#182 - A Focus On Sales Live From CIADA w Marshall Zoerner

Hello and welcome to the Independent Dealer Podcast brought to you by Buckeye Dealership Consulting. Thank you so much for joining us. This week we're going to share with you a live recording. Luke did a presentation along with our good buddy Marshall out at the Carolinas Independent Auto Dealer Association Convention this year. It's called a Focus on Sales. We apologize for the audio. As you guys know, our production value here is minimum.

We.

But there's some great information, so stick with us. Stay tuned in. Hope you enjoy.

Welcome to the Independent Dealer Podcast with hosts Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson, a podcast by Dealers for dealers. Here we go. My name is Marshall. I've been in the car business for about 21 years. We own a company called Premium Motor Company. We have two locations. We have full sales. We have service, we have auto body, even wholesale. I think that pretty much encompasses everything we do. We try to do everything. Soup to nuts. When it comes to a car, I don't like to sublet anything. Soup to nuts, huh? Soup to nuts, okay. That's a regular term that regular people know. And we employ probably right now about 78 employees between our two locations.

So has anybody had any problem employing people this year? Anybody have any problems getting employees all that good stuff?

Hold on. Wait a second. I just need to pause for just a second because this is. This class is going to be a participatory class and we're going to go. Step one. If I have a question, what do you do? Answer. I would love answer. Thank you. Okay. If you have a question, you just answer it. So if I ask a question, I want you to participate nice and loud like this young lady did here. If you guys, if I ask a question, I say, hey, how many of you are dealers in here? What would you think you would need to do? Raise your hand. Okay, what does a good hand raise look like? There we go. Okay. Yes. They're a Marshall. Yes. Thank you. If somebody was like, hey, would you like to collect a million dollars? The first person to raise their hand. You guys wouldn't do that.

Yeah, there we go.

All right. I'm kind of interested. Right? Is that. There we go.

We had a baby over there.

There we go. How many of the starter dealers here. All right. How many of us are vibrating?

Okay, there we go.

Okay, good. All right, well, first we would like. I'm gonna tell you a little bit about what we're gonna cover. I put the font small. I changed it. When I saw you guys sitting in the back, I was like, you know, I'm gonna Put the small because it serves you right for making you guys sit that far back. Look at all these empty seats up here.

You can come forward.

Nope. See, what I have to do now is I have to walk all the way over here, and you guys are the ones making it weird, not me. So all these empty seats right here. So it's tiny font. I'll read it to you. Okay, so, main takeaways today. Importance of holding on to people. Luke asked guys, is it hard to hire people right now? Yes. Yep. It is. It's hard to hire people. I think that's all across the nation. So I'm talking about the importance of holding on people. What did we learn from COVID Everybody went through Covid this year. Yes. Okay, so what did we take away from it? Hopefully we all learned something. One of the things I told my managers when we sat down when this thing first started and we shut down is I said, we better learn something from this. We better come out of this being different. Otherwise, this is a waste. Right. Because some of us. Did you guys, business change a lot in this last year? Yeah, I would say so. Okay. All right. What is a good sales process? Are we sticking to the process and what should we be tracking? Yeah.

What did you learn from COVID What.

I learned from COVID See, one of the questions that was asked is, work with less. Right? Do less, work with less, work with less people. Get more efficient at your processes. That's one of the biggest things I took away. What did you take away?

Was my process broke? How can I fix it?

Anybody else learn anything from COVID that you thought was, like, really good that you came out of it?

Stimulus money is good.

Stimulus money. Keep it coming. Bankrupt our country. Yeah. Anybody else? What else did you take away from? Sorry, I'm not. Am I not allowed to say that?

What did you say?

I said bankrupt our country. Keep paying off stimulus.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

Get all your inventory ready to be wholesale. Even if you're trying to retail at other dealers, you're going to buy at retail price half the time.

Always have your inventory ready.

Get your inventory ready. We're definitely. Cover that shirt. Yeah. Love that. How many? Is it hard to buy inventory or pretty easy right now?

Hard, easy, hard, hard.

Okay. All right, good. We'll talk about that, and then. Yeah. What should we be tracking? Let's go right into it. Invest in your people. Okay, guys, if it's hard to find people, wouldn't you want to keep the ones you have? How many of you guys want to keep the Ones you have everybody.

I hope you got a lot of people want to fire a lot of people.

That's not unusual. Okay, I know. Because without our employ, sometimes we're like, well, life would be easier for us without our employees. I promise, we don't get any sales. Right. Without your employees, you wouldn't be able to be here. How many of you guys have employees back in the store right now whose.

Dealership is still open right now while you're here? Is everybody's. Some of you.

Okay.

That's called employees, right?

Yeah. What does investing in your people look like to you? Give me an example of what investing in your people looks like, Luke.

Training them all the time and letting them be taking more responsibility.

Always be training. I know, but he saw the slides earlier. That's why he was able to answer them. Yeah. Always be training your people is a great one. Always train. I mean, training sends a message of investment, right? I mean, it says, I'm willing to invest in you. I'm willing to let you go out of the dealership for a day. I'm willing to not take that day off, take you off the floor. I'm willing to waste some time. Not waste time is the wrong term, but I'm willing to invest time in you that I normally would go. Just go out there and sell. Right. If I'm willing to take an hour out of my day and invest in the event, that shows something. Right. What about if I send them here to a class or you send them to another training class? That sounds invested, right? Training is huge to invest your people, but it also helps you retain them. And I'll show you that here in a minute. What would be another thing to help invest in people, see how they're doing.

Talk to them, care about them.

Right. Care about them.

Yeah.

Okay. All right. How do you guys. How do you guys show you care about your employees? I mean. Okay, go ahead, Eric.

Eric is Marshall's business partner. Business partnership. Well, this scenario just came up this week. We had. We had a gentleman in sales teamed a lot. We brought him in. Hey, what's going on? He said, hey, I'm going through some relational problems. And so we said, hey, how can we step in and be helpful to you? We ended up connecting him to a marriage counseling type class that he wanted to get involved in, and so did his significant other.

So I'm going to tell you, there's a lot of things we like to do. Spiffs and things, like a lot of places do. And cash talks, Right. We always think Cash talks. And all our employees like money, but trust me, our employees want to work for a place that cares about you. So if you can really connect with your employees and figure out what their hot buttons are and what shows that they really care, like, I mean, making sure that a newly married couple is taking proper date nights, maybe somebody, one of your employees who just had a kid, you get them a babysitter. I mean, anything like that that you go is specially catered to that person. Luke, you do anything like that for sure.

And during COVID it was even bigger because during COVID you had to worry about if somebody got sick, a family member got sick, can they work at home a couple days a week. There's all these things that you do that, that really show you care to your employee. Taking them to movies, you know, giving them a pass to go see movies because, you know the new Disney movies coming out and they have four kids and say, here, here's past AMC. Go have a good time.

Right? Yeah, listen, $100 bill goes somewhere. $100 bill on your paycheck gets disappeared in taxes. $100 spent on a gift that gets them somewhere that they can say, hey, you're taking somebody out to dinner. Oh, my boss is paying for this. Right? That is something that goes a long way.

Hand them the credit card. I do that all the time.

Oh, do you?

But I do set a limit on what they can spend. True story.

Funny story.

First time Isaac had a hat trick and at the office one day and I said, man, you did such a great job. Take your then girlfriend to dinner, gave him the Amex card. Right. Have fun.

And he bought a new girlfriend.

I did. That would have been funny. I did not give him a price limit. You know how much the middle was?

Let's say $150. I probably would have spent a thousand.

It was 220.

That's nice of him. Yeah.

I was like, where did you go?

I went to Ruth's.

Chris, of course you did.

What did you think was going to happen? They're like, you know what? Luke is being nice. Let me go to Subway.

I mean, come on. I should have said 120, right? Maybe 150.

It doesn't matter. I think the fact that you did that and didn't put a set limit on it probably means a lot to him.

It's an oxygen dinner. He does what?

You guys got to find out ways to invest in your people and connect with them. Because in this day and age, like just normal pay plans and just offering Them money isn't gonna work. It's not gonna create the retention of. I want to work for this guy, and I want to work for this company. So you got. The competition is going to be poaching you. If you can't find people, guess what they're going to do. They're going to go to your people. Oh, I forgot to point it over here. Maybe. All right, let's talk about the benefits of training. 1. Trained employees have fewer questions. Trained employees ask better, more interesting questions. Trained employees know how to use a clicker. Trained employees learn more efficiently. Trained employees are happier and more confident and protect your liabilities. Listen, how many of you guys have a process for your dealership? Raise your hand on what you do. Process for your dealership. Good. Can I pick on somebody? What is it? What's your process for your dealership? Just give me an overall, like, really simple. Like, if. If you're gonna train me right now, just give me a quick outline of what your process is that you. To sell a car. Okay. Do you have it written? You have it written down? Then that's awesome. How many of you guys have your processes written down?

Sales process.

Sales process written down.

Those.

You have an outline of that? Yeah. So somebody. So when somebody walks into your dealership, what's that salesperson supposed to do? Greet them. How do they greet themselves? And that's in your training? That's in your outline.

Everybody say the exact same thing?

No, they don't always say the same thing. They say the right way. Okay, Luke, do you have a training or. Yeah, you do. Where is it?

You're out looking at shopping today, aren't you?

Yes. Yes. Thank you.

And then we move into.

I'm gonna move into what?

Move into qualifying and seeing why they're here and all that.

You don't just look at them and try to qualify him?

No, not at all. I blame anybody.

I mean, you guys sometimes can tell if you can qualify somebody just by looking at them. Right.

Your salespeople do it.

