2006 Sydney Motor Show

The 2006 Sydney Motor Show launches tomorrow.

Due to complimentary feedback from last year’s show and this year’s Melbourne Motor Show, we have again posted a page of Motor Show Resources, including free tips for working at the show, tips for following-up motor Show leads, show dates and a map of the Motor Show layout.

To access all these free resources, click here.

Land Rover News added

We've recently made another addition to our web site: Land Rover news page.

You can view it by clicking here.

What Are Your Favourite 'Sales' Movies?

Following our post regarding Sales Movies last month, a friend suggested that I ask readers of this blog for their recommended Sales Movies.

So we invite your recommendations of movies about sales, or movies that have examples of sales situations in them. To suggest a movie, post a comment with the details of the movie and what examples of sales are in it, by clicking on 'comments' below.

New News Page

Our recently added Mercedes-Benz News page has been attracting substantial traffic, so hopefully the information we post there is proving to be interesting and valuable for all visitors. We have added a similarly-styled BMW News page. Have a look!

First 3 Years in Sales

At the moment, we're conducting induction training for some new salespeople at a large prestige dealership. One recommendation that we have given them is to stay in the dealership for a minimum of three years.

We showed them a spreadsheet and an accompanying graph of what happens after three years if they have effectively stayed in touch with their customers for their first three years. The average buying cycle for clients of this dealership is about three years, so after three years, the new salespeople will notice a significant jump in their sales figures if they've been following up their clients properly.We identified three common obstacles to salespeople staying in a dealership for three years and gave them strategies to address those obstacles. We'll post more on this later...

Auto Sales Training No. 1

It was brought to my attention yesterday that the main Auto site currently ranks No. 1 on Google Australia for the search term: Auto Sales Training.

Hope it translates into more Auto Sales Training for us!

Sales in Movies

I'm asked in training every now and then if I can recommend any good movies about sales.

Among several that I recommend is 'Wall Street'. It stars Martin Sheen, Charlie Sheen, Michael Douglas and Darryl Hannah. Charlie Sheen's character, Bud Fox is a young stockbroking salesman.

Bud Fox demonstrates some differences between effective and ineffective sales proespecting as well as the value of persistence. He's also 'sold' severla times in different ways by Gordon Gekko ( played by Michael Douglas ).

Plenty of Web Site Traffic!

We noticed a huge increase in traffic to the Auto site last month. Traffic has been growing steadily for the last few months. I looked at our web statistics today and saw that a lot of visitors to our were coming to our site via the big search engines, because we are ranking very highly for various search criteria.

Some examples of our rankings today are:

No. 1 on Google Worldwide for 'GL 450 news' ( from 54,300 competing sites for this term ).

No. 2 on Google Australia for 'Car Sales Training' ( from 1,050,000 competing sites for this term ).

No. 1 on Yahoo Worlwide for 'Premium Automotive Industry Solutions' ( from 832,000 competing sites for this term ).

No. 3 on NineMSN Worldwide for 'Auto Sales' ( from 28,076,066 competing sites for this term )

No. 7 on MSN Worlwide for 'Auto Book' ( from 8,722,391 cometing sites for this term )

No. 3 on NineMSN Worldwide for 'BMW Sales Career' out of 310,528 competing sites ( from 310,528 competing sites for this term )

No. 3 on MSN Worldwide for 'Premium Auto Sales Training' ( from 429,789 competing sites for this term )

No. 3 on NineMSN for 'Car Sales Training' ( from 81,934 competing sites for this term ).

This is just a small selection of our current first-page rankings in search engines.

We are yet to spend our first cent on ads ( like Google Adsense ). One of the key tools we used to achieve these rankings was our web design software XSite Pro which we bought for less than Au$300 less than six months ago. The other thing that's dramatically helped our web site is the superb professional advice of J-Six Solutions.

Mercedes-Benz News

We have added a new page to our web site: Mercedes-Benz News. We'll post news, information, reviews and articles that we find to help keep you up to date.

We'll create similar pages for some other brands in the near future.

Who Wants to be a Sales Manager?

Sales Management has been the dominant topic in many of the discussions I've had with industry colleagues this week. Sales Managers have spoken with me about Sales Management skills and techniques, salespeople and sales trainees have asked me about how to become Sales Managers. Dealer Principals have discussed various Sales Management practises with me.

