When Dealership Leads Aren't Enough to Make Your Month

**Originally written and published in April 2020 issue of Dealer Magazine. https://www.digitaldealer.com/magazine/

If you're in any type of sales capacity, you might experience those months when leads just aren't enough. Maybe business is slow, your not hitting your objective for the month or quarter, you lost a few deals, there aren't as many leads coming in as last month. In business, especially sales, every single one of us goes through this.

Are you maximizing your efforts as a face for the dealership? Do your family and friends know what the monthly specials are or if there are new programs or special cars that come in? Are you letting them know they can purchase vehicles directly on your website?

Over the last few months, I've been connecting with our sales team at Celebrity Motor Cars, working one on one, to help each person create a brand for their self. It's been an insightful experience for me because while I've worked with, consulted and sold services to car dealers for over a decade, I've never sold cars. Everyone in any sales role, regradless of the industry, can benefit from guidance and a refresher on how to use technology ( while humanizing it) to market themselves to their network.

Every person has a unique story to tell. The fun part is pinpointing your story, interweaving it with the dealership's culture, and tying it into relevant marketing that will connect and resonate with your audience.

If you work in a dealership in any department and at any level, you are a walking advertisement for the dealership and the dealer brand. To fill the gaps in the empty months, you must begin to go back to sales basics and market yourself as a brand. This requires consistency, and lots of patience. Long-term, this strategy will not only help the dealership and leverage the advertising your dealership is doing, but also will put more money in your pocket.

Three marketing tips to sell more units per month:

Pro Tip 1: Get educated on your dealership's marketing efforts. All dealerships have some type of marketing budget. The budget may cover various facets of maretking such as social media, digital ads ( search, display, pre-roll video) television, radio, events, promotional items, etc. You might not get the specifics on how much exactly your store is spending, however, you should be able to find out what the media mix is.

Pro Tip 2: Connect to the agency or person at the dealership who works with the owner and/or GM monthly and find out how you can help leverage some of their marketing assets (video files, audio files, photos, banner ads, email templates, etc). Marketing assets are usually stored in a content library. Having access to these assets can help you market your personal brand. For example, if the dealership is running a TV campaign, you can take that mp4 file of the commercial and share it with your social network in a post tagging the dealership, mentioning the store/brand while using a unique hashtag to represent you! Once you get the ball rolling, see if your dealership's advertising agency or creative team will assist you in making personalized creative.

Pro Tip 3: Know what the factory is doing for advertising. Dealers rely on their dealership advertising budget each month to bring in traffic to the showroom, but they also rely on the manufacturer to bring guests in as well. The manufacturer advertising is also known as Tier 1 and drives awareness for the overall brand. Most car dealers piggyback off the manufacturer programs in their advertising each month. All programs usually come out on the third or fourth of the month. A lot of brands have an annual marketing calendar so you can start preparing in advance for all of the events that go on throughout the year.