Dealer Puke!

The number one issue I hear when I am in a dealership consulting with Internet personnel is "I can't get anyone to call me back or respond to my emails!" Sound familiar? Do you hear this from your staff?

When was the last time you actually read the emails you are sending to your customers? How about the last time you listened to the voice-mail you salesperson left for that potential customer? If you have not done either lately, it is a good place to start to discover why your customers aren't calling back or responding to emails.

Are you giving them a reason to respond?

When I hear this complaint, the first place I go is to the CRM and review the emails that are being sent out. In every situation I find the same thing; Dealer Puke! That's right, Dealer Puke! We are sending emails that tell the customer how great we are, how much better our people are, how many xyz models we have in stock, how easy our Internet process is and a whole host of other self appointed accolades. In a lot of these cases, the specific questions that the customer asked is not even answered. If you asked me a question and I ignored you and started telling you how great I was, how long would I have your attention? Please do not misunderstand me, having "Why Buys" IS important; but more important is connecting with the customer. 

When I listen to the voice mails it is more of the same? "Hi this is Tom at XYZ Motors. I just received your lead on the 2013 Gizmotron and wanted to see if you had any questions. Please call me back at your earliest convenience. My number is 123-555-PUKE".  Why should the customer call you back?

What reason does the customer have to email or call back (besides to ask their question again because it was ignored the first time)?

If a customer was to visit the store or call us, we ask questions to:
1) Gain Control
2) Build a dialog
3) Find out the customer's wants and needs

It is said that the best salespeople ask the best questions. Why then are we not trying to engage our customers with questions and/or curiosity statements? Now I know what you are thinking; we ask questions in our emails. Where are those questions located in the email? Are they relevant to the request? Are they personal? Normally the questions are near the bottom of the email, you know, the part that the customer does not read; and they are generally canned questions that do not build any value.

Do you want to get quality replies to your email? 

Start asking Personal, Relevant, Dialog Building questions! Start by placing these questions near the top of the email; bullet point the questions so the eye is drawn to them.

Look at the lead and try to find out who the customer is. We can discover a lot just from the email address; where they work, hobbies and age are just a few. How many times have you looked at the email address, saw that the customer worked for ABC Company, and asked the customer about their position or what they do? We do that when the customer is in front of us, why not in an email. Working at ABC my qualify the customer for a supplier discount on a new car and this customer has no clue they qualify. A lot of email contain the year of someone's birth; I am not going to ask them about their age, but I at least know how to better approach this customer.

Did the lead arrive from a payment calculator from your site or the OEM site? Why would we not ask the customer about their payment expectations? We know that payment is important if they submitted a lead from a payment calculator; aren't most customers payment focused?

Look at the address line; where does the customer live? Do you know this area or live nearby? Maybe the address is at the local college; is this a student? Does this customer live in your primary market area and your store is the logical choice to by from? Does this customer live in another town or even state; why are they sending you a lead?

Did the customer list a trade on the request? Are we asking questions about the trade? What did they like most about their current vehicle? Why are you wanting to trade? What is the condition of the trade?

What options/color did the customer request? Are we asking why those options are important to them? How are they going to be using the vehicle? Are we asking what colors the customer would not take? Is this vehicle for business or pleasure?

I recommend 3 or 4 Personal, Relevant and Dialog building questions. Don't make it an inquisition, but a personal conversation that flows naturally. Once the customer realizes that we are genuinely interested in them and we are asking questions that are relevant to their request, they will respond. The dialog will start to flow and the you won't have to just focus on price. The customer who submits a lead is no different than the customer that walks in; they want to know that you care and are interested in helping them. They are not looking for someone to puke all over them with things that are not important to them.

Start asking Personal, Relevant, Dialog building questions and your Internet staff will start getting responses. Start building a dialog with the customer and our Why Buys won't look like Dealer Puke and the customer may actually stop and read your email in the future.

My next post we will tackle the voice mail and giving customer a reason to call back.

Like two peas in a pod!

