#317 - Training The Trainers

This is the Independent Dealer Podcast, Education by Dealers for Dealers. Now here are your hosts, Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson.

Hello, and welcome to the Independent Dealer Podcast, brought to you by Buckeye Dealership Consulting. I think there's times, Luke, where we have to train ourselves, right? We talk about training our staff, we talk about training our employees. When do we get training?

You know, hopefully a lot of dealers out there are getting training, some. A little bit of training. Listen to us. Every once in a while you get training on the state level. If you're a member of the association, you get training at 20 groups. I think you get training at convention. But you know that sometimes you really need that hardcore boot camp training that places offer. You know, I was lucky enough in January, Marshall and I, and Marshall took two of his managers to go to a Joe Verie event, train the trainer. It was honestly probably the best training event for a dealer I've ever been to. When it comes to. To just training salespeople, really and truly, it's about sales. And, you know, I've always heard people in the buy here, pay here industry say, oh, you know, I could sell 100 cars a month. Okay, you probably could, but are you selling the right cars? And so you still need to train your salespeople when it comes to buy here, pay here, retail, new car store. Anyway, they're going to say. And you said this so many times, Jeff, they're going to say outlandish things. They're gonna, they're gonna run off that 40 lead that just stepped on your lot or that 40 lead that just called you. You can't allow that to happen because you're afraid to train.

Yeah. What's funny is the new guys will say stuff out of left field just because they don't know any better. Right. They just. They get a bad habit or something. Now the, the old school guys that have been with you forever, they start saying stuff out of the norm because they think they know better. Right. They think they found some sort of a shortcut to your system to cut through the crap. But what they're actually doing is short circuiting. They're getting less down than they could. They're. They're closing less sales than they could have. But what they think they're doing is making their job easier. Right. Because they found some sort of a shortcut or some way to skip your sales process.

Yeah. Those are those old car dogs that so many of us have hired from new car stores where the reason they left new car stores, not always, but the older guys Reason they even left the new car store is because they didn't achieve. They didn't, they weren't doing it right. The technology had passed them by and they were selling their normal 10 cars a month. And these young people were coming in, they were learning the training process and they were selling 20 cars a month. And you know, they just kind of washed out the bottom because they never have been trained to say the right thing.

Yeah, I've been consistently selling 15 cars a month. Wait, how long you've been there? And you sell 15 every month and you've done that for the last three years. Like, okay, not getting any better. Like, what Was your goal? 15. And you hit 15?

I hit 15 on the 15th of the month and I didn't work anymore.

I was done.

And man, that happens the way we get better. As a dealership, every department is to train. It starts at the top with training the owner and, and we have to make it a mandate to train either the people ourselves, which you can do, or train the, the manager so that they train properly. In my case, I train everybody because I want it done my way.

Yeah, I agree with you. My dealership is at that same size as well, where I'm the one that does the sales training. And what does your training look like in your dealership, Luke? Let's get into the nuts and bolts so dealers that are listening can really understand what we're doing, compare it to what they're doing and maybe find some system that's going to work for them to get a little bit better at it. What's your training process look like at your dealership?

So before, before I went to this Train the Trainer event, it looked sporadic at best. And it was Friday mornings, 8:30, we open at 9. So I was, I was requiring people to be there at 8:30. And what it had turned into was going through Neo and looking at, you know, a grade here, a grade there. And it wasn't, it was really technology training on neo. It wasn't training how to speak to these leads that were coming in and how to make sure that we were using the best of them. So we decided that we were going to revamp our training process. And when I went and to start with, before you even think about training, you've got to have a written down path to the sale. And we've talked about this so many times, Jeff, if you don't have a written path to the sale, what are you training on? But you don't know. So I encourage anyone who's listening to this, that has not written this down. Write it down. And it, it's not hard. You know how to sell a car. You would, you wouldn't be in business if you didn't know how to sell a car. Write down the steps of that process and what it looks like.

