Storytailer

STORYTAILER LLC
CHAPEL HILL

Archives for March 2010

Who Are the Real ‘Suckers’? (Stereotypes and Car Sales)

By

I remember my first car sales job. I don’t know what specifically drove me to take that job other than the fact that I was good at sales, needed a job and they hired me. I’m really not a gearhead and I didn’t know much about cars but I figured I’d give it a go. It was a multi-line straight-sell store. I didn’t get any training other than the basic – Say Hi. Land them on a car. Take them for a test drive. Do a four square. – type thing. This “training” still exists within our industry, believe it or not.

One of my first sales managers (and I swear this is true), told me to watch this movie called “Suckers” and that it was a good training video.

Here’s a short clip for those who have not seen it so you can get an idea of what I’m talking about. (Caution: Rated R)


So, now you get the idea. (If you haven’t seen this movie, the story sucks but the cars sales-bits, which account for about 1/2 the movie are hilarious).

There are very few dealerships that have transitioned away from this mentality. The wrappers have changed but the candy bar is still the same. I see sales managers (and salespeople) acting this way all the time. It truly is special when I meet someone who sincerely cares about their customers aside from how much money they will make off of them.

How many times have you offered a customer a screaming deal to move a unit, maybe even at a loss in profit, and they don’t believe you? Why?

Do you treat the person with excellent credit differently than the customer with challenged credit? Why?

This stereotype still exists because this type of behavior does.

I challenge you to truly reflect on your staff and identify the individuals that exhibit these types of behavior. I guarantee you have some. Chances are, you already know who they are. Is this acceptable behavior? If not, will you let it continue?

Before this perception can go away, a true change needs to happen. We can tell customers how great we are and how much we care about them all day long but until all of our processes (and employees) that further this stereotype truly change, the customer perception of us won’t. 

Perception is reality.

Where is Waldo? (Foursquare: Why You Should Pay Attention and 3 Great Tips for Dealers)

By

foursquare.

For the foursquare clueless, foursquare is basically a cell phone based application that allows it’s users to “check-in” at places they visit using a GPS-enabled phone. The benefits to the user are that they can see where their friends are, can get “tips” about nearby places that people have left and earn points and cool badges for checking in. A user can even become the “Mayor” by being the person who has “checked-in” the most. It’s a game, but one that is growing in popularity and has some value for dealerships and all businesses.

First, let me explain why this application is something to watch. Then I’ll offer a couple neat ideas and things you can do to DRIVE TRAFFIC  to your dealership in a non-traditional way.

The app is adding 100,000 users per day (or so they claim). While a small percentage of the population use it, if the growth rate continues, eventually, it may be statistically relevant.

Now, Bing is incorporating foursquare user “tips” into Bing Maps. The result looks something like this:

So, even if you think it’s the stupidest thing on earth, there is one area in which you should pay attention to this application: Reputation Management.

I’m sure you would want to know what “reviews” show up when someone does a Google Search or a Yahoo Search, so why wouldn’t you want to know what people are saying about your dealership on foursquare? These “tips” are essentially mini-reviews and the best (or worst) part about these “tips” are that, for the most part, people won’t see the “tips” until they are already at your dealership! If I were a shopper in an auto mall, and a foursquare user, and “checked-in” at a dealership I was about to shop for a car at and saw “tips” that told me not to shop there because they suck and will rip me off, I might heed that advice.

Now for three tips on how you can leverage foursquare to assist you in your marketing.

Tip One: There could be “tips” that say a certain salesperson is GREAT and that you should ask for them (hint to salespeople), there could be reviews from disgruntled customers, and there could also be reviews from happy customers. If you’re ahead of the game, it would be easy to get this campaign started in your favor rather than wait until you have to do damage control.

Tip Two: You can easily incorporate foursquare into your Facebook marketing now with a new app that will allow you to add a tab to your Facebook fan page with YOUR business’s foursquare information.