Yeah. If that's not in your training plan, I mean, it definitely shouldn't be. But if you don't tell them what to do, they're gonna do their own thing, trust me. One of the biggest things we learned during COVID and I'm doing a few of these here in a segment with Luke. One of the biggest things we learned in Covid, we do a pretty rigorous initial sales training. When somebody comes on board, we have. Ours is thick, our train's thick. But if you just start with a basic Outline that. I'll go to here in a second. We were really rigorous with this. We'd hire a salesperson to get a month long training before they're live and hit the floor. Well, all of a sudden, Covid hit. We had to, unfortunately lay off a few people. And then we reopened. We hired them back. Some people didn't want to come back because they got paid more to stay home. So then all of a sudden, we're trying to get new people, right? Well, we get new people and really we're just like. You guys ever in a situation where you just need a warm body, you just need somebody, and all of a sudden you're like, I can't even get an applicant. But at least they have a driver's license. So you hire them, and some of them don't even have a driver's license. But you're like, that's fine, you can breathe. So please sit in this chair. And all you do is when that person comes in, say something to them, please. I just, I don't even have time to tell you what to say. Just, you know, do it right. We all get in that boat. And that's essentially. Now, I'm definitely, definitely exaggerating, but that's a little bit of what we got into. We're like, oh, my gosh, we just have so many leads coming in. How many of you guys had more leads coming in during COVID than you did pre Covid or after Covid? I should say, wherever you guys start getting more leads. Did it get a little bit busier in the car business? All of a sudden people wanted cars, right? I get the stimulus money. All of a sudden you're like, whoa, why do people want cars? Oh, no, I need some people. I need some salespeople. I don't have time to train them. That's exactly what happened to us. And you know what happened with those employees that we hired that we didn't give this training to?

They didn't last.

They didn't last.

You know what happened to us? We had all the right people, but because of COVID we quit training. So guess who we have now?

Nobody. Nobody.

So training is important not only to when you get new employees, but it's also keep the same thing going with your current employees, and they don't want to go anywhere.

You do have to keep training consistent, and I'll explain that here in a minute. But the biggest thing, if I didn't start them off right, we were doing once a week training. They were so lost. Didn't Know what to do. I mean, they were picking up parts of it so they would know what to say. But one of the, like, you ever have this word track that people use in your dealership and you're like, where did you get that from? Like, all of a sudden they start learning car lingo that you're like, this isn't like, oh, that's it, That's a lay down. You know, there's like no way I can get that person bought. Like, they start using all this car terminology that you're like, they're not gonna understand that we have a credit union direct le. I don't know what that is. Credit union direct lending, cuddle.

Everybody knows what cuddle is, right?

Okay, yeah, you called it cuddle. Everyone knows what cuddle is, okay? But the first time you're talking to a customer and you're like, hey, yeah, okay, well, let's see if I can get you financed. We're gonna go ahead and cuddle. We're gonna send you over to cuddle. Like, I'm gonna listen to my area if you say that. I mean, it doesn't matter who you're talking to. They're like, I'm ready to cuddle right now. Right?

Like, that's weird.

Hey, that's where I'm from, Portland. So that's the kind of terminology we start using if we don't train our people cuddle. It's credit union direct lending that sends a lot bigger message to a customer that says we partner with a bunch of credit unions than cuddle. So using the criterion knowledge, maybe you.

Do cuddle with your customers.

It all depends on what kind of discount they want. Okay, we covered this. I want to dive into this as we go a little bit further. But let's talk about, let's talk about this here for a second. If we don't have something printed when they start, I don't care if it's a one piece of paper that looks something like this, okay? If you don't have that, whoops, don't go too far ahead. Then you don't have anything to train on. Okay? If we have nothing to train on, how the heck are we training? If we are not training, how is our sales staff getting any better? Do you guys want them to get better? You guys want your sales staff to be better? So stay the same, get better, okay? The only way they're gonna get better is if you can train them. But if you have nothing to train on, they're not getting better. If they don't get Any better? How will they succeed? And if they're not succeeding, why the heck would they stay with you?

Hey, can we ask a quick question here?

Yeah.

Who in here actually trains with their self staff, weekly, monthly, anything?

What do you guys do every Friday morning? Who doesn't? Michael, Hugh. It's great, though. Do you ever miss it? Did you miss it during COVID or did you guys stay through?

No, we kept going through Covid. You did.

Nice. Nice. That's great. How many of you guys train once a month?

Who is not training? Don't be. Don't be bashful.

Yep.

Well, there's got to be some people that are training and not training.

No, it's the definition of training. All of us are training. Okay, so let me clarify that, because we're all training. They're watching our behavior when Luke walks around his lot, and if he's walking around without a notepad, he's training his newest person to walk around without a notepad. Okay, so we're all training. It's just how we're training. And I like you guys. Us kneelers, we're the worst at it because we have everything up in our head. Everything is in our head. And we go, we know what to say, we know what to do, and we just don't know how to get that extracted out. Even Luke and I were talking yesterday, and I'm, like, asking him some questions. He's walking me around his lot.

So he's been in my dealership for two days. And if you've never had another dealer come into your dealership, especially people who are good friends and do train a lot and do these type things, it's like being in jail for two days. Because he's pointing out every possible thing that is wrong at my dealership. Y' all ever had that happen?

First of all, I didn't point that out. I asked questions. You pointed it out to me.

He did. He asked questions of me. And then I realized what I was doing wrong.

He's telling me about this car and that car and this car. I said, who knows this? Like, if you were sick today or not here? I said, who would know it? Nobody. Nobody. And it adds an amazing amount of stuff in his head.

And it's as simple as, why is that car parked there? Well, it shouldn't be parked there. It should be parked there. Well, who knows that?

Why should it be? I know that.

Do you have a diagram of your parking lot, where to park cars? Well, yeah, we do. Was anybody using it? Well, it doesn't look like they're using it right now. It's as simple as that.

It's everything.

Train everything, right?

Okay, here's the other thing with that. You guys have a process. How many of you guys put in a process? A dang good one. And then I don't know. For some odd reason, it stopped getting followed.

Nobody used it for some reason.

So nobody used it for some reason? Yeah. Why? Because we are amazing at holding people accountable to that, right? We like. I don't know. They're not following. I don't know. Why? Because you know what? Sales covers sins, right? It's a universal thing. Sales covers sins. So if they're not doing a process, they're not turning in their nightly emails. Like my sales guys have to turn a nightly email to their sales manager. My sales managers have to turn a nightly email to their gsm. My GSM reports something to me once a week. If they don't do that once a week, guess what happens? I don't care. Because they sold enough cars, right? I don't care. Depends on if we're at our goal. I don't care. I 100% care. I'm just saying this is our general mentality, okay? If they don't do it at my dealership, it affects their paycheck. So it's great that they sold cars and I want to high five them and I want to be super excited because I don't want to be demotivating. Hey, listen, we had an agreement at the beginning of the month. This is what you would be reporting to me and you didn't report it to me. So good job selling seven cars on Saturday. That was awesome. We'll get them real pumped up. But you still got to send an email. That's the process. You guys gotta get good at holding people accountable so these don't go by. And then all of a sudden you're like, oh, I had a problem. Let's rewrite that process. Why are you writing stuff that you already have? The other thing that can happen, and I bet this happens to you too. You have a bunch of processes, but where the heck are they? They're in like your Google Drive not labeled correctly somewhere here. I printed it one time or I wrote it on a piece of paper. It was on a napkin when I was at CIA Ada and it was really good. I took a picture of the napkin, actually. I just gotta find it on my phone, phone. And then, and then I'll get that thing implemented, right?

Yeah.

And then someone new starts and you don't Hand that napkin to that new person. And the old person wasn't following the process. Now everything's gone.

Right? Right? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. All right, let's get to it. I'm gonna give you guys an easy sales process. How many of you guys have seen this process before? Raise your hand if you've seen this process before. Anybody? One person. Good. Two people. There we go. All right, now I'm gonna talk about this process, a little bit of how we do it at our dealership. Luke will talk a little bit about how he does it at his dealership. Then I wanna talk about how we do it on Covid. And then how many of you guys have built up an online business that's a little bit different than before?

Did Covid change your online presence? Did Covid allow you to sell more cars? Indirectly, virtually, virtually? Raise your hand. Everybody. Okay.

Yeah. Okay, if I go through this? Because, guys, is this class. This class is for you. It's not for me and Luke. Okay. This class is definitely for you. We learn a lot while doing it. 100%. But if you're like, hey, that doesn't make sense to me, please raise your hand and don't be shy. And I will power through that. Okay? All right, so. Whoops, here we go. Point this thing. All right, first step number one at our dealership is a meet and greet. And then we investigate. And then this is Luke Step qualify. We'll talk about that here. Just second. And then we do a test drive. We close, and we negotiate, and then we deliver a car. All right. We also have. We have a few more steps to us. This is the basics that I think you should have. Okay. What does a meet and greet look like at your dealership? You said. What did you say yours was? No, go ahead and give it to me. As if I'm walking in, you're like, why did I say so? Fine. My name is Julie. I'm just looking.

Julie.

Yeah. Shouldn't ask because you're not a salesperson. That's totally fine. That's fine. All right, cool.

I bet.

Patrick.

Dude, that's what I was gonna do. Patrick, if I came into your dealership, pretend I'm a customer, just walked in the door, what would you say to me?

Welcome to the auto finders. My name is Patrick.

What's your name? My name is Marshall. I'm just kicking around the tires here. Just kind of plotting and seeing what you have at your dealership, if that's cool. Yeah. Thank you. I haven't been in before. Yeah. So I'D just, like, take a look around, if that's cool. Yeah, dude, that was awesome. He got me to the next step. So first of all, I try to stay just looking. I play a little bit more of a difficult customer because, I mean, most of our customers don't say just looking. Right.

