Who is this for?
This is for owners and GMs that have always dreamed of having the most profitable and not only the highest customer satisfaction but the highest employee satisfaction dealership in the region!
This is for owners and GMs of car dealerships that want to sell more cars and make more money, in a market of increasing competitiveness and margin compression.
This is for owners and GMs that finally want to stop the madness and don’t want to be part of the industry average of 80% salesperson turnover and the associated half a million dollars lost each year because of it.
If you want to finally build a winning culture so that your team is fully engaged and everyone is making more money, then this article is for you.
In this article, I am going to show you…
How to turn your sales and management team into predictable over-achievers, even if they’ve constantly been operating below their maximum potential.
How to make your dealership a place where the best salespeople and managers want to work, even if you’ve been plagued by high turnover for years.
How to make your dealership a place where the customer wants to be.
How to increase the ROI on the training and software that you have already paid for, even if it seems like your sales team isn’t interested in learning how to do it a better way.
How to implement a grand vision and get everyone bought-in to the same goals and mission, even if that seems like an impossible task right now.
…And I’m going to show you how to do all of this, without needing to spend more time than we already know you don’t have…and asking your staff to work more hours.
My Promise to you:
I am going to give you a step-by-step strategy to create a winning culture in your dealership so that you’re selling more inventory, making more money per deal, and your team is happier than ever before.
I know this might sound like a big promise, but it’s the same approach that we’ve used to turn countless dealerships into highly profitable businesses, that are also amazing places to work.
So I want to invite you to push those limits of what you think is possible, and let’s get into it.
House Rules:
This is NOT for owners or GMs that think they have to keep doing the same things they have always done just because that’s the way it has always been.
This is NOT for owners or GMs that believe that investing in their people is a bad investment.
This is NOT for owners and GMs that believe that rigid control and “my way or the highway” is the best way to manage a team.
This is NOT for owners and GMs that believe success is only accomplished by a “work longer hours and work your day off” management style.
Does this sound like you?
Really quickly, let me just check in with you and see if I know where you’re at:
Does the reality of margin compression in the car industry make you lose sleep because you are not sure how to keep lowering your prices and erasing your already thin margins?
Do you know that you are leaving money on the table every single day because your sales, finance and management teams are operating below their potential?
Do you stress out because you’re adding more and more to the workload of your already overworked staff, but you feel that you can’t afford to hire new people?
Do you struggle with the costs associated with really high employee turnover, and you don’t know how to mitigate those costs?
Do you secretly wonder how you are going to compete in the future as it becomes harder and harder to retain and find good talent, especially as the veteran salespeople start to retire?
Does it drive you crazy knowing that you spend so much money every year on training and technology solutions for your team and then it goes underutilized?
Are you being forced to treat your product as a commodity, when you know that you provide so much value to your customers beyond just the car itself?
…Do you feel that there is just this invisible ceiling on your profits and growth?
The real problem:
You haven’t yet made “the shifts”.
If you nodded your head for any of those things, I have good news, because none of those things are the real problem, those are just the symptoms, the real problem is that you haven’t yet made what I call “the shifts”.
And I’m going to explain to you what those are in a second.
But just know that, once you make “the shifts” …
You’ll have customers that choose to buy from you because you offer the best value, not the cheapest prices.
Your sales people will have the tools they need to operate to their potential every single day, and you’ll no longer worry that their deficiencies are costing you money.
Your sales staff will have a work-life balance and will be much happier in their roles.
You’ll almost eliminate employee turnover and eliminate most of the costs associated with that problem.
You’ll always have a full pipeline of talented people that want to work for you because your dealership is known to be the best place to work.
Retiring staff will no longer be a problem because you have built a system that allows your people to train up and you promote from within.
You’ll finally get the most out of the training and technology you pay for, because your employees will engage in it, and will continually grow their production as a result.
Who am I?
My name is Jon Stubblefield, and I’m a partner with Car Motivators, America’s leading coaching company for car dealerships.
I use my experience in the auto industry to help my clients create the ultimate winning dealership culture to help them become the most profitable and highest employee satisfaction dealership in their area.
In my first six months with Car Motivators, I helped the company grow by 50%. I did this by working with multiple sales and finance departments all across the USA to help them get amazing results by leveraging and maximizing the potential of their people and their technology.
Discovering the 4 shifts
Let me quickly tell you how I discovered these 4 shifts that I am about to share with you. I’ve been in the car business for many years now, and in that time, I’ve had the opportunity to work with a lot of great owners, general managers, sales managers, salespeople, and customers.
In this time I have worked for large dealer groups, down to one store owners and I’ve seen what has worked and what hasn’t.
I studied what the successful dealers and people were doing, and I narrowed it down to these 4 things.
