Ask Joe

a new guy like me on what I should focus on first?”

Congratulations on your new career. There are a lot of things you have to understand when you talk about learning how to sell. One is about the profession itself. Selling is not what most people think it is. Most salespeople think there are only two ways to sell:

• Push people into buying something

• Be nice, know your product and hope

The pushy people never make much money and nobody really likes them; not the customers and not their peers. I was taught the ‘push and shove’ method my first few years selling cars and I finally quit because I didn’t even like myself as a pushy salesperson.

The other version – just be nice, learn all you can about your product and hope people buy, doesn’t actually work, either. There aren’t many nice, walking, talking product knowledge experts who talk and talk about their product and who sell a lot of units or make a lot of money. While you don’t want to push, you do have to learn how to move people to make a decision now.

Selling is pretty much in the middle. You certainly have to know your product. You have to be liked, and you do have to move people towards making a decision. But pushing
isn’t required.

All you have to do is to learn how to make friends with each prospect, earn their trust, find out what they want and need the vehicle for, avoid pricing so you can build the value in owning your product, overcome any objections they have and close the sale today.

Slow down and read that last long sentence again, because to pull this off, you’ll need to spend months developing dozens of key skills.

And not to overwhelm you, but that’s just the selling part of being in sales.

You also have to learn to develop your own prospects so you have someone to sell to. You’ll get incoming sales calls and Internet leads just because you’re on shift when they come in – but if you don’t develop the skills to turn those calls or leads into appointments that actually show up, it’s “No Sale”!

Then there’s learning how to recontact the prospects who looked at a vehicle, but left your dealership without buying. This group offers you the greatest potential for immediate, and significant improvement in sales. But a lack of skills to get the contact information plus not knowing how to make the call, along with fear of rejection, keeps most salespeople from increasing their sales 50% or more, overnight.

Now add in long-term retention skills, to keep that sold customer as a customer for life. It’s important, because on average, every customer is part of a family who will purchase 36 vehicles in their lifetime. Will you sell all 36? No way, but it’s sure a shame to miss out on even 5 or 10 from a lack of skills.

Then there’s goal setting to keep your sales and career on track. Along with goals comes tracking, getting organized and managing your selling day, so you can get the most out
of it.

There’s a lot for a new or experienced person to learn. Plus, there are just as many other skills you need to develop to really turn this job into a profession.

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Sell more cars with Joe Verde’s new book, “Earn Over $100,000 Selling Cars – Every Year.” Get a free PDF or order a free soft cover book.