Every single one of them.

Right. Okay.

Just looking.

So the first thing we gotta do is eliminate that just looking one. Then we gotta get to the next step. He asks, have you been in before? This is the first time. It's my favorite one to do. So obviously he's heard that from someone somewhere at some point in time. Then if you don't have something to ask after that, they're going to say, I just want to look around. You're going to give them a business card. Or worse, they're going to say they're going to look at a car that's sitting right there. It's the most shiny, most expensive one. They're going to say, how much is this one, Patrick?

300Amonth?

About 300amonth. What's the lowest you can do? Can you do it for 200? I mean, also, we're talking about price. We shouldn't be talking about that. So we got to teach them how to get off of price. All right, Luke, let's try this. Okay. You want me to be the salesperson? You want to be the customer?

Yeah. Oh, that's fine.

Oh, okay.

So it's retail. Is this gonna be a retail deal?

Yeah, because you're gonna do the. I'm gonna do the retail, then you're gonna switch and do that. Sounds good. There we go. Yep, Yep. Oh, I'm sorry. You walked in and then said, hey, beautiful day out, isn't it? Actually, hold on. We're in Carolina.

Hot day out.

Let me, let me. No, no, no. Oh, my gosh. It's muggy, but freezing in here, isn't it?

It is cold.

Yeah, it is cold. Have you been in before? It's your first time.

I actually been here before.

You have. Oh, cool. Who do you usually work with? Or have you worked with anybody?

No, I just was walking around a couple times checking out your beautiful cars.

They aren't. They. They are. My name is Martin, by the way.

Hey, Luke.

Luke, nice to meet you. And what are you currently driving?

I drive a LS460.

Oh, cool. Are you going to be keeping that or adding to your fleet?

I think add it to the fleet.

Cool. Awesome. What? Use this car to me for you or somebody else?

I just want something a Little sportier.

To drive around sometimes. Yeah. Just for you or somebody else? Just for me. Just for you. You going to have anybody else in the car? Is it just going to be you?

Maybe my daughter, my wife, Everyone else.

Want You're a daughter in your wife? Austin, do you have your license on you or is in the car? I got it. You got it on you? Great. I'll have you fill out a test track form and get you on the road. Okay. At no point in time was he gonna be. It was easy because he didn't try to get difficult today toying. But I also didn't leave any area where he could go just looking or ask about price. Now you're going, well, Marshall, that's not a typical customer. But if you say something like this, go ahead and try to say just looking. When I say, man, it sure is freezing in here, isn't it?

Just looking.

Okay, weirdo. Like that's a weird response, but that's fine. I'm gonna power through that anyway. So he's a weird guy and he said just looking, that's fine. I'd love it if you looked around. By the way, have you been in before? Is this your first time? At no point have I gotten an introduction. I'm just trying to find out some information. If he said he's been in before, that's great. Has he worked with somebody or has somebody just not done a good job before? Right. So has he been in before his first time? He says, yes, I've been in before. Great. Has anybody helped you before or would this be your first time getting help?

Some guy.

Some guy helped him. That to me. And just so you know, at our dealership, I don't know what rules you have, but if the person can't remember the salesperson's name, that person's up for grabs. Yep. I take this customer, you come over and you go, hey, I worked with him last time. Well, great. He didn't remember who you were, so. And you know why that's allowed? Because we have a strict follow up process. And if you were doing proper follow up. Now they're not allowed to get like that in front of the customer, but if they went into the office, they could get like this. If you did proper follow up and they wouldn't be asking about the name. So you just lay off. That's not how the text we get. But I'm just saying that's.

I'm sure it is.

Yeah, they do get a little. I mean, it's a commission check, right? Everybody's trying to fight for their commission check. Okay. Does that make sense? You're trying to eliminate just looking. Somebody's you customers are going to say, just looking. And if you do not believe me, go to any store and just think about yourself. When you walk into a store and you go, hey, man. Or somebody asks you, hey, can I help you? And you go, I was just looking. And then you turn around and go, but hey, if you could point me to like where the shoes are. Right? So obviously you needed help. You just didn't want to ask it because we're too good for help for some reason. But if a well trained person walks us through, they don't even realize they're getting help. Let me also give it to you visually. Come this way and square up on me. Okay. This big man. Are you trying. This is a confrontational greeting posture. Okay. This says to me right here, welcome to Freeman Motor Company. Welcome to Freeman Motor Company. I don't even want to listen. I'm just looking. A welcome is ready for a knife. Just looking. He squared up on me. So when he does that, I'm already. I don't care what he says. If he said, go ahead and use.

Your gradient, you're out looking at shop today, aren't you?

Yes, I am.

Right. You want to keep going?

No, I'm not. I'm not going to keep going there. This. But this is a square. I'm still going to. I can still maybe just say looking because that's the square response. If we get side by side and I come up and he's out in the lot looking at a car and I do it like this, I can.

Run if I need it.

That's a nice car, isn't it? This is conversational. Like, why would he go, I'm just looking. We're just having. He doesn't even know who I am at this point. So. Beautiful car, isn't it?

Sure is.

I mean, something. That's a yes question. That just gets them like something they can't say no to. Because I need more positive stuff than any negative stuff. We're just friends at this point. Great. We're just having a conversation. You've been in before. Is this your first time? Never been here. Never been here. That's awesome. Now he welcomed me to the greeting. He just did it because he said he's never been here. Oh, well, shoot. I'm Marshall. And you are. Hey, Luke. You see that? You see how he welcomed me into it instead of me scaring him off by me going hey, welcome. You know? And then you're like, I don't know if I want to be healthy. I just kind of want to look and see if I even like these cars.

Next time you're at your dealership and you see someone out on the lot, send your salesperson out and see how they approach them. It will scare you. Okay?

No, what scares you is listen to phone calls, too. That's. Ever listen to phone calls, guys? Is there a greeting at your dealership for in person? You guys have a greeting for your dealership in person?

Yeah.

Is there a different greeting for on the phone? Yeah, there should be. Is there? I mean, you don't just on the phone, when somebody calls, beautiful car. Isn't it weird? And then if they said just looking, you'd be like, well, you want to FaceTime or are we going to Skype this thing? What are we doing? Right? That doesn't happen. So a phone call obviously has to be different. What about Internet lead that comes in? You guys use chat? Anybody use chat? Nobody use chat. Use chat. Okay. Chat. Chat and email, they're slightly different. Okay. Cause somebody's just. They're asking a question off the bat. You're like, you're not even giving me an option to do this. But we can talk about that here in just a second. Luke, let's do your greeting again. So buy here, pay here, people. Because I know you're trying to qualify them before you get them on a test drive. I need to get to know you. I need to understand that you're even on the right car. Because did you know 86% of people buy something other than what they intended to buy? So they came in, they said they were going to buy a truck. A truck. And they end up leaving in a convertible. Yeah. Yeah. You're like, what. What happened there? I'm just that good, you know? That's not what happened. Yes.

So that's how. So that's how mine would go. Yes.

Okay. You can go that route. I'm just gonna tell you at our dealership, I don't like that. I don't like to eliminate my inventory. So what happens is, I don't know, some dealerships like to park their cars, like, SUVs over here and cars over here. So we're not even gonna go over there. Cause you said you only want cars. Right. But if you walk a customer through your inventory and I don't find out. Exactly. I mean, if you said, hey, I came in on that Chrysler 300, I'm gonna walk you, that Chrysler 300. I might take the long way to get there, though. Cause as we're going, you know, the customer's doing this. Oh, what's this car? Yeah. And you're like, you send your insurer to the price 1700. Dude, that's a truck. One this way. Like that's what we're doing. Mentally. We're eliminating our inventory. And all of a sudden we sit them down and try to get them financed. And we're like, oh, we can't give this person finance. But we don't have any other options because we pigeonholed them into that one car.

We use the. Well, I was trying to think she would go through it real quick.

Okay.

You're out looking at the shop today, aren't you?

Yes, I am. Great.

I'm Luke Gower.

Oh, Marshall. Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you, Marshall. Are you here for a specific car or are you here for our financing program?

Financing program. Okay.

So I was hoping he would go to a specific car because then we could.

We could. Because they don't train that way and they don't have the train. No, I'm just messing.

So you're here for our financing program. Have you been to our website yet?

No.

You haven't?

Okay, so you have to go the other way, though. Can. Can we. The other way? Yeah. Okay, go ahead.

So you're here for a specific car. You here for our financing program?

I'm here because I saw that Chevy truck you had on the front line. What if we. Or would you use our financing?

Or do you have yours already set up?

You guys do financing? We do. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, I love looking at that.

So just because someone decided that they were here for a specific vehicle and not our specific financing doesn't mean they're not a buyer payer customer either.

Right.

So a customer can be there for a specific vehicle, but also be interested in our financing. Again, though, we don't pigeonhole them to a specific vehicle, but we know that they came in on a specific vehicle, which means they probably already drew our website and may tell us differently. But we know that when you guys get.

There's three types of questions that you can ask that you should ask. There's all these. Yes. Type of questions. Right. I guess A beautiful car, isn't it? Ones that trigger yes responses. Things that make you get your head on your.

It's hot outside today.

It's hot outside, isn't it? Sure is cloudy. Sure is raining. We just use raining because it's raining all the time or it's sure nice to be inside, isn't it? Okay, that's a yes question. Then they have open ended questions like, you know, how many people who, what, where, when, why and how? Right. How many people are in your family? What do you like to do for fun? What do you currently drive? Those are what get people talking about. Those are good conversationalists. Women tend to be better than men at this. So if you want to learn any of it, just hang, just listen to your wife for once and then you'll hear a little bit more of it. Okay, what aren't open ended question is, are you married?

That just killed the conversation.

