You’ll Sell More When You Count Correctly

4 x 25 Does Not Equal 50

If your dealership requires you to track what you do and count the people you talk to each month, my bet is your total ‘ups’ hover right around 50 a month.

How do I know? Because we surveyed 3,555 salespeople and asked, “Counting everyone who shows any interest in a vehicle, how many do you talk to on an average day?” Their answer: 4

Then we asked how many days they worked each month, it was right at 25.

4 x 25 is 100. But only logging 50 makes it seem like you close 20%.

The catch – if you don’t count everything accurately, you honestly don’t know how you’re doing, or what strengths you can count on, or which areas hold you back.

When we asked them to rate themselves from 1-10 on closing, most salespeople pick 5 or better. If that were true, the worst would close 5 out of 10. That can’t be right, because 50% of 50 would be 25 a month, not 8-10.

The accepted ‘closing ratio’ is 20%, but that comes from numbers dealerships supplied, which they got from their sales logs, which aren’t correct.

20% isn’t accurate because almost everybody pre-qualifies who they count, and some dealerships even count a write up as closing.

Sorry, but a write up is just an attempt to sell a car, closing is a delivery.

 Rating yourself accurately is the tough part and it was for me, too.

That little monster we call our ego keeps wanting extra credit – so we feed it bad numbers, and lie to it about why we don’t sell more, then it gives us a quick shot of ‘I feel better’.

When I only sold 8, I never tracked anything except my pay. When I started selling 30+, I knew tracking was the only way I could plan my growth. So one month I decided to find my real closing ratio, with no pre-qualifying at all – I wanted 100% accuracy.

I did the math at the end of the month and found I’d only delivered about 10% of all the people I talked to.

 How could it be so low at 30 units?

I counted everyone who looked at a car; service customers who said, “Just getting an oil change”, the kid on his skateboard, the lunch hour ‘looker’, the “I just like to look at cars”, everyone.

Why everyone? Because I’d sold lots of service customers, kids and lookers before. But that was only after I followed every step of my 8 step sales process and gave it 100% every time.

If you don’t track everything you do and every prospect (walk-in, phone, repeat, be-back, referral, etc.) you’ll have no idea where your best chances are to improve and sell more cars.

Tracking only takes a few minutes so try it, you’ll like it. And if you’re competitive, you’ll love winning more often.

#####

Learning to set goals is so important in sales and our lives. Download my book, “Get Everything You Want In Sales” today (it’s FREE) and learn how to control your own destiny.