to prioritize the entire next day to do list. As I mentioned you want to head into work on the offensive making stuff happen. On a given day the priority might be a customer we are real close with closing, sometimes it’s working on the CRM action plan, writing a press release, sales training, etc. However, they are prioritized and align with my goals, instead of someone’s email.
Eliminate work other people can do
Prior to reading the 4-Hour Workweek there were countless things that I would do on a weekly basis and the entire time while doing them I would be thinking someone else really could be doing this for me. The reason I didn’t, I was too lazy to teach someone else how to do it. I am sure there are countless things that you could have someone else do as well. A few things that come to mind are reporting sales, sales logs, and dealer trades but I am sure there are countless other things that you can have someone else do for you as well.
Below is a great chart that is included in the 4-Hour Work Week on finding stuff to outsource to a personal assistant. I have found that there are enough people in the dealership to keep busy that a personal assistant isn’t necessary. Finance Managers are great people to utilize because they are detail oriented and while they aren’t selling products you might utilize their skills rather than have them checking Facebook while they are waiting for another deal. Other people that come to mind are secretaries or warranty administrators. I would recommend not having sales people doing stuff like this because there are a lot of sales people who will make these things a higher priority than selling cars.
Empowerment
Another thing that is mentioned in the 4-Hour Workweek that is a big time saver is empowering your employees. Now, truthfully I’ve yet to implement the majority of the stuff I am suggesting so these are merely ideas. However, Tim Ferriss shares about how he would get 200+ emails per day from the customer service side of his business about different customer complaints and how each should be handled. He would spend 9-5 replying to each email about how to handle the situation. Ultimately he empowered his customer service to fix any customer problem under $100 without contacting him and this instantly reduced his emails from 200 per day into fewer than 20 per week.
In the New Gold Standard is explained how the Ritz-Carlton empowers each employee up to $2,000 per day to take care of any customer issues and also to exceed their expectations. Naturally this empowerment must been managed, but both Tim’s company and the Ritz-Carlton note that such empowerment has had little to no effect on the bottom-line. Yet, the quick resolution of problems has undoubtedly increased customer happiness. Even if such empowerment does minimally affect the bottom-line, the freedom from constant interruption this provides you and your managers makes it well worth it.
Dealership specific example of how this could be effectively implemented would be to provide a structure for internet pricing for BDC or Internet Sales Reps so they don’t have to check with a Sales Manager for every price. Also for Service Advisors to take care of any problems and unhappiness on the service drive.
Time Vampires
In Dan Kennedy’s book No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs Dan talks about one of the of the biggest threats to your time and energy, time vampires. Time vampires can come in the form of coworkers, vendors, and even customers who have no regard for your productivity and are constantly interrupting you with meaningless questions, stories, or gossip. Some time vampires he talks about in the book are Mr. Have-You-Got-A-Minute, Mr. Trivia, and Mr. Soap Opera. These people need no description, you know who I’m talking about.
A couple of things to drive a stake into the time vampires is to end the open door policy! If you are working on something and can’t be interrupted put your phone on do not disturb and put a big sign outside your office to not come in for a set period of time. I tend to bounce around from dealership to dealership and therefore don’t have an office so when I sit down to get work done I put on headphones. When people see me banging on my keyboard and working diligently with my headphones on they know it better be good to interrupt me.
The last time vampire is Mr. Meeting.
Meetings
I have gone full circle on meetings. I used to be a Mr. Meeting. I thought that the old school car guys were crazy because they never seem to ever have meetings. However, after reading the 4-Hour Workweek and some of the other books I’ve mentioned I have realized that there can’t be anything less productive than a meeting. I used to take every meeting asked for by AutoTrader, Cars.com, CARFAX, and if you are vendor reading this and I forgot your company I apologize but the good news is I probably had a meeting with your company too.
So don’t let the vendors talk you into going over your account performance because this is simply an opportunity for them to upsell you on a higher version of their product or waste your time. Meetings should only be used to solve a pre- defined problem and must have a set agenda. So if you are having a problem or want to know about a higher version of the product, you set up the meeting with them.
Side note: one meeting I do recommend having is a morning meeting, most call it a save a deal meeting. I think it is so important that i will go over it in another blog post.
Questions:
Have you read the 4-Hour Workweek and if so what did you get from it?
Are you applying any 4 Hour Workweek rules at your dealership or to your personal process?
Source - http://www.dealerrefresh.com/hour-hour-work-week-dealership/#more-8007
Are you watching the Olympics?
