Gerald Bentley – Tips to Sell More and Sell Better
Transcript
Gerald : 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
nGerald : I 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 :nI know you can’t see this, because it’s Yeah. But I swear to you, I was at a dealership in California, April 19. And I said, Can you send me your guest sheet or your customer sheet? I can share with a dealership in California? He says it’s called a guest sheet lol. But yeah, that’s where he took this dealership from 125 to 450. And he swears all you have to do is implement a guest sheet.n
nGerald :nI think it’s the number one thing you can change right off the top. Because you gotta think there’s, there’s a veteran salesperson at every dealership in the country, right? Who says, oh, yeah, no, I know, my customers. I close everybody, thatu2019s 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 that’s like Anchorman, that’s like the clown, it works 60% of the time, 30% of the time, that doesn’t work. That’s number one. Number two, which I think is really important too, and doesn’t happen a lot. Manager 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 price, they’re not. And if you let them, it’s probably not going to end well. So get that off of them, make it really upfront and easy. Hey, my name is Gerald, I’m going to take care of all the pricing and payments for you. Salesman 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 upfront. So they can just work on the product and get kind of dialed in on it.n
nReid :nThat involves a little bit of training. Let’s get into that. So how do you train your salespeople to handle customers in the current economy that has high gas prices and certainly unfriendly financing terms? What kind of education do they have to provide to the customer?n
nGerald :nSure. I think one thing is to feel some empathy. I mean, 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 I actually, a couple 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 helps a lot. The other thing I pointed out, which I think a lot of dealerships have gotten away from over the last couple of years because of the COVID restrictions, is really taking some time to walk around the car, maybe even go on a test drive. n
nBecause as part of coverage restrictions, you weren’t going on the test drives your BCA 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. Well one of driving relax, because that’s going to be your key. The other podcast I just did, talking about setting up you’re finish, because right now, you’re getting one shot at a customer, you probably don’t have any cars, you don’t have much coming in. Your one shot is your best shot. So before you get into it too much, you need to know what your finish is, how do you end it? What ends the sale. My analogy was the Ric Flair, every match he had. If he wanted, he was winning it with the figure 4 LifeLock. That was the whole set to get to that. So figure out what your finishes maybe with this. Maybe with this customer it’s high fuel economy and good safety and being within their payment range all information you would have 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.n
nReid : Gerald, if you don’t mind sharing, what are maybe your top three.n
nGerald : I 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 :nI know you can’t see this, because it’s Yeah. But I swear to you, I was at a dealership in California, April 19. And I said, Can you send me your guest sheet or your customer sheet? I can share with a dealership in California? He says it’s called a guest sheet lol. But yeah, that’s where he took this dealership from 125 to 450. And he swears all you have to do is implement a guest sheet.n
nGerald :nI think it’s the number one thing you can change right off the top. Because you gotta think there’s, there’s a veteran salesperson at every dealership in the country, right? Who says, oh, yeah, no, I know, my customers. I close everybody, thatu2019s 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 that’s like Anchorman, that’s like the clown, it works 60% of the time, 30% of the time, that doesn’t work. That’s number one. Number two, which I think is really important too, and doesn’t happen a lot. Manager 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 price, they’re not. And if you let them, it’s probably not going to end well. So get that off of them, make it really upfront and easy. Hey, my name is Gerald, I’m going to take care of all the pricing and payments for you. Salesman 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 upfront. So they can just work on the product and get kind of dialed in on it.n
nReid :nThat involves a little bit of training. Let’s get into that. So how do you train your salespeople to handle customers in the current economy that has high gas prices and certainly unfriendly financing terms? What kind of education do they have to provide to the customer?n
nGerald :nSure. I think one thing is to feel some empathy. I mean, 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 I actually, a couple 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 helps a lot. The other thing I pointed out, which I think a lot of dealerships have gotten away from over the last couple of years because of the COVID restrictions, is really taking some time to walk around the car, maybe even go on a test drive. n
nBecause as part of coverage restrictions, you weren’t going on the test drives your BCA 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. Well one of driving relax, because that’s going to be your key. The other podcast I just did, talking about setting up you’re finish, because right now, you’re getting one shot at a customer, you probably don’t have any cars, you don’t have much coming in. Your one shot is your best shot. So before you get into it too much, you need to know what your finish is, how do you end it? What ends the sale. My analogy was the Ric Flair, every match he had. If he wanted, he was winning it with the figure 4 LifeLock. That was the whole set to get to that. So figure out what your finishes maybe with this. Maybe with this customer it’s high fuel economy and good safety and being within their payment range all information you would have 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.n