Right? And our salespeople, if they don't know the right questions, that's what they're going to ask because they're thinking, okay, wait, I got to make sure I put the right car in there. You told me to investigate. You told me to build some reports. I'm going to investigate. Like, do you like to go on vacation? No, I'm too busy at work. Okay.

So another thing here in the Carolinas, during football season, a lot of people walk around with jerseys on or hats on. You can always talk about the football team. And people usually give that up real easy. You know, it's. Oh yeah, you're a Clemson fan, right? Yeah, that was great. How about that game last weekend? You know, you can go there or you can be the antagonist and say, yeah, I'm a Gamecock fan, y' all suck. It's still gets conversation started.

It does. And if you don't practice these. So what we do is we make our guys write some of these open ended questions and I make them practice them in. I'm like, that's a terrible one. Never say that. Like, you know, are you married? Is not an open one. But that's just leading to a bad thing, right? Like no.

Wife ran out from a dog.

No, I can't have kids. I've been trying for years. I mean it's just like crap. I don't know what I got into. Okay.

Real bad.

Make sure you ask the right questions. If you want to know how many people are in the car you saw, I use a lot of or questions which are different. Those are just designed to control where I want to go. Right. Have you been in before or is this your first time? I just need to know if he's been in before. Is this first time? If I just say have you been in before? He can say, no, I need to know one of those two things. Right. So A lot of times I supply an answer. I ask the question, I supply answer. That's a big one for me. Right. But open ended. If you can get good investigative ones, back pocket, write this down, give this to your sales staff. Every single one of them knows it. And if Patrick would have done this next, we would have got off the price question. So you said, how you been in before is the first time. And I said, I haven't been in before. And they said, great. I said, how much is that car? And if you would just address the price. And he goes, it's a little over 15 grand. And then he would be, he would say something like, by the way, what do you currently drive? You don't want the customer controlling the conversation. Because if he just stops like he did, I'm going to say, well, what's the best you can do on the price? He's going, well, I mean, we're trying to keep the payments around. Probably A$300 a month depending on what you do. I mean, how much money do you have down? And we're getting into a negotiation at that point. I need to make sure they're interested in the car. So if he can just address it again and then go, by the way, what do you currently drive? Why do I like what you currently.

Drive takes us off of price.

Takes us off the price. But also what does it tell me?

What is how many people he may have in his family or I mean.

Is he trading that thing in? I mean, all of a sudden I have so many questions. I want to know how many times does a salesperson come to you with a, with a, a pencil or say, hey, what can we do on this car? And you're like, you, you negotiate with them and later you find out there's a trade. You're like, dude, like, that's pertinent. Like, yes, we got.

What if they won the lottery yesterday?

That's true.

I'm just saying it gives you a.

Process to kind of figure out 100%. Yes, you, you've got, like, what's making you go from. Like, if you said that you. Yeah, what's making you go from a Ford Focus to a truck? And they would say, well, you know what, I got a better job. Like, I just got promoted. I finally like, I need to haul stuff. How do you haul stuff? What do you do for a living? Yeah, so the other back pocket one. What do you do for a living? What do you do for work? It's gonna be pertinent. I'm probably sure you Ask that one all the time. This is one you can ask anytime somebody gets you off of. Normal negotiation wants to ask about price at any point in time. You just be like, this car's like 15 grand or it's $200 a month by the way, where do you work? Change the subject quickly, get them open up and start talking.

Because if not, you're jumping way ahead in the process.

Right.

That's the reason we don't want to do that.

So it's very important to get your sales team to ask open ended questions. But you got to give them much open ended questions. They'll come up with some pretty dumb ones.

You know, in general, people are payment shoppers or down payment shoppers, correct? For the most part. So it really doesn't matter how much that car costs. Now if they've got in their mind that they want to negotiate off that price, that's one thing. But the top price to start with is just kind of a waste of.

All of our time, especially if they can't afford it anyway. Most people have like these stupid commercials in their head where they're like 0 down 299, 199amonth. Yeah. They're like, I don't know, I want to be around 200. You're like, well, clearly you don't know math, so that's not going to work. Okay. At any dealership you should have a meet and greet of any sort. It's just the way you introduce yourself and how you introduce the dealership. You should have some sort of investigation which should involve open ended questions. If you didn't write those two down again, they're what are you currently driving? What do you do for work? Those will open up. What do you like to do for fun? If you're like, well, I'm trying to find out how many people in my family. That's why I want to ask if they have kids. Then just say how many people are in your family, not if they have kids. Yes. If I want to know if this is for him or somebody else, that's a super important one. If you want to write down two really important org questions, this is going to be for you or somebody else. Why is that an important one? Because decision maker possible.

Who you gonna buy?

Yeah, you're like, okay, well I just gotta bring my wife down here because it's gonna be for her, right?

Why am I showing him a car?

It's for his wife. Well, I mean, it's just changing what I'm doing. I'm gonna Try to get that wife down here. Do I need you to drive the car to her? Do we need to make an appointment? Is she, like, on vacation for three and a half weeks? We need a facetime. Like, what do we gotta do? Like, that a different line of questioning is gonna happen so I can get you. Right?

Yep.

Then also, this is what I like to do. Cause if I investigate, I'm like, okay, what do you do for work? Is this gonna be for you or somebody else? You said, oh, it's gonna be for me. And I said, oh, that's awesome. Or if he says this, it's for my wife. And I say, oh, okay, great. Is it gonna be a surprise or is she gonna be in on the decision? Right? And then he goes, aw, it's a surprise. Then we get down to negotiation, and he goes, well, I really gotta check with my wife. And I go, you said it was a surprise. Why are you ruining the surprise? Either you're a liar. You just don't like. You don't like me surprise, right?

Harder than, like, a real surprise.

Here's a good one. If you want to get, like, four questions at the end, and you want to find out why somebody didn't buy the car, this is a great one. Okay, I totally understand. You want to go home and think about it. What is it you want to go home and think about? Is it the color, the equipment, the price? Me something I said, I get a reason why. How many people. Have you got a sales guy come up to you and they go, oh, they left. Why'd they leave? They gotta think about it. What are they thinking about? Like, what? What is it? Can we overcome it? Well, he's gotta show his wife. Where's his wife? She's at work. When'd she get off? Like, you guys are probably asking. These guys gotta ask these questions, right? At this point, this customer's left.

How many times have any of you had a customer that was going to get their down payment or going to get their money? Has anybody ever had that? And the customer never showed back up? Nobody's ever.

Nobody's ever had that.

Everybody's always had that happen, right?

We taught them.

So what you can do is. You know what you should do? You should drive your car. You should drive your new car to the bank and put them on a test drive back to the bank. They gotta come back.

Right.

Or they stole your car. So if they go, well, actually, I'll just drive my. My car, then you really probably need to investigate some more, because they're probably not gonna coming back. Always have something in the back of your mind because if they are leaving to think about it, they're probably not coming back.

Yeah, get creative. And I, you know, with our new salespeople, we say this, I don't love this because it's very new car esque. But we tell all new salespeople a customer can't leave until they talk to a manager. And I know you're like, I don't like that. But you know why we do that? Because that customer, that employee is not trained enough. And it's not because he said things wrong. He just doesn't know all his tools in the tool belt. And so if somebody comes up and they say, well, I'm going to think about we're going to go to lunch. And he doesn't know what to do because he hasn't ran out of that situation yet. Manager comes out and says, oh, great, you're going to lunch. I just wanted to say hello before you left. But you know, you're welcome to take this car to lunch if you want to. And that's what a manager can do and that newbie salesperson can't. And once that person leaves, I mean, you pay a lot for that lead, right? A lot. All right.

Hey, everybody. Sorry to interrupt the podcast. We need to throw a shout out to Buckeye Dealership Consulting, our sponsor for the episode.

Yep. It's all about reinsurance, Jeff. Reinsurance and consulting coming up, I think. But if you don't have a reinsurance company, Buckeye's place to go. And you just start one today. Drop what you're doing, get it done. We've got convention coming up. Buckeye will be at most of all conventions. Stop by, say hello, let them tell you what you should be doing in your dealership to make more money. Right, Jeff?

And tell them that the independent dealer podcast sent you over to see them. We want those guys to know that we're doing them good here, right?

Yes, sir.

Awesome. Okay, guys, back to the episode.

How has online changed our business? How has online changed our business? Guys, we track this. How many of you guys track this? I have a question for you.

On your test drives, when you're doing.

The sales process, do you limit the miles the customer go on a test.

Drive and do you limit the time.

That the person can have that vehicle out?

I think there needs to be a designated route. I think we both agree on that. And you should set expectations. Always have your sales staff ask, how long are you going to be gone? You Know, because some people may live an hour away. So I want to take it to my mechanic an hour away, but they may not tell you that. So I think setting expectations is number one. But the first test drive should be a specific route that you encourage your salespeople. Or if your salespeople are not riding, give them a handout. Say, hey, here's the route we. We suggest you go on. So it takes about 15 minutes.

If you want to fix it, like, because you don't have time to do any of this other stuff. You think just. Just keep low gas in the car. They won't go very fast. Yes, I'm a believer. You go on the test drive, because I am not.

But there's different thought process.

Yeah, well, let me see if I can.

I don't think there's a right or wrong answer there either.

There is. You're supposed to go on test drives.

You do it because of. Yeah, go ahead.

You do it because when a customer goes on a test track, they. They hear things that you don't hear. And, I mean, spare tires are loose in the back. You got those little blocking lug bolts every once in a while, or somebody left something in the trunk or tighten.

Up the dealer tag.

And they're like, it's making it. The engine's knocking. No, it's not. It was just like a spare tire or the license plate in the back. You can overcome what that is. But if they just come back and say it made a terrible noise, your sales guy's like, we gotta get this in service. It's making a terrible noise.

