#9 - Luke's NADA notes - Sales process of today

Hello and welcome to this week's installment of the Independent Dealer podcast here with Luke and Jeff. And today is going to be our second episode in the NADA notes that Luke took when he was out there in San Francisco.

Yes, sir.

Awesome. And what are we talking about today?

Today is about the sales process. Let's make sure that our sales process is moving in the right direction. Make sure we're not antiquated, make sure we're not just all over the board. We need to be consistent, we need to be present. We need to be doing what we do today, not what we used to do.

Alright, this is gonna be a good one. Everyone. Stay tuned. All right, welcome to the Independent Dealer podcast, the podcast for auto dealers to learn and grow together. Here are your hosts, Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson. All right, and this is section number two of our three episode series of Luke's Notes from the NADA Convention 2019. Luke, last week, real quick, what did we talk about last week?

We just talked about advertising and the things you can do with the information and the data you already have. And don't go crazy. Mind the right place, do the right things, engage your customer. We just went over the things that are kind of leading to the new aspect of advertising, but that are still traditional.

Okay. And that is going to lead us into this week. We are going to talk about sales and the sales process, right?

Yes, sir.

Great. Now let's jump right into it. What were your main takeaways? What do we need to know about the sales process as it exists in 2019?

What's so funny about today's sales process is that everybody is so concerned about this new technology and new technology, new technology. But what we keep forgetting is that customers still need the personal touch and customers still need, need customer service probably now more than ever. And the reason that is is cause a customer can totally destroy you online if you don't give them that personality, if you don't give them that love. So the biggest takeaway and what everybody's biggest takeaway should be is customers still need customer service no matter what technology you may be needing or using.

Yeah. Which is funny. It's the same technology we're able to use to improve the customer experience. They can actually use the same, same technology to tear us down as a business. That's what's really interesting for sure.

And that's customers are smarter now than ever. There's no question about it. And they know a lot of times what a dealership pays for a car. And so they're using that technology to do all this research. And at the same time, they're using that technology to gauge if they want to buy from you before they ever get there. And so if you go to. If you see a great price on a car, right. And you go on. If you go to Google and you start looking and say, oh, well, let's see what their reviews are like. And if your views are junk and the price is great, the chances are that customer is probably not gonna show up at your lot. Right. So the sales process has got to match what you're trying to do online.

Yeah, I mean, just. That takes me in so many different directions, and I'm gonna try to keep this thing focused on your notes. But I mean, the reviews, the online review thing is definitely. I mean, it's. It's crucial, right? I mean, whether you respond, whether you don't respond, whether you're getting, you know, purposefully harvesting good reviews or, I mean, man, where does that start and stop? You know, you've got. You've got review blackmail. We've had that before, you know, geez, yeah, it's.

It's. It's a whole different wormhole, but it's a wormhole that you got to go down and you got to. You've got to have those reviews. If you don't, you're not going to. You're not going to win. But your sales process has got to match those reviews. So you'll see some dealers out there just buying a bunch of reviews, and you can tell they're bought when the real customers get on there. They get one star. So you do have an issue, but that is a different topic for a different time. For sure.

For sure. Okay, so falling back in love with customer service, how do we do that? Give us number two.

So the one thing is, you've got to train your staff. So customer service, number one, you got to hire for customer service. You know, that's number one. Make sure that the person you're hiring is friendly. They're not friendly. Don't hire them. That's pretty simple, right?

I laugh at that because I literally had that conversation last night with my sales manager that sometimes people get burnt out.

Yeah, you can train a lot of things, but training a good personality, probably not going to happen, right?

Yep. And you look at the first impression of this person, and you look and you say, hey, they were pretty good in the interview, but, you know, yeah, I see that little thread in them. And then after a month or two months or three months, that little thread that you Saw as an attitude or a sideways glare or develops into something bigger. Right?

Sure. Yeah. And that's number one. You know, number two, though, that we talked about. You know, you go to a lot of these training seminars, and they're going to teach you. Script, script, script.

Right.

Joe Verde. It's all about the script, all about this. Well, typically, a customer has shopped different places, right? Or they've called different places, and they are getting that same script. A lot of times, what I encourage you to work on training your sales staff with are prompts. And you say, what's the difference between a prompt and a script? Well, you can have a script if a customer asks you what the down payment is. Right. Or you could have a prompt. A customer says, hey, what's your down payment? And that could lead you into an explanation of why down payments are what. But don't just be a robot robot. Your. Your sales staff need to think on their feet. They need to be personable. They don't need to be scripted. So there's a fine line there. You. You need to know what. What your sales staff are saying. They need to be trained on that, but they don't need to regurgitate the same thing over and over and over again.

