Did you know that 85% of sales are influenced by women? For both sales and service, your strategy to turn women into clients needs to be different and we can show you how.
Get the Hard Facts from Samantha Cunningham at POTRATZ, and learn how it's not just a man's world.
How would you rate the skill sets of the sales staff at your dealership? Let’s review a few of those skill sets:
• Phone skills — taking inbound calls and making outbound calls
• Follow-up skills — Following up sold and unsold customers with an organized game plan utilizing multiple streams of follow-up methods
• Marketing — Utilizing a planned and sequenced marketing campaign utilizing multiple media methods for low- to no cost self-marketing and prospecting
• Action Management — Otherwise known as “time management”; a well-thought out and executed game plan for a daily, weekly and monthly action plan
• Self-Education — A well-planned and executed game plan for self-education based upon increasing sales skills, people skills, life skills and marketing skills
• Closing skills — The ability to bring all the work done with the customer, the relationships and value created to a purchase decision
Over the years, I have been in thousands of dealerships and know that the answers to the above questions for the vast majority of dealerships are a lot poorer than any of us would like to admit. If you are a manager or dealer, my question to you is the following:
If you have been trying unsuccessfully for many years to raise the skill levels on the above areas, what will change or make a difference in the future? If you keep banging your head against a wall and all you get is a bloody headache, then wouldn’t it make sense to try something different?
One of two things will have to change. Either you must spend the time, effort and resources necessary to recruit, hire, train and retain the right type of quality people, or you must devise a new sales process that alleviates most, if not all, of the above responsibilities from your sales staff. There is a much greater chance that you can hire and teach salespeople to execute a few things really well rather than expecting your sales representatives to execute a whole range of responsibilities at a high level.
Some of you may read this and say that I want you to just give up on salespeople and for some of you that is partially true. If you will not spend a tremendous amount of time and resources on recruiting the right people, then don’t bother in expecting better results. It’s ridiculous. What do you presently have in writing that you implement on a regular basis for a recruiting, interviewing, testing and training program for your dealership? My guess is five percent of dealerships have anything. If that is the case for your dealership, once again I must ask, “What do you expect?” If you say you want a good sales staff that performs necessary sales functions at a high professional level and you spend zero thought, time and resources towards getting good people that even have a capacity to perform these functions, then you will get what you pay for.
If you have determined that you cannot get high-quality people or do not want to spend the resources necessary to get the top quality people, then I do not find shame in creating a limited sales process with limited functions for your sales staff to ensure a high probability of success. My hope is that you chose some plan of massive action rather than keep doing the same thing and expecting a miracle. Hoping and praying alone does not seem to work. To paraphrase a quote, “Pray, but move your feet.”
To receive my articles and FREE special report on Death of Traditional Salespeople, contact me at info@tewart.com with “Death of Traditional Salespeople” in the subject line.
With the increased emphasis on content in social media marketing this year, video has emerged as one of the key areas of focus. Even last year, Forbes was touting the strengths of utilising video content, highlighting the significant response rate of video over other formats. But while the numbers emphasize the considerable benefits, many businesses lack the time, resources and/or budget to create video content. Enter Vine. Vine has changed the way marketing teams look at video, expanding the options and reducing the overheads. If you’ve not considered using Vine in your marketing efforts, here are three reasons why you should re-investigate your options to ensure you're not missing out on a great opportunity:
1. Visual content significantly boosts content marketing success. All the stats show it, the marketing experts support it. Brands can achieve great reach and engagement results with visual content. A recent report from Cisco suggested that video will account for 69% of all consumer internet traffic by 2017. A Nielsen report found 64% of marketers expect video to be a key part of their strategic planning moving forward. The logic behind the numbers is clear – information can be communicated faster in video, people are more likely to share video content, a growing number of consumers say product videos make them more confident in a purchase. With video becoming more accessible via SmartPhone, its popularity has increased exponentially, and consumer expectation has also been heightened as a result. Video is a familiar and powerful medium that generally require less time commitment than written content and can generate a strong emotional response in very short exposure time. As noted in this piece from The Guardian ‘if a picture paints 1,000 words, one minute of video is worth 1.8 million’.