Yeah. So yeah, I'll tell you, Luke, my path to the sale is A, the meet and greet, right. B, sell the package. Step three is get the credit app. Step four is the wants and needs car selection and step five is overcome objections, close the deal. So that's what I drill into my salesman every single time. Step 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. You can't go from 1 to 5. You can't jump straight into 3 and start taking a credit app and think you're ever going to make it to five. Right. You have to start with those steps. Meet and greet, sell the, sell the value, then take the application, then do the wants and needs and car selection and then close the deal. And of course I'm buy here, pay here. So that's why credit app comes way before the car selection. If you're a retail dealer, you may flip flop those two. You know, you may be start look cars and then go worry about the credit app and getting them approved. But you have to have. And so I drill that five fingers, right? Those five steps, I drill it into them every single time. What's, what's yours?

Yeah, I actually. Can I, can I share this, share my screen real quick, Jeff. Just if everybody's, hopefully everybody's watching on, on YouTube. If not, go back watch on YouTube. This is the gala motor selling process. These are the steps of the sale. It's seven steps at five. Seven. It doesn't matter. It could be three. Jeff. But you need to have this written down. And so, so once you have it, you train on it. And so you may spend a lot of time on the first part which is, is meet and greet. Right. And so mine's not much different than yours, right? Yeah.

I think you, you go from the meet and greet to the application. Whereas I put this the why buy in there. I have the why buy as an actual step which gets skipped a lot. I feel like it's important to make it its own step because there's no difference between my Ford Focus and the guys down the street. Except for the mine's probably priced more. Right. So if I'm not educating the customer up front as to why they're buying from me, then I'm just a commodity. I'm just another dealership that they Stopped into get the price on that Ford Focus. So I try to help my salesman say, hey, you've got to get them bought in on. You get them bought in on the dealership and what makes us different? And then it's so much easier for them to give over their information. You know, when you start asking them for their phone number and Social Security and everything else, you've built that rapport. You know, they kind of know why they're there and they may be committed to you. Yeah.

We don't have that problem. We've been in business for almost 40 years now. And so we have special inventory people come to us because they. They know who are and they know what. They know our deal.

Right.

And so, you know, but it doesn't matter. Your. Your sales process today will probably be different than your path of the sale next year, which may be different the following year. So write it down, evolve it, then train on it. So, you know, I asked everybody out there, what does your current dealership training look like? Because that, that's super important. If it's nothing, then. Then write that down and say it's nothing. Well, you know, let's get started. Right. So when we did it, we noticed several things. We only were training once a week. There was no structure. There was no ultimate goal. I was lecturing, I wasn't training. I don't think the salespeople really like being there, and we need to be lectured. They were getting lectured. Right. And they really weren't involved and it wasn't fun. And I've been to your sales training. I know, I know it's a good bit more fun. So we just need to be more consistent. And so that's, you know, I decided.

To revamp and we drive this home all the time. Luke, sales telling is not sales training. Right. So many people and salesmen and managers get confused as to them getting up and ranting for 45 minutes about leads and closings and do this and do that, and this is what you should do. And this is what you should do here. That's a sales telling meeting. And if you want to have sales telling meetings, that's fine. But.

And there's a. There is a place for that. And so, yeah, there is a place for that, but it's not during sales training.

No, no, no. And what's the big distinction between telling and training? Right.

Yeah, you practice and it's the role play. Practice and role playing, that's what it's.

About, is the role play.

Yeah. And so like I said, many of you probably just need to get started. And so you need to do that. You need to organize your, your meetings, which is what we decided to do a little better. Identify where, where your staff needs the most help. And you only can do that if you have the, the path to the sale and also listening to their calls and listening to this to them speak to other customers. Right. And if you gotta decide on the time and place, one thing we changed was we changed to two days a week.

Okay.

Tuesday morning at 9:00 o' clock and Thursday morning at 9:00'.

Clock. Wow. Okay, those, and they're full 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour.

They're 30 minutes and 30 minutes. I start at 9:00 clock. They may be here before 9:00'.

Clock.

They may be sitting in my conference room at, at 8:50. Sometimes they are. I have work to do at 9 o'.

Clock.

I stop whatever I'm doing. I start and we go until 9:30. Not 9:31, 9:30. They are, they are told to leave and go down the hill, start working leads, and it's 30 minutes. And it's not their time. It's, it's my time. And I think if you ask salespeople to come in earlier, they're giving up their time. So that was the big distinction we made, was, okay, let's do it during regular business hours. Then we don't even have to, we have no pushback. You don't have to be here early. It's 9 o' clock. And you know what? They're here at 9 o'. Clock. There's never anybody late for a 9 o' clock meeting. How many people do you think were late to 8:30 meetings?