Make sure that they know your policies, they know how you want it done within the framework, but not necessarily word for word.

Exactly. Be friendly. Talk the way your customer is talking to you. I mean, to a point, but, you know, make them seem like you. You're one of them, which most of us are one of them. So we're all customers at some time. So you need to be customer, not salesperson to customer.

Okay? Use prompts, not scripts. Okay? What else?

Okay, email is out, guys. And if you don't. If you don't understand that, a lot of you do. A lot of you get those free car gurus emails, right? And you respond to them like crazy, and you get nothing in return, right? Well, there's a reason most people don't look at their email, because we get way too many of them. Okay, so if I tell you emails out, so what's in?

Right, yeah, what's in. Tell us.

So, pretty simple. Text messaging is number one. Now, there are some ways to go about text messaging properly, so make sure you do that. Also, Facebook messaging is popular, right? So make sure that if you're engaged with that customer online through your. Through your dealer website or through your dealer Facebook page, be very prompt on responding to that messenger. Even Google has a text service. I'm not sure if any of y' all are using that, but you can turn it on on your Google my business page so that a customer can text your Google page, essentially. And Google helps facilitate that text back and forth. So, you know, emails are out, phone calls have been out. Don't get me wrong, phone calls are still very important. But if you check your numbers, I promise you that side of phone calls coming in dealerships, a lot lower than it used to be.

So true. So you need to communicate with the customer the way they want to communicate, not what's easy for you. Not because you can blast out 2,000 emails on a Friday afternoon all at once, or because you're used to just dialing for dollars. You're communicating the way your customer wants to communicate.

For sure. For sure. And that's another thing. Text messaging is still really a really sticky subject that everybody needs to be aware that you don't want to overuse. So we don't want text messaging to be the current email. So make sure if you've got those text blasts going out, don't overuse that because a customer will drop you pretty quickly that way.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. We all. We've all been there, right? We somehow got our phone number on a. Some sort of a marketing campaign for something and. Jeez Louise. So when you said the Google listing, the My business, I know that's a topic that's come up. I've seen in a couple different places especially that's the specific. The easiest one is your app on your phone, right? My Google or my business?

It's Google My business, I think.

Okay, let me see if I think I downloaded one. Yeah, it's called My business by Google. And that is what everyone needs to have on their phone. They need to make sure they have their listing. They own it. They can post, they can check their. Yeah, they can check their reviews. Look, you got a post there and you got 21k. Oh, man, you got me beat big time. I'm only. What do I got, 10 there?

Yeah, yeah.

And I spend a decent dollar on Google AdWords and YouTube pre roll and things like that. So I got to get that up.

I'm probably a little bigger market than you are. But, you know, the thing is we use. We use Google My business. We use the Google my business just as we use Facebook and probably. And so we get a lot of leads that way just because we interact that way. But make sure you are interacting the way your consumer is interacting.

And I don't want to go down this rabbit hole too far, but that Makes me think, man, look at your Google Analytics. Look at your website analytics. Where are these people coming from to your website? And we know that still the majority of our traffic is from Google Search. You know, we popped up in a search, so I'm getting some over from Facebook and Instagram and some of my referral sites. But, like, man, that's still that bulk of that. So why not have your Google listing optimized?

And we can even dial it down even further on that. Jeff, not only are they coming to you predominantly via Google, they're coming. They're coming to your more prominently from their iPhone, from their Droid or whatever. They are doing it mobile. It's a mobile search. It's not a desktop search.

So I think we're all like 8020 these days, right?

Is that pretty much the 8020 across the board? So you need to make sure that not only your website's optimized, but your Google my business page is optimized to interact with that customer very easily.

I think I said this last time or previous one is whenever I get on my website to look at what's going on, I'm doing it on my dang laptop. It doesn't even dawn on me to think, Jeff. Well, you're checking for bugs, but you're checking on your laptop. Of course, all the links work and the layouts look fine. And this. That do it on your phone like all your customers are doing.

Yeah, but, Jeff, you and I are old man. That's what happens. We get on the desktop. Right.

Know, but the funny thing is, I do everything else on my phone. I look up other businesses on my phone, but for some reason, I'm not looking at my own business on my phone.

Yeah. And, you know. Yeah. I think you and I share the same website platform, and it's really good. And they are. They're at the forefront of our. Our phone works probably better than our desktop a lot of times. So just make sure you're doing that.

Mm. Okay. Communicate how they want to communicate. Number three. Number four, what are we communicating?