These are the 4-shifts I teach my dealer clients so that they can turn their dealerships into highly profitable businesses comprised of leaders and salespeople that can’t wait to get out of bed in the morning because they love what they do, and are making great money.
And so today, what I want to do, is pull back the curtain and break down for you what the most successful car dealers are doing, and how they are embracing coaching to massively transform their culture, profit, and impact on their employees and community.
And pay attention, because what I am about to share with you, goes against a lot of the conventional wisdom you’ve been taught about how to sell cars and run a dealership. Think back to the turnover for salespeople 80% and US employee average at 19%.
There are 4 key shifts that you must make to take your car business to make more money and nurture the best talent.
Shift 1: Stop Focusing On Working Harder and Longer Hours
A rocking horse can do a whole lot of rocking…. and still get nowhere.
The reality is, most of the “work” your team is doing is not getting your dealership closer to its goals. Conventional wisdom says that a good employee is one that works long hours, and does a lot of “work”.
We have become convinced that the perfect car salesperson is one who is willing to work 14 hours/day, 6-7 days per week.
This is not the way to do it, and it’s the reason your dealership is struggling and why the turnover is so crazy!
It’s not about the amount of work we do, it’s about the impact of that work. The truth is, that most of the “work” your team is doing does not create the full impact, and does not create the maximum value for your business.
The “work-more” mentality means that you are wasting your employees’ time, burning them out, and making them dread going to the job that you need them to excel at.
That approach is not going to drive your dealership forward.
Stop focusing on tasks, and start focusing on outcomes. Stop measuring the number of hours worked, and start measuring the impact created. Stop overworking your people just for the sake of keeping them busy.
Let’s say you have a salesperson who sells 20 cars a month right now but wants more time off, would it hurt you to give him a goal of say 25 cars and if he hits his goal he can work fewer days.
If you had to run two shifts of 25 car salespeople that work 4 days per week would that be a bad thing? Dont force them to work those hours just because it’s the car business and that’s the way it’s been forever. Can you say 80% retention instead of 80% turnover……..
When you do this, you will quickly see an increase in impact and tangible value creation. Even if it seems like your team is working less, they will accomplish more because now they are open to doing what actually matters while they are there to actually work.
Shift 2: Create Clear Expectations
If you don’t make your expectations clear to the people that work for you, they will make their own. If you can’t clearly articulate them to yourself, your team isn’t going to have a hope of meeting your expectations.
Think about where the gaps are as a way of knowing where in your business you need to have those expectations.
We believe this starts with a clear Cultural Vision.
Do you have a clear Cultural Vision? Decide what the perfect dealership looks like. Dream big! Do you want to be the best, most profitable, highest employee and customer satisfaction dealer in your area, how about your region?
Who is (YOUR) Dealership? If you are the best, most profitable, highest employee and customer satisfaction dealer in your region, what do you believe, what are your core values, what are the behaviors of your leaders and their team members?
This is best accomplished when you co-create this with your team and not by yourself. You not only get your leaders’ input but its really awesome when you create a shared team culture and you get everyone involved including salespeople.
If they build it they own it! If they own it they will act on it!
Now, do you have clear expectations?
Do you have employee playbooks with specific duties? Do you have clear Steps To The Sale with not only what’s expected but with best practices, scripts and objection handling.
Do your new hires have a 90-day playbook that walks them through what to do every day and what results to expect for each step for the first 90-Days?
Do you have systems in place for when they fail, because you know this will happen, regularly, and are you there for them with positive reinforcement.
Do your leaders help them see this not as a failure but a learning experience and opportunity to do better the next time!
If you answered no to the above questions then you need to build these. These again are best built with the involvement of everyone on your team, leaders and salespeople.
It’s one thing to have expectations, but your team also needs context and intention so that your expectations are more clear, and easier for them to follow. Create that shared Vision.
If your team understands how the expectations fit into the bigger picture of what the dealership is trying to accomplish, then getting them to commit to those expectations will be much easier if they are built together.
It’s not enough for you to simply tell your team what you expect of them, you need to make it mutual. As a leader, your team is going to have expectations of you, and you need to understand those expectations as well.
This needs to be a true conversation and team-building exercise so that both sides understand the other, and you can work in alignment to serve the big picture.
Shift 3: Get buy-in from your people
True leadership requires getting buy-in from those that you lead. It will also make your job much easier if this happens.
If you’re going to get results and outcomes that you’ve never gotten before, you’re going to need to make changes. You are going to need to do things you have never done before!
Your team needs to know why you are implementing the changes, and where it is going to take them. What are the benefits for both you and them?
Find out how your newly created cultural vision is going to positively impact their careers and how you plan to measure success and expectations.
Personalize the tasks that you assign to each person so that it plays to their strengths. If you set your team up for success they are going to be motivated to achieve their goals.
