Dealership Rescue Mr. Gerald Bentley

Kelly Kleinman : Hello automotive industry I am Kelly Kleinman with Mr. Fantastic who in his alias occupation is none other than car motivators coach Reed Richards, you are tuned into the car motivators, Who’s Happening in Automotive Webcast. Today, we have the opportunity to chat with Gerald Bentley, the founder of dealership rescue, who also currently doubles as a used car manager for Adam’s Toyota in Kansas City. He is uniquely qualified for this interview, because we are living in a time where used cars are the cars getting sold. And Gerald certainly knows used cars. He also knows how to rescue dealerships, because he’s been with quite a few. Gerald, thanks for jumping on. n

nGerald Bentley : Oh, absolutely. Thanks for having me on. n

nKelly : Now, we covered this before our interview, but you’re from Cleveland, correct? n

nGerald : Yes. Are you? n

nKelly : Are you a knowledgeable Browns fan?n

nGerald : I am. And it’s gonna be really interesting. They did all the cards with all the chips in and we’ll see if it works out because they definitely made themselves a magnet for controversy this year. n

nKelly : Yes, they did. Who are they going to pick in the draft?n

nGerald : I don’t know. Hopefully, a wide receiver. I mean, you cashed your lot with Deshaun. Watson. So you’re gonna have to make them work right? Triple down with the receiver. n

nKelly : I agree with you. 100%. So let’s get into it. When COVID hit? How did it affect your business at the dealership? And since your a process focused guy, what processes did you have to adjust to keep selling cars? n

nGerald : Well, the biggest thing we did is that it was really hugely helpful about a month before they started really locking things down, putting in stay at home orders. And going with mask mandates, we went ahead and bought every car we could buy. We went from stocking about 60 or 70 cars at a time to buying up over 200. And at the time, it seemed like maybe they were a little expensive.. We sold every one of them and really wish we would have bought even more but that initial surge of inventory at least gave us enough to get through the first few months where you were just getting nothing from the factories..n

nThat was really the biggest thing we did, and then make it a point to tell the salespeople to really double down and figure out what the person actually needs. And get towards that as opposed to just hey, I wanted to look at this SUV, you may not have it. So you have to work on switching to something.n

nKelly : What about a digital retailing solution? Did you have anything implemented? Or was it something that you just sort of had to adjust on the fly? n

nGerald : We have it, we have it implemented, we have it in place. It honestly didn’t become the huge factor we thought it would be. We really thought it would have a bigger impact than it did. Now, maybe in some parts of the country it did. In Kansas City, the dealerships were still allowed to be open because we were deemed as an essential business. Now, foot traffic obviously dropped to near zero. So virtually every sale was an internet sale driven by a lead driven by a phone call. But digital retailing really only accounted for about maybe 5% of our sales. It was surprising. n

nKelly : That seems to be the number across the board. There’s only one group where I’ve seen it get between 9 and 11%. And that is way up there in Big Sky Country. Well, let’s get into dealership rescue. I want to find out what the genesis of it was. Was it a late night epiphany, an accumulation of experiences that culminated in a great idea to serve an underserved and desperately needed niche? n

nGerald : Yeah, you know, it’s just something I thought about and I’ve wanted to get into for a while because there’s a huge difference. dealership to dealership on how things are managed, right? What the processes are, how they work through things. And having had the chance to work for big groups like group one, like Berkshire Hathaway, that, especially with Berkshire Hathaway they really dig into the analytics. There’s things that are just almost no brainers that should be done everywhere. that the vast majority of dealerships just don’t do. I mean, even something as simple as, hey, you get to three pencils. That’s it, it’s go time, because a 4th pencil for your closing rate is virtually zero.
nAnd some dealerships have done the analytics, the big ones mainly like a Van and maybe a Hendrick.n

nBut others are just oblivious to it. And getting to see that firsthand, I realized, there’s really a need for somebody to be able to go in, make a couple of small changes to a dealership without disrupting the whole process and what makes them unique. To just help them out, give them a leg up, change some things that they may not even realize they were doing wrong. n

nReid : Gerald, if you don’t mind sharing, what are maybe your top three.n

nI think number one is actually doing a customer interview, doing a guest sheet and writing it down. Because if you write something down, you’re using multiple senses. It tells the customer that you care that you’re actually listening. n

nReid : I was at a dealership in California, April 19. And I said, Can you send me your guest sheet or your customer up sheet? I can share it with a dealership in California. And he says it’s called a guest sheet lol. But yeah, as far as he took this dealership from 125 to 450. And he swears all you have to do is implement a guest sheet. n

