In our crazy world that is the automotive industry, at one point or another, you have to begin.
In retail sales, the typical training for a new salesperson used to be “This is how you do a foursquare. Now go get a customer.”
In today’s world of technology, we’ve added only one thing. “Here’s how to use our CRM.”
In the case of OEM and product training, most OEM’s have some sort of certification test and/or required product knowledge tests. These OEM certification tests are great – in theory. In reality, however, many salespeople don’t ‘really’ learn anything. They do them because they have to, not because they want to.
Many OEM’s today require a certain level of completion by a dealerships’ sales staff to qualify for CSI-based factory incentives. Some OEMs that have ‘spiff’ programs for salespeople will also require a salesperson to have completed product training before they are eligible for individual sales spiffs.
I cannot count how many times I’ve seen salespeople rush through these certifications just to make sure they (or their dealership) qualify for whatever. They share test answers. The sales managers give them the answers or even take the test for them.
The sad part is that you don’t really need any product knowledge to sell a car. Most industry veterans can do a walk-around on any car even if they know nothing about it. Most ‘green-peas’ follow the leads of the industry veterans (and we wonder why dealership turnover is so high).
If you can sell emotion, you can sell a car. Everyone knows that even the worst salesperson at a car dealership can sell a car if they are just at the dealership enough. Our basic sales process is designed to do just that – sell emotion. Get them in the car. Touch it. Smell it. Drive it. Chances are they wouldn’t be on your lot if they weren’t interested at all in what you were selling.
We concentrate so much on losing a sale that we don’t create a customer. I would bet that the phrase “Don’t let them leave.” has come out of every sales manager’s mouth at least once.
Why are we so afraid of the customer leaving?
If the salesperson did all the things he/she was supposed to do: fact-find, build rapport, properly present the product, effectively demonstrate it and truly attempt to create a financing strategy that worked with the customer (versus for the dealership), the customer will do business with you.
Make training your sales staff a priority in your dealership. If your dealership will not provide any training, get it yourself. It’s important and you WILL make more money. Guaranteed.
Now onto other news:
Plastered all over yesterday’s news and blogs was the story of a dealership in California that responded to an internet lead for a Chevrolet Volt with the following e-mail:
Hello *****
Thank you for your online request, as you know the Volt is going to be a very limited production vehicle for the first 2-3 years. Demand is going to far exceed supply for this vehicle, initially our asking price for the Volt is going to be MSRP plus $20,000, we are expecting only receive 9 Volts all of next year.
I will keep you in my customer base for when the Volt comes out and I will contact you with any information as I receive it. We are taking orders right now for the Volt, if you would like more information, please let me know and I will be more than happy to help you. Thank you.
***** *****, Internet Specialist
******* Chevrolet
********, CA
I don’t know what dealership that was nor whether that employee was responding per the direction of his/her managers. I can tell you one thing, however. There is no chance that that particular customer is EVER going to entertain the thought of going to that particular dealership to do business whether it is to purchase that, or any other, vehicle.
I understand that dealerships have the right to sell their vehicles for whatever price they want to. I’m not at all saying that a dealership shouldn’t make money selling a vehicle. All I’m saying is that the strategy of this particular person, even if the dealership really will only sell these vehicles at $20,000 over MSRP, should have been very different.
If you’re confronted with a situation in which your dealership has made the decision to mark up any particular vehicle over MSRP, you’re better off not giving the customer any price whatsoever for the vehicle, in my opinion, especially online.
Why do some dealerships and/or sales managers still insist on handing out in-the-box-scraping-them-off-the-ceiling prices to their internet departments??
You have a better chance of selling a car with a customer in front of you than with no customer at all. Most customers don’t even buy the vehicle they came in to initially look at anyways. Why scare them off?
This resulted from either a lack of training, apathy from the internet ‘specialist’ or pure stupidity.
Only one can be fixed.
The sad part is that the $20,000 over MSRP price is probably in the dealerships’ DMS that way because the sales managers don’t want to have to manually add the addendum. Because of this, not only has the dealership potentially scared off THIS customer, but that $61,000 price tag may very likely be populating their website and all the third-party websites they subscribe to.
Now they’ve scared off everyone.