That's number one. Everybody wants to. Wants to know our why Buy. Right. Why buy from us? You know, years ago, there was a big push to have the why Buy? Book in your showroom. Right. When a customer walked in, you showed them that book, and then it kind of went to, well, you showed them via laptop so they could hold it and they could watch your story. But today, we're pushing that story out there. Right. Look at some things we're doing right now. Our why buy story is our Facebook ad right now. It's going out there, it's attracting people to us and it's a, it's a 15 or a 30 second pre roll into why buy from us? You can hire a production company to do that as well. But more importantly, your sales staff has. You're, I mean, if you, if you're collecting like we do as well, if you buy, your payer, your sales staff, your collection staff, everybody, your service department needs know why that customer buys from us and why they should buy from us. So if you don't have a 15 second nailed down, why buy? You need to do it. And it's not just because we're the oldest in the market. We have the biggest inventory, we have the lowest prices. Everybody does that. You can, you can go to every, you know, every new car store in town. That's what they're going to tell you. So the independent has to be more specific. You may be a family owned business, but why does that matter? You know, you know, they're there in Utah. You know, you could be, you could be the oldest family owned company there. But you know, what makes you different? You know, our values are this, we are, you know, veteran owned or whatever that might be. You, you gotta have a connection that really, that really brings that customer and really brings knowledge that that customer knows why they should buy from you and why they should trust you.

Right, right. And along those lines, I mean, this has been done forever. But again, you are the brand, you know, and they want to know who you are. Literally, you know, not your dealership name or this, but a lot of that comes down to getting yourself out there and you getting your salesman out there and having them in front of the camera or whatever it is to personalize them to your customers 100%.

Yep.

So when you get that story out there, you get them into your shop. Now what?

That online Persona better match your in store experience. If it does not match your in store experience, you've got a disconnect. And that customer is going to walk in and they're going to say, hold on, am I at the right spot? Because this really doesn't make sense. I came here because they are a buy here, pay your store. And I get here and they tell me, well yeah, we do buy here, pay here, but that's really not what we do, you know, so. Or you know, they come in because they think that they can get anybody financed. And next thing you know, I'm here for five minutes and they're telling me I can't get you financed. So, you know, or we have the best customer service in the world, and you walk into dealership, nobody greets you, nobody wants to talk to you, and you're left there going, oh, I've already made a bad mistake. I need to go somewhere else.

Yep. I think inconsistencies and, you know, false. Say, false advertising. But that's probably the biggest thing that we as consumers cannot forgive of a company. You know, mistakes, things we've done. I get it. They apologize. But when you put out there that you're one thing and they check under the hood and you're something else, that's where you draw the line. That's where you, like, there's no integrity in the company. And on the reverse of that, I think that as car dealers, we have a job to put out who we are to the public. On the good side of it, because you have a lot of customers that come in there, and they love dealing with Luke, and they love Luke's personality, love him and his family and his wife and his kids. He sold them five cars. But the general public doesn't know that that's who Luke is, because Luke's not putting himself out there. He's not putting the warm, fuzzy, the friendliness, the humor, the good times of his dealership aren't making it out to the general public. It's only known within their little circle of people that have bought from them. So. So at the same time as you're, you know, you're shining that light out as well, you got to get your. Your personality out there for sure.

And that. That's hard for some of us. You know, I don't. I'm not a big Facebook user. I'm probably more of a Facebook looker, not a user. And, you know, someone like Jack Carter, who we're going to be talking to here soon, you know, that's. He. He talked about that the other night in the. You know, that little video he put out is that it's about, you know, his business Persona is about he and his family. I'd be willing to bet you, you walk on the lot tomorrow there in Georgia to see Jack Carter. I'd be willing to bet you you'll see Jack Carter. You'll probably see his wife at some point, or you'll see people you've seen on his Facebook. So I promise you he's got a connection there.

Yep, absolutely. And you see him and you see those interactions, and it personalizes them to you. It endears you to that dealership and that's what we've got to do, you know, and flip the stereotype. The used car dealers are all horrible, take advantage of you, spitting, cussing, swearing. You're gonna walk into some dingy trailer with tore up carpet and a dog jumping on top of you. You know what I'm saying? Turn that stereotype around for sure. Okay, and then what? What do we got after that?

You know, the last thing of a sales process that I think really needs to be taken to heart for everybody, because everybody's been here before. You need to give that customer three options always. And you may say, well, the customer can't have three options. Well, I guarantee you, anytime you give a customer anything, you can provide three options for them. It might be three cars that that customer qualifies for. Right? It might be three payment arrangements that customer qualifies for. It might be three down payment options that customer qualifies for. So there's always options. But you can't just look at a customer and say, customer, this is it. We're a one price store. You're gonna get this price and that's it. Well, if you are a one price store, you, you may have to stick to that price, but you can give them options within the deal to make it a little better. So don't scare away customers saying, this is the way it is. Buy this, leave. Because a lot of times in today's marketplace, the customer will leave because there's a ton of choices out there. So be careful of pigeonholing a customer. Give them options. Let them make the best choice for them, not the best choice for your dealership.

