Constantly being at dealerships and talking to consumers gives me plenty of material to talk about, sometimes the most obvious being how we as sales professionals treat our customers. Being the resident “car guru” in my office building means that anybody buying a car comes knocking on my door when I am in town seeking advice and many times asking me to work the deal for them. A nice women came to me with her Porsche lease expiring interested in possibly leasing another. I asked her what process she had already started and she said that she spoke with the dealer and he simply told her “he could get her in another car”. No lease end appointment, no offer of a consultation, just a good ole’ “I can get you into another car.” His basic lack of interest put the relationship on shaky ground from that point on. The salesman opened the door to lose his customer. She loved her car, but had retained no real relationship with the dealer over the short 24 months of her lease. The promise to get back to her with the details in a day became never. Who suffers? The salesperson? Not really because you can’t miss a deal and commission you never had. The brand? Will Porsche ever know why they lost the customer? So, does the customer suffer? I don’t know………she seems pretty happy with her new BMW Z4 that’s sitting in her driveway.
(Please note that this blog is informal and may not comply with every grammatical rule of law.)
Sales lessons can come from anywhere I suppose. One of the biggest things we always struggle with is price, but is our struggle self created? It boggles my mind how many dealerships around the country go to price in an email, on the phone, or in the showroom without any “buffer” that builds value or obligation. Price is “an” issue, but the not “the” issue. Price without value raises the difficulty level of holding gross profit exponentially and worse yet can make it tough to even make the deal. When you successfully present value you also raise the opinion level of yourself in the eyes of the prospect who is “considering” doing business with you. When a prospect has a low opinion of you it can only lead to price conversation. To me, providing price with no value is like hiring the sales person with low self esteem. One of the first sales lessons that mega-mogul Martha Stewart learned was the lesson of “perceived value.” When she first started selling pies while still then a house wife her pies tasted great and had a fantastic “steal of a deal” price on them, there was only one problem….. nobody wanted to buy them. The product was great but the perceived value was low. She made one major change to her pie sales plan, she tripled the price…….pies started selling like hot cakes and the rest is history. Question, would the iPhone be as successful today at 199 an 99 if it hadn’t started at 599? Don’t let fear of loss stop you making more money. You are worth more than that!
Even with a formal office, and a fully equipped home office I still like to get away. I do what many do, escape to the local Starbuck’s and 1 tall Chai Latte later I’ve got the laptop cracked open and I’m working. If you’ve seen me live then you know I present from a MAC ( I’m MAC since 84′), and aside from being a fantastic computer it attracts attention because of its looks. Along comes someone with their carmel macchiato asking how do I like my MAC? It’s funny because many people “drink the kool-aid” about something, maybe it’s a brand of beer, or a car, or a football team. Basically something you love to talk about and don’t mind commenting on at anytime of the day, well one of those things for me is MAC computers. After evangelizing about the MAC the guy thanked me an left. I ran into him a week later and he said he just picked up a new MAC and said my enthusiasm helped push the decision over the top. So what’s the moral here……….
I witness deals in dealerships all the time where for the sake of moving a unit we sell a car to a customer who we already know that no matter what we do will be a disaster. The thought is we will just RDR the car to “the moon” or put the RDR in someone’s cats name so the store doesn’t take the hit on CSI. What about the millions of Starbucks conversations that take place all over the country where the person asks, “I saw your new car outside, how do you like it?” The dealership will get its name destroyed (regardless of it’s justified or not) and there will be no one to tell the dealerships side. As the saying goes, “sometimes the best deal you can make is the deal you don’t!” Check out my new free training tip Training Tuesdays VIdeo Topic: Referrals