Why would you want to do that? Well, it’s an easy way to see how many users are coming to your dealership, who the mayor is, and, especially to keep an eye on the “tips” that are being left. It’s also a convenient way to add map information in your Facebook page showing people exactly where your dealership (or business) is. It looks like this:

It seems as if foursquare is digging this app since they’re the ones who told everyone about it (see their status update at the top of the above image). Here’s a link to the app on Facebook. Place Widget

Tip 3: I’ve heard a lot of dealers wonder if foursquare is even worth their time. Well, so far, people have been looking at how a foursquare campaign, using traditional methods, can increase traffic, get me phone calls, etc.

One way is to offer foursquare users who check into your dealership coupons and special offers but what about some creative and “outside-the-box” ways?

One business thought outside the box and had great success. Rather than try and figure out how he can make people want to come into his business to buy things, he catered to their fun for the game. He dissected the available badges and found one that he thought he could leverage to bring in some traffic.

It’s called the “Swarm” badge. A foursquare user earns this badge when they “check-in” at a place where 50 or more users are checked in at the same place and at the same time. He says it took him about a week to coordinate and that foursquare was even on board and helped him. Most of this event coordination was using Twitter. Foursquare even “tweeted” it out for him to their 46,000 followers. There are only 300-400 users in the Milwaukee area but he managed to get 161 people into his restaurant to earn this badge! Are you kidding me? Almost 1/2 the foursquare users in his market showed up for this event! Link to Article

Would you like 160 people at your dealership at the same time? What if there are 3,000 users in your area and 1/2 of them showed up?

Dealerships have events all the time designed to drive traffic to their dealership, why not try a new way?

I bet an enterprising dealer could find some other interesting badges to organize events or functions around.

I also think that an enterprising dealer could contact foursquare and see how they can help.

What about a badge that ONLY PEOPLE WHO BUY A CAR FROM YOU GET? I bet it can be arranged.

While the percentage might be small now, I know I think foursquare is fun and if I had the same deal to buy a car at multiple dealerships but one of them gave me a badge if I bought from them, that would be sweet and a badge not many of my friends had. It just might influence me into buying at your dealership over the other…..

and my friends may just go buy a car at your dealership, also…..

Just to get the badge.

[EDIT: After writing this article, an interesting website was brought to my attention: 4squareoffers.com . I’d certainly want MY dealership listed as having an offer versus not having one at all or having my competitors have one. Just a thought.]

Sticks and Stones Will Break Your Bones… (The Importance of Reputation Management)

By

A website was brought to my attention yesterday that screamed to be talked about.

The website is this: www.ackermantoyotasucks.com

A quick glance of the content will tell you how damaging this website is for this dealership. I guarantee that people see it. I guarantee that there have been potential buyers that have seen it.

Here’s why:

This is PAGE ONE of a Google Search resulting from the search terms “Ackerman Toyota”. The first two organic results are the dealership’s website. The third one is.. you guessed it.. our lovely.. uh.. tribute website.

I drilled down a little into the message board thread and read into the
customer’s complaint a little to see if there was any effort on the
dealer’s part to rectify this and/or could the dealer have done
something about it. The dealer always has a choice on how to handle a customer issue
especially on a new car purchase, in my opinion.

The customer’s complaint seems to be that the a window screeches when being rolled down on his newly purchased Scion.

It seems they blame the window tint job that the customer had done on  the vehicle for the issue while the customer claims it had something to do with some stuff they installed prior to delivery.

The message board thread appears to have been contained within a forum
that the dealership was affiliated with in some way and the dealership
did interact, within the message board, with the consumer. They also
seem to have, at one point, called the customer and talked to him. In
the end, they had the message board thread deleted (probably due to
their affiliation with this forum) but not before the customer could
preserve it in all of its glory.

Anyways, I’m not trying to take sides here. I don’t know what happened but I know one thing, a potential customer won’t dissect this situation near as much as I tried to.