nGerald : I think it’s the number one thing you can check off the top. Because you gotta think there’s a veteran salesperson at every dealership in the country, right? Who says, oh, yeah, no, I know, my customers. I close everybody that is serious. Okay, so you’re determining who’s serious to buy and who’s not. So therefore, the 15% that are serious, you close 100% of the time that’s like Anchorman, it works 60% of the time, 30% of the time, that doesn’t work.
nThat’s number one. Number two, which I think is really important too, and doesn’t happen a lot.n

nManager introductions, manager interventions, just getting up and talking to somebody, take the pressure off the customer, especially right now, take the pressure off the customer, off the salesperson that the salesperson is negotiating the priceu2026 they’re not. And if you let them, it’s probably not going to end well. So make it really upfront and easy. Hey, my name is Gerald, I’m gonna take care of all the pricing and payments for you.n

nSalesman here, Jim, he’s got the easy job, he’s gonna find the right vehicle for you. He’ll work with you to make sure it’s the right vehicle, then we’ll get it wrapped up. That way you eliminate a lot of the pricing questions up front. So they can just work on the product and get kind of dialed in on it.n

nKelly : That involves a little bit of training.n
nLet’s get into that. So how do you train your salespeople to handle customers in the current economy that has high high gas prices and certainly unfriendly financing terms? What kind of education? Do they have to provide the customer? n

nGerald : Sure. I think one thing is to feel some empathy. I mean, don’t, don’t hide it. Don’t be oblivious to the prices being high. Just go right out and say to the customer, hey, you know, as soon as they say, wow, these are crazy prices. Hey, I agree. It’s crazy. Everything’s too expensive. I mean, like, everywhere you go, everything’s too expensive, right? Yeah. If you get somebody agreeing with you, you kind of diffuse the objection upfront, right? If you bring it up, you give it voice, you can combat it. I think about what a lot of people are doing. And when actually, a couple of weeks ago on my podcast, I pointed out that if you’re just blindly walking to the end of the sale, and then you’re going to deal with the pricing at that point, you’ve probably already lost because customers aren’t listening to dealership podcasts. They’re not. n

nThey’re not really focusing on dealership news and what cars are selling for. So if you just assume they know that prices are going to be sky high, and everything’s over sticker, you’re probably failing because they may not. If you can bring it up and engage in conversation to work through that. That helps a lot. n

nThe other thing I pointed out, which I think a lot of dealerships have gotten away from over the last couple years because of the COVID restrictions, is really taking some time to walk around the car, maybe even go on a test drive. Because as part of coverage restrictions, you weren’t going on the test drives you were BCAA in the car, dig back in and really point out and sell the vehicle. Find on your guest sheet, the two or three things that are the single most important thing to the customer. And then just talk about those. That’s going to be your key. n

nThe other podcast I just did, talking about setting up your finish, because right now you’re getting one shot at a customer, you probably don’t have many cars, you don’t have much coming in so your one shot is your best shot. So before you get into too much, you need to know what your finish is, how do you end it? What ends the sale, my analogy was Ric Flair, every match he had, if he won, he was winning it with the figure for like lock. That was the whole set up to get to that. So figure out what your finishes may be with this. Maybe with this customer, its high fuel economy and good safety and being within their payment range all information to what I got from the guest sheet. From that point on, every single thing you say, should be targeted to those three things. Not so the price doesn’t sell cars. If it did, Mitsubishi would be the number one brand in America. And it’s not. n

nKelly :nEssentially, they’re telling you what they want to buy and how they’re going to buy it so well done and their wishes. Cue Pat Benatar on taking your best shot. Now this is actually really quite important because it does deal with being able to train people, what’s the culture like in your dealership? Right? So if you had to identify the biggest issue facing a dealership? How high up on the list would culture be? And what can be done to turn that around since there’s so many different personalities and egos and attitudes involved?n

nGerald :nWell, I mean, having a positive culture, I think is really high on the list. Because otherwise you get everyone afraid of their own shadow. And you ask somebody to change. And if there’s not buy in from the top. As soon as they change something, and it fails, you’re going to remember, and the top people are going to remember the one thing that failed. And we’re good, we’re good with doing what we’re doing. And it’s it really makes no sense here at a dealership that it worked out previously. I was told by the former owner. Hey, it’s just a slow marketnEverything’s gonna rebound.n