One of the questions that's been asked notably frequently this week is how Sales Managers can work effectively with ambitious salespeople who declare that they'd like to be Sales Managers but haven't yet shown any aptitude or self-improvement in the direction of Sales Management.

This question reminds me of a great exercise that a football coach of mine gave us one year. For many years, I'd witnessed coaches diplomatically wasting time and effort every week ( before, after and yes, even during games ) trying to justify their selection decisions and match tactics to a whole host of people with varying degrees of commitment to, knowledge of, and interest in the team ( all of them with less than the coach's commitment, knowledge and interest).

One of the better coaches I've played under started the 1997 season like this: a week before the first game of the season, he issued all of the players and the other 'interested parties' with a team list and asked all of us to select the team, with each player in position, for the first game of the season. He posted a list of criteria to consider in our selection, including a focus on winning, fitness level, skill level, position suitability and experience, training attendance, pre-season commitment, etc. He explained that we had to justify every inclusion decision and every exclusion decision. We also had to be aware of the probability of accusations of bias for selecting our mates over other players.

My first observation while completing my 'homework' at the time was how complex the decisions were. The second observation was how time-consuming the process was. When we brought our team selections back to Thursday training, the coach read each person's selections and criticised only one selection of each person's. It made everyone realise that they had overlooked at least one factor in their decisions. He then asked each person what he had learned and although the answers varied, I don't know of anyone that questioned the coach's decisions that season ( We had a relatively successful season, making the finals after finishing bottom of the ladder the previous year ).

How does this relate to the Sales Management of ambitious salespeople? Well firstly you can delegate simple management tasks to these salespeople. That may provide them with enough experience to know that they don't want to be Sales Managers full time. If, however, they excel at the tasks, it could be the start of grooming them for management over time.

Coolest Guy

A friend of ours has been achieving more success with his 'Coolest Guy on the Planet' experiment.

If you are interested in learning how to go about getting more people to visit a web site, visit James' Coolest Guy on the Planet page.

Another Good Service Experience

After the challenges I've experienced in getting my bike serviced, I had the required work done today at a dealership that I hadn't patronised before and I was pleased with the service I received.

They fulfilled their promises and fixed a problem I gave them at the last minute. They had all the work itemised properly before and after the job, and they informed me on the job's progress during the day. The bike was finished earlier than the nominated time. They gave me 2 good suggestions to save me money, but left the choice to me.

Congratulations to Northside Motorcycles at Artarmon for a job well done.

Our Next Open Training

As a result of the great response to our first Open Training, we'll be holding our second Open training in mid-August. We're currently finalising venue bookings, then we'll be confirming the details on our Open Training page.

Liar, liar

What lies do car salespeople hear from clients? If you work in car sales, which of these sound familiar?

"You're the first dealership I've been in contact with" ( then when you appraise the trade-in there are three or four brochures with business card attached sitting in the front seat ).

"We bought another model because they gave us more for our trade-in / better payments etc." then you see the client a month later still driving their old car ( or better still, they visit you again )

“We’ve been given a price of $ XX,XXX ( $ 2K to $ 3K below dealer cost )" and of course: "We'll definitely come back and see you before we make a decision."

Why do customers lie? In most cases, I think it is substantially influenced by fear, especially a fear of the unknown and/or a fear of what might happen if they do tell the salesperson the truth.

To address these situations effectively, it's important not to take the lies too personally. There are specific strategies and skills to use to reduce the number of lies that you are told by customers and to work more effectively with the lies.

Trust Me, I'm a Car Salesperson

On the way to a client meeting this morning, I was listening to the radio and one station had a talkback competition on the question: "Who don't you trust?"

The winning caller was a car salesperson who doesn't trust customers. As funny as this may be, those of you in car sales ( or any sales ) are probably familiar with how many lies you are told every business day by your clients.

Most of the salespeople I have worked with do not lie to their clients and are very aware of the damage that lying can do their business and to their careers. Yet they have to work diplomatically with all the lies that they are told by their clients daily.

In another post, we'll look at some of the reasons why customers lie and what we can do about it.

Under-Promised and Over-Delivered

The service advisor mentioned in my later blog post on 1st July called today to give me an update on the parts availability for my bike.

I was very impressed.