Yeah, well, that's a good point. I'd like to talk about that because mine is before we open. So what? So if your meetings at 9 o', clock, what happens if there's a customer sitting at your doorstep at 9 o' clock because they know you open at 9? Does that customer sit and wait for a half hour or does that salesman miss the training?

The sales manager takes that customer.

So your sales manager's not in these trainings?

No, he is. He's always in there. But if there's a customer that showed up, and I can tell you how many times this has happened since we started this. It's happened twice out of, out of 10, 10 meetings or 12 meetings so far it's only happened twice. So. And we knew that. We knew that Tuesday and Tuesdays and Thursdays, number one, we were never busy in the mornings. Typically And Thursdays we get busy in the afternoon. Tuesday is really our slowest day. We moved it up, we moved it off of Friday because Friday is our game day. We sell more cars on Friday than any other time. And we need to be focused on Friday. We need to be focused not on what we're learning, we need to be focused on, on getting leads and selling cars.

Yeah, I understand that. So if someone calls in, your, your front desk is just taking messages. No one's, that's it. You're not answering sales calls, you're not doing anything till 9:30. Okay, so my argument, my sales training happens at 9:00 clock on Fridays. We don't open till 10. So I expect my salespeople to be either here, present. We're mostly doing it by zoom now because both locations. So I typically have a sales Zoom meeting at 9 o'.

Clock.

My argument for that is I am doing this for the benefit of the salesman, right? And we try to help them understand this. Yes, this benefits the dealership and you probably have more to say about that, but this is for the benefit of the salesman. Now if they're not learning to train on their own, if they're not listening to sales books, if they're not reading books, if they're not going to training on their own, if they're not studying YouTube videos and stuff after hours and on their lunch break, I don't know what they're doing, right? Like I might as well replace them with a kiosk. But if they're not willing to sacrifice, quote unquote, an hour of their morning to be logged into a zoom and be ready and be present in front of the camera to learn how to sell better, to learn how to make more money, to learn, handle, hand, do their job better than I think they're in the wrong industry.

You know, I, I would love for every one of my sales people to be listening to podcasts, get pumped up and this. I don't think they're doing it. I think they depend on me. I don't know, I, I think that'd.

Be an argument to, to, to battle because yeah, man, if I just need a bunch of like minimum wage workers to take orders and write down sales receipts and sign documents, then that's probably what I should have. But if I've got sales professionals who are being paid pretty darn decent to sell cars, then they should be sales professionals. And I don't need a bunch of C and B players. I need A players that are here to have a career out of this not a job until they jump to something else. So that would be the perfect world. And that would be my argument. I'm not saying I'm there because that's been our biggest issue is when we're on zoom. Guess what I'm looking at the whole time? I'm looking at the freaking ceiling.

Yeah.

Why is your phone pointed at the ceiling? I don't know. Who am I talking to? What are you doing? So we've had a couple of come to Jesus's with our sales staff to say, hey, guys, I'm sacrificing my time to be here to teach you. You need to be in front of your camera, turned on, ready to rock and roll and learn. Because I'm not doing this for my own health.

And that's the reason, I mean, I really like in person. I'm one of those old dog. In person. Gotta happen.

Speaking of in person, Luke, good time to talk about buy here, Pay here, United coming up. If you haven't signed up, now is the time. It's not too late. It's getting there. But if you're in the buy here, pay here industry, you've got to be in Vegas coming up.

Yeah, it's in April. It's the, the week of the 25th in April. I actually last night booked my, my room at Bellagio, got the presidential suite, Jeff. And you know, it's, it's great. We're going to have a big time. But really, I did book last night and it was such a great, it's been such a great event for the last two years. We're going to be there every day, wrapping things up. You need to get there, you need to be there, meet us, talk to us, get our opinions good and bad on everything and, and just, you know, connect with other dealers around the country. You just never know when you're going to need a person in, in Seville in Wisconsin and you'll, you'll meet them at one of these things.

Yep. So speaking of, Luke, why. Why do you convince your sales staff or, or have you got them full buy in as to why they're doing it?

