When you focus on how many appointments you have coming in TODAY your actually trying to manage history. Learn the best way to manage activity by watching this video.

Are you Managing by Crisis? (Text Version)

As a manager do you find yourself obsessing over how many appointments you have coming in on a daily basis? “Hey guys, get your appointments for today up on the board.” When you figure out that you’re light on appointments for that day what do you do? Chances are you go to battle stations. “Guys get on the phone and call everyone.” It’s classic management by crisis. Unfortunately today is probably too late to do anything about today. Today should have been taken care of yesterday and the day before that. When you obsess only about how many appointments you have coming in that day, in essence you’re trying to manage history. Change your focus to how many appointments has your staff setup today whether for today, tonight, tomorrow or the next day. A board I recommend every dealership have is an appointment set today board. If that’s where you keep your foot on the gas pedal and you have your staff setting up plenty of appointments every day, every today will take care of itself. You’ll find plenty more of this and other management techniques on my Adapt Virtual Trainer.

There is absolutely no benefit for a dealership to have an open floor. Watch this video to find out how your open floor is actually rewarding negative behavior while limiting the production of your staff.

Get a Client Service Specialist (Test Version)

This is huge. Do you have someone in addition to your salespeople following up your unsold customers? If not you need to. A market research study was done a while back that showed that 39 percent of all customers that visit a dealership say that the reason that they would not return to that dealership is because they didn’t like the salesperson. Why? He was too tall, too short, talked to much, said the wrong thing, reminded them of their x-brother in law, who cares they didn’t like the salesperson. Now if that salesperson follows-up with that customer that didn’t like them the customer will never tell the salesperson that they didn’t like him or her. What will the customer say? “We decided not to buy anything right now, we already bought, even if they didn’t, we’re going to wait and all the rest. They won’t tell the salesperson, but they will tell someone else. A client service specialist for example. This is someone at your dealership who’s specifically trained to make these calls. At the point that a manager finds out from a client service specialist that the thing preventing a customer from returning is a specific salesperson, they can make the decision to make the switch to someone else. A couple reasons I’d prefer a client service specialist making the calls rather than sales managers, which is what a lot of dealers tells me happens at their dealership is this, first managers have a lot of things come up throughout the day and might make one attempt to reach the customer but not much more. When I look at logs and guest sheets that sales managers have followed-up, I see a lot of left messages. A client service specialist has the opportunity to be more persistent. Also, it’s an easy call to make and train someone on. We can teach someone whose getting paid a lot less than your sales manager to get as good of results if not better. 39 percent of 500 floor-ups that you have no shot at getting back into your dealership right now is a big deal. We have everything available to educate and train your in-house client service specialists on our Adapt Virtual Trainer.

What is Training? (Text Version)

Here’s why a lot of dealers think that they can’t train their sales staff. It’s because most of what we’ve called training over the years has really been educational at best. You send your guys off to the Marriott because the hottest sales trainer in the industry is going to be putting on an 8 hour “workshop.” Your guys come back pumped up and excited, probably complaining about the lunch and days and weeks later your wondering why the results aren’t there. “We sent them to training, it didn’t work!” No you didn’t. That’s as much training as you watching a day of golf at the masters is training for golf. You can watch Tiger Woods all day long and it’s not going to make you a better golfer. Going to a baseball game is not considered training for baseball. I might become educated in baseball but the only way to train is through repetition. For golf I have to go out there and hit bucket after bucket after bucket of balls in order to improve. Baseball teams take batting practice everyday, they take fielding practice everyday. So yes, going to a seminar can deliver education. It can teach your people the right way to do things, a better way to do things, but training is what managers need to be doing everyday in the form of role playing. Practicing on pretend customers instead of real victims…So again, the thing that we call training is really a process comprised of more than one part. The first one is education: Learning what to do and what to say. This can be accomplished virtually, by reading, in seminars or CDs. The second is training. Training is practicing, its role playing…training isn’t something you did, its something you do…you can absolutely train your staff but just make sure that what your calling training really is. You’ll find a lot more on this as well as any other management topics on my Adapt Virtual Trainer.

Control your Conversations (Text Version)

Here’s a real simple strategy for improving your selling skills: Control your conversations. On my adapt VT platform I discuss how the key to handling a telephone call is maintaining control of the conversation. All too many times when listening to a salesperson talk to a customer on whose calling, the call falls into a very familiar pattern. The customer asks and the salesperson answers…silence…customer asks salesperson answers, customer asks salesperson answers…it’s as if the salesperson is simply waiting for the customer to run out of questions. That strategy will never have a good outcome. How do you maintain control? You need to start asking the questions. There’s nothing wrong with answering a customer’s question, but immediately after you do, you need to follow-up with a question of your own. So let’s say a customer during the course of a conversation asks you “does that car come standard with navigation?” Answer the question. “Well no it doesn’t come standard, but it’s a very popular option. So did you want navigation?” The customer answers “yeah probably.” I’d immediately respond “okay great so you probably want navigation, what about the third row seating? Is that something you’d be interested in?” So always after answering a question immediately follow-up with another question and obviously make sure it’s a question that will make sense in the context of the conversation. Same thing applies on a lot. If you’re standing in front of the MSRP of the car and the customer is just peppering you with questions, chances are that exchange isn’t going to have a very good outcome. Make sure you answer the customers question but then immediately follow-up with a question of your own. Not only do you maintain control but you’ll also sound interested. Plenty more on this topic and 100s of others on my adapt virtual trainer.

Managing Activity (Text Version)

It’s an all too familiar sight- 5 salespeople standing around for 3 hours waiting for one customer. It didn’t make any sense 10 years ago and it definitely doesn’t make any sense today as floor traffic counts drop precipitously. I like talking to managers about managing salesperson activity. What I mean is making sure that your people are doing the right things the right way at the right time. Five sales people standing by the front door talking about last nights basketball game and the economy really isn’t doing you much good. There’s never been a study done that showed that the more people standing by the front door of a car dealership, the more customers come in. In fact I think it would be the opposite. Now let’s say that we leave one person waiting for that one customer and we have the other four on the phones following-up their unsold customers, actually calling their sold customer base for a change and generating repeat and referral business. That, I promise you, will get more customers into your showroom. As a manager you might be the best desk person in the world and you might be a fantastic closer but right now you’re faced with an empty showroom and a staff that’s hoping that some customers show up today. Manage your showroom and your staff’s activity properly and watch your traffic count climb. You’ll find this as well as many other management strategies including an explanation of the modified open floor on my Adapt Virtual Trainer.