Customer focused selling for Planning

How to create outlook signature

(upbeat music) - Every day at the dealership feels like a grind. Man, yeah, we've sold some cars today, yeah, me made some money, but I spent my entire day handlin' heat, deskin' deals, puttin' out fires, chasin' stips for F and I, and I don't feel like I have the time to get everything I need to done. What am I doin' wrong, and what do I need to change to be more effective and more productive every single day? (upbeat music) Look, I understand that we have a ton of stuff that we need to get done as managers everyday at the dealership. But nothin' is more important than our sales people. The fact is, we have to have a plan, and prioritize our plan every single day when we come in. We have to focus on the most important things, or they simply won't get done. At least, not consistently. And once we realize that we're in the people business first, and the car business second, and we make our people the priority, it's much easier to prioritize our day. And as a manager, OK, the first thing you've got to understand is, you've got to set the example for your team. They look at us, they mirror us. Be early, be the first one there, be the last one to leave. When you show up, be fired up with a positive attitude when your team shows up. Man, it's be like a coach high-fiving guys. Every single morning when you show up, ask yourself this. What am I going to do today to make my people better than they were yesterday? When you start askin' that question, you're going to force yourself to say, Okay, I need to train, I need to do one-on-ones, and I need to make sure that I'm spending time with the guys every single day. It's not an option. I don't care if it's a five-minute one-on-one, or a 20-minute one-on-one, sit down with each one of your sales people every single day, and see what's goin' on. I want you to check their attitude, look at their goals and their stats, and are they on track for it. Start looking at all of their tracking and look for areas of opportunity to help each one of them get better, then review their daily plan. Look, most sales people, they have good intentions, they just don't have a good plan. So once you go through their plan, look at every one of their working prospects, create a game plan on how to get those people back into the dealership to close the deal, make phone calls for them if they're not confident with that customer, and make sure every single one-on-one you end on a positive. Always end with somethin' positive and motivational, because that's what they're getting ready to go start their day off with. And for you guys that use our sales professional's quarterly playbook, that's the best tool you have to be able to be consistent, and be able to keep the sales people on track, and havin' a daily plan every single day. It's consistent with every sales person. If you know exactly what you're going to cover every single day. And if you don't know use the quarterly sales playbook, you should, but if you don't, have some sort of system that every one of your sales people is on. Right now, so many of them are organized in a disorganized manner. Yeah, you've got your CRM, and they've got their legal pad, and their sticky notes, and their notes on back of business cards, we've got to have one set system, so they can be organized, so you can help them hit the big time. So remember, we're in the people business, not the car business. Now we've got make sure that we're engaged with our salespeople throughout the course of the day. Always remember this. Sales people don't have bad months, they have bad hours, that turn into bad days, that lead into bad weeks, that become bad months. So what I want you to do, is set an alarm on your phone, that goes off every two hours. Get up from your desk, walk the floor, touch and talk to each one of your salespeople. See, I can make sure they don't have those bad hours, and bad days if we stay engaged. So often, we keep our head down, and we're handlin' stuff wrong. V-Auto, managin' our inventory, you're on the phone, you're dealin' with service, and we look up, and we haven't talked to our sales people in five, or six, or seven hours. So make sure every two hours, get up from your desk, walk the floor, touch and talk to each salesperson. And the other thing is, make sure whenever your salespeople are with customers, that we're getting involved early and often in those car deals. I want to make sure that we're doing early management introductions, and gettin' out and sayin' hi to these customers, make sure you're there to help the salespeople, help them t-up the pre-demo trade walk. Be there after the demo to take the T/O, in case they can't get a commitment out of the customer, and if you have a salesperson not comfortable in that negotiation, then take over the negotiation. Don't send them out there to fail. Set your guys up for success, and I promise if you're involved early and often in those car deals, you're gonna close more deals. You're gonna make more money, your salespeople are gonna be more successful, and your job gets easy when your people get good. If we don't make the time to do it right, when are we going find the time to do it over? It's time to plan your work, and work your plan, and watch your team grow. (upbeat music)