Yeah, right.

And all of a sudden you're wasting time, too. But you can't close that customer. The other thing is, I mean, our closing, if I get this right, our closing happens on the test drive. So we're on a test drive. 1. We have them fill out a test drive form that says, test drive will be 10 to 15 minutes. Okay, so if they do go out on their own, it's written there. They don't always follow it, though. I mean, that's. And we're not gonna call the cops. Cause they took it for an hour. You said 10 to 15 minutes. We don't do that. But they. At least some acknowledgement. Right, but our closing happens on the test drive. We're driving this car, and we have a specific route that they go on. So they have trigger marks that when they get to it, they ask specific questions. We have them show the service department. We make sure we pull it up into a place where it'll utilize the backup camera because there are different types of backup cameras now. There are non functioning ones, non existent ones. There are surround view cameras that I think are just like mandatory now. I just love surround view. That sells a car to me. I go, oh my gosh, it's like a helicopter sitting on top of my car. I can just see where to go. It's awesome. So you want to rich people problems. You want to display all the features. Some of these features are. Did you know how many of you guys have cars that have heads up display?

Okay.

If you wear polarized sunglasses, that heads up display does not always show up. So if you're on a test drive and you're trying to tell somebody, oh, I forgot to show you the heads up display. I noticed you're wearing sunglasses. When I polarize down, you can see that, right? I mean, you want to be able to demonstrate the features that made the price the way it is. And if you're not on that test drive, it's hard to do. Also, we start our closing. So when we're starting to come to our trigger point, we're asking some questions. Wow, it really sounds like you like this car. That sure does drive great, doesn't it?

Yes.

Yeah. Oh, man. And this heads up display sure is cool, isn't it? And you know what, the safety features really are going to keep your daughter safe, won't they? Man, and I bet this is going to look so cool in your driveway, isn't it?

I want to.

You want two. Wow, she's an easy customer. And you're jealous. Won't they? Yeah. Well, man, sounds like we found the right car for you. Okay, this is as we're pulling in. Do you want something? You want some coffee or. I'll get you a bottle of water while we write up the paperwork.

And by the way, is this going.

In your name or. Well, no, I wouldn't ask that. You can ask one or two of those. And she goes, well, and by the way, we're in the car, trapped. Can't be like, I'm going to think about it walking away. You're in the car, right? I'm like pulling in parking. I don't know if I'm ready to do this deal. Oh, okay. Well, what's holding you back? Is it, you know, the color, you really like, the equipment? You said your daughter really likes it. What's holding you back? These aren't. I know some of you guys are like, these are salesy.

What are you doing?

Does that sound salesy? Sounds Aggressive. What I just did sounded aggressive. You were, like, too pushy. Yeah. And you know what? So you go ahead and roll with me then. It sounds like we found the right car. Do you want to, like, register this? Would it just be in your name or somebody else's name? Not sure yet. Totally get it. You want to think about it? Yeah, I get it. It's a big decision. Am I right? Yeah. And I wouldn't want to rush you in that decision. Just so I know, though, what are you thinking? A little too fast? Yeah, a little too fast. Honestly, Totally. And I don't want to move you too fast. So listen, I don't care if that's an answer, because some people like you definitely want to disarm them. But here's what I don't want to do. I don't want to get all the way to the desk, start negotiating, and then go, okay, I want to take this piece of paper and go think about it. So I can go over here to Luke and go, hey, this is what this dealership will give me, or show it to my husband. And then he's like, I can get a better deal for that. I'll show you where. We'll take this to CarMax and they'll match it. Right? I just want to. I want to negotiate when I know you're closed on the car. So if you're, like, if you said, well, what's your best price at that point? And I would say, you know what? Sounds like you want to think about it, make sure this is the right car for you. Why don't you go ahead and think about it? We'll follow up with you tomorrow. Does in the morning or afternoon work for you? And I'm going to get permission from her to call her. Does that make sense? Covid could not go on test drives in our state. I can't get in the car with somebody. That eliminates that. That was a major problem with us. One of our major things in the greeting is smiling, right? Nobody wants to go, hey, welcome. Hey, it's a nice day out, isn't it? Right? That's not how you do it. Hey, it's a beautiful day out, isn't it? Like, is it? You should be popping. It's smiling. When you wear a mask, you can't see the smiling. We couldn't go on test drives. We had to adjust this process. But you know what a lot of us did and we did for a quick minute is throw this whole process out the window. And I go, well, we just can't do it. And that's what our sales staff did. And we said, oh, no, no, no, we still need to do it. We need to figure it out. So this right here where it says test drive, you can just put slash and demo. I need to at least demo the car. Let me show you the features and benefits of it. And then after that, after I show you all the features and benefits of the car, let me go ahead and get you a test drive map so you know where to go, because I hate it. We have a road that they all go in and I tell them you're gonna come back and you'll tell me.

It pulls to the right.

Because every time on this road, it pulls to the right. Please get off a different road so you can see what it does. You want to be able to address those ahead of time. You're going to tell me if you come back and you hear a noise, you know, let's try to identify that noise. It could be something that's loose in the back. You want to try to work on those objections. Does that make sense?

When we got somebody asked a question, we went off on that.

I know, sorry. Okay. Okay. Online. What is the goal of an online lead? Get them in the store.

Anybody else? There's got to be some more answers.

I mean, if a sales guy gets an online lead, what do you tell them the goal is?

Sell the car.

Sell the car. Okay.

Jumping a gun a little bit here, Patrick.

Make contact with them verbally.

Make contact with them verbally. Okay, so you want them to, like, call that lead.

What if they didn't want to call?

Text message or email.

Text message or email. Okay, so the goal is that you just get a text message out.

Yeah. That you have two way conversation with them. Somehow or somebody.

There you go.

That's probably the best answer. It's closest to what I want. At least listen. There are so many people shooting out web leads right now, just shooting them out. And you're like, dude, these people just ghosted me. They're not responding to me. Why are they not responding to me? Your main goal, first goal, ultimate goal, Patrick, you want to sell them the car. Okay. But your first goal is to create engagement. If you're telling every salesperson, hey, these online leads, I just need you to sell a car. That's what they're gonna try to do. When can I get you in here? Can you come in later? Can you come in right now? Like, it's an awesome car, It's a great deal. Then they start. Well, I'LL come in, but I just want to know your best price per game. I don't want to waste both your and my time. Right. So what's the best price you can do before I come in? I just need engagement. So our process. I don't care what your process is. Just make sure it's written down and you guys know it. And it's practice. It doesn't matter who you message. First goal is, the first question is, well, are you from in town or out of town? That's the first thing I get to them. I'm just trying to get engagement. Then when they reply to that, then I know how I'm handling the Webley, too. Is this an out of state sale? Because maybe I am trying to sell them the car. Maybe I don't want them to come in the store that day. I give it, especially if it's like a chat and they're like, you know, is this still available? It's the worst. You know, let me check on that. I never tell them right away because I need to hold them in suspense. Let me check on that. By the way, are you in town or out of town? Patrick? And then he has to go, oh, they're checking on it. And then if he says he's out of town, I'm gonna try to sell. I'm trying. Like, at that point, I'm gonna try to sell a phone call. I'm not gonna try to sell an appointment. He's not coming in. I need to get him on the phone so I can facetime him and show him the car so I can actually sell an out of state person. If you're in town, then what am I trying to sell?

Car financing or appointment?

Trying to sell an appointment. Yep. When can you come in? Is it this morning or this afternoon? If you can't come this morning or this afternoon, is it tomorrow or the weekend? Saturday or Sunday work better for you or like Sunday?

In Covid, we had a problem with that because we didn't want to sell the appointment.

Correct.

Because we wanted our doors shut. We wanted to handle how people were coming in. So we went from selling the appointment to selling the application. And we're by your pay here, so I wanted to make sure we had the customer approved before we got them to the store to buy the car. So this can all. It's a fluid process that can change very quickly. It shouldn't be much different than your meet and greet. It should be a different work track.

Right? Yeah. That whole sale process that you have, you should have one for the phone and you should have one for online. They're different. And chat and email are a little bit different. Because I can't go back and forth very on an email, like, you know, is this for you or somebody else? Wait for that thing to come back, you know, and then like two days later, like, oh, it's for you. Okay. I mean, like, they just can't. It's not realistic.

Right.

So in email. My goal on an email is to sell a chat or a phone call. My goal in a chat or a phone call is to sell an appointment. But my ultimate goal is to create engagement because I can't do anything unless I have them responding back to me. And if they say it is, is this available? And you go, yeah, it is. Or you have that automated thing that says it is. Check out all our other inventory. This is really great. Check out, here's the Carfax. Here's all the information you need to go shop us. Right? That's what you have.

That's not much engagement.

Yeah.

We get more engagement from chat than we do email. Do you see that?

We get a ton of engagement through chat. I want to chat. I don't even want to call people, airlines, whatever I'm on. I'm like, can I just chat with a service? I mean, that's the world we're living in. I want to chat.

Who, who has chat on their website?

Currently? Everybody.

Most people I don't even know.

No, through most third party vendors you can get chat and chat.

You can actually install, which we do. We install the Facebook chat on our website.

We put a widget on there and it works great.

No, it goes through my. Yes, my Facebook page. Yes. Attached to my website. It'd be great if I could get it into my CRM.

Ours goes through our CRM. But you can also put like the hours that you're closed. So if you're worried about do I gotta be on 24 7? An automated response will go on after a certain amount of time. Because we don't have a BDC or something like that.

There's free ways to have chat and if you don't have it, it's a super easy engagement tool that you should probably have on your website.

It is. But I would encourage you, if you get chat, you need to set up a process. Otherwise your responses are going to be.

