Good morning, five o’clock on the east sales people getting up doing their thing glad you can join us brandon hardison, president of champion strategies for another edition of artisan’s tips.
So let’s just get right to it and unpack it asking sales customers who just purchased an automobile.
If you were to go to them just like i did and said what is the name of your automotive sales professional? What do you think you would hear back well as for me, there’s something that i’ve been noticing in my travels lately, and that is customers not knowing the names of their automotive sales.
Professional just boggles the mind that a customer cannot remember the name of their automotive professional after they just spent several hours with them and spent many thousands of dollars with them either the world has completely lost your memory as it spins on its axis um or the Automotive sales professionals that are out there are not making a good first impression in the minds of their customer or selling value.
If you will, i can’t even imagine spending that much time with the guests and the next day or the next week, or even a month later they can’t remember my name.
I’ve listened to several inbound calls at more than one dealership when customers have called in for information or paperwork the person answering the phone asked them simply.
Who was your automotive sales professional and they don’t know they start guessing or describing what they look like, but they can’t remember their name just to make it clear.
This happened more than once several dealerships different states, same results, customers, don’t remember sales person’s name.
Now there wasn’t any particular sales person that stood out, but then again not every car, professional and the sales call that comes into the dealership after the purchase the vehicle.
Sometimes there may be a disconnect meaning that there was a split deal situation, so the person was dealing with two or more people and yes, they’re, a little confused of who the original person that they talked to, because so many people were involved with the remaining steps.
Now my first thought was to do a little more checking on these particular customers and see whether these were get me done.
Customers repeat or first time, customers, i’m sad to say that this is not uncommon for our industry to neglect the customers that didn’t buy because of whatever reason.
But do you know the name of your car salesman? If i’m a manager boy, let me make sure that this crm, this tool that i got my salespeople using, are there notes in there do the notes make sense? Are we debriefing one-on-one whether it’s before shift after shift during the shift? Are we actually holding our desk managers accountable for what’s in there, because there should be some type of follow-up a week a month six months, we should be able to have a good bond and rapport with these guests that come in to buy.
However, here’s what i do know – customers in general, are not giving out referrals or giving good reviews or giving good answers on csi surveys, because they just can’t remember what the experience was like.
These are the kinds of customers that you want to have in your dealership and doing do-over.
If you will.
Unfortunately, we can’t do that because, realistically, they won’t be coming back to your dealership and they won’t be telling their friends, co-workers or family members not to ask for you the salesperson.
Not only is this poor business practice, but it’s also absolutely embarrassing to to our profession.
The fact that a customer cannot remember the name of the car salesman is just sad.
The image of a professional salesperson already makes this profession hard enough as it is when they take shortcuts in the steps.
But when a professional salesperson viewed by a customer is not enough memory, there’s not enough bond and rapport where they can’t even remember who they talk to can’t even describe the person.
That’s how you the gm you, the dealer principal, make the business highly paid profession for the people you work, for, we must inspect what we expect from our guests.
If we’re not looking at our processes, this is not going to work and forget telling your people to ask for referrals or repeat buyers.
Customer already told you, i can’t remember you, so i can’t remember your dealership and why would i be sending anybody back here? Remember this is for the long-term growth of your business.
This is for the long-term growth for that sales, professional to control the income and look at this as a career and just not a job.
So please make sure that your sales people are doing such an outstanding job of selling value of themselves, selling value of your dealership selling value of your oem.
That customers will be glad to tell someone else about the experience that they had with your person at your dealership.
If that makes a little bit of sense, i would have a meeting on that sometime, if not one-on-one the ones that are really doing bad for your middle managers to make sure they’re doing some leadership coaching once again, brad and hardison president of champion strategies for another Hardison’s tip for thursday july, the 16th.
Now, let’s get on out there and let’s make it a champion day, take care .
