Is Your Dealership’s Sales Process A Buzz Kill?
Good morning busy automotive sales professionals… Have you ever stopped to think why some advertisements work and yet the salespeople who see those resulting clients usually fail? There is a correlation worth examination.
When the factory advertises a vehicle, they usually display one with all the options (that’s even in the small print) but the advertised price or payment is from a vehicle without the options shown in the advert. It’s also the same when a dealer advertises as well but even worse. So keep this in-mind and I’ll get back to this in a moment.
Have you ever wondered why a brand new (greenpea) salesperson can out-sell an experienced & well trained veteran? Think about it for a second… The brand new salesperson has no idea what he/she is doing. He or she is polite and hungry and probably just happy to have the job. I’d like to take a moment and examine the effects of that “hopeful” attitude…
When a customer asks a new salesperson a question, the “greenpea” salesperson will typically respond in a hopeful manner. Even saying the dreaded “I’m new” might not answer the question, but it doesn’t kill the mood either. So when he talks with a client, he still gives the client hope. Maybe even the same feeling that the advertisement gave the client, which is why the client is at the dealership in the first place! The new salesperson might not know which way is up, but at least he/she isn’t a buzz kill. No one likes a buzz kill!
It isn’t until he or she is “experienced” that he starts to blow out his prospective clients by asking insulting questions like “on a scale of 1 to 10 how would you rate your credit?”. Asking a client Buzz Kill Questions during the early part of the sale is monumentally stupid. Yeah, I said it… Stupid!! This stupidity isn’t just aimed at pre-qualifying type questions… Another mistake is asking “would you like to drive it?”, or saying “lemme go get the key”. Both of these give your deal a giant ditch to drive into. They open you up to getting a very emotional “NO that’s ok we’re just looking anyway” response.
Many new salespeople don’t ask these questions. Ignorance is bliss!
To my mind, advertising creates a mood. A buying mood. The more financially pleasing the ad is the more the clients get “in the mood” to come to the dealership. It’s a buying “buzz”. If we can keep the client in the mood on the lot then a commitment is sure to follow. Most of the salespeople I see that have been incorrectly trained ask questions that kill the buzz on the lot before a demonstration drive, or (even worse) they bring the client inside the building and negotiate before they even SEE a vehicle they are trying to buy! No wonder we only sell 20 out of 100 clients! The other 80 either get their buzz killed, or they witness incompetence that confirms that they aren’t in the right place.
When salespeople are incorrectly trained with buzz kill techniques that do not work, the domino effect can be devastating. First, it effects their ego and confidence. Then it affects his/her trust in management, because their approach doesn’t seem to work. You simply can’t have a productive sales force if their confidence and trust is crippled. Meanwhile, the insanity cycle continues… The advertisements keep putting customers in the mood and the sales process in the dealership keeps killing it, along with all those new salespeople who are hungry to succeed. When that fails, we hire ten more “greenpeas” and train them by another person who has not greeted a customer or sold car in years.
Correct training and a non-buzz kill sales process is the best way to ensure advertising success. We would love to chat about your daily dealership challenges and successes. Call us at 919-889-2423 or visit our sales training website at RobertNoell.com.
Note from the editor: No persons under the influence or “buzzed” customers were harmed in the production of this article. For the PC Police: Our definition of “buzzed” is of a natural “high” created by the desire to purchase a fantastic new vehicle, not by otherwise un-natural means. Have a nice day!