I handle all of our.

Is this available? Yes. And then. I don't even like that. I don't like that Luke said that. Because you handle our chat. Who's chatting with them right now. Nobody. Right? So he's the worst person to have on chat because he's not available. Like you're going to put the wrong person on it. Even a salesperson, like, well, I got to go help that customer. Chat is tough. Like we have my manager monitors chat because a sales guy, if he's on it and then he has to go help a customer, well, you don't go, I'll be with you in a minute. I'm really like engaged in a sale. And they're like, you're just on a computer. You playing Dungeons and Dragons? I don't know.

I didn't have an open chat right now. So that's good.

How would you even know everything you have is closed?

That's true.

Okay, let's do real quickly because I don't want to. I don't want to leave this part out. Is identity identify the problem. A lot of things happened during COVID Sales went slow, then got busy, Then I can't get inventory. And now I may not have enough sales people. What is going on in my dealership? Do I want to sell more cars or less cars? Or do I do I just want to stay the same? How many guys. This is a legitimate question. Maybe you're at the goals that you need to be. How many of you guys want to sell more cars? More and more and more and more and more. Okay, what is the problem for you selling more cars right now? What is it having the inventory? Inventory. Okay. Okay.

Who else? Does anybody else have a problem with that? Inventory Brown.

Which. Yeah, yeah.

Inventory.

How do you know that's the problem? Yeah.

Are you counting your leads? Okay.

Okay, so. So how many leads are you getting in with lower inventory that you have now versus what you were getting in before?

Before sales leads by 150amonth or so. Now it's closer to maybe 90 or so.

And how many less cars you had? So when you were getting 150 leads, how many cars do you have on your website?

Live active. Active listings. Anywhere from 20 to 25, 15 to 25.

Okay, so right now how many do you have? Or when it went to 90?

17 right now.

Okay.

Have you seen it creep back up? Or when you were getting 90, were you at 17 or you had 10?

Oh, we had less than 10.

Okay.

So something I noticed. Marshall and I told you this this morning that it's, it's a correlation. If you don't have a certain amount of cars on your website. I know what our number is. Our number is 40. 40 cars on my website will probably produce 200 leads a month, thereabouts.

Okay.

And so it sounds like, you know, that if you have 20 to 25 cars, produce 150 leads a month. Marshall, what's your magic number?

We need to have a minimum of 80 cars at each store online.

So that's 160 cars total to get.

How many leads a month?

You know, over 300. Over 300. 300 is the minimum.

300 per store?

Yeah.

Okay, so just, just as a quick. Beside, that number goes like this, okay, To a certain point. I don't know when that point might be, but as your inventory drops show, are your leads going to drop? And that might be a Google algorithm that we don't know about. It may be customers only look for certain things. So we're just trying to identify the problem here. And it sounds like inventory is definitely a problem.

Well, inventory could be a problem. Acquiring it is one thing, but I mean, how many guys have cars in the back that are waiting to be put online? Every guy knows. Why are they waiting to be put online?

Well, could they be sold prior to reconditioning? They could be. So should that be on your website?

Listen, if mine dropped below 80 because we sold two cars today, we're looking at it and going, what two cars can we put from the back online right now? Now, maybe it's a coming soon banner or maybe it's. Maybe we only took four pictures of it. But I need to have 80 cars online. I don't care which of those cars, but they have to be up there because that's the magic number for us to get the name, number of leads. If you guys go, man, sales are really slow. I just need another salesperson. I would say, okay, that could be true. Do you know how many leads you're getting in a month and how much did that drop to? Or how much did it increase? For you to quantify that, you need another salesperson. Some of us just think, well, I need my salespeople to do better. That could possibly be true. If your inventory is up here and you know that that creates X amount of leads and that hasn't gone down, you got a sales problem, right? Or you have a wrong inventory problem. So that it's your job as the owners and managers to go look and go, okay, am I getting interest on this? I have enough inventory covered that. Am I getting enough interest on this? We have all the tools to tell us whether we're getting enough interest on these cars. Are they priced wrong? Are they just the wrong inventory. And then if I have the right inventory, I have enough cars online, then it's a sales problem. It's either I don't have time to follow up with leads or I have people following up leads improperly. Because what should the closing ratio on your leads be? 15? Is that what it is for your store?

12.

12% for us, yeah, but it should be 15. Oh, is that just a. I think that's an industry. Is that a goal you give your guys or do you go over that with them?

We, we have one person who sells with us, so we, we don't really go over closing ratios with that person, actually.

So.

So in general, in general, what you should do it. Let's just say 100 leads should produce 50 appointments, should produce 25 shows and 12 and a half sales, which would be 12%. That's probably pretty close, right?

So everybody's gonna vary all. Whatever any consultant ever tells you, or you go to Niada and get a number and you're like, we should be closing at 20%. That's the national average. I think it's 22% or it was. Who knows what it is. Now it's probably 50%. Because everybody just wants to buy cars, right? If they're qualified, they can get. Right. I don't care what some national, you know, trainer tells me. I care about what my dealership is, can do and is capable of doing. I get a new person in and I say, hey, our store average is 30%. That's what our store average is. We close at 30%, you're at 12. I need, as a manager, I'm going to give more leads to my 30% person. I'm going to work on getting your closing ratio up before I give you more leads. You get an average of 11 leads a day. Sorry, but until you get up on your closing ratio, you're gonna get five leads a day. Other leads are gonna go to you. I don't word it exact like that. There's a lot more finesse that goes in. But that's what you as a manager should be looking at. What's my closing ratio and is it in line with my store? If you're sitting at 12%, I don't like that number at all. But I mean, it's your number. So your goal should the next person that comes in can't be at 4%, right. I would encourage you to get that up to 20, though. 20% is. Are you retail or about your payer? Yeah, you need to be at 2020%. At least 30%. 30% is like our standard. I've got guys closing at 40, and then it's again. How you measure that, too. Make sure you're measuring the leads properly.

So that leads. That leads to sales.

Leads to sales, yeah, that's counting. So I don't know what you're measuring. I don't know if you're just talking about leads to, like, how your leads are coming in. Are they doubled up or not doubled up? Sometimes you have to weed through that a little bit, guys. Garbage in, garbage out. So make sure you're tracking stuff. But identifying the problem is a huge thing. So let me go. I'll go to this last one here because I think we gotta wrap up, don't you? I'm done. No, don't worry about that. What should you guys track? That's what I'm going to say. What would you guys think would be necessary to track your dealership? Anybody? Anybody?

What do you track?

Let's see. We track days on lot, gross profit per car and number of turns per year, which is essentially days a lot. Same thing.

So those are all good. Those are all good dealership numbers you should be looking at. What do you look at for your sales? Oh, for shows.

I'm sorry.

Oh, okay.

So, yeah, number of leads, number of.

Appointments.

Number of leads, number of appointments, number of sales. I mean, I guess the. The applications. We do look at those. I don't look at these necessarily in like a, you know, like a. Like a funnel, per se, but we do look at those four for sure.

Do you track them or do you look at them? How do you. How do you track them?

I download a lot of our CRM. I look at the number of leads coming out of the CRM, number of appointments out of the CRM, and number of apps out of the DMS or the system.

Write them down, Cross reference them with your inventory that's online. I want your advertising. Make a correlation between them. Track them that same way for at least a quarter. Don't do this. What some people do is they start tracking. They're like, oh, I track a. But I tracked differently in May than I did in July because. Don't do that. Okay? Just track the same way. Because no matter what you do, there's gonna be some inaccuracies. There's always inaccuracies. So you just account for those and just track them the same way so you know what to do with them. And you've gotta correlate them somehow. And you've got cause you need to give this to your sales team. This is one thing I do with our sales team. When a sales guy comes in and he goes, I just can't get to. I just can't get to more sales. And I go, what do we. Well, I don't wanna do better, man. Like, what are you doing? It's my job to say, hey, listen. Well, I've noticed you've gone on 50 test drives, which isn't a lot. You've gone on 50 test drives and sold 20 cars. I mean, our closing ratio on test drives is 50%. You should have sold 25. So we got to work on whatever you're doing on your test drives. There's something wrong there. Or are they even going on their test drives real quick if they don't have any test drives up? They're like, well, here's a problem. You don't get out of your desk.

You can see. And you can also, if your salespeople are tracking these things for you, you'll see that some people may be fudging their numbers, especially when you start looking at this. So you need to make sure you're tracking them as well and not just your salespeople.

Guys, when I meet with our sales team, don't use their numbers against them. They will give you crap numbers, okay? Use it to help them get better. I need you to track this so I can figure out where you need more training. But if I throw it in their face and say, well, if you don't get. You know, if you don't get it up to 20%, you're fired. I mean, I don't know. It's not helping.

During COVID we. I had this salesperson who was having a problem closing deals. And we looked, and both sales people were getting the same exact amount of leads. They were getting the same amount of applications, and he was conditioning a lot of applications, so. And the other salesperson was approving a lot of applications. So I said, you know what I need to do? I need to dig through his conditions. Well, he was grading them a lot harder than everybody else. So what we found is we went back through his applications, showed him where.

He was going wrong.

Well, all of a sudden, his approval rate goes up and his sales go up. So there's a reason to make sure you track these things and go back and figure out why it's happening. Not just that it is happening. And that's the main thing when it comes to looking at it.

All right, guys, I want to recap something supposed to be Done here. Okay. I don't know. I think it was 2:30 maybe. Well, let's.

I got a chat real quick.

