Business has begun to pick up. You've lost some people due to the previous year's slow down. You've added a franchise. You want more coverage. All of these are legitimate reasons to begin a hiring campaign to add sales people to your team. But, other than the cost of advertising, are you prepared for the "real hidden cost" of hiring?
There are two directions to take when beginning a campaign. You can go for experience or you can train new salespeople in the style of your store. Both have some good selling points as well as hidden costs if not done properly. I say hidden because in the nearly 20 years I've been training sales people, these are overlooked 99% of the time. Some are common to both experienced and new hires, while others are unique to each.
What about hiring only experienced sales people? They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. While I don't know if that's true or not, I prefer to work with people who have open minds, are willing to learn, and can be taught to follow direction. How often have you been able to find that in sales people with "years" of experience? Often they bolodly talk about how they did "back in the day" and that they are ready to produce like that again with a fresh start. Generally, you can't turn production on and off by simply changing location. While you can still do well hiring experienced people, you need your managers to really do some digging. They need to be able to track the most recent six months of production. They should even try to speak with co-workers and not just the one manager they are friends with. With over 18,000 franchises and twice as many used car operations, you're looking for a professional and not someone playing the odds of getting hired somewhere.
So, not wanting to go through that revolving door scenario, you want to take a different approach. You decide that you'd like to have people willing to do things the way your dealership likes things done. You want the opportunity to mold them into your idea of a sales person. I'm talking about people with no automotive experience. They may have the maturity, knowledge or even be looking at their first career, but, they have the desire to succeed without the negative things that "experienced" sales people like to talk about. But, you have to be asking yourself, "What kind of risk will I be taking if I hire new people with no experience?"
First, look at the sales team you currently have and play Olympics. In scoring, you drop the high and the low and work with what is left. You drop the high because it's unlikely that a new bunch of sales people will not rise immediately to the top (although I have trained some who did exactly that). You drop the low because it's simply not acceptable performance. You need to look at them as the middle of your sales board in the beginning and help them reach their own level of performance over time.
When I do a recruiting/training assignment for a client dealer, I prefer new people for a very specific reason. They will always increase the overall performance of the dealership. The real benefit is that they also increase the performance of the seasoned people already there who want to stay. Otherwise, the seasoned people either shape up or walk away. Either way, the dealer wins. For my company we say this. Our goal is to provide dealers with fully trained people with no bad habits. You need to have the same hiring goal.
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F*R*E*E* Copy just for asking.
The first 40 dealer principles who contacts me within the next 10 days will receive a copy of my latest book, "YES!" This book was endorsed by the former chair of NADA, a Senior VP of GMAC, The President of Dent Zone and other top people. Simply email the dealer's name, address and phone number along with a good time to call. I'll call, speak with the dealer about how business is, and your copy will be in the mail immediately. This offer is good for the first 40 dealers who call. (My Cell Number - 603-860-8104)
About John Fuhrman - Since 1979 John Fuhrman have been either selling cars, financing cars, managing sales teams or training them. Because of his expertise, he has trained over 15,000 sales people literally around the world. While other companies talk about how long they've been in business, how many trainers they have, or how their programs have worked for decades, you might say, he actually wrote the book on it. In fact, he's written ten books on sales, management and leadership. He now has over 1.5 million readers.
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