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…

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 or services. People buy from…

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…

For years, the dog has been man’s best friend. He’s got a lot of things going for him; one of the best things is his dog nose. The dog’s nose is some 50,000 times more powerful than our human noses, and has some amazing powers.

Our dogs sniff out bombs, buried earthquake survivors, skiers buried in avalanches, drugs being smuggled. Dogs have a world of smells open to…

Does your dealership have a process in place for a quick transition from the sales floor to the finance dept?  Are your customers waiting for a hour or more to get into the finance office?  Does your F&I producer come out to meet the customer before the consumer get's to his/her office?  Ladies and gentleman I could go on and on with questions that I talk about with automotive managers and what we find is very concerning.

First, the transition from the sales floor to…

THE DIGITAL DEALERSHIP SYSTEM AND EVOX IMAGES® ANNOUNCE PARTNER PROGRAM

I was talking with a GSM today and he had no idea how many calls his coordinators were making per day.  Equally relevant, is that I talk with people that have positions of authority in the dealership all the time and it's unfortunate to see the majority have no clue when it comes to their E-Commerce Dept.  The…

The Social Media Statistics for 2013 across Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest provide us with an interesting opportunity to review where we may want to spend our social media dollars and time in the coming year. Quicksprout recently published the below infographic outlining the major differences between the three…

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…

The Cure for IT Insomnia?

Most car dealers are not spending sleepless nights worried about their IT and

technology but, based on what we are seeing every day, they should be very 

concerned. Technology requires constant vigilance and a level of attentiveness

that just doesn’t exist in many…

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…

Customers don’t buy vehicles, and sales people don’t sell vehicles. Customers buy solutions to problems they can feel emotionally. Sales people are the conduit that helps customers discover those emotional solutions.

People buy from people. Customers generally do business with people they like and trust. Your customers don’t walk out of your dealership telling you that they bought from you because you are a jerk. Customers can get vehicles anywhere. Most of you are not…

All businesses are built on two areas of competency – people skills and marketing skills. Many sales people who are more than adequate in their sales and people skills are struggling today. The reason is most sales people lack enough opportunities with customers. Lead generation = dollar creation

As a sales person you are in business for yourself. Having a mentality of being the CEO of your company is crucial to developing your business. The dealership signs your check, and…