Yeah. So, you know, you don't do anything unless you know the why. And you've got to make sure the salespeople know the why for them. And, and this is the why. And you got to explain it to them. Nobody, number one, nobody likes to be uncomfortable when they're speaking to someone like, you know, so the comfort level that they're going to build by training and going to be huge. Jeff, Just think about when, you know, when you asked your wife out for the date for the first time. You know, you're big, lanky, goofy fella. You go up to Tanya, who's this beautiful woman, and you try to ask out on a date. I'm sure you were like, well, you couldn't get. You couldn't get the words out, could you?

In my defense, I had had a lot of training, so I was. I was. I was very confident. I was on my game. I had been doing weekly, if not daily, training on how to handle that situation, but it presented itself. So, yes, that is a perfect example. And that's what I tell my sales staff. Look, you guys need to memorize these scripts. You need to memorize what I'm saying to you. Not so that you can just regurgitate it word for word, but so that in the moment you can make it yours. And it's already programmed in your brain and you're not spending so much time thinking about what you're going to say. You're listening to the customer, and then you're adapting this script to lead them down the path to the next step.

And Joe Birdie, it's. I mean, and I keep saying Joe Birdie here, I know several y' all reached out and. And asked about the books and which ones to use, but he calls them back pocket questions, right? Back pocket either or back pocket yeses. And it just gets you comfortable. Then as soon as you're comfortable and you know those back pocket ones, you start to develop your own either or you start to develop your own automatic yes questions. So the comfort level goes way up, which allows you to get rapport with the customer and to build rapport with the customer and to get the things you really need. Like how much down do they have, how much, how much payment can they afford? Or do you want a car or truck? All these type things that come with this comfort level as it builds, you know. And what's funny is the one thing that, that most everybody wants, that has a job, is to make more money. That's a huge why that you have to explain to your salespeople. If you follow this training and you do what I ask you to do, you're going to sell more cars and you're going to make more money. You know, that's an easy sell, right?

I thought all you guys were on salary. Don't they all get paid the same regardless?

Yeah, they do, but they. To keep that nice salary that they have, they have to hit certain numbers.

Okay? So for Your guys, it's more. So it's not about making more money. It's about just not getting your head cut off.

It's. That's right. But you know what? As. As we. As we grow and we sell more cars and they can sell more cars, their salary will go up because it will go up proportionally and, you know, advancement. Not everybody wants to be a salesman for the rest of their life. Some people do want to be a salesman for the rest of their life. Some people may want to be a manager, and they may need to understand how to train other salespeople at your dealership, at another dealership, or somewhere else in. You know, one of my really good friends is the freaking national sales manager or was a national sales manager for Moen. I mean, he was a great salesman and rose up the range because he knew how to do it and he was managing thousands of people. I mean, that's, you know, that's pretty good advancement there. And it's to improve your skill. The last thing everybody wants to improve a skill. If you don't train, if you don't play golf, if you don't hit golf balls, you know, consistently, if you don't play pickleball consistently, you're never going to be any better. You're just going to be average and. Yeah, I don't want to be average.

It's all about the practicing. Again, it comes back to that. It's like the same thing with golfing, right? I go out on the course and I'm like, this is stupid. I shouldn't be out here. I should be at the driving range. I should be learning how to hit the ball better, not just out here chasing a ball all over God's green earth, right? Same thing. When I get my butt kicked in a pickleball match, it's like, dude, I've got to learn that shot. I've got to go drill this shot, because when it presents itself on the court, I am missing it. I'm not putting it away. I'm not closing whatever it is. So that's what this is about, is taking those reps so that when you're put in the game, right, and you can convince the salesman that that's why this is so important. You. You are going to have a shot at a sale today. And if you're not ready to take it, then you're going to fumble it, you're going to drop it, they're going to bail out. That could have closed. And that's really what's an interesting argument, is Some of the salesmen are like, oh, well, you know, we only have so many sales. We only have enough sales for me to sell 10amonth, blah, blah, blah. We just don't have better leads. And I say, wait, wait, wait. You're telling me that if my, if I was sitting in your seat and taking those leads that we wouldn't sell more than 10 cars a month? You think 10 is the way it is? Hell no. Like, if I was in that seat, we would be selling 20 to 30amonth. Right?

Yeah.

So, yes, talent and skill and experience does matter. It's not just happenstance of whatever the crap person rolled in with a mattress on their back and laid down on your showroom floor. Right?