All they’ll see is … Ackerman Toyota Sucks, a complaint, and links to other negative reviews on other dealer review sites… including the dealership’s Yahoo business listing and dealerrater.

This customer obviously has a vendetta against this dealer. I’m sure the customer created this website out of anger, frustration and, probably, revenge. It was pretty much created immediately upon the conclusion of
the message board thread.

This website has been around since 2007 and still has the optimization to show on Page One as the third organic result.

In my opinion, typically the truth lies somewhere in between both sides of any story. Even if the customer was completely in the wrong, which I doubt, as a dealer, my interest would lie more in what can I do to get this website removed, than in who was right and who was wrong.

A “screeching” window doesn’t sound like a big deal to me. I’ve sold cars that had this issue. I’ve had customers who’ve had this issue. I cannot think of a single time, on a new car purchase, where the issue wasn’t fixed for the customer if only to preserve our beloved surveys and CSI.

Whether the dealer could use legal methods to remove this website or not, they obviously didn’t (or couldn’t) as this website has existed for more than 3 years. With Toyota’s current campaign of domain “repossession”, you’d think the dealer would be jumping at the opportunity to bring this to the OEM’s attention and let them handle the website’s removal.

I know if I were the dealer, it’d be worth it for me to fix the window issue and make the customer happy in exchange for removing this website.

You might be under the impression that dealer reviews on dealerrater and such (not even including this website tribute) don’t  make much of a difference but I guarantee you that potential customers will believe these reviews more than they’ll believe you.

The customer doesn’t even have to search for reviews of the dealership
to find this.

All they have to do is search and that’s the one thing
that every internet shopper does.

Take Me Out To The Ball Game (Customers Are Not Your Competition!)

By

Most dealerships view their business as a competition.

I’m not talking about a competition against the car dealer down the street vying for the same customers. I’m talking about a competition with customers themselves.

Why do dealers feel that their customers are the competition?

We may not do it consciously but we do it.

How many times have you heard in the sales office or between salespeople that they “hit a homerun”?

In this analogy, you are in competition with your customers. I believe that every customer would agree that if you “hit a homerun” off of them, that would be a bad thing. So what this phrase is saying is that you are on one team and the customer is on the other team and that you just did something bad to their team.

If you sell a car with zero gross or lose some money just to move a unit, does that mean the customer “hit a homerun”?

Why is there a need to make a customer feel like he “won”? What does it take for you to feel like you “won”?

There are many analogies similar to this one that we use in regards to customers and deals and almost all of them pit dealers and customers in adversarial positions.

The mere use of the analogies reinforce their message.

Why not change your thought process and put the customers on your team instead?

If you and your customers are on the same team, there is a mutual benefit and interest in scoring. This way when a car is sold (and bought), everyone feels like they won.

In Major League Baseball, competition is intense. Players are hyper-competitive not just with their opponents but amongst themselves. (ie. “My stats need to be as good as possible.”, “I need more playing time than that guy.”, etc)

BUT, one day a year, the best players in the game get together and play on the same team. They throw aside their competitive nature against their normal opponents and work towards a common goal. Even the fans who would normally “boo” a player cheer him on.

Your dealership’s success and survival are dependent not only on your employees, but also on your customers.

Change your perception. Play the game with your customers as your
teammates instead of as your opponents.

Make every day an All-Star Game and everybody will cheer for your dealership.

Don’t Get Kicked Out! (Building Relationships vs. Selling Cars on Facebook)

By

The second dealership I worked at was a brand-new dealership. I mean it literally had no cars on the lot when I first started. There wasn’t a lot of foot traffic. There weren’t previous customers to follow-up with. We worked from an “up” list so there were many moments of down-time where you didn’t have much to do. We could go the whole day and only see 1 customer at that time. At this time, I wasn’t in the Internet Department. I was just a salesperson “on-the-line”.