2. The barrier for entry is much lower than it once was. It used to be that you’d need to pay a third party video production company to shoot and produce video content. Not anymore. Vine is structured around a low-tech approach – the editing options are limited and there’re no additional filters - you shoot what you want, then send (note: it is possible to access additional editing options by using the VineClient app). The six second limit also means the cost is kept to a minimum, whilst not lugging you with the burden of lengthy production time. Vine is designed to be quick, easy and accessible to all users, from tech experts to kids. And just as Twitter changed the game on communications with its character limit, Vine’s run-time limit re-imagines the approach to video, forcing you to expand your creative thinking on how you’re going to capture attention and convey an intelligent message in such a short amount of time. These constraints have lead to some amazing content, all made for relatively minimal cost. And while the time limit is restrictive, it’s also freeing, knowing that you’re not under obligation to fill minutes or hours of content. You get in, present what you need in it’s most direct form, then get it out. This was simply impossible ten, even five years ago.
3. Brand Vines are shared four-times more than any other online videos. This is the clincher. Not only are Vine videos relatively cheap and easy to make, but they are 400% more likely to be shared than other forms of video content. That’s a pretty compelling case right there. That sharing is not on a limited scale either - nine tweets that include a Vine video are sent every second of every day. A Facebook group that collects the best Vine videos, ‘Best Vines’, now has 19 million likes – that’s more than the population of most countries. The popularity and reach of Vine content cannot be underestimated. One of the major appealing factors of Vine is it only takes seconds to watch – people are more likely to press play knowing that it’ll only take a moment, then they can get on with their day. If you can condense a clever brand message into that six-second time frame, there’s a high chance that it’s going to get seen and shared, spreading your brand message.
There are many examples of brands using Vine creatively and achieving great results (check out ‘Brands on Vine’ for inspiration). Whilst it may seem like video content is beyond the capacity of your business, if you look through the examples, you’ll find many pieces are extremely simple. You still need to create great content, but doing some research and expanding your thinking on what’s possible may lead to you having a ‘light bulb’ moment for a Vine piece. And even if you try it and it doesn’t pan out, it’s not going to blow your budget. Vine offers great opportunity for branded content and is a platform that all companies with a social media presence should consider using. Who knows, you could become the next viral sensation.
A recent article I wrote titled “The Death of Traditional Salespeople” received more response than any article I have ever written. Judging from the massive response, I struck a nerve with salespeople, managers, business owners and just about everyone who read the article. Based upon the overwhelming response and the huge amount of requests for more information on this theme, I am providing the following article.
For as long as I can remember, traditional sales training has focused highly on certain sales skills such as cold calling, presentation-demonstration, objection handling and closing. This model is outdated and out of touch. The traditional model that is taught to salespeople has an adversarial and combative tone that goes against the grain of basic human communication.
Selling is not something you do to someone. By my definition, selling is assisting people in finding and understanding a solution to their problem(s). Every buyer has a problem — whether it is a want or need problem — and it’s the job of the salesperson to guide the buyer to the solution instead of force feeding him product or services. It’s much easier to practice what I call the “slippery-slide method of selling.”
If you were at a pool and it had one of those slippery-slides, you would start at the top and slide effortless to the bottom. In sales, it’s usually the salesperson that puts obstacles in the way of the customer from fl owing effortlessly to their destination. The obstacles start in the form of an outdated mindset of “control” and coercive techniques.
Instead of concentrating so much on outdated word tracks to overpower people, why not concentrate on understanding basic human emotion and thought in assisting the customer, rather than fighting him? Let’s start with the most abused skill in selling, which is listening. So much of selling is actually just listening. It is a proven part of communication that when most people listen, they listen intently for about the first 10 seconds and then quickly shift into thinking about what their response will be. A quick shift occurs in the salesperson that is now self-focused and control oriented.
To truly listen is to seek to understand based upon complete focus on the customer and their perspective. Perception of the customer is the only reality that matters. It’s not about right or wrong or overcoming objections, but about truly understanding the customer and their thoughts and feelings. From understanding comes a shared goal-achieving process with the customer. You and the customer share a destiny, rather than acting as opposing players.
