Jon McNeill discovered Tesla had done 10,000 test drives but followed up on only 1,000. The company was tracking to sell 3,000 cars against a 12,000 target. He convinced Elon Musk to lock down Salesforce and call back every prospect, which generated enough orders to hit the goal.
Chapters
As Elon and I were getting to know each other, I was selling at one of my companies, and I wanted to get to know his company and especially like the sales funnel. So I went to visit eight different Tesla stores around North America. Come to the store, get greeted, educated on the car, then ask for a test drive. And I take the test drive, which is amazing. So I had my mind blown eight times. So I was getting another company, and I called the head of sales ops and I said, hey, can I ask you a question? Like, I've been tagged in your system or something? Because I've taken eight test drives at eight different cities. I've used eight different emails so people don't know who I am. Them. Wow. And I'm getting no call back. Wow. The guy said, that's super weird. And so I said, hey, could you do me a favor? Tell me how many cars you have to sell this quarter. And he said, 12,000 to meet the street's expectations. How many sold so far? I can see him sort of his face drains. He's like, 3,000. I'm like, oh, my God, you're not going to make your quarter. I said, can you tell me how many test drives you've given without callbacks? Yeah, all of them. He calls me back in two hours. Now he's white as a sheet. And he's like, you won't believe this. We've given 10,000 test drives, and we've only called a thousand of them back. I said, well, the good news for you is you're gonna make your quarter if we call people back. And so he calls me back the next day. He's like, you won't believe what's happening. Like, orders are coming in left and right. Then I had to call Elon because it dawned on me. So I called him up and I said, hey, man, I gotta apologize to you. He's like, why? I said, well, I told him a little story. I said, I don't even work for you yet. And I made this decision. I locked down your salesforce until they. Until they called all their prospects back. We've sold a bunch of cars in the last 24 hours. But it dawned on me that I hadn't want to buy you. You're the CEO. I'm not. And I get this long silence that he's now famous for. But I. I was not ready for the silence at this part. Right at this point, he breaks the silence and says, I think you're going to fit in here just fine.
