Where have all the good managers gone?
A lot of dealerships think they are saving money by taking a good sales rep and making him/her a manager and not training them . The pay plans have shrunk for managers over the past year as well . The idea of paying people less and expecting more is a bad choice ranging from managers to internet people .
A planed sales training meeting should be done every day . Very few meetings have the hooting , clapping and hollering any more compared to years ago .
With poor managers the longevity has shrunk as well . It was nothing 10 years ago to see sales reps with 10 to 15 years on the job . Now it is hard to find sales reps with this much time at one dealership .
Some of the old ways will never be surpassed by the new ones . A hand written Birthday or Holiday card with a follow up call will never be beat . Computers are great but the lick em stick em envelope with a sheet of paper wishing someone Happy Birthday was outdated the day it started .
All is not lost . I work with dealers that have not gotten away from the meat and potatoes training and making sales reps accountable the right way . There sales meetings are fun because everyone knows what is expected . There are great managers that lead by example but we need more of them . I believe in time the dealers will go back to basics and invest in there sales force and not just advertising .
Comment
-
Comment by Scott Hengtgen on June 29, 2012 at 3:31pm
-
Candace good point. Gen Y's are motovated much different then us Baby Boomers. With Gen Y's time off goes a lot further than $100 did for us. Gen Y's like and need more balance in their work/home life then our generation. They do not like being talked down to and want to understand why they are doing a process the way their being told to. If you try to teach and motovate an Gen Y sales person the way our (baby boomers) generation was you both will fail.
-
Comment by CANDACE BENNETT MCRAE on June 29, 2012 at 3:10pm
-
Steve is perceptive about the lack of young superstars. I submit that overachievement is not in the Generation Y's nature. Yet overachievement has historically been a bedrock principal of retail automotive sales. We have already altered how we market to those young people. Perhaps we may be looking at a paradiegm shift in how we manage that same generation (certainly as they become a majority of the work force). I have been "motivating" production out of sales staffs for a long time and my techniques have softened over the years. Now the overwhelming majority of my staff is of the GenY generation. Jeff is right about inspiration versus the stick. In my opinion, this generation has been coddled by our generation (their parents). The motivation used to motivate us when we were coming up in the business will not work with these guys. These guys can be productive and valuable long term employees with proper training, motivation, and compensation packages. But we must understand what motivates them. I hope you trainers are ahead of this shift.
-
Comment by Fran Taylor on June 29, 2012 at 12:57pm
-
Jeff you are so right . Some of the experts aren't really experts when it comes to selling . To hurry a customer through the steps of a sale and use time as an excuse cost everyone money .
-
Comment by Jeff Nabel on June 28, 2012 at 11:27pm
-
Steve your are right is so many aspect within your comment. But here is the sad truth, there was a time when we were proud to stand in line at the bank. I know that if the wheel is not broke, have the courage to break it is a philosophy that great achievers believe in. But in our business it does not apply to selling cars, yes we use more finesse, but the basics are gone and have been replace with systems that sales managers are so busy trying to sell, they forgot how to sell. The fundamentals are the same "here" "now" "me" and lastly and least important "price". Yet salespeople are still uping new customers and stopping the sale at the first chance they get. As an example a customer may ask for a xyz model with a beige interior, the salesman replies "gee we don't have one, let's take a look at what we have coming in", we stopped the introduction, the relationship building, the needs and wants, the presentation, the demo, the service walk, the write up,the sale and the "here" "now" "me" in the first 30 seconds. It happens everyday with "I'm just looking", "Just stopped in on my way to buy a loaf of bread", "I get my tax money in 3 months" "My wife is coming back from a shuttle mission in an hour", maybe the excuses are different but they mean the same thing....time to get on track, stay on track and when side tracked get back on track. Call it selective hearing, call it stamina, call it endurance, call it a belief system that when a person walks on the lot it's for no other reason but to buy a car, it's called selling. Time to raise their blood pressure and make them believe, and you can do that with inspiration not with a stick!
-
-
Steve I think that's the problem we have today in dealerships . The internet or a dealership never sold a car . People sell cars . Go in any dealership and ask the managers and sales reps , what are the steps of a sale and what do you do in each step ? Very few dealerships will get 80 % of it right on there program.
To much concentration on advertising and not the whole dealership. Most dealers spend 99 % of the advertising looking for new customers and zipo on getting repeat customers . Prospecting and rolling the red carpet out for customers seems like a lost art. Jeff I agree with you as well . Thank you .
-
Comment by Steve Marsh on June 28, 2012 at 10:36pm
-
I have my theory that many of our old line managers, the guys like me and you who came up in the late 70's and 80's through 3 recessions...every position from sales to owner and all in between...trained by corporates, NADA and other named pros...many of these folks simply 'cashed out' when the recession came looming. Most were in a position to open their own gig in whatever field, or just step out all together. This left a void filled with the young salespeople of the late 90's & early 00's....these guys/gals weren't rounded out as well and thus elevated to the "Peter Principle" levels. Now they are training salespeople in their images...if these managers weren't trained as highly as we old school folks then their new hires are not either. Some of us kept up. Don't know about some on this blog but I stayed current with the I/Net, social media etc...took classes in interacting online and read all I can to stay on top of the fast moving technology. Now its up to us to re-train the young folks and help them become better so the future of the industry stays bright!
-
-
Salespeople need to be accountable from % of demo rides to % of write ups and everything in-between with accountable monitoring. However without the pros of yesterday they are just scripted robots and without the support we know grows moral, self esteem, and motivation to be the best as we shrived for, well it just doesn't work. Before we could monitor these % by computer we used pen and paper to get a feel of what we was missing and of course that grew into instinct. I appreciate the more accurate accountable methods of today, but you still have to have the other part of the equation, motivation, support, building self esteem and the willingness to stand shoulder to shoulder with your salespeople to make them successful. Oh it's called, lead by example!
-
-
You're absolutely correct, back in about 79 when times got tough dealers reduce expenses by reducing talented management that had a wealth of knowledge. They learned as business started to turn that the guys they thought were saving their butts were probably costing them money as they were the one's not turning the page with the rest of the dealers in the come back. Of course out went the beginners and in came the pros, and the pros got paid as they should, why? because the gave the pros the pay plans that the green pea management had and whew everybody made money and the fun was back.
-
Comment by Craig Lockerd on June 28, 2012 at 6:58pm -
Couldn't agree more my friend!
-
-
Thank you Craig for the link . I think if we all keep adding value to our blogs more dealers like Candace will add comments . Here is where dealers can speak freely about there wants and needs for trainers or just add comments to make a point . Thanks much appreciated .
© 2024 Created by DealerELITE.
Powered by
You need to be a member of DealerELITE.net to add comments!
Join DealerELITE.net