Many sales people tend to always be chasing the next customer and worrying about the next paycheck. The good news is that this is unnecessary and can be fixed forever in two years or less. Sales people can eliminate future sales and income anxiety once and for all.

What’s the key to creating freedom? It’s marketing. If you are a sales person who is waiting for your business to provide an endless funnel of prospects and buyers, you are living in a fantasy land. Even with a ton…

A common perception of what makes a business successful is as follows: the leader is a genius who has a vision, defines the strategy, and all the employees work to make that vision into a reality.

The reality, however, is far different. In the best-selling business book, “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t,” by Jim Collins, a team of researchers discovered that the most successful leaders focus on getting the right people on board before they set…

Do you want to be more successful? You can achieve greater success if you begin to follow certain secrets that blow open the doors that are closed for you now. I am comfortable in saying that all people have some closed doors that limit their achievement. What are the doors that I am talking about and how can you open them?

The doors are a metaphor for the gateways to successful achievement. The keys are the secrets that unlock them and allow you move forward faster and with…

1. Educate Yourself

Don’t wait for managers or anyone else to give you the sales education you need. Unfortunately, the automobile industry has been stuck for years in a, “Throw them in and see if they can swim mentality.” Some dealerships take new recruits to a meeting room and have them watch training tapes for a day and expect them to be trained. Neither of these options will increase your odds for success.

Begin a massive self-education program that will…

There are 24 hours and a total of 1,440 minutes in every day. Successful people just seem to get a lot more done in a day than unsuccessful people. The main reason is successful people keep the main thing the main thing. Success is not an accident.

First, you must be honest about your strengths and your weaknesses. Spend your time in what you are strong at and delegate what you are not. A sales person reading this article may immediately think they don’t have anyone…

Recently I had the privilege of working with Media Active Incorporated on an industrial shoot for Toshiba Corporation. Engaging in any project with MAI is always a blessing for a multitude of reasons. One aspect is the opportunity to witness on the set while being educated in the art of performance technique and the…

After returning home form a speaking engagement in New York, I wanted to relax a little and flipped channels on the TV until I came to a movie called “Beyond the Sea.” My intention was to just watch and enjoy the movie and just release all the tensions of work and travel. It was time to veg-out and not think. Then – boom – it happened. A line from the movie hit me like a thunder bolt: “People hear what they see.”

“Beyond the Sea” is a movie about the life of Bobby Darin.…

Cars, dealerships and sales people can be commodities. As a sales person, your job is to move everything you do and everything you have towards being a non-commoditized item or service. You must sell your difference.

When making a decision, customers look for deciding factors. Being able to know what the differences are and then helping the customer know what they look like, sound like and feel like is your job. Customers don’t spend an hour with you and say, “This is exactly…

As a sales professional, it can be an eye-opening experience when you go shopping for yourself. Weaknesses in other’s presentations can teach us lessons about how to strengthen our own. One common theme you might notice is that many people don’t seem to recognize that people don’t buy products…

You may be wondering why the president of a dealership management system (DMS) company is talking about CRMs. It’s not because I want to sell you a CRM. It’s because one of the most frequently asked questions I get from customers is, “What do you think about such and such CRM?”

The first thing I always answer is, “Why do you want to switch?”

The reasons I get vary and often include: “Well, our new Internet Sales Director thinks that CRM is better,” or “Our…

There is a revelation that is shocking and, quite frankly, scary. A dangerous and potentially fatal mistake is being made everyday in businesses. The mistake is the confusion between strategy and tactics. Strategy is your overall goal for your business and your overall marketing philosophy to achieve those goals. Tactics are executable actions you take to achieve those options. The good news is that once you have clarity about your strategy, and then apply emotional direct response marketing…

Words are cheap. What matters is the true belief system behind your words and the actions you take because of those belief systems. Economies don’t improve, people improve. Waiting for something to happen is for losers. The most important economy is the one created between your ears.

During down markets you have to get creative to make things happen. Although you may not be able to push a new car market if it’s not there, you can niche market, create affiliations, utilize…

Each year at the start of football practice, Vince Lombardi, the coach of the Green Bay Packers started his season the same way. His opening statement to his players was, “This is a football.” Every year, John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach of the UCLA Bruins started his first practice of the season by demonstrating to his players how to properly put on their socks to prevent blisters. Pretty basic stuff, huh?

Notice the similarities between Wooden and Lombardi in the…

Is your dealership successful or is it wildly successful? Are you a good leader or a great leader? And if you are merely “good,” but desire to be “great,” what does it take to make that transition?

I have been revisiting the best-selling business book, “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t,” by Jim Collins. In Chapter 1, he posits that good is the enemy of great. Meaning that if you are good, it is often difficult to become great because it’s so…

Albany, N.Y. – April 29^th, 2013 – Auto/Mate Dealership Systems (http://www.automate.com) announced today that the company has been recognized with a “Top Workplaces in the Capital Region” award by the Albany Times-Union newspaper for the second year in a row. Auto/Mate was featured in the “Small Workplaces” category for companies with 35-149 employees.

“One of the best ways to create a successful business is to…

Negotiating can be done in a professional manner that can increase customer satisfaction while helping to protect both parties’ interests.

Let’s first look at some of the problems that give negotiating a bad name and then look at the solutions. A lack of training in negotiating in the automotive industry has put sales people at a disadvantage. Usually, a sales person is taught how to negotiate in a learn-as-you-go method. Although all learning must be accomplished by doing,…

When you have a first encounter with a customer, they are usually wondering one simple question. Can I trust you?

There are three stages of buying:

1. Character and Trust

2. Emotion

3. Logic

I don’t know that one stage is more important than the other but I do know that the trust stage usually happens first. When you build a house and the foundation is weak, no matter how nice a house you build it comes crumbling down…

You are who you decide to be at any given moment. It does not take money, a degree, a certain age, a certain appearance, tons of experience, knowing the right people, past success or any other qualifying factor that you may be currently using as a subconscious roadblock to your desired success. Your belief system creates your results both past and present. If your current belief system is not what it should be to support your success, you must fake it, till you make it.

If…

ALBANY, N.Y. – April 22^nd, 2013 – In a recent survey conducted by Auto/Mate, more than 100 dealers were asked what the most important consideration was when choosing a new Contact Relationship Management (CRM) system. Whether the system integrates with their dealership management system (DMS) was ranked as the most important, with cost being the second most important consideration. To guide dealers through the…

In the last several years, I have had a revelation about the art and science of sales. The answer to sales success is within all of us. The answer is simple but the key to unlock the answer is elusive.

If you were to go back to the late 1800s, the first formal sales training provided by the likes of J. Edward Douglas and others, you will find teaching geared toward techniques — tie-downs, inverted tie-downs, etc. For more than a century now, sales people have been trained…