Needs Focus

In recent months, I have issued an assignment to many of the salespeople I train. The assignment was to keep a note of every objection to which they lost a sale, then we review the objections together.

I've introduced specific methods to address or avoid most of these objections, but one of the most common challenges that comes up when trying to work with salespeople to develop ways to overcome these objections is that the salespeople know very little about their clients and their clients' needs.

If you do not discover and develop your clients' needs, you will receive more objections and you will have a significantly reduced chance of answering those objections successfully.

Who serves who, again? It's all so confusing.

After my truly strange 'service' experience yesterday, I 'phoned yet another Triumph dealer to book the work on my bike.

Once the work and date were confirmed, the 'service' advisor said "Call me a few days before the scheduled date to make sure that the required parts are in stock."

I replied "How about you call me a few days before the scheduled date to tell me that the required parts are in stock?"

He said "No, I'm really busy."

I replied "Guess what? So am I - and I'm the customer so you can call me."

Poor bloke. It must all be so confusing to try and remember who pays the money and who provides the service.

Would you like a couple of aspirin with your service?

I ride motorbikes and during the last 18 months I've had some very poor service experiences with a two-franchise Triumph dealer in Sydney. These two dealerships were so bad, I could no longer take the bike back to them to fix their own stuff-ups ( free-of-charge ), because every time they were supposed to fix something, they damaged something else, costing me more time and money one way or another. Eight visits after the first problem, I cut my losses, including the damage and incomplete/shoddy repairs they had done to my bike.

In contrast, I have also had several excellent service experiences from the BMW bike dealership at Gosford, even before I was a paying customer.

I moved my Triumph serviced to another Triumph dealer, but they closed their retail operation a few months ago and didn't notify their customers. My Triumph needed servicing, so I booked it in with the new Triumph dealer in the area. I booked the service by phone early in the week and told them some of the extra work I wanted, representing a service bill of perhaps a couple of thousand dollars. I like looking after my bikes and spending money on my bikes, especially if it keeps them looking good, working well and safe.

I called the dealer yesterday before I left home to confirm that I was on my way, and got their night-switch message, still on at 8.50 am, telling me that their business hours were 8.30 am -.... When I arrived at the dealership, I parked my bike outside the workshop and spoke to the one service person there. He said he had no record of my booking so I'd have to go into the front of the shop to book in.

When I went in, I met the person who I'd spoken with on the phone and he had, at best, a vague recollection of my booking a few days earlier. He checked his 'records' and said that he'd lost my details and asked for them again. He pulled out a paper pad with one piece of paper left in it, which had scribbles and doodling on it, and wrote my details on that. There was no repair order, no signature required, no authority to perform work, etc.

I wondered if the parts required for the work had been ordered, but I already knew the answer. I was then told that the work should be finished today because I was the only service booking for the whole day. I returned to the workshop to give the 'technician' my keys. He was already trying to loosen the rear axle, but didn't have a socket head to fit. I watched, a bit bewildered, as he went between my bike ( still outside ) and his toolbox trying to find the right socket head. He complained that Triumphs had strange bolt heads ( they do, but he's a Triumph dealer ).

I asked if he wanted me to remove the panniers ( hard plastic side-bags ) to make work easier and he said that it wasn't necessary. Then he decided that moving the bike into the workshop was a good idea. There were bollards closely-set in place just outside the roller door opening, so I thought he'd wheel my bike up to the bollards, pull out a bollard and then wheel the bike into the workshop. I watched in horror as he didn't stop, forced my bike between the bollards, and collected the right pannier on a bollard ( scratching the pannier and taking paint off the bollard ). I was not two metres away and I swore loudly. He ignored me, didn't even inspect the damage and started to lift my bike with a jack. There was no way I wanted him working on my bike, so I asked him to lower the bike and let me leave and forget about the service. Then he looked at the damage and said he could get the yellow paint marks off my pannier with some 'Prepsol.'

This didn't work, so he got something else which did remove the paint although he said it was difficult to get at the paint embedded in the scratch! He then tried to downplay the whole thing by saying that there were already a few scratches on the pannier so it didn't matter so much.

