Automotive Sales Training - Are You Boring

You probably answered “no.” Who wouldn’t? I wonder how your customers would answer that question. Do your customers think you, your product and your business are boring? People want to be entertained. Entertainment = Sales. Boring = Broke.

Your customers get their news from FOX News and USA Today, their food from drive throughs, their coffee from Starbucks, their money from ATMs, their exercise from 7- minute abs DVDs and their information from the Internet.

To be successful, you must provide the perception of ease in doing business, some semblance of speed, and high entertainment value. Your customers have been trained to pick up on “boring” at lightning speed and move towards “wow” in mass.

To provide high entertainment value you don’t have to be a comedian or a circus performer, but you must possess finely tuned people skills. All things being equal, customers will choose the lower price. Your job as a salesperson is to make you stand out so strong that it makes everything else pale in comparison. Your value raises the level of all other considerations. Never forget that you are the difference maker — period, end of story.

Weak salespeople play the price and blame game. Good salespeople concentrate on what they can influence. When you accept total responsibility for your success and failure, you move from blame to fame.

Let’s cover some ways to increase your entertainment value. The easiest way to stand out from the pack is to do the exact opposite of your so-called competitors. First of all, you must change your position of power and leverage by marketing for leads rather than begging for a sale from someone who randomly shows up.

Next, you must think about your first point of impact and how that adds or subtracts from your position. You must either change the location, wording or nature of the first meeting.

Evaluate your conversations with customers. Are you playing the same qualifying game that most salespeople do? When you openly try to qualify people financially and to see if they are ready to do business, you should realize in doing so that you are offending them and putting yourself in a position of beggar. Try giving a reason for people to qualify for you and your product. Stop qualifying them for financial data and make them qualify in a positive way that creates a mental take-a-way.

The take-a-way positioning creates scarcity, urgency, and provides you maximum leverage. Example: When you are profiling your customer in the beginning of the sales process, make sure to mention that you would like to ask a few questions up front to make sure you can assist them the way they desire and to make sure you and your product would be a good fit for them. It’s OK to tell someone up front that you and your product may not be the best fit for everyone and that you purposely don’t try to sell everything to everybody.

It’s a proven fact that customers who have to take certain steps or actions before purchasing create their own sense of emotional and psychological commitment to purchase. In simple language, you allow them to buy rather than trying to sell them. When people commit to something by their own choice, they will go to great lengths to do business, if nothing else but to save face. People don’t want to look bad.

You may be asking yourself, what does this have to do with being boring? Boring salespeople do what 99 percent of all salespeople do; they beg and pant like a dog for a sale and put their salesperson dunce cap on for customers to laugh at. STOP IT. You are more important and valuable than that. Salespeople with leverage and a different game-plan for everything — including their sales skills, people skills and marketing skills — never appear boring. Their actions attract and endear customers without having to be a comedian, huckster or circus clown.

Ask yourself again honestly if you are boring and if your sales positioning leaves your customer with a strong mental and emotional feeling about their experience with you. Do you stand out, or are you boring? Boring is usually fatal.

4 members like this

Comment

You need to be a member of DealerELITE.net to add comments!

Join DealerELITE.net

Comment by Lizelle Landino on March 29, 2013 at 6:43am: Automotive BORING!! Yes!! I have serious cases of it!! My Health insurance won’t cover a thing, they claim this is classified as a pre condition! Invasion of BORING to my social space is depressing! The Ego driven brings NO VALUE to car dealers and It does not fit into the me lifestyle!! The next generation of automotive trainers and successful sales people, will master the new social engagement important with much social intelligence . Social engagement strategies will be a game changer ,how well we train the important of social engagement to your clients social spheres.

Comment by Mark Tewart on March 25, 2013 at 4:23pm: Thanks Troy

Comment by Troy Spring on March 25, 2013 at 4:13pm: Good stuff Mark.

Comment by Mark Tewart on March 24, 2013 at 9:21am: Thanks Larry. I agree. In my training and seminars I share that we are building a profile instead of qualifying. A profile based upon wants, needs and even a lot more. We are building a picture of the customers previous patterns, communication style and behavioral mode, leverage points or HFG - Hope for Gain, body language. The lending sources will determine who qualifies. So many sales are lost today because of no effort. We work the deal backwards through dealertrack and do not give full effort. I think some of this occurs because of the large amount of bad credit and some is from laziness. No matter the credit condition, we owe the customer and ourselves a full effort. I believe in inserting a trade evaluation step (not an appraisal) in the beginning of the process instead of waiting until the end of the proces. This step creates role reversal and allows more real communication to occur that allows the sales representative to create a buying atmosphere vs. a sales process based upon only numbers.

Comment by Larry Sherstad on March 24, 2013 at 7:48am: Well done Mark! Can we please remove the word "Qualify" from our thought process when really performing Needs and Wants analysis?

Comment by Big Tom LaPointe on March 22, 2013 at 11:59pm: Great points here. I agree with Ron that selling is a true art form, but I will argue that you have to know the fundamentals and rules before you start breaking them. Tom Brady needs the instinct to make a dump off pass in the flat when he is being rushed, but there are those times when he can sense something long will open up down the middle. Same for sales. Other than step 1 I have reordered the steps probably 100 ways but rarely did I skip them outright and still make a quality sale

Comment by Mark Tewart on March 22, 2013 at 5:55pm: Thanks Ron, great points!

Comment by Ron Rozier on March 22, 2013 at 2:54pm: Great article it really is an article that every dealer, trainer, consultant should read and learn from. All of this rehashing of the :"Road to the Sale" or the 12 Steps to the Sale" and etc, does not even begin to touch on the true art form of selling. Each sales person has to find their niche with customers. I am orginally from the south and what works for me with customers will not normally work for someone who is from another part of the country. My advice to new sales people is this, ( if you ever wanted to be an actor, this is the job for you).

Just my humble opinon, and it has served me very well over the 27 years

Comment by Randall Welsh on March 22, 2013 at 1:34pm: Fantastic article Bill, I just had a meeting with our CEO about this a few minutes ago. Thank you for the insight. rwelsh@cimasystems.NET

Comment by Mark Tewart on March 22, 2013 at 1:29pm: Thanks Jim! Very kind words