Yeah, no, it's, it's, that's true. I mean, improving the skill is going to sell more cars. You know, you got to make these, these meetings fun, Jeff. And interesting.

Let's talk about the meeting structure. What is your sales meeting look like in its structure?

So the structure is we, we recap the last meeting. We just go over, you know, whatever we did last meeting, we go over it and we, we kind of do a quick role play on what we did last week or the last meeting. Then we outline what today's training is going to be about. And so let's just say we're gonna, we're gonna go over the greeting because we hadn't discuss the greeting in a while. We were on close for a couple of weeks. And now we're going to recap the close. We're going to talk about the greeting again. We're going to make sure everybody knows it, we're going to go around, we're going to discuss it, we're going to practice it. And, and so that's step three. Then I'm going to assign them some homework on, on the greeting. You know, incorporate the greeting in this way or incorporate it this way. What happens if a customer says this? So we're going to go over that homework, get them to write out two or three different scenarios, and then we're going to repeat what we covered again. We're going to repeat the greeting again, and everybody's going to be happy and we're going to go and seize the day, right? Yeah.

I think having that repeating of what you did last week or last training is so important because that's where that retention comes in. Right. If you're just going like three or four months before you get back to the meet and greet or before you get back to the, you know, overcoming objections, they Lose it. Right. They don't. They're not just going to retain it in the first 30 minutes. And that's something we did recently. I had done some training on our CPI program. Right. We just switched over to Buckeye. And I'm trying to get everybody just assume that their insurance is our CPI program. Don't even ask them for full coverage. Don't even ask them for their deductible or who they use. Just assume cpi. And I went back through and I was like, oh, you know, tell me how you do this. I'm like, you guys don't understand what it is like I told you, but I can't expect you just to know it the first time. Like, how long did it take me to wrap my brain around what CPI was? Right, yeah.

So that's called the. Yep, that's called the assumptive close, Jeff. And assumptive close is definitely something you need to train on. You know, you close on, you close on something small, you know, and it leads to the big sale. And CPI is a great, a great product. You know, we talked about it. You know, Buckeye getting that CPI program going. Another training I have every week is training with my insurance girls. We go over things, we work on how we're presenting cpi. We talk about the objection she's had, but that's what we have to do. We also do the same thing with our selling your service contracts, our ancillary products. It's 100% of the product, 100% of the time we train on that. We want these Buckeye products in their face every time because it makes us more money in the long run. You know, reinsurance is. And I'm going to, I'm going to not pick on one of our listeners, but it was interesting. We got a question the other day, Jeff. I'm not sure if you saw it. I answered it, but the guy was talking about he, he didn't like the vehicle service contract that, that he was selling to his reinsurance company. And he went back to selling an old product from, from another warranty company. And I thought about that for a second. I said, maybe, maybe people out there don't understand this. So let's go down this rabbit hole real quick. That product that you're selling through your reinsurance company is your product. You can design it and make it exactly like that product your salespeople have been selling, or you can make it better than that product you've been selling or less than that product you've been selling. So remember, reinsurance through Buckeye allows you to sell your product. It's your product and make sure you remember that. And, and honestly, if you've got salespeople that don't want to sell that product because they've sold, you know, another warranty company forever, I would get rid of that salesperson.

Yeah.

Or figure out why that salesperson only wants to sell that. Because it's very possible somebody might be giving them some back end money.

Yeah. I took all the, all the pamphlets, all the paraphernalia from any other warranty company and just threw it in the trash. Right. There is not an option outside of the couple, few, few little cars that we sell that are exotics or if I'm trying to put an aftermarket on a Tesla or something like, it's all my products now. And that's, that's a good thing to train on. Right. We talked about the cpi. We talked about the service contract. Just assuming a service contract or an upgrade on every car. What are some of the other things that dealers are listening? You could easily, just because, you know, I talked about it with my sales manager once. It's like, we just need a calendar. Let's just take our whole sales process.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Let's break it down into little subsections and let's just put it on a calendar. Because instead of you just logging in at 8:30 and being like, okay, what are we going to talk about today? There are some stuff that present themselves. If you look inside your CRM, you're like, oh crap, how is this? Or I overheard a phone call the other day and I'm like, whoa, dear. Okay, we need to retrain on phone calls. Yeah, those things happen. But to have a set schedule is so useful because then you as the trainer are thinking about that the day before or the morning of and saying, oh yeah, here's what I really want to do. Because yeah, I'm not doing it daily and there's times I present a topic and I'm like, oh yeah, I did that wrong. Like that role play. I said that wrong. I'm out of practice.

