in demo a car, salespeople, spiffs
Ask Joe
“At our 20 group last week we were talking
about spiffs for salespeople. My
question is – why should we have to
pay our salespeople a spiff for doing a write up or
for an appointment that shows up?”
With dealers, when the talk eventually turns to pay, which it always does in almost every Dealer/Manager meeting I hold, this question usually comes up about write ups, or demos, appointments, hat tricks for 3 cars, etc.
The real question is…
“Why should we have to pay people to do part of the job
they’re already supposed to be doing to make the sale?”
I agree! For the record – I completely agree with you, if you think you shouldn’t have to pay them spiffs to do the job they were hired to do. You should not have to pay a salesperson to do a write up, demo a car or make an appointment.
So if that’s how you feel, too, we both win the argument.
Having said that, I have to ask you three questions…
1. If you do pay $25 for a write-up, will you see more writeups at the desk?
Yes or No
2. If you do pay $25 and you do get more write-ups each month, will you sell more units?
Yes or No
3. In the end, is your goal to win the argument and lose sales you could be making, or is it to sell more cars?
Win The Argument or Sell More Cars
The same three questions would apply to whether or not you should have to train your salespeople and managers (we won’t spend any more time on that today), whether you should be paying extra for demos, appointments on the board, appointments that show, or any other activity that leads directly to more sales.
I’m 100% behind you on this one. Salespeople should bring you every breathing person on paper who even kind of agrees to buy a vehicle today, so you can have a shot at making a deal out of it. But they won’t. I know it, you know it, and in real life, most of us didn’t bring every single opportunity to the desk when we were in sales, either.
The spiff is to encourage them to do something most of them won’t do, because they don’t see the benefit. And yes, I completely agree that it doesn’t make sense that a salesperson would put someone on paper just to make a $25 spiff, but they won’t write them up in the hopes of making a $300 voucher – but, oh well, what’s a manager to do.
This is an argument based on principles that you just can’t win. They won’t write everybody up and you can’t make them. But if you offer them some cash, they’ll even put the guy who just got off the bus on paper, and in the end, you will make a few extra deals every month.