I took that time to look at message boards that were geared towards enthusiasts of my manufacturer. I found one that was particularly active and started participating. They welcomed dealer/salesperson participation with one simple caveat – they did not want you to try and sell them anything. The salespeople that did anyways, got kicked off the boards. I participated vigorously answering any and all questions people asked with complete transparency. If I didn’t know the answer, I found it. If it involved a different department, I got them involved. After doing this for awhile, I truly became a “member” of that community. People appreciated the interaction and that I didn’t try to sell them anything. They knew I sold cars and that, ultimately, I wanted to sell them a car, but I didn’t try.

By behaving in this way, I was rewarded by many of the forum members buying vehicles from me. Customers were flying to me to buy cars. I was shipping cars all over the country. People were referring other people to me. If someone went onto this forum asking other members where they should buy a car, I didn’t have to say anything. The other members did it for me.

I wasn’t giving the cars away either, I was selling them at MSRP! People were flying in to buy FROM ME at STICKER PRICE (and no, I wasn’t paying for their transportation either). Here’s the forum and a sample thread:

Fresh Alloy forum: Arnold Tijerina at Riverside Infiniti is THE MAN !

(There are more posts like this. Feel free to search around the forum.)

The point of this story is that I took the time to build relationships with these consumers online without trying to sell them anything, was still being profitable for the dealership and making money for myself.

Dealers have many other avenues in which to continue their traditional advertising and capture business – print ads, 3rd party leads, websites, direct mail, email campaigns, and more.

Social media is presenting dealers with an opportunity that either didn’t exist or I didn’t know about back then. (This was in 2003). Dealers have the ability to interact with consumers in a forum THEY control. The message board I was dealing with wasn’t under my control, I was a passive participant until a question was asked.

I’ve seen many dealers start to create Fan Pages. Some I think are doing it right. These dealers seek engagement and to put a personality to the dealership. A great example, in my opinion, is the Walser Automotive Group. Here’s their Fan Page. They’re trying to build relationships on Facebook.

I’ve also seen dealers on the other end of the spectrum who are basically mimicking their traditional online and print ads on their Facebook Fan Pages as much as possible. They’re trying to sell cars on Facebook.

You can take this opportunity to create relationships with the knowledge that the business will come in the future from the evangelists you created…..

or you can try to sell some cars and get kicked off the message boards.

You decide.

You’ve Got Mail! (Two Easy Ways to Give Your E-Mail Auto-Responder An Edge)

By

Almost all dealerships get e-mail leads in some fashion, whether it’s through a 3rd party lead aggregator, OEM or through their own website. Many of the same leads your dealership gets, your competitor gets also.

Every dealer I’ve ever known has an auto-responder attached to their CRM or ILM that goes out to the customers upon receipt of the leads. Many of them are generic and very similar.

Something to this effect:

“Hi Bill,

Thank you for your inquiry on a [insert year, make, model]. We appreciate the opportunity to earn your business and want you to know that we look forward to assisting you with the purchase of your new [insert year, make, model].

Someone from our internet staff will be in contact with you as soon as possible. In the meantime, feel free to give us a call at 888-555-1212 if you’d like to contact us faster.

Best New Cars has been in business for 25 years and you can have confidence that we’ll give you the personal attention you deserve.

Thanks, Internet Manager”

Usually this e-mail is in a nice-HTML rich template with the dealership’s banner, some pretty pictures, links, etc. Sometimes they include an initial quote, many times, they don’t.

The problem with this is:

  1. Every dealership is sending the customer the same thing so it is quite impersonal and the customers know its an auto-responder.
  2. These e-mails are hard to read on mobile devices like Blackberries, etc.

 Here are two easy tweaks that can give you an edge.

Tweak #1: Change your auto-responder to a short message, ideally 1-2 sentences in a non-HTML email with an important twist in your signature.

Example:

“Bill,

Thanks for the inquiry. I apologize that I can’t call you immediately but I promise to get in touch with you as soon as possible.