That calendar, setting up the calendar. You know, let's, let's start with the 90 day calendar of, of getting training on the board and topics for those trainings. Go slow with those trainings as well. Jeff. If you think you need a week on a subject, you probably need two weeks on a subject. Okay. Don't, don't bypass it. Make sure that you get it nailed down before you head to the next topic. But what helps is if you have that calendar set up. It gets you focused on what you should be making sure you know how to say to your training staff, to your staff so that you train them properly. And it takes that pressure off of you. If you've got that calendar lined up, you're good to go. You know, it's just invaluable to have a training calendar do that. But the things, the easy things, the first thing everybody out there needs to train on is the greeting. Yeah, I mean, that's the first thing you need to train on. The greeting. On the floor, also on the phone. They're two different things. Role play it, stay on it, write it down. You should have a greeting that every salesperson says every time they walk up to a customer. And if they don't say it, then you have a problem.

And I want to point this out real quick, Luke, when you say that again, the role playing word, role play should be 75% of your time from the time you start your meeting to the time you end your meeting. Role play should be 75 or more of the actual time spent. And what that looks like for me is I say, hey, guys, here's what we're going to talk about. Here's why we're going to talk about it. Here's how to do it. I am the salesman. You are the customer. Ring, ring. Hey, this is Jeff at Four Seasons. And I literally go through it word for word how I want them to say it. And then I say, okay, guys, what did I do good? What could I have done better? Always ask that phrase.

Yeah. And each got to make sure. But then you got to make sure.

They'Re doing it right. Right. But after each exchange, it's, what did I do good? What could I do better? And the salesman then has to process in their brain, okay, I really like that Jeff said this. He said this. Oh, this could be better. Okay. Then we go around the circle, and I say, okay, Daisy, your turn. You are the customer. You are the salesman, and Marissa is the customer. And do what I did last week. I gave her the example. She said it completely off track, went completely rogue. And I was like, you. You didn't listen to what I did. You are completely not even close to what I told you to say. Let's try it again. And so then the second time around, she like, oh. And she said it perfectly and so much better. And so, yes, you hold them accountable. What did you do good? What could she do better? Right? And I think that's a good way to just re. Ingrain the good parts of that role play is, is asking that question for sure. But, you know, followed by the greeting, what else are you typically training on?

Easy, easy. Either or questions. Right. That's something I would get everybody out there to do. And. And it's super simple, Jeff. So when somebody comes on our lot and the first question everybody probably gets, if you're a buyer pay your store, is, what's the down payment? And so it's super, super easy. We engage with them. Know that we actually don't have set down payments because that's not. That's not how we determine whether you're going to buy a car from us. But speaking of down payment, Jeff, are you closer to $1500 down or 30 $500 down?

I'm closer to like 500.

500. You know what? We could very well get you approved with 500 down. So, you know, with 500 down, you're looking at a very expensive car payment. Are you close to 600 or 700amonth in car payment?

I'd like to be like 250.

250, that's right. So. So we're going to have to up that down payment to get you close to 250. I'm sure you're not good with 250. I'm sure you could probably pay up to 500. Right.

Well, I was talking like 250 like a month. Is that possible?

So this is the questions we get. This is why we have to train.

And heaven forbid, what if you just started put that person in that Ford Focus and you sent them on a test drive? How often do we see our salesman do that? It's like, wait a minute, you didn't. You didn't know he only had 500 down, and you didn't know he could only afford 250 payment, yet you put him in our 2022 Ford Focus. What are you doing?

Yeah, that's. I love that. That's a good way to. That's a good way not to have a job at Goblin Motors. Yeah, yeah. You don't. You don't get a test drive until you're 100 approved.

Yeah. Anyway, so I love that the, the addressing the down payment on the lot is a really, really big one. The other one is like, we just said that can I drive that car Question. And, and you don't know. Okay, is this person about here, pay here customer for me? Are they subprime or do they have, you know, a bunch of $100 bills in their pocket? I don't know. What's going on? What do I do when they say, hey, I'd really like to check out that Ford Focus? Could I drive it?