Process and Accountability

It still amazes me that there is a lack of understanding that you can not hold people accountable without a defined process; and you can not have a defined process without some level of accountability. The two go together like peanut butter and jelly; two peas in a pod.

proc·ess - a systematic series of actions directed to some end

ac·count·a·ble - subject to the obligation to report, explain, or justify something; responsible; answerable.

In my new role as a trainer in car dealerships, I see it everyday and when I reflect on my time as a leader in my store, I was missing it as well. Most of the problems we face in the dealership, and in any business, can be traced back to no clearly defined process. A process starts when we decide what our expectations are and then write them down. Once we write down our expectations we can then start to create a process around them. The clearly defined and written down expectations then become a draft for the job descriptions for your staff. This becomes the first step to accountability; making sure your employees know what is expected of them. 

In a lot of car dealerships the only expectation is to sell cars; this is why some stores must use monetary means to get results for something that should be a condition of employment. Great customer satisfaction scores should be a condition of employment, but how many stores must spiff a salesman to get the desired result. If we are not getting good customer satisfaction scores it is because we have failed to set the expectation, create a process to ensure the desired results and we have not held those responsible for poor performance accountable. 

The same can be said for the Internet sales process. How many leads are we failing to answer because our only real expectations are to sell cars? Sure we must pay attention to response times and response rate; but only because the manufacturer holds the store accountable for these measurements. In most stores, a good salesperson is given the task of Internet Sales with the goal to sell cars. There has been no thought given to how to follow up, how long to follow up, what our communications with the customer is going to look like, how we are going to price our cars and I could go on and on.  

You cannot have accountability without some type of process. Likewise, you cannot have a solid process without accountability. If you feel like there is no accountability in your store, start by looking at your processes. Do you have a clear process that is understood by all? Write down the expectations and build a process that leads to the expected results; write down the key performance metrics, you cannot build a process without having some type of measurement.

Success is a Journey

Having been in sales management and a youth baseball coach for many years, I have noticed several similarities between the two. Specifically, there is a certain path that business and players follow that leads to success or failure. As a reference point, imagine the youth player as the new business and the parents as the owner of that business. Don't get upset, I am not saying youth sports is a business; just follow along for a few minutes.

When the player/business first starts out, the parents/owners have dreams but they do not know the full potential of those dreams yet. In the beginning there are signs that things are good; sales are moving along, the player is enjoying baseball, employees are happy and the player is good. As good parents and business owners, we are active daily trying to develop and grow our dreams. The parent practices with the player and encourages him to listen to the coach and keep working. The business owner is active with customers and takes an active role training employees and instilling his vision. With each passing week the player and the business grow stronger and new milestones are reached. The player makes his first All-Star team and the business has a record year and edges out a competitor in overall sales.

Encouraged by the progress, some parents and business owners start to invest in their player/business. Additional training, better equipment and more encouragement and engagement in the progress. Yet there are others who are either content with the progress or just think that they have reached their peak. So they stop getting outside help, they stop training, a few less days in the store and a few more on the golf course. Things are seemingly still good, but the competition is getting stronger; training harder and looking for ways to improve.

The competitor down the street has a good month and we pass it off as a fluke; another player on the team has a better average and they just got lucky. The blinders are on and we can't look in the mirror and reflect on what is wrong; or worse we refuse to look in the mirror and instead blame it on outside factors; EXCUSES! Before we know it the other player is now the starting 3rd baseman and the competitor is beating us on a regular basis.

Tim Tebow, the NFL quarterback, says it best in his quote "Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard". Stop and think about that statement and ask your self the question, have I stopped working hard? Have you relished in your accomplishments so long that the competition has caught up? We have heard it a thousand times, Success is a journey not a destination. We are either moving forward or moving backward; in life and in sports there is no such thing as sitting still. You may not be moving but your competition is!

Social or Selling

Social networks are what their name implies; places to be social. Imagine you just walked into a party with a group of 100 of your friends and acquaintances and the first thing you do is yell out to the room "I sell life insurance, who wants to buy some!". Sounds ridiculous doesn't it?

It is 2012 and I am still amazed at how many people and business that are doing just that on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and all of the other social networks. Let's go back to the party and see what normally happens at a social event.

