Can efforts to capture customer loyalty be thwarted by employee loyalty?

Evidence gathered from top retail groups, including auto dealerships, indicates that employee loyalty directly affects customer loyalty and thus business results.

Dealer operators and their managers do their business, their stakeholders and their shareholders disservice…

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…

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…

I was recently invited to be a guest lecturer for an entrepreneur class at the University ofCincinnati. In the question-and-answer portion of the program, the professor asked me to sum up what I felt was the most important message I could stress to the class. My reply was one word – ACTION.

At a sales seminar I was giving, I was going over low- to no-cost marketing strategies designed to increase leads for sales people. At the first break after the marketing section, one of…

Great managers view themselves as coaches more than managers. There is an old adage: “Lead people and manage things.” There is a fine line between creating and utilizing systems and processes and micromanaging details without emphasizing the power of personal interaction.

Good systems and processes should allow employees to raise their performance by giving them confidence in their direction and lessening the burden of the manager and coach from having to constantly inform…

http://www.automotivedigitaltraining.com

April 2013, Cover of AutoSuccess Magazine “Automotive Digital Training”

NADA says that there are approximately 17,580…

Have you made the commitment that automotive sales is your career choice? Unless you commit, it’s impossible that you will take the necessary steps to create the business you desire. Long-term thinking in addition to short-term goals are keys to continued success.

When you first enter into a sales position, 80 percent of your time is spent acquiring customers and 20 percent of your time is spent maintaining those customers. Eventually, with the right efforts, that model…

The first step in advancing the productivity of your staff in using the phones is a better understanding in the importance that the telephone can play and how it affects your business. Often a lack of the right attitude is displayed in the treatment towards the receptionist position. The receptionist is usually hired without any guidelines that would be used to hire for an important position. In your dealership do you have personality profiles, set interview questions and guidelines to hire…

Are you the CEO of your company? If you’re a sales person, and you answered no to this question, think again. To be successful you must have a CEO mentality. All successful sales people view themselves as a business within a business. Never forget that the company you work for writes and signs your check, but you fill in the numbers. Always take responsibility for everything. You are the CEO.

What does a CEO do?

First of all, a CEO designs a marketing…

Many times people say they don’t like to negotiate; yet, they still shop around and never pay full MSRP. Most people act in their own best interest. And most people who say they don’t like negotiating, actually still want to.

There are three things you should always listen to in this business:

1. What people say.

2. What people are trying to say.

3. What they really mean.

Often, what people are saying is they ‘hate’ to…

Do you believe in luck? Do you consider yourself a lucky person or are you waiting for your ship to come in? There is a difference between luck and randomness. You should create your own luck and remove the randomness of your results.

Recently, I conducted a sales meeting for a business. Before I gave the meeting, I entered the meeting area before the sales team arrived and I taped a $20 bill to the bottom of a chair. During the meeting, I asked everyone to stand up and then…

Who owns the customers?  Where do your employees work?  Are prospects even being called back?  Some dealers don’t know.  All because we allow some of our sales team members to do it their way.  You’re feeding into their problem. 

I’m asking you to ‘Just Say No’ to…

1)   Letting salespeople use their own personal email addresses when responding back to customers.

2)   Allowing salespeople to make all of their (so-called) follow-up calls to happen from their…

Each year thousands of new-hires sit through a dealer’s orientation and basic skills class to learn how to sell cars. In many cases that is the full extent of focused training they will receive in a career that will be an exception if it passes the 6-month mark.  Even the ones who survive are likely to end up with one year of experience many times, rather than…

You probably answered “no.” Who wouldn’t? I wonder how your customers would answer that question. Do your customers think you, your product and your business are boring? People want to be entertained. Entertainment = Sales. Boring = Broke.

Your customers get their news from FOX News and USA Today, their food from drive throughs, their coffee from Starbucks, their money from ATMs, their exercise from 7- minute abs DVDs and their information from the…

When my wife and I were in the process of potty training our toddler; CORRECTION: When my wife was in the process of potty training our toddler (I liked to think of myself as the fan that cheered him on from the bleachers), we tried a million different “strategies” to get the idea of going potty to stick in his head.



After every successful potty-going…

I collect vintage sales training materials and included among the items I've collected are many of the old phongraph record and filmstrip materials.

I was looking through some of these the other day and found one that the box it should from Chevrolet in had never been opened and that got me to thinking.

I have found there is resistance by dealers and dealership managers to spending money on training. It is understandable when much of the time the materials are…

It is impossible to restrain and if unleashed it will spread like “wild fire”! What am I talking about...? [Passion] or should I say Pass-it-on? It is contagious…it breeds the must have ingredient in success and that is MOMENTUM!

Let’s talk about the importance of momentum --- often called The Big Mo ("Big…

1. Manage things and lead people.

Processes should be defined and managed daily. People should be lead by example daily. Management by strict control inhibits star performers and eliminates creativity of intelligent people. Feelings of manipulation are caused by strict control. Control, manipulation, and disrespect keep many dealerships from moving to another level of performance.

2. Speed of the boss = speed of the team.

If the boss has a…