We got 10 minutes. So let me just recap a few things and then you guys can ask some questions. 1 Guys, we have to retain our people. Right? Right. Because we don't want to go looking for new ones. It's not easy and it costs us a lot. Anytime you lose a salesperson and then you get a customer like so and so said they were going to do this, you're like, well, they're not here anymore. So like that always creates heat somehow. Oh, 2:45. It goes till 2:45. That's what it says. Oh, that's phenomenal. Unless they're bored. Are you guys bored? I can stop. Yeah.

Do some jumping jacks that sound like they were doing cartwheels over there.

Well, yeah, it's good. Then I'll go back. Somehow you've got to do training because otherwise you guys don't know what they're doing. And if you don't have it written down outside of your head. And you know what? We just keep getting better. The second you write something down, you write a simple process. Then you come to another trainer, you're like, oh, I gotta add that. Then I gotta add that. And you keep refining it and refining it, and all of a sudden you've got a manual that's like 45 pages long. And you've got this great. When somebody comes on, you're like, here's what you do. We're gonna work through this book together. It's phenomenal. It's awesome. I think ours is like 70 pages, but it outlines everything, like what you do and how you take a deposit and all that stuff. But it didn't start at 70 pages. It started 10 years ago with one page. That little road to the sale thing. So how many of you guys have a road to the sale? That's a good start. How many of you guys have more than a road to the sale page? Yeah. What else do you have? Like. Like what to do in all those situations. It's good. Yeah.

How. How many pages is it?

I.

Four years in. It took me 25 years to get to that. So that's good.

We make those guys bring it to their sales training and they're like writing in it. And then what I do, like at the end of the year, we. We take their books from them and then we like, look at their notes so we can update, like, what changes we made. Because we're changing it's not a hard and fast, not a bible. All said, like you can't change it. You got to be able to adjust. Okay, I have. Since I have a little bit of time, there are a couple things I did want to talk about. Okay. Is that okay, you guys okay, or did you have questions before I. Yeah.

Any questions before we move on to something else?

I have five salespeople per location. That's 80 in one location. Yes, 80 in one location is what we sell. We sell 80amonth. I have to keep an 80 online. We carry about 93 cars in inventory at each location. But I have to separate the locations because if I just treated it as one, one store would go this way. And each store is responsible for their inventory.

Marshall, what should we figure? If I wanted to sell. If I wanted to sell 50 cars a month, how many sales people do you think I need?

So it all depends on. It all depends on how many leads you have coming in. But I think an average is 15 cars a person. Our bonuses start at 15 cars. If you're selling below 15 cars, you're not really making much money.

I think that's pretty close to what you should expect. Some people will say 12, but 15 is a good number because you're going to have some people who sell 20 or 25, and some people would sell 12.

The difference between a 10 car person and a 15 car person is skill. I can get anybody in my dealership to come and sell 10 cars. You don't have to do much. I get some stuff that's not hard. I want you to be a skilled player, though. I want you to feel like a professional. I tell this to all our sales people. I want you to. I want you to be here a long time. I want you to be a professional. I want them to say, I don't want them to go, oh, I'm just a car salesman. They're a sales professional in my place. And so doing that you. They're well trained and they have to sell 15 cars a month. Otherwise they're just. I mean, they're not playing the NFL.

So you think. You think that it's. It's about skill. Don't you think it's about follow up as well?

Well, skill's all part of follow up.

How often do you train on follow.

Up and what is.

Do you have a process built in.

For your follow up and answer all those? Yes. So ours isn't just those simple steps. We've got a few more. We have a delivery process, and then we have a Follow up process that they follow sold customers, unsold customers, follow up. We have that outlined on what they do, you guys. And I'll get to you in a second. If I sold you a car, didn't sell you a car, and I have your information, I'm following up with you. I'm gonna make it seem like you bought a car for me because the other person does not care. So I'm looking at everybody as an opportunity for me to get into my database and just build my book of business, right? I mean, you get all this like, you follow up with something, you're like, oh, hey, how's it going? And they're like, oh, you did. Which means you bought a car somewhere, right? And they're like, okay, well you're dead to me. Click right. That shouldn't be. It should be like, oh, that's awesome. I mean, what did you get? That's great. Take notes, put in your CRM. Then when you follow up, 90 days, hey, I just was, you know, checking in on you and your family and how's that, you know, white Impala working out for you? You know, I mean, just. That's the proper follow up. Now here's the other thing. If you teach them the improper follow up to the cars that you sold and you, they do a 90 day phone call or a six month phone call and they say, hey, hey, this is Marshall calling from another company. Just checking to see how your car's doing. What are you gonna get complaints? Well, the battery died as soon as I got it home. And man, it's been in the shop like three times. He basically sold me a lemon. And then they're like, oh crap. Luke.

That is the main reason employees, salespeople don't follow up with their solar car.

They get one of those and they're like, I'm done, I'm done with follow up. So you never ask about the car. I mean, a follow up call. Looks like, looks like this. Luke. Hey, is this Luke? Yeah. Hey Luke, this is Marshall coming to my car. Did I catch you at the right time?

Yes, sir.

Hey, I was just, you know, I saw it's been about, you know, 90 days since you purchased call and I was at car and I just checking on seeing how your family was and wanted to let you know about a special we got going on. We have cars and coffee. This I'm just giving you a couple examples. So I wouldn't give all these at the same time. We have cars and coffee going on this Saturday or we got a service Special going on, you know, 10% off oil changes or. I wanted to let you know that we just have a partnership with a nonprofit called XYB and we're donating X amount of proceeds. Whatever promotional thing you have going on that you can give them a reason. I just want to let you know and keep you informed. And I also want to let you know that if you ever have any car needs, I'm the person you call. If you have any friends or family, just let me know. By the way, Luke, while I have you on the phone, do you care if I just confirm some of your stuff? Of course. Yeah. Obviously this is the right phone number. And you still live at this address? Yes. Great. Cool. Awesome. Well, hey, while I got you on the phone, by the way, all the people in your family, who's the next line to buy a car? My sister. Your sister? Awesome. Like pretty soon or a little down the road?

She told her car last week.

Totaled her car last week. Oh, okay. Well, I mean, I would love to help her and I know you get a referral fee if. A referral bonus. Referral bonus if she comes in. And I'd love to help you out with that. I mean, is there. Can I give you my contact? You pass along to her. Would you want to give me her phone number?

I'll give you her phone.

Okay, but let's say it's somebody else and they're a little bit further down. Let's say it's your son. He's 15. Let's go that route. Okay. Who's next in line to buy a car?

Well, you know, my son's turning 16 next month and I think I'm thinking about buying him a car.

Okay. Oh, that's awesome. So, hey, I bet you're looking for nice car, pretty low miles at a reasonable price, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, how about I call you in about a month when one of those comes in and we can talk then? That's what a proper follow up looks like. Because not only do I want to make sure I'm not talking specifically about the broke down car, but I want to know next in line, who's next line to buy a car. So I can have something in the queue if he tells me pretty far down the road. When you say pretty far down the road, are you talking like two months? A year? Eight months. Eight months. Okay. Well, I tell you what, I bet you're looking for a nice clean car with low miles at a reasonable price, aren't you? Yeah. Why don't I do this I'll just put a little note in here. I'll follow up you in six months, if that's okay.

Sounds great.

Yeah, we don't want you to miss out on that. Boom. I have permission to follow up with them in six months. That's just proper follow up to teach my sales staff. So I'm not doing it wrong. That make sense. And that.

That separates a good salesman from a great salesman.

Period.

See? Period.

Period. End. Big argument we have last night. Yeah, he's just like that, wins an argument. He says period. I said period.

If I said question marks.

You've never said that. I'm starting to, yeah.

How about exclamation one?

You look like a question mark.

I was just wondering, for. For an 80 car store, how many total leads do you get for a store? Retail. They're retail, right?

Yeah, yeah.

How many leads total for each store? And then how many of those are like, what percentage are, you know, third party website or your website where they've acquired versus phone up to walk in?

That's a lot of.

Okay, so the question is, for Andy Fars, how many leads do we get in? We need 300 leads.

And that would be from his site and third parties?

Yes. From. From any leads first. That's what I need. Not phone calls. Online lead sources only during COVID We what? Yep, yep. That's like credit applications coming in. Yeah. Those count as leads. Yeah, yeah. Any online lead now there's some double up. So my sales guys will come to me and they're like, this was a junk lead. Yeah. You're going to get a percentage of those. But everybody got a percentage of those. So I'm not going to weed through yours, so I have to weed through everybody else's. We're using the same numbers. That's why I say whatever closing ratio you come in your store is your store's numbers. So that. That's ours. During COVID right after Covid happened and they got those stimulus checks, leads were coming out like a fire hose. I'm like, they could, like, our guys couldn't keep up with them. We had like 600 leads. I can guarantee you those were being mishandled. I didn't have the staff to do it. It was just like, this car. Yes. Next. This car. Yes. When can you commit? I mean, it was just like insane. Now, we didn't panic and hire a bunch of people because those eventually slowed back down. But we do know that that kind of threw off our numbers a little bit. And I would never take that. That's why it's really important for you guys to have historical data. Because if you know that 300 leads gets you X amount of sales, and all of a sudden you've got a bunch more leads coming in and then that drops off and you're like, whoa, what happened to all of our sales? But you don't know that. Well, historically we've been here, so we're right where we should be. I just got a sales problem now, not a lead problem. Because we could look at it and go, oh, no, we have a lead problem. They went from 600 to 300. That's a huge lead problem. But it's not. That was a blip in the blip in the economy.

And if you know those numbers, you're able to go, okay, I've got the inventory. I have been getting 300 leads. I did turn this piece of advertising off. Now my leads are at 200. Maybe that piece of advertising was actually working.

Right.

So that's the reason you need to know. And look at these also.

If you know how many leads you should be getting a day. This happens to us all the time. Why did we not get any today? Why did I only get 2? 1 of the lead sources was broken. I don't know why. This happens to us a lot.