Again imagine you just walked into a room of 100 friends and acquaintances; what is the first thing you do? You see the first person as you walk in and say hello, swap pleasantries and then talk about what has been going on in your life. You ask questions of the other person to build on the conversation and show interest in their lives. The normal course of conversation will be about what has been happening outside of work first and at some point you will wind up talking about business and how things are at work.

Is this what is going on in your business' social marketing? Oops, I think I just mentioned the word that confuses people into shouting across the room, to the entire crowd, what they do for a living. Marketing, we have all done it for years, we advertise our wares anywhere we can. But wait, isn't that what I am supposed to do is let people know what I do and what I can do for them? Yes it is, but just like our conversation above, there is a time for that. Imagine you are back at the party (by the way, what kind of drink do you have in your hand).

This time you are already at the party socializing with your friends and in walks that guy. As he walks in the room he yells to the crowd "My name is Jim and I sell cars, who wants to buy one!". Imagine how quiet and uncomfortable the room feels right now. Now imagine he is making a bee line right for you. You look around feverishly to find someone to talk to, someone to protect you from "that guy". Maybe you turn your back to him and make a bee line yourself for the hours d'oeuvre tray. Uncomfortable isn't it.

Are you making your "friends/followers" uncomfortable at the party? There is a time to talk business at the party and even a time to pass out a business card, just like there is a time to do the same on your social networks. The right mix is important, too much selling and you get tuned out and avoided.

Don't be THAT guy at the party!


P.S.: Earlier I asked you what kind of drink you had in your hand when you imagined yourself at the party. Leave me a comment and let me know and in the next post we will talk about the most powerful word in sales.

Can a Mouse eat an Elephant?

In my last post we talked about your closing ratio and the number of opportunities you need to reach your goal. As a reminder the formulas are: Number of Sales/Number of Opportunities = Closing Ratio and Sales Goal/Closing Ratio = Number of Opportunities needed. Now let's look at the rest of the equation. 

How many working days this month?

This answer seems easy, but most people miss it the first time through. Yes there are 30 days in the month, but most of us work a 5 day work week not a 7 day week. With that said you probably only have 20 to 22 working days depending on what day the month starts and ends. Once you determine your working days you can then determine how many opportunities you need a day.

Number of Opportunities/Working days = Daily Plan  

Now when you get up everyday you have a goal for the day. I need to see at least X number of opportunities. Now we could stop there, but the next logical question is: How do I get in front of X opportunities today? You can now take this same principal and drive it backwards to get that answer as well. What actions lead to that face to face opportunity? How many phone calls do you need to make to get that appointment? How many emails do I need to make to get that phone call? How many visits do I need to make before I get the face to face with the decision maker?

Real Life Example

Now let's look at an easy real world situation. I have a salesperson who wanted to by new bedroom furniture; simple enough but he did not want to go into debt for it. The first thing we needed to determine was a timeline for this goal and how much it would cost. He decided that he wanted to get this done within 6 months and that it was going to cost $1,200. The next step was to back into the goal and break it down into a realistic timeline. Based on the numbers he needed to save $200 a month and at the end of month 6 he would have the funds. Given his average commissions this translated to less than 1 car extra a month, so he applied that 1 car to his formula above and within 5 month he had saved enough to get the bedroom furniture. He did the same thing to save for a down payment on a house as well!!

Can a Mouse eat an Elephant?

Yes, one bite at a time. The key in all of this is going to be your daily tracking (small bites) to reach your goal. You need to have the discipline that every day you are going to track your opportunities, phone calls, emails, or whatever the ACTION is that will get you to your goal. Tracking the actions that will get you to your dream is the "secret" to getting there once you have determined how to get there. If the boss tells you that you need to sell 17 widgets this month, the task might sound overwhelming, but if you break it down to the daily level, or even an hourly level, it becomes less of a mouthful. Now when broken down to the daily level, you know that you need to see 3 opportunities today, that becomes realistic.

Now it is time to work backwards into your goals and make those actions bite-sized pieces.