Traditional objection handling techniques stress changing a customer’s thoughts and emotions, rather than understanding them and then utilizing those thoughts and emotions to come a winning solution for the customer. I call this paradigm shift “selling form the heart.” Some old-school types will read this and think it’s a bunch of psycho-babble and feel-good mumbo-jumbo. To those of you locked into that vein of thought, understand that it’s not my mission to change you, as most adults do not change. As Jesus said to his disciples, “Don’t tarry too long with the non-believers.”
http://www.internetsales20group.com
Best Selling Author, Dr. Willie Jolley Will Be The Keynote Speaker For The Internet Sales 20 Group
Even if you don’t believe, as I do, that high sales staff turnover is the number one issue facing the auto industry today; we certainly can agree it is right at the top of the list. There is not one positive thing that happens at our dealerships as a result of high turnover, and the benefits of low sales turnover are so obvious that I don’t need to list them.
High sales turnover has completely undermined training efforts. It creates the mental attitude amongst many managers to not bother training at all because they won’t be here in 6 months or others take the salmon going upstream approach; if they survive then we will invest some time into them.
Meanwhile over the past 10 years our customers have become more and more acclimated to the Internet and are gobbling up as much information as they can on product and price prior to coming into our dealerships. By most accounts 75-90% of our customers have done most of their selection process before they ever step on our lots.
This is leaving many dealerships in the position of having the least educated salesman talking to the most educated consumer. Since we can’t uneducate the consumer we better start investing and educating our sales staff.
I believe the manufacturers play a major role in helping us to resolve this problem and should work closely with their dealers about salesman’s retention programs. With all of the dollars that are budgeted for incentives they should slice out $100 or $200/car and designate it to our sales departments and reward top performers.
Short of having these conversations with your manufacturers or dealer council reps we can only effect what we can control at our dealerships and we better start getting serious about training so we can give our salespeople the tools they need to EARN a good living.
Let’s face it we are not brain surgeons or scientists !!! We are only selling cars and if we hire motivated, personable people that care, we should be able to make it a personally and financially rewarding career. Here are a few items that I think many of us miss with our sales staff:
1) Know what each salesperson’s personal financial needs and wants are?
2) Ask each salesperson what they feel they should produce to achieve their needs or wants. You may be very surprised how far off some salespeople are with what they think they need to produce vs. what they will earn if they produce what they say. It is in everyone’s best interest to clarify their earnings potential based on expected performance.
3) Train, Train, Train, Train- Take the approach of a college student that gets a degree and then goes after his Masters.
The college degree would be the basics:
Product knowledge
Meet, Greet, Qualify, Road to the sale etc.
CRM- Your salespeople should know their CRM tool inside and out. They should look at it as if it was their own private secretary or marketing department that you gave them at no cost.
Networking and Referrals- The lost art of the auto industry!!! Let everyone know what you do and ask for referrals. This is a must for any salesperson that wants to make serious $ in this business.
The Masters program would be the training on the following topics:
a) Internet Sales
b) Phone Call Sales
c) Service Retention-Equity Mining
d) Lease list and owner loyalty
e) Social Media as a way to sell cars TODAY!!! For the first time, technology allows your staff to effectively market themselves at no cost to the dealership.
As a dealer you need to be clear of what your expectations are from your sales staff. This might include:
Sales goals
CSI Goals
Dress Code
Attitude
Both setting processes and expectations is a great step in making sure you and your sales team are following the same path, and hopefully are on a long road together.
You may find this article a bit odd, knowing that it was written by a sales trainer, but I believe that traditional selling is dead on arrival. The days of hiring and building a well-trained sales staff that executes all facets of the sale, follow up, prospecting, marketing, telephone skills and building a database of repeat buyers has, for the most part, been dead for a while.
Some of you reading this may be shocked or even angry at such a statement, and declare that it is certainly not the case at your dealership. However, it is the case for 95 percent of dealerships across the country. If you have been able to recruit, hire, train and retain a professional staff of salespeople who execute on an extremely high level then I say “bravo.” Our company has certainly helped many dealerships do the same thing. However, after almost 30 years in the business, I can tell you it is not the norm.
What I see in the auto business today, on average, is scary. I see lazy, untrained staff members who either cannot or will not learn the skills necessary to become strong, professional salespeople. I see dealerships with weak or non-existent game plans to recruit, hire and train a strong professional staff. I see managers who like to sit behind their desks and wait for untrained sales staffs to bring them deals.
