It's sales for beginners.  You must listen to your customer.  Internal or external.

It's so 101 that you could easily blow through this post and tune into the next thing.  Stayed tuned until point three and you'll have something new to try today.

As a salesperson I stood around or sat with other salespeople and shot the breeze while we waited for the next customer.  At any point any one of us might break away and wait on a customer.  If the GM strolled nearby…

Here is a post from a course I teach to prospective salespeople. Properly grounding newbies is important to starting them on the path to success. You may find parts of this useful when you begin to train new salespeople.

Why Become a Salesperson – Part Two

Here are some sales duties and responsibilities common to most organizations. Starting your new salespeople out with an understanding of these will help.

A. Deportment and Timeliness: You must be on time, all…

     If you had to pick a group of favorite failings, you’d be hard pressed to keep the list small.  Failing is generally what precedes massive success.  In fact, its’ difficult to name a significant invention, person, or other creation, without discussing the failing that occurred right up to the moment of success.

     However, in an attempt to share with all of you, the importance of risk, and the necessity of failing, I present my favorites.  These are my top five from…

(alternatively titled: "I never want to see a screwdriver again."

I've been surfing the internet again. 

This usually ends in one of two ways.



A) I find something that I don't need, but buy it anyway

B) I find something that I really want, but can't figure out how to buy it.

My new favorite thing, except for catch up on Season 3 of Dexter, is to browse the internet for car dealer websites. There are hundreds of…

While working with one of my clients covering a strategy on changing the price of a vehicle he had priced at $15,298, my first reaction was to tell him to reduce it down to $14,995 so he wouldn’t miss any searches done up to $15,000 because of his $298. Then it dawned on me, don’t even change it to $14,995 that might not work either. After the conversation, I come across a strategy that has changed the way I tell my dealers how to price a lot of their cars. It made me research all pricing…

Our never ending quest…as leaders…is to stretch people farther… than they think they can go…

To take an individual…or a team…and stretch them all the way out… till they feel they are at the edge of the cliff…

And just as they are about to fall off…extend our hand…tell them how important they are…

tell them that you…

Buyers and the lies they tell:  Buyers are not all liars.  In fact, most will be straight up with you but often times we back them into corners and make it to where it will be easier for them if they lie (not that we condone that behavior, but it helps us understand them a little better).  Also, I think some customers believe it's okay to lie to us because we are salespeople so we MUST lie all the time.  Therefore…

I'm a baseball man.  I could give up watching all other sports if the season went all year round.  It's a great sport to watch because on any day, someone could literally come out of nowhere and change the season.  As a Lifetime Yankee fan, being around when Bucky "Bleepin'" Dent took the Yanks past Boston to win another series was incredibly satisying.  Seeing it again with Aaron Boone two decades later brought back those same feelings.  Yet, neither one of them will ever be considered for…

Staying Dumb is the Smartest Thing You can Do

While working the desk here recently I handed a proposal (pencil) to one of our senior, veteran, strong salespeople.  It was the first proposal so it reflected a retail price with shorter terms and an average A.P.R. (we hadn’t run credit).  The trusty, crusty veteran looked at the proposal and said, “Here’s what I think we should do…” and proceeded to tell me how we should discount the vehicle, stretch the term…

Here is a post from a course I teach to prospective salespeople. It never ceases to surprise me how little most people understand about the profession of selling. Properly grounding newbies in their purpose is part of starting them on the path to success. You may find parts of this introduction useful when you begin to train new salespeople.

Why Become a Salesperson – Part One

Selling, salesman, sales clerk,…

We are asking each of our members to invited 5 friends in the Automotive industry to join dE today. Call them,email them or text them. What ever works best for you! Together We could make this happen!  

 34 more member's to reach 6000

There are many reasons why your search engine rankings can drop, and unfortunately, many times car dealers are at the mercy of Google and the other search engines.  Google is earnest in their mission to provide the most relevant content to  their customers, so they provide tips and suggestions for how content providers can rank highly for their relevant terms.  Below are some things that could cause your car dealership website to be…

Dealerships everywhere are looking for ways to cut themselves to a profit. Let me save you and your accounting team some time. The only way to change things is to start capturing more of the business you are loosing and generate traffic and sales for your dealership.

Sales

Even the best automotive salespeople close only 15% to 20% of the people they speak to in a given day or month. In addition most stores don't have a…

We all have a list of questions designed to help salespeople discover customers wants and needs.  The trouble comes when a salesperson hones in on the answers to the questions and runs through their list like an interrogation.

The customer can be put off by this approach.  It can leave a bad taste.  The unfortunate impression is that the salesperson doesn't really care, is just trying to sell them a car as fast as possible, and it comes off as pushy.

I don't…

Google seems to be everywhere lately, especially with their introduction of +1 and Google Plus.  Many people have so many different aspects of their life integrated into the search engine (email, social network, search engine, calendar, document management, etc) that sometimes it is hard to remember how we ever got along without it.

Most estimates put…

I was asked 1000 times back in my General Manager days, how do you do it?   Every store I went to (I did not skip around but rather was a trouble shooter) went the right direction and fast!   The answer was the same every time.   You have to have all the parts clicking at the same time.   You can't drive big traffic if your inventory or your sales staff can not support it.   You can not have a large inventory and great selection if you do not have the traffic to support the "turn".  You Have…