Thanks, Internet Manager
Sent from my Blackberry”

This accomplishes a few things. It makes your auto-responder different than your competitors, is easy to read no matter how they’re accessing their e-mail and they believe it was sent by you personally from your cell phone rather than recognizing that the e-mail they got was computer-generated. The customer will get the impression that you stopped what you were doing and acknowledged their inquiry while they are getting obvious e-mail templates from your competitors.

Tweak #2: Change the timing on your auto-responder. Most e-mail readers default from “newest” to “oldest” in the order in which the emails are displayed. Most dealership’s have their auto-responders set-up to email the customer immediately upon receipt of the lead. If you delay the sending of your auto-responder by 5 minutes, now where is your e-mail in their in-box? At the top and likely to be the first one that the customer reads. 

In automotive internet sales, we’re always looking for an edge over our competition. Anything you can do to set yourself apart from your competition and make you more memorable will increase your chances of success.

You only get one chance to make a first impression.

(Note: I learned this technique from Joe Webb at one of his sessions at a Digital Dealer Conference awhile back. Joe is a good friend of mine and is a very knowledgeable, progressive thinker and strategist. At the time, he was on the retail side of the business but now he is the President of DealerKnows where he consults with dealerships on internet marketing tactics and best practices. If you need some help, I definitely recommend him and his services. Also, if you’ve never been to a Digital Dealer Conference, you’re missing out on a wealth of information.)

It Must Be Nice To Have Your Own Magic 8 Ball! (Top 25 Technology Predictions)

By

Dave Evans is the Chief Futurist – Internet Business Solutions Group for Cisco.

He’s worked for Cisco for over 20 years. He was responsible for rolling out their first-ever web server. He’s held every job a technology professional could hold. He credits his prognostication skills to technology “street smarts”. Some of his past ideas are currently transforming the automotive industry.

Can he see the future?

Cisco thinks he can.

These are his predictions:

  1. By 2029, 11 petabytes of storage will be available for $100—equivalent to 600+ years of continuous, 24-hour-per-day, DVD-quality video.
  2. In the next 10 years, we will see a 20-time increase in home networking speeds. 
  3. By 2013, wireless network traffic will reach 400 petabytes a month. Today, the entire global network transfers 9 exabytes per month.
  4. By the end of 2010, there will be a billion transistors per human—each costing one ten-millionth of a cent. 
  5. The Internet will evolve to perform instantaneous communication, regardless of distance. 
  6. The first commercial quantum computer will be available by mid-2020. 
  7. By 2020, a $1,000 personal computer will have the raw processing power of a human brain. 
  8. By 2030, it will take a village of human brains to match a $1,000 computer. 
  9. By 2050 (assuming a global population of 9 billion), $1,000 worth of computing power will equal the processing power of all human brains on earth. 
  10. Today, we know 5 percent of what we will know in 50 years. In other words, in 50 years, 95 percent of what we will know will have been discovered in the past 50 years. 
  11. The world’s data will increase sixfold in each of the next two years, while corporate data will grow fiftyfold. 
  12. By 2015, Google will index approximately 775 billion pages of content. 
  13. By 2015, we will create the equivalent of 92.5 million Libraries of Congress in one year. 
  14. By 2020 worldwide, the average person will maintain 130 terabytes of personal data (today it is128 gigabytes). 
  15. By 2015, movie downloads and peer-to-peer file sharing will explode to 100 exabytes, equivalent to 5 million Libraries of Congress. 
  16. By 2015, video calling will be pervasive, generating 400 exabytes of data—the equivalent of 20 million Libraries of Congress. 
  17. By 2015, the phone, web, email, photos, and music will explode to generate 50 exabytes of data. 
  18. Within two years, information on the Internet will double every 11 hours. 
  19. By 2010, 35 billion devices will be connected to the Internet (nearly six devices per person on the planet). 
  20. By 2020, there will be more devices than people online. 
  21. With IPv6, there will be enough addresses for every star in the known universe to have 4.8 trillion addresses. 
  22. By 2020, universal language translation will be commonplace in every device. 
  23. In the next five years, any surface will become a display. 
  24. By 2025, teleportation at the particle level will begin to occur. 
  25. By 2030, artificial implants for the brain will take place.

