As I’ve been connecting with dealers over the past six years I have noticed a trend that few people truly address.

Technology is killing the car business. Your CRM hasn’t made you more money than you made 10 years ago and neither has your current advertising.

Whew…that was harder than I thought.

Before you start ranting about all the ways that your CRM helps and all the reasons that advertisers are bleeding you dry, let me just say this: it’s not technology’s fault and it isn’t advertiser’s fault: it’s our fault.

Because our mind-set (at least the mindset of many of us in this industry) hasn’t changed as rapidly as the tools that are now available to us and more important, we’ve been so inundated with change and technology and tools, we have let the most basic, common sense practices fall away. Many of these are free or nearly so.

Let me explain this in a bit more detail.

Fact: MOST managers would agree that MOST salespeople have personalities that we would refer to as ‘path of least resistance’. 

Back in the day (man I feel old now), we wouldn’t hire a salesperson who was ultra-lazy and unwilling to prospect or follow up because we knew that those were KEYS to our dealership’s success.

Today however, we have CRM systems and other automated email follow up tools in place to do a good portion of the job our salespeople should be doing.

Before you start justifying your CRM let me say, I believe that we ALL should be using a good CRM - it’s not the CRM I’m talking about, it’s the REASON that we have it.

The CRM that you have is a tool that is supposed to pick up most of the administrative work that the salesperson of the past had to do manually like emails, etc. It’s also supposed to act as a reminder so your salespeople know when to call their customers right? This is the modern version (and a waaaaay better version) of the index card boxes that many of us used in the early and mid 1990’s.

What is the ultimate purpose of your CRM though? It’s to save your salesperson time right? And why do we want to save them time? Obviously it’s so they can sell more cars right?

Let’s look at some numbers shall we?

In 2011, according to the NADA 2012 Automotive Recap Found Here NADA 2012 RECAP there were 14,987,509 light duty new vehicles sold. In that same study, it also shows that in 2001, ten years earlier, there were 17,121,900 vehicles sold. (That’s over 2 million more). Hmmm… must be the economy right?

Well, let’s rewind time to 1996 before we had all these kick-ass technical tools, how many cars did we sell back then? According to the 2002 NADA report, which also went back a decade, in 1996 there were 15,097,200 light duty new vehicles sold.

HOLD ON A MINUTE? In 1996 before we had all these social media sites, before we had these great CRM tools, before we had a million ways to remove the administrative work…OUR SALESPEOPLE SOLD 109,691 MORE VEHICLES THAT YEAR?

In a word: Yes

But that’s not all. In 2001 it cost dealers (on average) $387 is advertising cost for every vehicle sold but in 2011 do you know how much we spend? On average it costs us $628 per vehicle sold - WHAT IS GOING WRONG?

I can’t give you all the answers because the truth is that there are things that vary by store right? But here are some common sense ideas that are GUARANTEED to increase sales and profit while affording you every opportunity in the world to decrease advertising spend (see, I told you I like the idea of a CRM so you’ll never hear me tell you to ditch that).

Common sense tips:

• Teach your salespeople how to sell again - Remember when we’d actually train a salesperson and make sure they could walk every manager in the store through an entire sale before we allowed them to even greet a customer? Why did we give up on that? Teach your salespeople not just ‘how’ but more important ‘WHY’ they do every step in the sales process so they can truly serve your customers and sell more vehicles with higher profits.
• Teach then MAKE your salespeople prospect - Joe Verde and many others have hammered home three simple phrases that help get referrals: How many, how many, who’s next? I haven’t been in a dealership in 5 years that actually has salespeople prospecting in a way that works. When I was a sales manager, my salespeople had to either prospect the service lounge or call our lease list/orphan list/ or their past customers and do our simple script to ‘update their records’ 5 times each day. Some of you say “that won’t work today” - to you I say bullshit, you’re just too chicken to try it. Anyone with an ounce of courage can pick up the phone and say “This is Mat at ABC Motors, You’re on our upcoming lease return list and I’m calling to update our records and it’ll take 2 minutes…or You were just in for service last week and I’m calling with a three question survey about your visit…” both of these intros lead into a referral 80% of the time. Want the exact script?Email me at mat@konig.co with your name and dealership name and I’ll send it over. If you do this 5 times a day, you get 4 referrals x 5 days each week = 20 per week which is 80 per month and even if they are all a year from buying that’s 80 opportunities next year and if you only close 10% that’s another 8 sales per salesperson x 10 salespeople at your store = 80 more sales per month x $2000 gross per copy front & back = $160,000 additional gross per month. Guess what, that’s every month if you would actually care enough about your salespeople to make them do it. It will give them a raise, you a raise and your owner a raise!
• Motivate your salespeople every day! Have a quick 15 minute meeting each morning and say NOTHING but good things to your people in this meeting. Who will sell better for you: Salesperson with bad attitude or Salesperson with good attitude?
• Stop talking about how important your advertising ROI is and then doing nothing about it. Find a way to measure your true return and invest in what works, dump what doesn’t.
• HIRE GOOD PEOPLE! It’s better to run lean with 7 great salespeople than to hire someone who sucks just to fill a chair.
• TAKE RESPONSIBILITY - If you hire someone and don’t train them and they suck, it’s your fault because you didn’t train them. If you hire someone and you DO train them and they suck, it’s your fault because you trained them. If you hire someone and they aren’t improving every month, it’s your fault - because YOU HIRED THEM. When you live every day with the mindset that everything is 100% your responsibility you will find yourself investing time and effort into things that you didn’t pay attention to, then you’ll find ways to improve, then you will sell more and make more.

Gang, Your CRM and your advertising don’t have you selling any more cars than what we sold 16 years ago, but they could, if you look at them for what they are: Fantastic tools to help you attract customers (advertising) and stay connected beyond what a salesperson can keep up with manually (CRM).

Now if we would just get back to the basics on the other things that always worked and always will: Training, Motivation, Coaching, Accountability, Prospecting, Responsibility, we will all see phenomenal growth year over year.

Want to talk more about this? It would be my pleasure! You can contact me at anytime using the information below. 

Helping the best get better,

Mat Koenig
Founder & CEO
KonigCo LLC
www.konig.co 

p 615.392.0289
e mat@konig.co 

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