Well, are you looking to finance today or are you looking to pay cash?

Well, I mean, I just depends. I don't know if I like the car.

Yeah, we get that. We understand that, but at Goblin Motors, this is our process. Would you like me to lead you down the approval process or you are. Are you looking to pay cash?

Yeah, I'm not worried about getting approved.

Okay, that's great. So let's walk you through the approval process. You'd like to come inside. And that's. And that's what we do. We don't let somebody test drive it' you know, it. Our time's valuable. And you need to teach your salespeople that their time's valuable. They've got to get these leads done. If you train properly, they will understand the value of their time and not to be drug around, you know, by bus customers on the lot. Right?

Yes. And I always battle the asking the find out questions to know what you're doing with this customer. And a. Not wasting your time, but also not pre approving. Right? We have.

Oh, yeah, you don't do that grooming.

People when they judge them based on what they walked in or. Well, he said he only had 500 down. Well, you didn't ask him about a trade in. You didn't ask him about his tax return. You didn't ask him about if he was a 700.

He was a 700 credit score too.

You didn't ask like you didn't ask these other questions. So you broomed the guy. Not going through the whole process, you know. Yes. I don't want you to spend 45 minutes trying to gather all this guy's pay stubs when you found out that he's been on his job six months and he just moved here from, you know, freaking Nebraska. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like so there's that fine balance. So in closing, Luke, I think these things apply to a lot of different employees. Right. And we talked about sales staff. Obviously, this could be instituted with all your employees in all positions do this with detail. You can do this with your mechanics. You can do this with your lot. Porter, you can do this with your receptionist and your client clerical work. Now, you can do this with your collection staff, which is probably for those in Buy Here Pay here, the next most important training you can do. Because I guarantee you, if you got on the phones with your collector and listen to their calls, they're probably saying some stuff that you don't want them saying or they could say better in order to get the money.

Yeah. And one thing, you know, that's helped us is Blitzpay when it comes to, to collecting better. And we had to train on that, Jeff. And we're still training how to use Blitzpay better to make our collection staff less on the phone, which is, you know, is a big deal. They can spend more time working the customers that are, that are harder to collect. Blitzpay makes it easy for us to collect those, those, those easy payments.

Right. And that's the beauty of the automated texting. Right. Is it's like that's going to say the right thing at the right time every single time. Right. Exactly how I want it said. So that automated bulk texting, black testing, you know, makes it so much, so much easier. Let's. A couple of little tools that I use for training, and I think you use similar, and I mentioned it before, but to reinforce this in between your training meetings, we have a little volleyball. And you know how volleyballs have those little panels on each side? There's like, I don't know, 16 or 18 panels or something. We've written objections on each one of those panels. So there's a bunch of them and we, we go through the office and we throw it at a salesman and wherever their right thumb lands, they have to read that objection. Right.

Oh, you can do it.

What's, what's the most, what's the least down payment I can get away with? Oh, let me go talk to my wife. Oh, I need to sleep on it. Oh, can you do it better on the price? And, and we do those impromptu. I don't know what I'm going to get hit with, but I need to be ready with a pre programmed response to any of these objections. Right.

That makes it fun. That gives those back pocket responses out so they're actually using them. You can do that with a football, you can do it with a beach ball. You can do it with all these things. So do it. It's not that hard, right? Yeah.

Have you ever, have you ever called your dealership from a unknown phone number?

I. I have not.

Yeah, I mean, that's kind of fun, right?

Yeah.

Grab your wife's cell phone or your kid's cell phone or your buddies or whoever you're with and just call the dealership and act like a buyer. You know, what's the chance they're going to recognize your voice?

I think you. Yeah, I think you did that in an episode way back with Maggie. I think you had Maggie call the dealership here and you'll be surprised, but most of us have have call recording. That's a tool you can use for this. And you can take that call recording, play it during a sales meeting and train on it. And don't be negative. Say, you know what this is? This is a negative free zone. When we train, this is how we are going to get better. We're going to take one from the way a sales manager handled a bad call, we're going to take one from a salesperson and we're just gonna get better at it. That's what we're here for.

Absolutely. Cool, guys. I hope you all take something away from this. Luke, I'm glad you went to training the trainer and now you train the trainer. Training the training trainers.

I love it.

Okay, talk to you next week.

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