What Is The Cost To You Of Losing 1 Sale Per Week?

Nothing worse than picking up the phone and hearing a customer say they have decided to buy another brand, or even worse, they are buying your brand, but not from you…

While we can’t sell to absolutely everyone, and we in fact lose more sales we win, there are sales I believe that are missed every week because of either an incomplete sales process like we talked about last week, or an objection, if we had have been more equipped and better trained at how to overcome them, we wouldn't have lost that sale.

So what does it cost you as a salesperson and the dealership if you were to lose just one sale per week?

Automotive industry auditors in Australia, Deloitte, tells us the average new vehicle gross including hold back, factory incentives and aftermarket is $2,600 profit to the dealership. And the average salesperson makes 10% commission on that sale, equating to $260 per sale based on making individual sales targets of 15 cars per month.

This means If your dealership has 4 salespeople all with a target of 15 cars per month, and they all miss 1 sale per week for an avoidable reason, by the end of the year, the dealership has lost over $540,000 of lost revenue, plus the Additional service revenue & Opportunity for repeat and referral business.

Personally for you as a salesperson, you would have lost over $13,000 in additional income! Now that’s scary! Just think about the holiday you could have gone on, the new wardrobe you could have bought, the mortgage or debt you could have paid off!

Some scary math's there! The good news is, you can do something about that lost income. You can turn it around. But the only way to do that is by looking for ways to improve yourself and your selling skills to reduce these occurrences happening.

Take Jake Carlisle from the Essendon Bombers AFL team this year. After being one of the competitions’ best defenders last year, his coach Bomber Thompson decided he was going to play as a forward this year. After the first 14 rounds, Carlisle was showing he was a lousy forward, and should be returned to a defender. But his coach was continuing to persist with Carlisle as a forward and could see he was missing out on his potential by playing back. After 14 rounds Carlisle spent some time with Wayne Carey the legendary forward from the 90’s. A few weeks later, Carlisle took over 30 marks and kicked 12 goals in 2 games to realize his potential as a champion forward in AFL.

See you will only go to champion levels when you go and look for ways to improve yourself and your skills!

So here are 3 ways you can improve your own sales skills and get that lost income back

1. Attend Sales Training regularly – Every time you attend training, don’t be trying to learn and apply it all, just be looking for the 1,2,or 3 ideas that will make you that money back! Training is something you do, not something you have done. Regardless of your experience, be on the lookout for new ways, new word tracks and new techniques to better serve and sell.

2. Read Sales Books – How many sales books have you read or listened to? Start with books from Grant Cardone, Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins, Brian Tracy and Jim Rohn. And start with just 1 page every day. You will read 2 books this year.

3. Review every lost sale every time. Ask yourself after every lost sale. What could i do differently next time to get a different result? Don’t skip over this by saying “there was nothing i could do differently, I did everything perfectly. There is always something we can improve on. If you need, get your managers or someone else’s opinion on this, do so, to always look

Don’t be missing out on that extra $13,000 per year or $500,000 for your dealership!

Start looking for ways to improve yourself and your skills and as Zig Ziglar always said, I’ll see you at the top!

Great selling!

Dave Benson