No, I am not crazy and yes I am talking about the well known shock jock known for his outrageous radio show. Howard Stern is a genius for many reasons and they all apply to how you can succeed as a salesperson, manager and entrepreneur.

Let’s examine several of the reasons and the lessons that can be learned. First of all, lesson number one in business is to never be boring. Although, you may not agree with Howard Stern’s humor or persona, he certainly isn’t boring and that…

Over the past two months David Lewis and Associates has had their grand opening of their new state of the art training center.  Now I finally have a moment to sit back and reflect on the successes of this event and what it means.  I smiled…

In his book Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless, Jeffrey Gitomer poses the question, “If customer satisfaction is at an all-time high, why is customer loyalty at an all-time low?”  In the car business we see that play out every day. CSI scores are at record highs but customer loyalty continues to fall and…

I had the luxury of being able to watch a rookie sales manager T.O. his first customer and it reminded me of a few things I've learned along the way.



He was our top salesperson for a few years and took a promotion to management recently. He's good at what he does and it was natural for him to go out and perform his first T.O. When he went out there, he went with confidence and purpose. He wore his best smile and greeted the customer professionally. Where he was located in the…

Do it on Purpose!!

Another part of relatedness and trust is the signals you send out about your

similarities (trustworthiness). This is real documented stuff. Pick up any book on

NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming). You can get even better relatedness

through matching the clients’ breathing, posture and speech tempo. You can

listen for cues about how they get information, which will ensure that yours goes

“in.” For instance when they are a slow talker and use a…

Black Friday is the busiest shopping day of the year. People start lining up for sales hours and sometimes days in advance for an opportunity to purchase a television or other hot holiday item and save money. For many, it’s the thrill of the hunt. However, it’s estimated that consumers will spend half of their holiday…

I am sure many of you will have heard the saying “If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it’s meant to be.” While this may be good advice for relationships, it’s certainly not good advice for business. A recent whitepaper examined how many companies focus too much on share-of-market and the resulting damage. Market share has always been the leading measurement of success. The article examines why using only…

I was watching football Sunday and I got to thinking about the job of a receiver. I decided a receiver has three jobs:

1.        Catch the ball

Nothing positive can happen until the receiver completes the catch.

2.        Try to make additional yardage after the catch

For football fans, this is…

What kryptonite is to Superman is what “I’m not buying today,” is to a salesperson, debilitating.  If you want to decapitate the high hopes of a salesperson, just whisper those four words and watch him fall faster than Michael Spinks did when he fought “Iron” Mike Tyson (91 seconds by the way).

A customer may be shouting that they aren’t buying today,…

In my last post, Advertising That is Priced Less and Priceless, I talked about the best form of advertising there is, word of mouth. You can read that HERE.

Word of mouth advertising can also be the worst advertising in the world if you don’t handle your customers properly.…

Winter can be a challenging time for salespeople in the automotive industry. It’s easy to get swept up in the holiday season and lose focus on selling. Instead of losing productivity to lighter floor traffic and more distractions, it’s time to play Season Defense. The best sales teams use this time to circle their wagons, refocus on the basics, and keep improving.



Sharpen the saw

Take extra down time to educate yourself on new products, competition, and…

Car commercials are unlikely to leave people indifferent. Although when they provoke a reaction, it’s not always the kind of reaction the brands had hoped for. Many car manufacturers mess up and some of them never learn from their mistakes. Honda, on the other hand, very rarely (if ever) make the top lists of worst car adverts. There’s just something endearing in how they’re building their brand awareness. Let’s have a closer look into how Honda achieves success.

Riding One Can be…

Helpful…or Professional…which of these sound better?

If you are like a lot of Dealers and General Managers hiring “helpful” people always seems to be the right call. The belief is that you can develop someone into becoming a Professional. While I don’t disagree with this practice, what I find all across the country is the opposite of helpful or Professional.

Because we train all across the country, we have exposure to every make and model of vehicle in every kind of Dealership,…

Get Relatedness

Finding connected-ness through sameness.

This step overlaps Steps 1 through infinity. One thing that frustrates me more

than just about anything when coaching a salesperson is this: We’ll be into the

deal and something is going wrong. The customer all of the sudden wants to bolt

just before or a few minutes after we serve figures. I ask where the client is and

get, “Oh she left already.” The first thing I’ll do is to ask about how the…

STEP 1)

Generate a Client

When I started selling at a little mulch lot after school, I read everything I could get my

hands on. One of the first books I picked up was Joe Girard’s “How To Sell Anything To

Anybody.” Boy was I excited! I was 17 and I was going to somehow magically be able to

select any object, pick out a random person and sell it to them! Well, although there were

some good philosophical points in the book, unfortunately I didn’t ever get the…

Most companies are using a sales process that dates back several decades. It was probably wrong then and it most definitely is wrong now. Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s not the process I object to; it’s some of the things you’ve been taught to do in it.

Let’s look at some of the bad advice you have been given over the years:

Find Their…

Any dealership can sell more vehicles for more money right now. It’s a fact, not an opinion. The only thing keeping you from doing so is you. It’s your dealership and it’s your choice. You choose to win and you choose to lose, but make no mistake about it; it’s always up to you.

Step 1: Decide — The root of the word “decide” means “to cut off.” You must cut off any possibility of anything else. You must decide that you can and will sell more for…

No one likes to wash clothes, take a bath (don’t laugh some people don’t), or pay bills, but we would all agree it’s a necessity in life.  Although we may not enjoy the act, we enjoy the benefits it has to offer.  We love the smell of putting on a fresh t-shirt in the morning; we feel reenergized after washing off the funk of a hard-fought day and enjoy the ability…

When dealerships first started publishing web pages, I remember that many felt that it was not very important. However, as many other dealers were doing it, they felt that they needed to as well. At first they were static, very basic websites, with very little information. Along came the ability to dynamically add inventory updated in real-time. At this point, most dealers…