It happens to us too.

Yeah, lead source is broken. If you don't notice that for four days, you don't get that back. You don't get four days back. What? So like Cargurus is a syndicate site and all of a sudden the sales at Freeman Motor Company CRM email disconnected from it for some stupid reason?

Yeah, we had a problem with we had switched from inventory management to back to our IDMs back in DMS, pushing it out and it unconnected. And we didn't know for two weeks.

You don't get two weeks back. Yeah, just don't get that back.

And in our store, buy here, pay.

Here is going to be probably a.

Little different, but it takes 200 leads to get when I tell you 100 applications. So about 50% there, and then we're going to approve probably 50% of those applications. And then we're going to deliver about 84% of those dumps. So if we get 200 leads, we could typically sell 40 cars or thereabouts.

You guys got to know those numbers. That is super important that he knows that number because then he knows, okay, why am I not getting applications?

Well, the application might be broken on my website and I might not know that. I might be making it too hard For a customer to submit an application. These are all things that you got to figure out on your side.

Other questions? Yes, other than getting a deposit, what's a good way to take a customer out of the market when you don't have the part?

We always take a deposit. I don't know if there's another way around that, but that's one of the reasons we put cars not ready on the website. If we can get the customer approved, we will take a deposit even if we don't have the car. They may want a car that might be really hard to find too. But if we say, okay, we're going to give ourselves three weeks to find this car for you with this deposit. If we don't, we can give you the money back or we can put you in something else. And 99 out of 100 times, we put them in another car.

Are you retail or buy your pay? Okay, yeah, that's probably right. I'll do a whole deposit on a car we have in inventory. But I won't look for a car and I don't want to take your money unless I know that we're going to get you something. But the second I take your money, your expectation is that I'm working diligently to find that car. And that's just not the reality that I'm doing. So I'm really kind of lying to you at that point. And I don't want to do that. So I need my sales people to have really good follow up. I say, hey, what are you looking for? And anything remotely close to that. I am following up with you every single week. And even if I don't have anything, I'm just letting you know, hey, I got this other car that I know you said you weren't interested, but I want to let you know because what will happen is a sales guy will follow up. And then you're like, hey, we finally got the car in. You're like, oh, I bought a Cadillac Escalade. And you're like, what, you were looking for a C brake. I don't know how that happened. And you're like, I don't know. I just got talked into it someplace, you know. And so if we stay in your mind, like sales people need to just stay in your mind so that you're thinking nothing but your dealership.

And you know, in our business, we're selling. We're selling financing most of the time, right? And so just cause a customer wants a black Maxima with a pano roof with hyper silver wheels, doesn't mean they won't take that Ex Accord that just came in.

Right.

And so if we don't have that car yet and we just have a deposit and we really like that customer, we're going to try to sell them whatever we got. And you know, they may be stuck on it. They may be stuck on that truck that we don't have in yet. And so that might end up taking a little longer than normal. But to take it, if someone doesn't need a car today and taking their deposit and be willing to refund it, I think it's a good way to look at it because it takes them out the market. Dean, you have a question? Marshall, your retail, what you say, are you buying? Do you ever get that in house financing?

Yeah, they don't say buy here, pay here, but they do ask if we do in house financing. And we just. At that point, one of the things that I train all of our guys to do, and we train this in a lot of different ways, is bridge back to the process. A customer will always try to get us off the process. Right. You're caught on the. Because what if we just practice there on our greeting? That's an ideal situation, right. I'm free, waiting for people to come in and I have nothing to do. And the person comes in, I say, it's a beautiful day out, isn't it? That's not the reality though. Reality is I'm on the phone and somebody comes in and I'm like, ah, help them. And now they're over there, they look at four other cars and they all say hello to them. And I get off and I say, hey, I'm sorry I couldn't be with you. But then you have to at some point get back into your greeting and get your investigative stage. And if they say something like, hey, do you have in house financing? I'm going to say, no, we do not in house finance. We belong to a lot of banks and we have a lot of credit unions. We'd love to explore that. What are you looking for? Are you looking for you or somebody else?

You're looking for a solution, right? They're looking for a solution. And you know, you may have a solution that you, you don't even know about. The customer may think that their only hope is buying your pay here when it could be your, you know, a CAC dealer. Or you're, you're signed up with Agora over there. I see. Or you're a little plugged over, or you're. Are you got Santander or you know.

I guess that was gonna be my question. Are you, are you running into like where you can't help those people?

One of the responses we're.

No. And I, I use a really. In all of our trainings I always say there's an 80, like whatever the 80 is for your dealership is right here. There's 10% that are easy lay downs. There's 10% that are hard, that are over here. I do want to train on those. Not for entry level employees. I'll train on that later, pass that off to somebody who knows what they're doing. But the reality is if somebody comes into our dealership and says, hey, do you deal with trouble, credit or anything like that, we're going to skip a step and probably go, well, let's see what that looks like. We're not going to go spending two hours with them on a test drive. We're going to skip some steps and get there. But we don't train on that because that's not 80% of our customers. So you gotta figure out what 80% of your customers are. Yeah. And in your sales training, salespeople love to give you the most one off scenarios every single time. Go, well, how do you deal with this? You just, I don't have a solution for you because this is where we're at. We're 80%.

Well, Marshall, in Dean's area, it's gonna probably be, it's not gonna be the 10% rule. What he's getting is probably the 50% rule. So he probably should train on that and have a solution to decide, hey, you know what, we're going to have a process. When somebody asks that and you just develop the process and it may not work. The first process you develop may not work. But I would take them really quickly to application process and if they, if they start getting squirrely, if you're pulling their credit, then you got a different problem. But that's where I would, I would train to go straight to application. When they, when that's asked.

That's a.

Because you never, you never know.

And also their credit's like a 700.

That's right.

That'S right. But here, but this is dangerous because. What's that? This is, you can click through that. It's dangerous. If you give an approval, you got to have a good process in your dealership. The second somebody leaves with an approval, they find out they have an approval. What do they want to do? Oh my gosh, I didn't know I could approve. Where Am I going?

So what he just did was number two in the process. If you look back at your process there, investigate it. He decided that it was worth his time to investigate. Well, why do you think you need buy here, pay here financing? Because he has a possibility that that's probably better than buying pay for. For that customer, because the customer didn't realize that all of a sudden that bankruptcy came off, and his credit's at 625 now.

Right.

So it's all about investigation. Don't never leave your process.

Yeah. That investigation, that meet and greeting investigation can last a long time. The other thing, when you're trying to fight and decide how many sales people you need, you're like, this process looks like it takes a little bit. Yeah. To be a professional and handle all your leads properly. It does take some time. So you've got to consider that. Because there are days where I'm like, I don't have enough people here to handle this properly. And then you got to go, okay, what stage am I willing to cut out? And do my salespeople have permission to cut out the process? And the answer to that is, no, they shouldn't. They should have to go to the manager and go, hey, I'm juggling this customer and that customer, and they want to. Should I send them on their own on a test track? I don't need my sales guy making that decision, because I'm gonna go, what's this person doing? What's that person doing? No, you need to go on that test drive. This person. They're really. Credit challenge is gonna take them a little while for me to find out where they're at. So, yeah, go on that test drive. So sales people really, at least in my experience, they try to get out of test drives. It's like, I don't know why.

I mean, I don't want to ride with crazy people either. Shouldn't they?

Yes, I agree. But we close 50% of our test drives. I bet you guys would be. I don't think that's a crazy high number. I think that's. We just. A lot of us either don't go on them or don't track it.

Got a couple minutes? Anybody got any.

Words of wisdom, final questions? No? Okay, guys, leave here with. Put a process in place, practice it. If you don't do training once a week, don't feel pressure to do training once a week. If you do it once a month, that's fine. If you can't commit to it once a week, don't promise Once a week. Because here's what happens. You start saying, hey, we're gonna do it every Friday. And then that one Friday, you do it the next Friday. You're like, oh, I forgot, I have this golf tournament I'm supposed to go to or whatever. Cfada, I can't do it. Then those guys are like, see, I knew it. They're not consistent. They're not going to do it. And they write it off because you're not serious. So make sure whenever you're doing it, commit to it. I would write an outline beforehand of what it is. Oh, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I want to see my face up there.

That's not Marshall, by the way. That's my podcast co host, Jeff Watson. He's not here today.

Yeah. If you don't have the. How many of you guys subscribe to this podcast? Yeah, that's a good podcast. It's a good podcast. He has a lot of guest speakers on there. Some really talented ones. I've been on there. Everybody else is slightly. Mark's been on there. Yeah, we get some good resources. I never put him there. If you guys have questions or you want to give sales training, this is another one. Don't feel like it's all on you to do it either. I mean, definitely give them the process, but if you can't be there, don't cancel that sales training. Say, hey, you know what? This Friday, I'm not going to be there. Why don't you guys go ahead and listen to this. Watch this YouTube video. Go ahead and watch this video. It's about 10 minutes longer. Listen to this podcast. Listen the first 30 minutes, and then I want you to tell me the top three things you picked up.

If you're sitting on vacation somewhere, you can always do a FaceTime and train with the FaceTime right there. So there's always ways to do it. Gotta be consistent.

Yep. Don't lose your people. Trust me, this will help retain your people. We've had people leave us for more money. You know what happens? They come back, they go, oh, my gosh. And like, they just don't even know what they're doing. Yeah, it's more money, but that's not really what they want. They end up coming back. Okay. No worse. What are we mad about? First, you will Politics. Everybody in the company you're commissioned about cut in half the first six months. Thank you, guys. So glad you joined us. Please take a minute to leave us a review and share this podcast with a friend, the independent dealer. Podcast dealers, helping dealers.