nWell, hey, do you consider the dealership a mile down the road? Your competition? will share? We do? Yeah. Okay. It wasn’t a slow market for them. They outsold you three to one.n

nRight? So it wasn’t a slow market. It wasn’t this excuse. It’s truly just locking in working each customer one at a time. And having a commitment that you’re going to follow a process to drive it to a sale, you can make excuses for anything. I mean, every team that loses, you can do the postgame interviews and there’s an nah, you know, just wasn’t a good day, I didn’t have my curveball. And we had some untimely penalties. There were a few injuries. Although sports analogies translate into sales too, if you’ve been had dealerships on a on a bad day or bad moments where the sales didn’t total out to where they thought they were going to be. You’ll hear every kind of excuse. Ah, hey, you know, there was a parade today and seven hills.n

nThey had a big high school football game last night. It’s prom at this school. It’s tax free weekend. There’s an excuse for every single day of the year. Yeah. And at the end, it just doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t. n

nKelly : Yeah, well Reid you, you do quite a bit of coaching there, n

nReid : Train someone to close in a particular manner, you could train them how to use the technology that’s on hand. And that’s another question that I wanted to get into. But my philosophy is just like Gerald’s. I believe in a heavy TO situation. As a salesperson I, I want to have that energy taken away, I want to be able to do my job and find the right vehicle for you. I want to reveal the reverse to my manager and I want my manager to interject and say that he’s gonna go ahead and take care of the pricing. So that way I don’t have to, That’s key to me as far as handling that customer. n

nAnd I don’t think that it’s any different with COVID without COVID with volume without volume. It’s the same mentality. If they drive it, and they don’t like it, they’re not going to buy it. But they’re going to buy something. So if you can create a flexible customer, one that might be interested in something similar with a little bit of miles on that might save them some money create a reason to benefit in the mind of why they would want to switch – the art of selling I think Gerald mentioned earlier it’s the same thing, the thing is we have developed the skill set from over the last past 100 years that’s necessary for us to do our jobs the right way. n

nGerald : So now we’re being, you know, slightly slowly turned into artificial intelligence well and willingly being dragged along in some cases because here’s something that absolutely drives me crazy. And multiple dealerships have a salesperson who says, I don’t want to waste my time with the customer.n

nWhat? Yeah, you’re, you’re in a dealership where hours aren’t what they used to be, but still heck. Let’s say you’re there from nine to six, or you’re there from noon to eight If you wait on four customers a day and If it goes really long, that’s a total of four hours.nThere should never be one that ends with the phrase, waste of time or time waste, there isn’t one.n

nIf you just dial in, and really really lock in with the customer, figure out what’s important to them why they came there, why you and show them that you are valuable and that you are worth it. You’re three quarters of the way there already.n

nHere’s an analogy that I give a lot…Louie Vuiton. Louie Vuitton baton has 11 stores in a four mile circle on the Vegas Strip and they’re all on straight commission. And you go into one of the stores at the Bellagio, the Wynn, Caesars, and any of them doesn’t matter. You’re going to get great service, a great introduction, the salesperson is going to ask you where you’re from, why are you there? What’s going on? What are you trying to find? And when you share that with car salespeople? Their response is, oh, well, sure that’s a ton. It’s a luxury brand.n

nOkay, true. But you’re buying $1,000- $2,000. The most expensive thing you can buy is a $4,000 purse, your cheapest car is five times as much. That shouldn’t be an excuse, you should be that much better.n

nSo getting people to accept that is a huge part of it. When you buy into that as a sales rep. You’re gonna make a lot more money. It just happens.n

nKelly : Yeah, I agree with you. 100%. We were just this summer, we were at a Louis Vuitton store in Palm Springs. And I was amazed at how professional the salespeople were. They were very good. And I thought, huh, this should translate well to the car industry. Sure, and it does with the super luxury dealers. But for the Standard Model, you know, anywhere from 22 to $52,000 vehicles, it’s not as much emphasized, which you brought up a point and that’s utilizing the time that you have to utilize your time with it. And it’s a matter of efficiency and such. Do you find that the average sales and even the service personnel don’t utilize the tools that they’re given not only to build their books of business, but retain business as well. And I mean, also from technology, from lead gathering leads, following up leads along those lines? n

nGerald : Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I think you can go and find at many, many dealerships, you can find things in the CRM that aren’t being used. Here, something as simple as making follow up calls that are assigned in the CRM, guys will sit there and they’ll hammer away on phone calls. And like 1030 to 1030 to 1130. And then two o’clock in the afternoon to four because there’s probably not going to be many customers in the dealership. n