Some very compelling story lines and great competitions. I'm always inspired by these athletes who have put in hours and hours to reach that level of excellence.
Sometimes when I watch with friends or family, I find myself distracted from the message by the comical comments people make concerning the appearance of the people. I think it must be natural. you've probably even done it.
"What's up with that dood's hair?"
"There's no way he was an Olympic athlete."
"Why does one eyebrow move up and not the other?"
"She look like she stank."
"Didn't she look in the mirror after she put THAT on?"
My take on this, and the sales message for us is that the PERSON behind the words-- their delivery and appearance-- makes a huge difference in how the message is interpreted.
I'm probably not going out on too much of a limb here by stating that you probably sell a pretty good product or service. But unless it sells itself, YOU play a major role in how it is perceived when you're on the phone talking about it. The better YOU are, the more you sell. The common sense and the obvious are tough to be improved upon.
Some people believe that communicating on the phone is a disadvantage because listeners can't see us. I believe that actually is an advantage... you don't need to worry about physical appearance. On the phone, it all relies on what they hear. That's why to be your best you need to work on it. Here are some ideas.
GET RID OF THE NONWORDS I find some people have this nasty habit to a very severe degree. When a listener counts how many times they hear "um" instead of focusing on the message you know there's a problem. The persuasive speakers, on the other hand, don't use these filler sounds, or at least their use is minimal.
Action Item: Susan Berkley, author of Voice Shaping, suggests that the first step to the cure is identifying the enemy. Record yourself and count how many fillers you use. Once you're aware of your most common non-words, consciously replace them with pauses.
You can also control the nonword habit by getting your spouse or friend or cubicle-neighbor to say "bingo" or some other code word every time you use a nonword. By the way, this also applies to habits such as "you know," "like," "I mean," and anything else you use way too often.
ENUNCIATE! A guest on The O'Reilly Factor mumbled so much I had to turn the volume WAY UP so I could try to make out what he said. If I didn't care about what he was saying, I wouldn't have worked so hard. And your listeners might not work that hard for you.
Action Item: Read this several times- "If, I, Place, an, invisible, comma, after, each, word, and, an, invisible, semicolon; after, some, words, my, speech, has, presence." This forces you to enunciate.
Action Item 2: Practice tongue twisters to articulate clearly. Recite this one now, several times while picking up speed each time: "Frank phoned four pharmaceutical factories feeling fresh and fulfilled."
GET UP TO SPEED The more persuasive of the talking heads during interviews make their talking points quickly and don't mince words. We all can learn from that. After all, why use 100 words when 50 could make the same point? And don't speak at 33 RPM's when your listeners are at 78. (You won't get that reference if you don't know what record players are.)
In the book, "Smart Speaking, " Laurie Schloff and Marcia Yudkin say that when you speak too slowly you could be perceived as boring, tried, or less intelligent than you actually are.
Action Item: Practice getting to your point more quickly. Ask yourself a question you get during calls. Use stopwatch and give yourself 45 seconds to answer. Then cut it to 30, then 20. Tape your response and refine your answer content and delivery.
FINISH WITH STRENGTH Professional speaker and presentation coach and trainer Marjorie Brody http://www.marjoriebrody.com/ cautions against letting your voice rise at the end of a sentence.
In her book, "Speaking your Way to the Top," she suggests recording yourself. If you notice your voice rising at the end of a sentence it sounds as though you are asking a question, are tentative, or are a junior-high girl. If you tend to swallow your last few words, that reduces the impact of what you're saying.
Action Item: Practice finishing sentences completely and drop your pitch slightly while keeping the volume strong.
The interest that others have in your message is largely controlled by YOU and your delivery. Strive to reach Olympic-level performance. When you do, you'll sell more cars, more profitably, more often.
Thank You
http://www.alanvinesautomotive.com
Durran Cage went from a Chrysler OEM Rep to an Internet Sales Manager... He was delivering 25-27 units per month. They brought in Dealer Synergy and we helped them get to:
- 95 Units Per Month!
- 2.3 Million Dollars Gross Profit from Their Annual ONLINE SALES!
- Durran Cage, Internet Sales Director gets promoted to GSM of the Dealership!!
This is such an incredible success story and it couldn't have happened to a better person, a better department or a better dealership.
So, from everyone here at AIS... CONGRATULATIONS!!!
http://www.automotiveinternetsales.com
Automotive Dealer Principals & General Managers BEWARE of Internet Sales or BDC Department!
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