Every member of your team should know how their work is critical to the outcomes you’re all striving toward. It makes sense to let the members of your team play a role in defining the work they will be doing.
Getting your team to take on this new cultural vision is not an event, it’s a process that they will need to continue to work toward. This means that you need to continually follow-up with them. This doesn’t mean you are there to listen to them complain, but your team should know that you are there to address their concerns with a solution-based mindset.
When your team buys-in to the new Cultural Vision, new levels of possibility will be revealed.New Paragraph
Case Study: Wilde Honda – Sarasota, Florida
The General Sales Manager Jay Alexander did not want to simply buy a one-size-fits-all training solution for his team, he wanted his team to get the individual help they needed so that every person in the dealership could increase their potential.
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Before investing in Car Motivators coaching, the team was struggling to maintain growth alongside the barriers that they had in place at the time; a small storage lot and small service facilities.
They knew they needed to embrace social selling as a way of getting more referrals, but they just didn’t know where to start.
Time management was an ongoing issue for them, as it always seemed like there was too much to do, and not enough time to do it.
When we came in there to coach Jay and his team, we really got them to think differently about how they were selling cars and engaging with their customers. The results were transformational.
They started selling more cars than ever, with less stress than ever. Management did not need to work their team harder, but they were able to get a better ROI from the efforts they were already putting in.
They implemented a successful social selling program that utilizes social media and video response initiatives.
The monthly sales record for this dealership had been stuck at 380 cars sold for two years, and in December 2019, they hit 408, shattering their old record.
In that same month, the Used Car Manager Kevin Allen broke his personal record and did 183 cars sold in his department.
They also smashed their quarterly record by hitting 1,028 cars sold.
The bottom line is that Wilde Honda embraced the coaching model, and gave every member of their team the ability to get the personalized attention they needed to be able to push their own limits of what is possible.
Watch the video below to hear the interview with GSM Jay Alexander
Shift 4: Invest in coaching
Training and coaching are not the same thing, and your team needs both.
This is a critical mistake that so many car dealerships make, they invest in training solutions and leave it there. The difference is that training is generic, but coaching is customized.
Every member of your team is going to relate to training in a different way, and that is why they need customized coaching to be able to make the best use of the training that you have invested in.
Coaching is for everyone because it is specific to the person and the struggles that they are having.
One of the biggest obstacles that dealers face is that they don’t know how to get their people to operate to their potential. They have invested in the best training, but they aren’t getting the engagement that they were hoping for. Their people just aren’t doing the work they need to do to get better.
Every member of your sales team is different, they have different personality types, and different skill sets. When they have a coach that can take them through proven training in a way that is contextual to them, they will be fully engaged, and the results grow exponentially.
The highest achievers in every discipline have coaches, and selling cars is no different. If you want your team to catapult your business to the top, they need a coach.
Now you have a choice…
We’ve covered a lot, I’ve given you some new ideas, I’ve shown you that it’s possible for you to turn your dealership into a top performing dealership that is comprised of a team of sales people that love working for you.
I’ve shown you that the absolute best way to grow your dealership is by creating a winning culture and getting engagement from your people.
So you have a choice…
You can continue to try and stay competitive by just giving more away and playing into the cheap-mindset;
You can continue to rely on sales people that are burned out and are constantly looking for a new job;
You can continue to watch idly as your team operates below their potential;
You can continue to lose valuable time and money with sales person turnover;
You can continue to spend money on training that your team isn’t interested in…
Or, if you’re done with all that and you want to leverage a proven process to make this year the best year ever for your dealership, then here’s what I have for you…
How I can help
I have set aside some time in the next few days to speak to you personally about how you can apply these ideas to your dealership starting today.
Whatever your biggest challenges are when it comes to growing your car business, I assure you I’ve seen it and I can help.
We will get on the phone for about 45 minutes. On this session, I will work with you to craft a step-by-step game plan that will allow you to implement the shifts outlined here, and get real measurable results within the next few weeks.
I’ve been able to share with you some different ideas. But the reality is that every dealership is different. You’re different. Your team is different. And so, I have to go in and customize what I’ve taught you today, to your business, so that you can do some great stuff. That’s what we’re going to do on the call.
The cost? Absolutely FREE.
But there’s a catch, this call is not designed for everybody.
Who is this call for?
You must be looking to increase your impact and find ways to thrive in the changing landscape of car sales.
You must be ready to work with your employees in a way that you never have before.
You must be ready to make some deep changes to the way you work.
If that’s you, book a call now.
Why I’m doing this
I do this because I love working with car dealerships to help them achieve their goals.
Plus, I also know that after we speak, you may want my help to transform your business. If so, we can discuss it and see if it’s a good fit for both of us. If not, that’s fine too.
Schedule your breakthrough strategy call now!