Don’t Get Mad, Get Even. (Internet Security and Terminated Employees)

By

In another incident of employee “road rage”, a Texas dealership’s former employee disabled 100 sold car ignitions and/or set off their car horns. He also went into their accounting system and changed the names of buyers (ie. Tupac Shakur), and he ordered $130,000 worth of parts from a vendor. Apparently, the dealership installs GPS systems with ignition kills on sold cars to ease repossession if the customer defaults on payment. (Link)

What is your dealership’s policies and procedures for managing a terminated employee’s access to your company’s online services?

With dealership vendors increasingly moving online, and dealerships increasingly adding web-based services, how do you insure that a terminated employee would not be able to access your valuable data and/or sabotage your dealership in any way?

It’s not just enough anymore to just cancel their accounts and remove their access. Many of your employees know the user names and passwords of co-workers and, in some cases, managers despite any policy you may have in place that restricts that.

So what do you do?

  1. Keep track of which employees have access to which systems.
  2. Only give employees access to systems they need to do their job.
  3. Have one person who manages all your DMS, CRM, ILM, IMS and any online service’s access (and “all managers” does not count as one person).
  4. If you can avoid it, do not allow remote access to your systems.
  5. Do a regular audit of your system and user access.
  6. Don’t allow people to keep their passwords taped to their computer monitors, written in a notebook, or in a file on their computer. This is a recipe for disaster and happens way too often.

In the event of a termination:

  1. Cancel all of the employee’s user names and passwords before informing them they’ve been terminated.
  2. Require that all employees change their passwords upon a termination of any employee to all the systems/services which they have access to.
  3. Monitor access frequently immediately after an employee termination. Typically, if there is revenge or sabotage brewing, it will occur fairly quickly after the termination.

While some of this may seem like overkill and is inconvenient, you could be held liable for any misuse of customer data or consequences of a disgruntled employee’s actions.

Do you think the 100 people who had their ignitions killed on their cars are going to blame the disgruntled employee?

As dealerships become more virtual in their operations, security of your data and services becomes more and more important. Implement policies and procedures to minimize any backlash that could occur from a disgruntled employee.

It is not only your duty to protect your information, but also your customers.

                                  

I Do Not Like Them, Spam I Am

By

I just finished reading “Linchpin” by Seth Godin and I must admit that some of the things he says in the book were very thought-provoking.

One concept stood out immediately.

From Page 192:

“Just because his boss demands that he act like human spam doesn’t mean he has an obligation to listen. In fact, he has an obligation to do just the opposite. To stand out, not fit in. To make connections, not to be an invisible cog. To do otherwise is a loss.”

The concept that stood out to me within that paragraph was “human spam”.

We all deal with spam. In fact, some of us in the automotive industry create a lot of it.

We have pop-up ads on our websites, GoogleAds, email marketing campaigns, direct mail marketing campaigns, print ads, billboards, fliers and social media marketing campaigns. We send out our message in every way possible in the hopes that some of those broadcasts will bring us some business.

The definition of spam is “the abuse of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately.” (Link)

So what would the definition of “human spam” be?

I put forth that human spam could be defined as follows: the abuse of social interactions (including via phone, or in person) to send messages indiscriminately.”

Examples:

The salesperson who has so irritated a customer with the quantity of his follow-up calls that they have called in to complain.

The BDC employee reading a script to your customers whether on an incoming call or an outgoing call to anybody.

The salesperson burning ups on your lot because he’s pre-qualifying customers, judging them, or determining that they aren’t “now” buyers then lot-dropping them.

