WOW, thank you all for such great advice, this is why I come to Dealer Refresh (daily) over any other forum on the internet! Jeff and Alex, don't let that go to your head, but thank you guys for providing such a great resource for us all!
Joe Webb and Jerry, I will be giving you both a call. Thanks!
Jonathan, have him call me for sure! Thank you!
Uncle Joe……. as always, great advice, and you are right, there is a lot to touch that I am trying to grab a hold of and break down, like in the post I had “ Anyone have advice for the overwhelming amount of vendors these days?” back in Sept, you once again provided some fantastic advice and I appreciate it greatly. You’re dead on about the “choke point” being sales staff, you can have the best CRM in the world, isn’t going to amount to jack if you don’t have a willing sales staff! Right now I have to say they are not liking our current CRM as compared to when we were on Reynolds CM. I am searching for the right CRM, but also waiting on someone to break out his new revolutionary CRM solution!
The advice on the phone skills is dead on; I am going to make that a priority in our store.
Jeff, “HA - no one from that Gen wants to work 60+ plus hours a week, get drilled everyday, no tools to effectively do their job - just to name a few.” – you got that right for sure! And I agree with your first point; too many times the “fair” and “equal” mess cost us more than we realize, time to get out the RoundUp! Why do we put up with such BS sometimes and then scratch our head!!
Alex, thanks for those two threads, both were helpful! If you think you’re A.D.D., I bet I got you beat! By the way, driving over the CBBT Sat about 11am, was beautiful and about 65, looked down the beach toward Chick’s, two girls walking on the beach in bikini’s, in November, in Virginia…........how’s the skiing?
Craig, you are right, “Age of salespeople or current skill level are just excuses. We have taken advantage of the age and experience in our sales staff and brought them up to speed on technology. Yes it takes time, work,meetings,emails, training, commitment etc.. to make this happen but what kind of commitment do dealers have if they are not willing to invest those resources in their people?’ – couldn’t have said it better, you got to commit, and you have to keep inspecting what you expect! And then when you don’t get your expectations you have to go back to Jeff’s comment on weeding out the weak, but it seems there is a fear sometimes of commiting to that! To often I hear, "but we need to hire more sales people before we weed people out". I think if you hired a few, fired a few of the week ones, the remaining would get the message fast!
There seems to be another topic jumping off the page, Joe brought up; “There is a bunch of demand for better hours. Has anyone successfully created a different hours/commission model?” – We are trying to figure out how to attract more sales people, and even though I agree with Craig on age, I want to avoid being the “old carguy home”! We are having a tough time finding younger people to want to come into commission sales and pull the hours. We had a GSM from another Chevy store come to our lot one day for his wife to look at an Acadia, our new car manager said he made the comment he wished he had 20 of our 70 year old guy that greeted him right away, shook his hand and introduced himself. He said all his younger guys wanted was time off, play on the computer, and so on. We’re just the opposite trying to find younger people, point is you got problems at any age. But, you got to have a mix, and unfortunately we are having a hard time attracting the younger ones. I’d be interested to start another thread on this topic, of if Uncle Joe wants to or someone else that might have better thoughts would please go ahead cause I am really interested in what people are doing to attract new, and younger, blood in today’s selling environment! Who’s going to start it?
Thank you all, I hope more will respond to this thread!
Eley
Joe Webb and Jerry, I will be giving you both a call. Thanks!
Jonathan, have him call me for sure! Thank you!
Uncle Joe……. as always, great advice, and you are right, there is a lot to touch that I am trying to grab a hold of and break down, like in the post I had “ Anyone have advice for the overwhelming amount of vendors these days?” back in Sept, you once again provided some fantastic advice and I appreciate it greatly. You’re dead on about the “choke point” being sales staff, you can have the best CRM in the world, isn’t going to amount to jack if you don’t have a willing sales staff! Right now I have to say they are not liking our current CRM as compared to when we were on Reynolds CM. I am searching for the right CRM, but also waiting on someone to break out his new revolutionary CRM solution!
The advice on the phone skills is dead on; I am going to make that a priority in our store.
Jeff, “HA - no one from that Gen wants to work 60+ plus hours a week, get drilled everyday, no tools to effectively do their job - just to name a few.” – you got that right for sure! And I agree with your first point; too many times the “fair” and “equal” mess cost us more than we realize, time to get out the RoundUp! Why do we put up with such BS sometimes and then scratch our head!!
Alex, thanks for those two threads, both were helpful! If you think you’re A.D.D., I bet I got you beat! By the way, driving over the CBBT Sat about 11am, was beautiful and about 65, looked down the beach toward Chick’s, two girls walking on the beach in bikini’s, in November, in Virginia…........how’s the skiing?
Craig, you are right, “Age of salespeople or current skill level are just excuses. We have taken advantage of the age and experience in our sales staff and brought them up to speed on technology. Yes it takes time, work,meetings,emails, training, commitment etc.. to make this happen but what kind of commitment do dealers have if they are not willing to invest those resources in their people?’ – couldn’t have said it better, you got to commit, and you have to keep inspecting what you expect! And then when you don’t get your expectations you have to go back to Jeff’s comment on weeding out the weak, but it seems there is a fear sometimes of commiting to that! To often I hear, "but we need to hire more sales people before we weed people out". I think if you hired a few, fired a few of the week ones, the remaining would get the message fast!
There seems to be another topic jumping off the page, Joe brought up; “There is a bunch of demand for better hours. Has anyone successfully created a different hours/commission model?” – We are trying to figure out how to attract more sales people, and even though I agree with Craig on age, I want to avoid being the “old carguy home”! We are having a tough time finding younger people to want to come into commission sales and pull the hours. We had a GSM from another Chevy store come to our lot one day for his wife to look at an Acadia, our new car manager said he made the comment he wished he had 20 of our 70 year old guy that greeted him right away, shook his hand and introduced himself. He said all his younger guys wanted was time off, play on the computer, and so on. We’re just the opposite trying to find younger people, point is you got problems at any age. But, you got to have a mix, and unfortunately we are having a hard time attracting the younger ones. I’d be interested to start another thread on this topic, of if Uncle Joe wants to or someone else that might have better thoughts would please go ahead cause I am really interested in what people are doing to attract new, and younger, blood in today’s selling environment! Who’s going to start it?
Thank you all, I hope more will respond to this thread!
Eley
I totally agree. Adding a BDC is a "work-around" to bypass the under-performance coming from the floor. BDC leads will be handed off to the sales reps (aka "choke point").