I continue to see dealerships moving to more and more specialization and technology. I see dealerships utilizing CRMs, in-store or external Internet departments, outsourced BDCs and sales processes that heavily utilize managers and technology. Although technology does not sell vehicles, it surely assists you in the process. More dealerships will move towards the old school — but now new school — process of product specialists and managers. People will only be trained and expected to perform in certain areas of competency. F&I managers will be moved more towards the front of the sale rather than the back of the sale. Many smart dealers have moved towards this arrangement years ago.
Dealers have been beating their heads up against the wall forever trying to get salespeople not only trained, but get them actually doing it. For the most part, it has not worked. I have heard certain sales trainers cry out “It’s not an option.” That’s easy to say, but those same sales trainers went broke while owning their own dealerships. I am not writing this article to be politically correct. I am writing this article to be a witness to the truth as I see it. The average salesperson today in most stores is lucky to have a job, let alone resembling anything close to a professional salesperson. Customers just won’t tolerate amateurs and old school selling anymore.
If you are fighting the same battles you have been fighting for years and not getting better results, then it may be time to stop blaming your managers and look in the mirror. It may be time to try a different approach. And, to all the truly professional salespeople out there that don’t fit into the 95 percent category I mentioned, you have my apologies, as you should be held in very high esteem and not lumped in with all the rest. You are truly some of the most valuable people on earth.
If you would like to receive my free report on the new generation of selling, e-mail me at info@tewart.com with the phrase “new generation” in the subject line.
Anyone can have a dream, but why do some succeed and some fail? Find out what you need to reach your goals this week on Think Tank Tuesday.
Traffic is slow, business is weak, the economy stinks and banks aren’t buying. Repeat this mantra 100 times and see how you feel. I promise you that if you replay this message enough, you will believe it as absolute truth and become depressed and desperate. No matter what circumstances are at present, the choice is simple: You choose to win or choose to lose.
The one single ingredient that is always present in any success story is self-determination. You are always responsible. You are responsible for the good and you are responsible for the bad — it’s just that simple. If you will allow any excuse for failure — no matter how overwhelming the evidence — you have sown the seeds for more excuses to follow.
To succeed in good or bad economies takes the exact same ingredients, but in tougher times it takes more resolve to keep producing the successful ingredients. Your success or failure is based upon your beliefs and philosophy. If you do not have a belief system to support success and a personal philosophy of self-determination, you are subject to all forces that cause failure.
You must create an impenetrable mind — a mind that can sustain all attacks of negativity and philosophies of randomness. The dirty truth is that most people do not believe in self-determination. Most people are excuse makers, and have philosophies of luck and a welfare belief system.
In the United States, which is the richest country in the world, with resources and opportunities that can only be imagined by people in some parts of the world, people make excuses everyday as to how they cannot control their own destiny. It is much easier make excuses than to take control of your own destiny. After all, how can it ever be your fault? The economy is so bad, and you certainly don’t control the economy.
The economy is made up of single micro-economies that create a larger macro-economy. You do control your economy, and it starts between your ears. When you listen to the news and hear that things are not good, do you allow that to be your destiny? After all, if you hear it on the news, it must be true, right?
Let me ask you a few questions. Did you allow your expenses and debt to get too high? Did you allow weak processes and accept less-than-favorable results? Did you create an on-going relationship based marketing program to your existing customers, or did you ignore your most valuable asset — your customers? Did you neglect to install and enforce daily education? Have you massively self-educated yourself on a daily basis to stay abreast of all developments in marketing, technology, social media and marketplace changes? Have you created a marketing plan based upon measurable direct response media that you continually tweak? Do you allow excuses and surround yourself with excuse makers?
Success is based upon certain fundamental truths. Install and adhere religiously to those truths without fail and you will succeed. Although everyone has setbacks, setbacks are not failures and are only temporary signs to adjust and plan accordingly. Always ask yourself, “What’s next?” Keep moving and adjusting. Success and failure are ultimately choice. The choice is yours.
Michael Jackson and Billy Mays passed away in the same week. The passing of Billy Mays made the news but Michael Jackson dominated it. The underlying message sent from the media is that entertaining is good and somehow noble, but selling and marketing is bad. My question for you is the following: Do you allow this flawed thinking to keep you from being successful in your sales and marketing?
