A friend shared a story about his pastor, who, wanting honest "In your face" feedback about his sermons, invited two close friends to lunch, gave each a pad of paper and pencil and invited them to “unload" with comments about the things that they did not like about his sermons.” They did.

As difficult as honest feedback usually is to hear, isn’t a truthful assessment of how others perceive us, (personally or as a business), valuable information to know?

Honest and constructive input like this, if we’re strong enough to hear it and respond accordingly, can change us in ways that makes us better human beings, better businesses, and sales teams.

Many dealerships agree. They use third-party survey services to, figuratively, hand non-buying customers a “pad and pencil” and invite them to unload about their experiences at the dealership. Knowing the real “why” a customer left the dealership without buying can help your dealership restructure its sales processes—from the Meet and Greet, to the Presentation and Demo etc.-- to sell more cars, retain higher gross, and increase CSI.

Infusing such feedback into targeted training by identifying weaknesses in the dealership sales process is helping dealers to save anywhere from 10 to 50 deals a month.

Dealers concerned enough about maximizing business opportunities embrace “in my face” customer feedback. Here is what some of them say about it:

·         “The information we get is truly the magic ingredient that allows us to know more about each customer we are working, get more of them back in, and close more deals”

·         “The survey gets us a much more honest answers as to ‘why’ we didn’t sell…usually reasons for which I can hold the sales manager or sales person accountable.”

Customers rarely share the real reason they walked without buying. Yet given the opportunity, most will be very candid as to why. Most often, these reasons are fixable, and can help a dealership increase sales and closing ratios from Showroom traffic by 50% or more every month. For more insight, download “An Auto Dealers’ Guide to Outselling the Competition."