Believe in The Sales Force by Drew Spink.
If you want to be not just really good but if you want to bring the very best out of yourself in automotive retail, here are a few of what I call the X factors. When they are visibly missing a vital strand of the retail DNA that creates the DYNAMICS for personal and dealership success is visibly devoid. The charisma chromosome ends up being cauterized by average Joe, who has about as much, charm, energy, enthusiasm and personality as a well used baby diaper.
Sales is as much about feeling, connecting, understanding, listening and learning the most you possibly can about your prospects, but you have to make an emotional investment in them as well.
Using the sales force starts off with a BELIEF. I believe I will be a success, I believe in my product and companies unique selling proposition and I believe I can make what seems impossible a reality. I believe social media and digital marketing is the best way forward but I also believe in applying a well blended approach to the business.
I am coming up for my thirtieth year of operational experience in automotive retail and sometimes I am still astounded by the absence of common sense and fundamental basics.
I have sold cars all over the world, I have worked with top coaches, industrial psychologists, neuro-linguistic practitioners, hypnotists, motoring legends, industry mentors, exceptional entrepreneurs, human resources hot shots, the best global finance and insurance/business mangers, international advertising agencies as well as the very best thought, servant and emotionally tuned-in era of new automotive leaders.
Having said all that I often encounter adversity that is easily overcome, sometimes you try to help and assist others but a busy fool, know all and what I refer to as fair weather sales folk fail, because they very sadly often think they know better.
They have worked in the business for five minutes and a manufacturer has trained them on products and some ancient, archaic road to a sale shit and they think they can go up against technology crafted by industry aces, tuned in customer centric sales experts and coaches.The business has changed and emotionally, rationally and financially driven customer pathways, language patterns and the art of transference into the customers shoes is tantamount for motor trade professionals. This should be combined with generational gearing which is complemented with a millenial mindset /approach. Differentiation is required within dealerships and it plays a pivotal part in the success strategy. The word total fucking moron is to kind for some that cost companies deals and lucrative opportunities in desperate and very tough times.
When I worked in London for Mercedes-Benz Retail, let me share a true story with you. A sales professional over there will run rings, outsell and is head and shoulders above the average sales person I have come across in South Africa.They average twenty units a month against a Sewells benchmark of about six units here in South Africa. Average becomes actual when you speak to actuaries who are the masters of statistics. People start believing the bullshit put forward so it becomes a real belief manifesting in motor dealerships as gospel, but openly it is garbage.
When sales staff are face to face with customers they need to be present and connected but some dumb dip shit, who sits isolated in an ivory tower within a original manufacturers equipment infrastructure decided they should rather be punching info into a customer relationship management system. How insane, when a sales person should be fostering trust and building a relationship. Sales staff are not present and connected with clients because someone thought they were clever. Let me tell you there is nothing clever about that, it is scary clown shit that belongs in a car sales circus not in a competitive cutting edge car sales operation. It is however all good and well and there is a time and place to to input valuable, insightful and predictive data capture and that is after clients have left the building.
Real time tools that allow you to capture while building the trust and rapport in the present are readily available. Realistically this can never ever happen when sales staff are glued to a computer screen, it is simple common sense, which is a most English virtue.
The days of charismatic, high energy, super enthusiastic sales professionals with larger than life BELIEF and personalities became numbered because of a subconscious preference for average. This cognitive dissonance within car sales environments led to the rise of the clones, paycheck players and the reactive retards found floundering, lost, bewildered and blind destroying everything they try to deal up.This is the very real dark side of automotive retail.
People in car sales with little or no psychometric personality and grey little mindsets became the marginalized minions, who in some cases ganged up on industry greats, this made it much tougher to create sales as closing ratios crashed into a dark and unrecoverable automotive abyss. When poor performers get hold of the best leads, information and interact with top prospects, foot fall and incoming streams, be it telephone calls or walk ins, inadvertently the industry created a car sales culture that aspired to industry benchmarks and average.
The cost to companies was exorbitant and it could be likened to a bunch of baboons working their way through a beautiful apple orchard, taking one bite out of an apple and tossing it to the ground and then grabbing the next one off the automotive apple tree taking a bite out of it and discarding it. Many of these sales primates were put into sales seats resulting in poor performance, roller coasting results with radical ups and downs. This combined with a tumultuous turnover of staff caused the brain drain, loss of knowledge, mental deterioration and total retardation of automotive retail.
The sales force is very real but you have to feel it, you have to believe, it is all around you so tune into it. See It! Believe It! and you will Achieve It! If you want to be a Jedi knight of sales in automotive retail it takes training and you have to practice every single day using your knowledge, skills, acumen and a massive amount of hard work, effort and well thought out radical risk taking which is combined with imaginative thinking to reap the rewards.
Inspirational leaders are incredibly passionate people that move beyond the reality of limited thinking. When you are working with someone who has a passion for their work, the feeling is so contagious; it makes you believe you can achieve anything.