The news coverage of Michael Jackson life was largely reverential and fit for king, while the coverage of Billy May’s life always seemed to mention the loud pitchman with a carnival barker quality. Our society tends to revere athletes and entertainers, but scorns marketers and salespeople. This subliminal message bombards the brains of business people who being to believe it.
Too often, business owners and leaders let their egos and perceptions of image get in the way of successful marketing and sales. Movies, TV and news often shape our thoughts. The problem with allowing your actions to be guided by these mediums is they often create false assumptions.
The first sin of marketing is to be boring. In today’s marketplace it is harder to get noticed than ever before. You must stand out. In different fields and with different styles, both Michael Jackson and Billy Mays stood out. Both Michael Jackson and Billy Mays were shrewd marketers and salespeople. Both were personality driven, and neither Michael Jackson nor Billy Mays were boring.
Many businesses spend tons of money on boring marketing. Often the excuse given is “You have to have your name out there” or “I am building a brand.” Unless you are Pepsi or Anheiser Busch, you don’t have enough money to build a brand. Spending money to keep your name out there is an excuse to not have a plan.
People make fun of personality-driven or wacky themed advertising, but if you measure the results of these businesses, they are usually the best performers in their area. Personality-themed marketing and advertising utilizes the personality to drive home the message and the call to action. Those businesses don’t let false ego and image to get in the way of effective marketing.
You should care less about what you think customers will think and more about what they will actually do. The surest way to create a brand image is by selling tons of products through personality-driven marketing and sales that creates a quasi-celebrity out of you, your family, your staff, your pets, your characters and anything else you can use. The personality has a strong supporting role in the marketing and selling without becoming the focal point. In other words, don’t be wacky just to be wacky.
I believe most business owners are somewhat ashamed of marketing and selling. The marketing of these businesses tries to show they are anything but marketers and sellers. The problem is that this tactic doesn’t work. General Motors Saturn brand didn’t approve of using the word “sale” as if it were somehow dirty. Maybe that’s why Saturn didn’t sell much.
Michael Jackson and Billy Mays were both smart marketers. Michael Jackson was loved for it and Billy Mays was laughed at. My own theory is that Billy Mays didn’t care. His bank cashed his checks the same as Michael Jackson’s. Billy Mays rose from boardwalk vendor to being a rich and famous pitchman. Billy Mays laughed all the way to the bank using personality-driven marketing.
To receive a free special report, “The Ten Deadly Sins of Marketing and Sales” e-mail me at info@tewart.com
http://www.dealersynergy.com 856-546-2440
http://www.automotivedigitaltraining.com
Make Money Mondays with Sean V. Bradley - 'More' - Automotive Sales - Car Sales
http://www.dealersynergy.com 856-546-2440
Introducing Geno Kyle, Chevrolet Automotive Sales Manager Of Andy Mohr Chevy - Indianapolis, Indiana
http://www.dealersynergy.com 856-546-2440
Example Of Video Review For A 2014 BMW M6 - Video Production - Video SEO - Digital Marketing
Don’t you hate to hear your customer say “no”? You spend a lot of time and energy with a customer and when you get to the final stage of the sales process, the customer says the dreaded “no” word. You were all excited and hoping for a sale and then poof, the air goes out of your sails. The good news is that you can change from getting “no” answers to “yes” answers.
First, you must recognize that getting a “no” answer isn’t accidental or bad luck. When a customer gives you a “no” answer, it is systemic from a thought or feeling that occurred before decision time occurred. Although it’s not possible to get a “yes” answer 100 percent of the time, it is possible to improve your ratios tremendously by doing a little review.
Review the last 20 customers you have been with who said “no.” What were their objections? Write down all the objections. Categorize each objection. The good news is that objections only fall into a few categories. Once you realize that you face the same objections over and over, it’s easier to prepare for them in the future.
Now let’s dig into why the objection occurred. For all the complexity of human beings, we are pretty basic in that thoughts and emotions drive our decisions. Small companies, big companies, your country of residence, foreign countries — those things do not change human nature. As a salesperson, you must dig deeper, dig deeper, dig deeper. When you get to the core, you will find fear. What fear is the customer feeling? The overriding fear is of making a mistake.
