BY: Phil Batterham

Prospecting… I know for a fact that the car industry don’t use this tool as well as we should.

Most of us rely heavily on walking traffic, phone inquiries and internet leads.

When was the last time you walked up to your sales manager and said “John, I’m going to give you 25 cars this month, I guarantee it! Based on my total leads I will speak, my contact to appointment ratio, my show rate, my close rate… Here’s how I’m going to do it! Because I’m a sales professional and that’s why you hired me.”

While Advertising and Marketing which is spent by dealerships, is what gets walk in traffic, I believe that is really owned by the company and very generously given to a sales consultant. A sales consultant should really be employed not just to take inquiries, but to generate leads!

I’ve spent 10 years in the health and fitness industry and this is the way my passion for lead generation was birthed. My teams did these exceptionally well, and I’ve worked with biggest brand in Australia, in health and fitness, training teams on how to do this effectively.

I would never hire someone that could not generate 350 leads from their own business every single month.

Think about health and fitness…  Not everyone has a gym membership, but everyone has a car!

So when we’re generating these kind of leads and having very successful contact to appointment ratios, my team is doing something really special. I understand that the price point is different. I understand the market is different. But c’mon guys, sales is sales!

I know that I can implement a lead generation system within your dealership around prospecting, around asking for referrals and effectively hitting those referrals with great phone campaigns, I can guarantee the success in your dealership. Put me to the test, that’s the challenge!

The way we do this is by building exceptional rapport with each and every one of your customers. We need to treat them like gold!

Once we obtain the sale, how silly it is for us not to have a fantastic referral campaign?! 

We need to tap into our customers circle network of friends, and after building so much rapport with them. Let’s ask “Hey John, if you’re going to give me a name and number of X, I’m going to treat them with respect. What can you tell me about them? What do they enjoy? What do they like doing? So when I ring these people, I wouldn’t sound like a clown or like some telemarketer. I want to sound like someone you’ve entrusted to give me your name and number to ring your friend.

I know we can be in control of the numbers we’re going to generate for the dealership based on these principles. We can go “I need to generate X amount of leads every single month that will come from ten sales, the rest are going to come from walking traffic.