I returned to the sales office to speak with a very good salesperson there on my way out ( the owner is away until Monday ) to advise why I was leaving, probably wouldn't buy a new bike there, or be back. I want a new bike ( in addition to what I own, not instead of ). I really like Triumphs. I've owned two Triumphs, I attended the first 4 Triumph Australia rallies and been a passionate advocate of the brand, referring three friends to Triumph ownership. I might start referring enemies.
I want to buy from someone who provides good after-sales service and I'm having real trouble finding even barely adequate service with Triumph dealers I've been to. The poor after-sales service is preventing a new bike sale. So I have money to spend on bike service and money to spend on a new bike. It seems that nobody wants my money enough to give me even a bearably low level of service.

Open Training Success

Yesterday, we delivered our first ever 'Open Training' Congratulations to everyone who participated in the training for the great level of participation and thanks for the excellent feedback, some examples of which will soon be posted on our testimonials page. Most of yesterday's attendees asked when the next Open Training would be and we are currently planning to make our next Open Training available in mid-August.

Pizza

I had pizza for dinner tonight. I know Mick, the pizza shop owner and often when I'm in ordering my pizza, we discuss different business ideas.

Mick is currently running a trial of a sales tracking computer programme for his pizza sales. The programme logs counter staff activity, driver activity, till activity, order types, order sizes by content and items, regular customers, suburb responses to marketing campaigns and lots more….

Mick and his family recently won ‘Best Restaurant’ in the local business awards for the second year in a row ( and they have only been there for two years ). Their shop's always busy when I visit, yet Mick still believes in counting the business' opportunities and maximising them to improve the business.

By extraordinary contrast, there are many large dealerships that still don’t track their sales activities. They don't record how many customers they spoke with for the week, where those customers came from nor what service was provided to those customers. It costs an average of over $ 800 in advertising to generate a new car enquiry and some dealerships don't even count how many opportunities ( at a cost of more than $800 ) they are getting.

By the way, the pizza was excellent!

Final Wash Out

I own a new washing machine and I'm pleased with my decision. Time is money and because I did all the work myself, I now needed some compensation for my time.

Once I had decided on the machine that was right for my needs, I checked the price of the machine I wanted by phoning a few stores, and checking an on-line store. I found the store with the cheapest price, which was a store I had already visited and one where I received blunt attention, but not service. So, even though they had the lowest price, I returned and negotiated another 12% off that price. The salesperson didn't know what my needs were and so had nothing to negotiate with besides the price. He didn't know that I really wanted the machine today, no matter what. If I'd had good service ( instead of pushy attention that directed me to the model that they wanted to sell me ) on my first visit, I would have been more likely to buy on the day and pay close to their original asking price.

More Washing Machine Experiences

After my less-than-successful telephone call, I decided to visit a few electrical goods retailers to check out my washing machine choices.

In the second store I visited, a sales person offered help. As soon as I said that I was here to check out a few washing machines, she immediately directed me to their cheapest model, saying 'This is one of the better machines here."

I asked her "What makes it better?" and she replied "Because it's our most popular model."

I didn't care if it was popular ( or cheap ). Again, my greatest motivator for buying ( my needs ) were completely ignored and I had the preferred choice of a lazy salesperson choice pushed at me. Of course, I didn't buy, but I stayed and made my own observations about the washing machines on display that I was interested in, and got some more information to narrow down my choice. Because I had to do the work myself, I realised that I was becoming more determined to get a good discount as compensation for the poor service I was getting.

What could have been done better by this salesperson? Again, the salesperson missed the opportunity to ask some basic questions: How much do I use my washing machine ( to determine required capacity )? Would I prefer a top loader or front loader? Do I have a preference for brand? What machine have I used previously? What did I like about it? What do I want to change / improve? When do I need my new machine?

There are lots more possible questions, but I would have happily answered any of these questions and helped the salesperson move closer to a sale.

Lessons from Washing Machines

I'm currently looking for a new washing machine. I'm getting some great reminders about sales as I go looking.

I subscribe to a consumers' advice magazine called 'Choice.' I got their recent washing machine report and rankings to read before my purchase. From this report, I identified 3 models I was interested in and I 'phoned a local retailer of electrical appliances. I explained to the salesperson that I had three models I was interested in and that I wanted to check availability and pricing before I visited the store. He asked me what was the first model on my list. I told him and he replied "No. You don't want one of those, you want a _____."