When you receive an objection, you must now practice risk reversal. The fear has reached a crescendo and created a perception of extreme risk. Sometimes the easiest way for a customer to deal with risk is to say “no.” Customers object for only four reasons: to stall, complain, negotiate or make a valid objection.
Unfortunately, the majority of objections are also unspoken. You have to use your gut to feel the objections of your customers. You may listen to what the customer says, but you also have to feel what they are trying to say and also what they really mean. These three things can be very different from one another. Listening without feeling and understanding will only cause you to chase veiled objections. You will forever be trying to change objections without getting to a “yes.” Your objective is not to handle or fix objections, but to get your customer to the point of not only saying “yes” but feeling good about their decision. Notice I used the word “feel” once again.
Fears can be either intrinsic or extrinsic. The customer can have information given to them extrinsically that creates a fear around you, your product/service or the money. Or the customer can create fear based upon their own thoughts or feelings. Remember that perception is reality to the customer. What will change their fears, whether they are intrinsic or extrinsic? Confidence is the game changer — confidence that you can show and transfer to the customer. People want to feel confident. Usually, your confidence will come from competence. The more competent you are in listening, understanding, communicating, problem solving, persisting and creating a kindred friendship, the confident you will be and the confident your customer will feel. Your confidence will trump any extrinsic information given to the customer by another salesperson.
Try the following risk reversal techniques.
1. Re-demonstrate Your Product or Service — Move people back from their head with their heart. It’s hard for people to make decisions based upon logic only without creating fear around our logic. People tend to have more confidence and conviction around their emotions than their logic. Emotions are fun and logic is boring, scary, black and white, right versus wrong. Re-demonstrating your product or service renews the emotion that justifies logic.
2. Ask the Pointed Question — “Mr. Customer, if you had to pick one thing only that is keeping you from buying what would that be?”
3. Reduce the Scary Monster of Decision — “Mr. Customer, the hardest part of getting what you want is to make the decision to do so. That’s normal. The root meaning of the word ‘decide’ means to cut off from all other things. That can be a scary thing. Once you make the decision, all the fear goes away and you lift a ton off your shoulders. It’s okay to make the decision to have what you know you already want to do.”
4. Make No Mistake — “Mr. Customer, based upon what you have told me, based upon what you have said you want to do, what your goals are, what you are getting and accomplishing, you are not making a mistake.”
Just as the customer has to decide, you have to decide as well. Do you feel worthy of making this sale? Do you feel like you and your product/service is the best for the customer? When you do, you will go from more “no” answers to more “yes” answers.
If you look close enough to this picture:
you will see my name “SANSONE” etched into my new Cutco Cutlery set. What’s amazing to me is that I didn’t think I needed a new set of knives, I certainly didn’t have any difficulty cutting my last steak.
So why do I own them ???? Because Cutco is smart enough to train their college-age, door-to-door salesman to ask for referrals. That’s right, my wife’s name was given to this young man from one of her friends and he cold called my wife and asked to set up a presentation of his company’s product. He was knowledgeable, polite and asked for the sale. Then after he got the sale he said “most of my business comes from referrals; who do you know that might be interested in a new set of knives? My wife was so satisfied she happily referred a few or her friends, not sure if any of them bought but that really doesn’t matter. What matters is that Cutco is smart enough and disciplined enough to make it part of their sales process to always be networking and ask for referrals from their satisfied customers.
The question I put to you is: why can’t we get our salespeople to ask for referrals? We all know that referrals close at a higher percentage, have a higher gross profit margin, have a higher CSI and cost almost nothing to get. You would think that this would be one the first things we teach our sales people like Cutco taught their part-time employee.
Can you imagine how much fun we could have and how much money we could make if more of our showroom traffic were referred from satisfied customers, as opposed to the price banging we all do with the online shoppers.
We all know the answer to the question…. It takes a process, training AND work. Every one of us knows a few salespeople who ask for referrals religiously and they are our top producers. Why not demand the same from all of our salespeople. Let’s at least try!!
Paul Sansone Jr.
http://www.internetsales20group.com 856-546-2440
http://www.vets-cars.com
I am HONORED to announce Vets-Cars founder, Chris Walsh will be a Speaker At the upcoming Internet Sales 20 Group in Atlantic City, New Jersey April 8-10!
Watch this video… This is POWERFUL!
