Automotive News Canada - September 2020 - 10

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Create Daily Sales Momentum with the Appointment Culture

President & CEO, Absolute Results

When your Sales Team has Momentum,
the whole dealership comes alive with
activity-the buzzing of customers, test
drives, and deals-but if Momentum
starts to falter, and the train slows down
or even stops, it take huge amounts of
energy to turn those rusty wheels and get
the Sales Team moving again.

Week #2 is Set-Up Week, with new
incentive programs now fully integrated
and inventory having been reviewed and,
potentially, repriced. New marketing
campaigns have launched, and the Sales
Team has now recovered from the previous month. This is often the best week for
training our staff. Unfortunately, by the
time this week is over, half of the month
has passed, and the Sales Team is usually
lucky to be 25 or 30 per cent of the way
towards their monthly sales goal.
Week #3 is Bell-to-Bell Week, during
which we push our Sales Teams physically. Sale events are typically scheduled this
week, in an attempt to catch up to our
monthly target and hit 50 per cent of our
sales target in one week. Staff are encouraged to work bell to bell and the pressure
on them to sell ramps up in intensity.
Week #4 is Jamming-for-Deals Week, a
time when we push our team mentally

Dealers have structured everything from
advertising budgets to staff scheduling
to accommodate and capitalize on this
fast-paced rhythm. The more intense
the pressure at the end of the month,
the more dealers are tempted to spend
on marketing that only conditions next

Traditionally, Sales Momentum came
from the Market. As buyers responded to
OEM and dealer advertising, dealership
phones would ring, showrooms would fill
up, and computers would chime as leads
were generated.
THE PROBLEM WITH MARKET
MOMENTUM IS THAT IT'S REACTIVE, EXPENSIVE, AND UNPREDICTABLE. It's reactive, because it forces
us to wait for customers to come to us,
fueling the old-school "come to work
to wait" culture. It's expensive, because
when we don't advertise, customers don't
respond. It's unpredictable, because even
the best advertising campaigns can fall
flat, and factors outside of our control like

APPOINTMENT
MOMENTUM
m
nt

ts
en

01
$

SO
LD

03
Mo

Activity

The last week of every month we jam so
hard to hit sales targets that Week #1 of
the following month becomes CleanUp Week. We process all the deals we
pushed through finance last month. Sales
Teams take a breather from the end of last
month's pressure, marketing analyzes and
adjusts to new Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) programs, and accounting closes out last month's business and
gathers data for the financial statement.

in a fight to close out the month and hit
sales targets. OEMs call dealers for sales
updates daily, and typically 50 per cent
of our monthly sales are registered in
this week. Often, our management team
also needs to decide whether to push
even harder for volume or to focus on
maximizing gross profit, moving some
lower-profit business to the following
month.

es
al

Yet every month, that's what happens.
EVERY 30 DAYS WE DO A
COMPLETE FINANCIAL YEAR
END, AND THEN WE START OVER.
Why? Very simply put, the retail auto
industry operates in a 30-day year. As a
result, our dealerships have a very unique
rhythm. Let's see if this sounds familiar.

Insights & Selling
Strategies

By JEFF WILLIAMS

SALES LEADERSHIP

Daily A
pp

Momentum
builds like a
freight train
thundering down
the tracks.

m e ntu m

month's customers to wait until the end of
that month to buy. Virtually every dealer
I know has a love-hate relationship with
this rhythm. They love the rush and the
challenge of winning again and again, but
they know that the stress and pressure
cause mistakes to be made, customer
service to suffer, and the frequent loss of
talented staff to other industries.
SO HOW DOES OUR SALES TEAM
CREATE AND MAINTAIN SALES
MOMENTUM, when we are forced to
operate in a fast paced and start / stop
rhythm like this? How do we get Sales
Momentum early in the month?

sports games, economic news, and even
the weather can affect showroom traffic.
THERE IS ANOTHER WAY TO
GENERATE SALES MOMENTUM:
DAILY APPOINTMENTS. Every day a
Sales Team comes to work with appointments is a day that dealers know they'll
sell cars. The more daily appointments the dealership has, the more
cars they'll sell.
Appointments Create Sales Activity. Sales Activity Creates Momentum. Momentum Creates Deals.
One successful dealer hit the nail

on the head when he once said, "Every
day that your Sales Team shows up to
work without appointments, they show
up unemployed."
Every dealer has over a dozen sources
of Daily Appointments: digital leads,
sales calls, service customers, be-backs,
finance renewals, etc., but it's not easy
to create, let alone sustain, the Appointment Culture. It requires the Sales Team
to shift from their reactive mindset and
behaviour, to a proactive mindset and
behaviour. This shift begins with the Sales
Management Team redirecting the Sales
Team's focus to creating Daily Appointments.
HERE'S A SIMPLE WEEKLY
STRATEGY FOR APPOINTMENT
MOMENTUM that I shared last month
in Europe with a large group of dealers,
who are working towards shifting their
entire retail operations to the Appointment Culture.
Week #1, let's not just clean up from last
month, and have Save-a-Deal meetings.
Let's have Save-an-Appointment meetings as we re-evaluate every one of last
month's leads. We will use the lens of this
new month's programs, inventory, and
market demand, and reach out with a
"What's Changed Conversation" and offer
an Appointment where they come to us,
or we offer to go to them.
Week #2, let's apply this "What's Changed
Conversation" to a group of clients from
our portfolio driving three-to-five-yearold cars, and rally our Sales Teams to
reach out daily to 25 portfolio customers and book Private Appointments for
them to come in and review their driving
options this week.
Week #3, let's reach out to each of last
month's service customers, who were
either in our dealerships for the first time
or who spent over $500, offering them
personal invitations to our Sales Event,
possibly adding the incentive of a Serviceto-Sales credit.
Week #4, let's review every opportunity
created this month in our Customer
Relationship Management portfolio
(CRM). To prevent missing customers in
the whirlwind of closing out our financial
year end, let's make 10 extra calls daily
to unsold prospects and to customers we
were unable to connect with earlier this
month.
Coming to work every day with a focus
on Making Appointments, Preparing for
Appointments, and Selling Appointments
will help your Sales Team generate Proactive Sales Activity every day and will keep
that freight train of Sales Momentum
moving steadily down the tracks.
Download
the free
e-book
now!

Automotive News Canada - September 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Automotive News Canada - September 2020