nSo I’ll make all my phone calls and then they’ll make the same phone calls the next day, and the day after, if they’re making them at all. Well, the problem is, if somebody’s calling me between 1030 and 1130, or two and four, it’s getting my voicemail, it’s probably coming across as spam likely, I’m never going to see it, I’m never going to listen to it, you accomplish nothing. You never reach the person, you did nothing. n

nSo something as simple as blocking your phone calls in time, and I think rate I think you have something very similar. That’s pocket and time from nine to 10. So maybe they’re just getting to work from noon to 130 on lunch, just leaving 430 to 530 they should be getting off work. Wrapping up the day you may get a chance to catch the person. And then on Saturdays don’t make a call after 1030 Because people are probably gone anyway.n

nBut the result of that is salesmen won’t do that, they’ll hammer the phone calls from 11 to one off, nobody answers them anyways, why do we even make them? And then they’re done. Because they were given a ton of tasks. They don’t believe there’s any value in it. And they tried. And it was a failure. So they’re out.
nAnd that’s just one example. Over and over. There’s many more. Let’s discuss vendors, because how do you approach that issue?
nTry to just push and hammer and hate you make the phone calls at times that people will answer the rest of the day. get text messages, business cards, I, I believe business cards are dead, every time I see somebody with a business card, I want to go grab them and get away. You know what I call thosen

nReid : Exit tickets.n

nGerald : Close their dismissal slips. What they should do for the customers there already, they got a cell phone. Hey, right. Let me do this. I’m gonna send you and if you have a CRM that has an opt in, it’s fine. It works. I’m going to send you an opt in text right now. Just reply back. Yes. Now you have my contact information right there. Any questions you have, anything you need, as soon as you text it back? I can see it and I can get it straight to my manager so we can get you an answer instantly. Does that sound good? n

nWay better than a business card? Yeah. n

nKelly : Do you feel like you have to keep hammering salespeople to do that? You could train them to do what we know is a best practice. But it always feels like there needs to be an ongoing process. How many texts did you put out today? And do you have to literally keep track of them on a sheet and on a database? n

nGerald : Yeah. I don’t know if you necessarily need a sheet or to track the numbers, because sometimes, sometimes the numbers don’t have value. But do you have to keep it going all the time? Sure. Is there a reason why Bill Belichick, still coaches, New England Patriots, they should know everything. You know, they spent hours, Bill Self just took the Jayhawks down the road to a national title. And I guarantee it, they work relentlessly at the same high low offense over and over and over and over again. But you have to get really, really good at what you’re doing. And I think what you find too, is if you go into most dealerships, the top person is also probably the person that is the most diligent, the most skilled, and is also the most repetitive. They’re doing what they do, because they know this process works. Tom Brady doesn’t go into the huddle. Even though he calls us on offense. He doesn’t go into the huddle, just saying okay, guys, let’s wing it. I mean, it doesn’t happen. He knows what he wants to do. And then you have to make some adjustments. Sure. But you have to have a plan, and you have to be able to execute it and make it repeatable. That’s true in every sport. It’s true, and really any kind of sales.n

nKelly : I’ve noticed that others in the rescue business tend to do a heavy analysis of the vendor slate, and they really tend to blow out most of the vendors. And I would say that they blow them out of any department. I’ll give you an example. Brian Sanchuck.n

nHe’s a Clevelander also. He was. Yeah, he was hired by Ford. And he would go into failing dealerships. And he would do the vendor analysis. And inevitably, he would blow every one of them out. And he did find that some of them were actually paying the GMs on the side. So what does your analysis look like when you go in and analyze the vendors? n

nGerald :nYou know, I think a lot of them honestly, right now are about the same. I really do. The biggest thing is you should be using one that actually interacts well with your DMS, the DMS isn’t going anywhere. Almost all the vendors now are on month to month contracts. If you have a vendor that doesn’t work well with your DMS, you’re setting yourself up to fail, right? n

nIf you don’t have a desking tool, then by nature, you’re not going to present multiple options because there’s still a tremendous amount of dealerships that don’t use the desking tool. They’re doing Sharpies and Foursquare’s, well if you’re doing a Sharpie and or Foursquare by nature, you’re presenting one option. So you don’t have the numbers to negotiate with. I mean, you just don’t. I don’t really think the specific vendors are all that important because there’s lots of good CRMs VinSolutions is good e lead is good dealer centric is good.nn