Dancing With The Stars is back on television and my wife is working on the syllabus for her next round of dance classes. That got me to thinking about the similarities between ballroom dancing and the sales process. Here are 4 similarities to think about:

1. Someone has to lead

In dance, it is usually the man who leads. Leading is…

The way you approach a potential customer will have a huge effect on your ability to create rapport, establish a relationship and, eventually, turn that prospect into a customer. Your job is to melt away the defensive wall prospects build around themselves. Melt away, not try to knock it down with a bulldozer which only causes them to build higher and thicker walls. Here are…

Making a strong sales presentation is crucial to closing more sales. Here are 10 tips to help you improve yours:

1. Acknowledge your customer’s requests and expectations.

Make sure they know you heard them. If it’s not appropriate to answer a question at that moment, thank them for the question and assure them you’ll answer it in a few moments. Never react as if they are interrupting your “pitch”.

2. Offer what they ask for, not what you…

Imagine, if you will, a ladder. This ladder represents the entire credit market and each rung is a bucket of credit scores. At the top is the prime rung. Just below that is near prime and below that subprime. On many dealers' ladders, the lowest rung is below subprime. The problem with this rung is that it moves. Some months this rung is down around 550, some months it is up…

You have all heard the old saying, "Practice Makes Perfect". It has been around for years. The problem is that it is totally wrong. If you keep practicing doing something the wrong way, like my golf swing for example, the result will be far from perfect. Repeatedly doing something the wrong way makes it permanent, not perfect.

Scientific studies prove that training…

Those of a certain age will recognize the title as a take-off of a folk song written by Pete Seeger. It was one of the most recorded songs of the early 60’s; appearing on albums by Peter, Paul & Mary, The Kingston Trio, Bobby Darin, Roy Orbison, The Four Seasons, and Joan Baez, among others. It was considered one of the most influential political songs of its time as it…

Salespeople seem to fall in to one of two classifications – worriers or warriors. There are some scattered between these two extremes but most would be categorized as one or the other.

Worriers are always worried about where the next sale is going to come from. They congregate near the front door, keeping an eye out for the next prospective customer. Usually,…

Designing your sales process to focus more on your customer’s needs and wants and less on you can help you be more successful. It lowers the customer’s natural resistance and can help you sell more and make more profit. There are 10 key ingredients to making this happen.

A Positive Attitude

Much has been written about the importance of maintaining a positive attitude and I will not rehash all of that here. A positive attitude is your armor against…

You have all seen or heard Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity – doing the same think over and over again and expecting different results. And yet, day after day, in dealerships large and small, owners and sales managers trot out the same tired old sales process, watch the same decades-old videos and hire the same trainers and consultants and expect…

Every day we hear about customer satisfaction. Companies do surveys to find out how satisfied their customers are with the service they received. Some even go so far as to reward employees with bonuses or prizes based on satisfied customers.

That’s just wrong. ‘Satisfied’ is the lowest level of acceptable customer service. Your business gains little from…

Now is the time of year when everyone begins thinking about the New Year and what 2014 will bring.  It is a time when people think about how and what they can change to make the new year better than the last. They resolve to make changes to improve their lives in the coming year.

Here are 3 resolutions you can make to improve your level of success in 2014.…

‘Death By A Thousand Cuts’ originally referred to an ancient Chinese form of torture. It was often used in interrogations and it doesn’t take much imagination to understand how it was conducted.

In the modern business world it has taken on a different meaning. In that context, it now refers to the loss of production, sales and/or revenue over time as…

How easy is it to do business with your business? How easy is it to get help? …resolve a problem? …answer a question? The answer to those questions is probably that you don’t know because you’ve never tried to do any of those things.

Want a real report card on how your staff is doing? Try being your own customer.

Here are some things you can do over the phone…

In his book Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless, Jeffrey Gitomer poses the question, “If customer satisfaction is at an all-time high, why is customer loyalty at an all-time low?”  In the car business we see that play out every day. CSI scores are at record highs but customer loyalty continues to fall and…

I was watching football Sunday and I got to thinking about the job of a receiver. I decided a receiver has three jobs:

1.        Catch the ball

Nothing positive can happen until the receiver completes the catch.

2.        Try to make additional yardage after the catch

For football fans, this is…

In my last post, Advertising That is Priced Less and Priceless, I talked about the best form of advertising there is, word of mouth. You can read that HERE.

Word of mouth advertising can also be the worst advertising in the world if you don’t handle your customers properly.…

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.   –  John Wanamaker 

You all know how expensive advertising can be. Dealerships spend thousands of dollars every month on newspaper, radio, TV, billboards, SEM & SEO, web based ads, signage, etc. All of this is designed…

First, let’s clear up a big misconception. Nobody can motivate you but you. You are 100% responsible for your own attitude and motivation. Other people can inspire you but you have to decide if their words or actions motivate you. You can just as easily choose to ignore them. Motivational speakers can’t motivate you. Oh, they can get you all excited about a new idea or…

Have you ever broken down your income goals to see how much your time is actually worth? It’s a great way to figure out which activities you should be allocating time for and which you should be delegating to someone else.

Let’s assume you want to earn $200,000. There are approximately 2000 working hours in a…

Most companies are using a sales process that dates back several decades. It was probably wrong then and it most definitely is wrong now. Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s not the process I object to; it’s some of the things you’ve been taught to do in it.

Let’s look at some of the bad advice you have been given over the years:

Find Their…