He then proceeded to give me a torrent of irrelevant information about another model. He described its features, most of which were of no interest to me. While he was talking, I checked the Choice comparison and found the model he was promoting ranking more than halfway down the list and that it had a greater capacity than I needed. When I told him that it was a larger capacity than I needed, without asking any questions, he switched his product dump to another model which didn't rank well and didn't meet my needs. I ended the call.

What could the salesperson have been done better? Firstly, he could have asked a few questions about what I already knew and what I wanted. I would have answered with information to help him help me. He could have asked me all 3 models I was interested in before he started telling me ( telling isn't selling ), and he could have asked me why I was interested in those three models. I would have told him that I had the Choice comparisons and he could have been careful not to contradict an independent source with more perceived credibility than him at this stage, especially without him yet knowing its contents. By making some sweeping statements about other products that were directly contradicted by the independent information that I had in writing, he lost credibility very quickly.

Open Training -Closed

Registrations for our first Open Training closed in the last few days. We've been pleased with the great response, not only for this training, but also dealerships already expressing interest in our future Open Training topics. To see more of what we're talking about, take another look at our Open Training Page.

Is Redneck a Language?

Just to show that I don't take myself ( or my web site ) TOO seriously, click here.

New Entrepreneurs

In the last few months I've noticed the entrepreneurial nature of many of the salespeople I work with.

They are asking a lot of questions about how to substantialy develop their business, they are actively seeking out the resources that I recommend and. perhaps most tellingly. they are investing in themselves; spending their own money on projects to help them earn more.

Addressing and growing this aspect of their business thinking so early in their careers is going to give them a phenomenal advantage in the short term and long term.

You Need my Needs

In a sales training last week, I gave the salespeople a selling exercise in which they had to sell me something. Everyone except one salesperson started their selling exercise focused on their needs, not on mine.

In his book 'The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People,' Stephen Covey recommends 'Seek first to understand, then to be understood.' The value of this recommendation is especially relevant in sales where many ( most? ) salespeople don't properly establish the client's needs and perhaps habitually start off with their own needs instead of the client's needs. I agree that there are some challenges in establishing the client's needs, but with some acknowledgment, thought and/or an e-mail, you can improve your ability to work effectively with those challenges.

New (Quote) Quotes Page (Unquote)

I have a new web site that offically launches late this month. Take a peek at one of the new pages I've created for it:

Auto Quotes

But don't quote me.

Non-Identical Twins

As part of a web site experiment, I am posting another blog parallel to this one.

You can see the other blog here:

http://www.whitepage.com.au/auto/

Which one do you like better?

Neat Trick

I was exploring some of the features of my web hosting control panel, I discovered another feature. To see an example of what it does, go to:

http://www.autoconsultants.com.au/home.shtml

Read the first paragraph on the page, then refresh the page by clicking the 'refresh' button on your browser and read the paragraph again. Notice any difference? Refresh six or seven times and see what happens! Can you think what some of the benefits of this feature could be? Feel free to leave a comment here with your thoughts / observations.

New Page for News

We've just added yet another new page to our site.

Our latest addition is a page of Automotive News, with RSS feeds regarding Global Automotive News.

To view this latest page, click here.

Slow and Steady Prospecting

In recent days, I've spoken again with a regular client: a Dealer Principal of a prestige dealership. Every second or third time that we speak together, he asks me about my needs for my next vehicle purchase and he mentions, in a low pressure way, a specific model vehicle in his range ( one that he knows I particularly like ). Whenever he discusses the topic of me updating my car, he does so with a good understanding of my needs and a clear focus on my needs, not his.

This has happened without me ever making a sales enquiry at his dealership. Through our business association, he has simply 'prospected' me. Over the last year, he has subtly positioned himself so that I am very likely to speak with him before I buy my next car.

Good Plans

Last week, we conducted some Time Management Training. During the training, we looked at some famous quotes relating to time management. The most popular quote in the training was:

"A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow" - George S. Patton

Wheels Magazine

I just renewed my subscription to Wheels Magazine. The June 2006 issue has some great information, including complimentary articles on the following cars:

Mercedes-Benz R-Class

Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano

Audi RS 4

Porsche 911 v. Cayman S v. Boxster

Mazda CX-7

Ford Focus XR-5

...and previews of BMW's new X5 and X6. A great read for anyone in the industry.