I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t seek out our customers. I’m not arguing that a BDC is a bad idea. I’m not necessarily arguing that scripts aren’t a bad teaching tool. I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t follow-up with customers.

What I’m saying is that all of your employees should have proper training and be empowered to handle customers as it seems appropriate and per the customers wishes. We are in a service business, you need employees that have good people skills.

If that means that they need to deviate from the script with this particular customer, let them. If that means that the salesperson can make a judgment call as to how often (if at all) this particular customer should be called or followed up with, let them.

If you don’t have the confidence in the people you hired to make these basic decisions… why did you hire them in the first place?

If you answered, “because they were cheap” or “because they were a warm body”, then you’re wrong. That person acting as “human spam” on your behalf and at your direction is costing you more money in lost business than they are in captured business.

“Good people skills” is a hard trait to quantify but I guarantee you that you know it when you see it. That coffeehouse clerk who always has a smile for you. The customer service rep that you’re talking to on the phone ready to scream at about some issue they didn’t even create who magically calms you down. They have good people skills.

When you first meet someone, how do they make you feel? Chances are that’s also how they’ll make your customers feel.

If the human interactions your employees are having with your customers are only transactional and not genuine, emotional and tailored specifically to that particular customer, then they are human spam.

It’s not about the quantity of the message, but the quality. The better quality your message, the more successful it will be.

Interact with people how they want to be interacted with. Be respectful of their feelings and wishes. Treat them all with respect (not just the ones with good credit).

I had a unique experience when I first started with my current company. I’m a remote employee so there isn’t much interaction with the the other remote employees or the employees at our corporate offices. After about a month (or so) of working, I got an e-mail from a fellow employee that said this:

“Arnold,

 I think I know you.  I think I bought my Infiniti G35 from you. “

I sold 378 cars the year this person bought a car from me. Who knows how many actual interactions it took me to accomplish that. That year was a windstorm of 18 hour days and 28 day months. That was also seven years ago. To have this person remember me after that much time, only by name, was a great compliment in my eyes. It means that the interaction I had with him was genuine and emotional, not merely transactional.

Make every interaction count.

Be human. Not spam.


A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes

By

I have a wish.

I contact the people, companies and resources that I believe will help make my wish come true. They, in turn, tell me all the tools they have that can assist me in my quest of wish-fulfillment. They tell me that this will work and that will work. They offer  training and support and say you can call me anytime.

Then, they give me the blueprint. They give me the manuals and instructions. They give me the hammer. They give me the nails. They give me the lumber and all the necessary tools needed to fulfill my wish.

I take their blueprint and instructions and I start building. I follow the instructions. I end up with a house.

I wished for a car.

This is what I see happening all the time in the automotive industry. Vendors call upon dealers to “pitch” a piece (or all of the pieces) of the puzzle. They say this is what you should do. This is how you should do it. These are the tools that you need. This is why you should buy them from us.

What they fail to find out is what your wish is.

Make your wish first.

Then find the right tools, companies and resources to make your wish come true.

If you’re doing it the first way, you’re doing it backwards and you will fail.

Failure in this fashion is the easiest option. If you fail, you can blame someone else (ie. Their instructions were bad. Their tools don’t work. etc.)

The solution I inevitably see involves some sort of phrase similar to this.

“Hey boss, let’s just get some different tools!’

Then you fail again.

“Insanity: doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” – Albert Einstein.

Make your wish, then make it come true.

If the tools don’t exist, create them.

If nobody else knows the instructions, write them.

If you don’t have the tools, get them.

If your boss(es) or company won’t let you fulfill your wish, find a company that will.

Define your wish, then make it happen.

Don’t wait for someone else to do it for you.

Don’t let other people tell you what your wish is.

If you don’t know what you are wishing for, nobody, not even yourself, can make your wish come true.

Not even the Blue Fairy.

Contact Me