And you know, in my brain I think, well, it doesn't mean that those three options don't have to be the best choice for the dealership and for them. You know, I don't have to give them a choice between, you know, this pile of crap and this brand new car. I can give them a choice between, you know, these three. Hey, and that brand new car works for you. And this is your option to get into that. You know, here's what you're gonna need for the bank to be okay with that. So, yeah, you can give them those options. And I think obviously giving them a set amount of options is probably giving them better than none or all, you know what I'm saying? Like, if we're gonna find a happy medium, let's find that and let's narrow that thing down because we've all had. And again, I had this conversation with my sales guy the other day. There's a lot of shopping going on, you know, and that flies in the face of, you know, this statistic that you quoted about. People are only visiting about one and a half dealerships before they buy. But everyone, you know, the word is out that you can get financed. And they're doing crazy loans for people. Like, I think our customers know that, that if you're not going to give them what they want or what they think they want, they're going to go down the dealership because they're under the impression that that dealership will. Is that.

Yeah. And sure. You also need to educate the customer within those options. You know, talking about, yeah, I can go down the street and buy this car for that because I've seen it on tv. Right, well, you know, educate that customer on what they probably saw. Sometimes a customer doesn't understand that they saw a lease payment of $99 a month with $4,500 now with qualifying credit scores. So they may not have seen all that. But what you can do is say, you know, I understand customer that. That you saw that on tv, but this is. This is the real deal on something like that, you know, we're looking at your credit score. We can get you financed. These are the options we can give you. Now, they may not match what you saw on tv, but that what you saw on TV is one option that you must qualify within this parameter and you must have this much down to get that type of payment. And I'm not necessarily sure you're going to see that when you get to the store.

Yeah, I think I get the defeatist mentality that I want to be the second place a customer shops. You know, I think that mentally that I want them to go to my competitors and get beat down and then come to me and I can be the good guy, because when they come to me first and I've got to be the one to bring down their expectations, they go to the next guy and they're like, oh, okay, well, I get it. Two dealerships told me that this is the range I need to be in, so I'll just stay here and buy this one, you know. But I think we can do that in one visit, right?

Yeah, you know, it's. It happens to us a lot, unfortunately, and customers shop us first a lot of times because we're one of the oldest in the market and we advertise very efficiently, and we're not great at handling that first visit as we're not as good as we should be. I should say, once we bring that customer down to earth. Customers don't like to be brought down to earth. Sometime we are within our sales process working on giving them that option and making them feel better. And we have, you know, seen a little bit of an uptick on those customers shopping us first going away and then coming back. So we're tracking it and we're seeing it so true.

You got to keep, if you're going to bring them down to earth, you've got to do it in a way that they're comfortable coming back to you when they've gone out and realized that you were their best option. And again, did you sell them on your program and your dealership first before you had to look at cars and get them qualified and let them know they don't get approved for the 2015, but they got approved for the 2015, you know, so if you go through that process. Correct. And you've sold value in your dealership, then even if they do walk, you're still going to be their best friend. And where they come back to you in theory. Correct.

It's all the why by. If you explained your why by. Right. And your dealership matched your online presence and they felt comfortable in the chances of them walking away the first time and coming back is going to be pretty high. Yeah.

So man, I just seriously talking to you, it's amazing how each one of these six points, literally five out of the six, I had the exact issue this week, you know, that should be addressed. And just to let's wrap those up in summary again, number one, your notes.

Number one is fall back in love with your customer. That's the way I describe it. Customer service, so important.

Okay.

Number two is let's get off of the script. Script, script. And let's start prompting our salespeople on what to say when certain questions are asked. Let them feel more genuine in their explanation to the customer. Number three, communicate the way the customer wants to communicate. Email is out, guys. Don't keep sending that. Email, email, email. It's probably not working. Number four, your why buy needs to be specific, it needs to be concise and it really needs to convey your process. Number five is make your in store experience better and make sure it matches your online presence or your TV ad or your radio ad or your flyer. Make sure they all match together. Okay. And number six, what we just talked about is the power of three. Give your customers three options. Always.

Excellent. Excellent. And speaking of the power of three, Luke's third installment of this three part series from his nada conference notes are going to be the foundation of the sales process and the customer service experience. We're going to talk about employees and pay plans. Correct.

Pay plans are huge. And it can be the difference in hiring a good customer. I mean, hiring a good employee or not hiring that employee or keeping a solid salesperson and not keeping one. So stay tuned. It's gonna be awesome.

All right, we'll talk to you guys next week.

See you.