HOW TO GET EVERYTHING YOU WANT IN LIFE

As just about everyone intellectually understands, there's a huge difference between wants and needs. In the USA the great majority of us have everything we need: food, water, shelter, clothing, etc. Evidence of this fact is that obesity is one of the largest health problems in every state, while malnutrition is practically nonexistent.   

But the title to this article is How to Get Everything You WANT in Life.

 I believe I first heard this statement from Zig Ziglar: “You can get everything in life that you want if you'll just help enough other people get what they want.” This is one of the truest statements you'll ever hear. It pertains not just to guests who visit your showroom floor or service department, but also to your family of support personnel.

If you are a sales consultant, you are highly dependent on a lot of other people in your dealership. You cannot be successful at sales unless your dealership has a conscientious group of variable operations people, administrative people, fixed operations and management personnel.

I can't imagine an intelligent sales consultant not understanding that he or she really needs every other person on their business team. But few days go by when I'm at an Jim Ellis Automotive Group dealership, that sales consultants don't complain about the challenges they face interacting with the men and women in support roles and how insensitive they can be to the guests (and, of course, the sales consultant’s) interests.

Sales consultants are na?ve if they don't understand how they are quite often perceived by other members of the dealership’s team, especially by fixed operations personnel. While many sales consultant take personal credit for creating opportunities for variable operations people to have a job, fixed operations people more often than not see sales consultants as arrogant, selfish and self-centered.

The truth of the matter is that both sales consultants and fixed operations personnel are critical to the success of any dealership. No sales consultant could earn a living wage if he or she were required to personally deliver everything that he or she sold. It would be equally time consuming to try to sell in between stocking in vehicles or getting vehicles PDI’ed or getting vehicles ready for delivery or rotating vehicles on the showroom floor. “It takes a team to raise a dealership”

 Relationships

It's a lot easier to get someone to do a favor for you if you have already made a significant investment in building a relationship with that person. This is especially true of service advisors, technicians, parts personnel, porters and lot drivers. Wise sales consultants treat co-workers a lot like they treat guests.

 Internal customers

 The reason this is true is because each co-worker at your dealership is an internal guests. You are their internal guest. If you want your internal guests to give you preferential treatment, you have to give your internal guests preferential treatment. Remember all of this was discussed during Orientation, so don’t forget to incorporate this concept into your daily processes. The benefit will be noticed in your monthly units sold!

  “Do Unto Others”

 While on a sales training follow up assignment in western New York, I spent some time with a fleet outside sales consultant as he called on his customers. As we drove from appointment to appointment, he was forever honking his horn and throwing up his hand to say hello to the driver when he would see one of his dealership trucks approaching. On one occasion he saw a driver making a delivery and stopped by to say hello.

"You sure do go out of your way to be nice to the drivers," I commented.

 "Yeah, these guys can make me look awfully good or awfully bad. My job would be a lot more difficult without them on my team. In fact, just last week, I told the drivers not to bring a lunch to work. I told them that I was buying pizza for the whole crowd."

"That must have cost you a lot of money."

"No, it didn't cost me anything. The money I spent on those guys was an investment, and I promise you, I'll get a good return on that investment."

 This event that took place about ten years ago and it came back to mind over this past Thanksgiving Day when speaking to one of our Jim Ellis Automotive Group’s sales managers. Here is what I said to him and I am saying to everyone on the variable operations team at your dealership:

If you want to be in a position to ask a favor of someone on the fixed operations team and hear a cheerful yes, consider the following ideas:

1. Send a lot of thank-you notes. Each time a service adviser, driver, technician, parts personnel or fixed operations manager does you a favor, send a short thank-you note.

2. Occasionally ask this question: "What can I do differently to make your job easier?"

3. Tell members of the fixed operations team how much you appreciate them.

4. Occasionally jump in with a service advisor when a guest is pulling into the service drive. Introduce yourself as one of the team members at the dealership. Make him/her feel like an important member of the team by bragging on him to the guest.

5. When you're talking to guests, make positive comments about your fixed operations personnel.

 6. Once in a while, bring in donuts (or fruit for the health conscious) for the fixed operations personnel in the morning.

7. Occasionally ask the sales team to buy pizza for lunch for the fixed team members.

The better the relationships you develop with people in your own dealership, as well as with the people who are in a position to send business your way, the higher the odds that you will be in a position to have not just everything you need in life, but for many more of the things you want.

Even in this difficult automotive selling and service market that many of us are currently struggling with, there is business out there that your relationships can send your way. By treating everyone you meet like they’re ten feet tall and like they hung the moon, you'll discover what relationships can do for your sales volume.

Every sales consultant is in a position to grow their market share by taking business away from the competition. Expand your relationships and watch your business expand, as well.

 We are family at the dealership and from time to time it’s nice to be reminded of that. Variable operations just like fixed operations, we all want to be liked, trusted and respected for what we bring to the dealership for its overall success. Attitude, pride and miss-communication keep us from moving forward or being consistently liked, trusted and respected not only from our external guests but most importantly from our internal guests.

 Make It A Champion Day!

 “Sales Training Matters”