ALWAYS BE PREPARED!
That’s the foundation of you career in selling cars.
You can’t build your business without a foundation. You can’t have a strong business with a weak foundation.
What am I trying to accomplish?
I want to have a solid understanding of the vehicles I am selling, their features and benefits, and competitors. I want to know my inventory, what is available for me to sell at a given time. I want to have the necessary people and sales skills. I want to master my sales process.Why do I want to accomplish it?
Because my success depends my product and inventory knowledge, my people and sales skills, my commitment to the sales process.How am I going to accomplish it?
By making enough time to learn about the vehicles I am selling, walking the lot everyday day, striving to understand people, studying and practicing sales skills, and learning the sales process I need to follow.
The purpose of building a foundation is to be prepared to build a successful and strong business on top of it.
How can you be always prepared? By getting educated and trained.
As you will find out in the following segments of this training program, there are three things involved in any sales transaction: People, Product, Price. So you need to build your foundation on those three pillars.
Know Your People
People involved in car sales transaction are you, your dealership, and customers. Car business is essentially people business. The more you understand people the better you will get at selling cars.
Know yourself. Let’s start with you. How much do you know yourself? How is your attitude? Are you a positive person? How do you handle rejection? How do you deal with difficult people? Are you assertive? Are you mentally prepared to meet with strangers several times a day? Get to know yourself. As long as you know what you need to do and what it takes to do it, you should be able to set your mind to it and control your emotions.
Start every day with a positive outlook and a great attitude. If anytime you don’t feel like you have the right attitude take a step back, clear your mind of negative thoughts and start over.
Know people you work with. Get to know your fellow salespeople. You are going to need to turn your customers at some point to one of them. Essentially you will count on them to make you you money so it is important that your customer and the other salesperson are a good match. You can only do that if you know about the salespeople you work with.
Know other personnel at the dealership who gets involved in the transaction. Who are those people? Closers, finance managers, sales managers, detailers and lot personnel. You will need to be communicating with one or several of them at different points in the sales process. You need to know the roles they play and how they help you sell cars and make more money while keeping your customers happy. Get to know them personally. Figure out the best way to interact with them so your transactions go down smoothly.
Know your customers. What is your dealership’s customer base like? Do you have an idea of the average customer profile? Do you know how to deal with them? How much do you know about basic personality traits? How quick are you in reading people? Do you pay attention to body language? Can you read between the lines? These are all questions to get you to think and be prepared by finding resources to learn more about these topics.
Know your Product
Know your new cars. You need to know what you are selling. Every new car manufacturer have an established product training program available. They may also offer certification program and a spiff program that goes along with it. Based on your certification level, every time you sell a new car they pay you. For some makes this program may generate a considerable income for you. Make sure that your sales manager enrolls you in this program so you can get trained, certified and paid.
Don’t just focus on sitting in front of a computer and doing your product training. After you complete online training on a specific model go out and do a hands on training on that model. There is no need to take each model on a test-drive by yourself. You just want to capture the basics like differences in the trim levels, equipment packages, optional stand alone equipment the model offers. Sit in the driver’s seat. Get comfortable with dashboard, control panel, climate control, entertainment or any other systems in the vehicle. Check out the rear seats, trunk and the engine compartment. Skim through the information on the window sticker. Note the pricing structure for different levels of trims.
You want to get the news about your products as soon as possible. Go to Google Alerts and create email alert to receive about the new makes you are selling. Find the twitter, instagram, and facebook pages of your manufacturer and subscribe to the feed. You can do all these on your smart phone.
Visit your dealership’s and manufacturer’s websites. Google any question you have about the models you carry. Not only you will learn more you will also see what your customers are seeing when they are doing their research.
Keep learning.
Know your competitors. Manufacturer’s training programs may do a good job educating you about their competitor models. They may also miss real competitor models. Listen to your customers. Find out what other models they have been researching and considering. You may be surprised by what you hear. In any case, keep learning about your competition. Use online resources or just go check them out in person.
Know your used cars. Here is another way to check out the new model competition: You most definitely have some late model competitive models on your used car lot. Go check them out. Learn to sell them. Learn to use them to sell your new vehicles.
Make it a habit to walk around your used car lot everyday. Check out the new purchases and trade-ins. Have your own favorites in different body styles.
Know your inventory. How many times you turn a deal because you didn’t know your inventory?’ Check your new and used car inventory on a daily basis. You’ll be better prepared to know what you have to sell and be better able to match your customers’ needs to vehicles on your dealership lot. Be sure to identify vehicles in new and used car inventory, and walk the dealership lot daily so you know where these vehicles are displayed. Check out the Inventory Explorer to help you stay on top of your inventory. Talk to your management about activating it for your store.
Know your Process
The three things involved in any sales transaction are People, Product, Price. Knowing People and Product will make your job easier in getting your customer to agree on your Price. As you will learn more about in upcoming sessions the term “Price” includes more than the price itself. You do not talk price until you go through your sales process and sell anything and everything in value so it is very important that you know your process. You took the first step by subscribing to this program. Always be learning. Keep working on your sales skills, presentation and demonstration abilities, objection handling, getting commitments, closing and more.
A well rounded product knowledge along with people and sales skills will give you more confidence. You will be able to take control of the process easily. Customers appreciate and trust a sales professional who knows his product, processes and has confidence in his/her abilities.
Laying the foundation is not a one time thing either. You have to keep fortifying the foundation everyday. There are new models introduced every year. The market environment is in constant change. How people shop, what they consider and expect also changes with new technology. You have to stay on top of all those and keep learning and always be prepared.
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax.”
Abraham Lincoln.