Automotive News Canada - January 2021- v2 - 8

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Keeping Your Appointment Culture Resolutions
Help your sales
team to get
" appointment
fit " in 2021
By JEFF WILLIAMS
President & CEO, Absolute Results

The New Year is a perfect time for dealers
to make Appointment Culture resolutions. Let's look at the benefits that making these resolution for 2021 could have
for your dealership and sales team. Then
let's go over the simple steps you can
take to ensure your dealership's ongoing
success keeping their resolution.
Here are five examples of Appointment
Culture resolutions:

* Attain a higher percentage of monthly sales from the team's appointment
activity than from walk in traffic

* Double the number of monthly sales
from the service drive

* Improve digital lead conversion rate
by 33%

* Ensure that each sales team member
has 2 appointments every day

* Make sure that on a daily

basis, the sales managers
both confirm and help their
sales team prepare for upcoming appointments

SALES LEADERSHIP
Insights & Selling
Strategies
help you build a plan for daily meals
and exercise, and they'll assist you with
developing daily habits and routines that
prioritize your fitness. " If you stick to
the plan " , they'll tell you, " you'll see the
results " . To keep you committed to your
new habits, they will want you to keep a
tab on your meal and exercise activities
daily, probably with an app, and they'll
monitor your progress on a weekly and
monthly basis, adjusting your routines as
you go.
Now let's apply that same simple formula
to the Appointment Culture resolution to
ensure that each sales team member has
2 appointments scheduled every day. The
value of the goal is an additional 10 sales
each month for each sales person, generated by their own appointment activity...
and this is without factoring in any sales
from walk-in traffic. That's a huge value
and a huge motivation, but is it actually
possible?
The establish that this goal is feasible, you
and your team will need to examine all
the sources of daily appointments. How
many new leads do members of your
team receive every day? How many new
sales calls? How many active prospects
are in their sales funnel or CRM? How
many customers are in their portfolio?
What is the mix of their portfolio,

FOCUS ON

DAILY ACTIVITIES

The benefits to these resolutions
are clear - less dependence on
walk-in traffic, lower cost of customer acquisition, busier sales
teams, and best of all, higher
conversion rates. Ultimately
sticking to these resolutions
leads to higher sales and gross profit, yet
many dealers won't make Appointment
Culture resolutions. Why? it's likely
because they lack a simple plan that they
believe their team can implement and
sustain. Let's talk about what's required to
turn an Appointment Culture resolution
into reality.

RATHER

THAN THE GOAL

With any resolution, the key to success
is focusing on the daily activities that
advance the goal rather that the goal
itself. For example, if you ask most
personal trainers what you should do to
get fit, they will likely start by asking you
your goals and the health benefit you
hope to achieve. Once they understand
your " why " and your motivation, they'll

orphans, previously sold, lease and finance renewals etc? The answers to these
questions should prove that sufficient
opportunities exist for the two daily
appointments you're striving for.
The next step is to determine the activity
needed for each team member to turn
these opportunities into two appointments every day. We can do this by
applying some industry averages, and
doing some simple math. Typically, 12
calls to portfolio customers every day will
generate 3 appointments each week, three
sales calls generate one showroom appointment, and eight digital leads result
in one appointment.
Not unlike a personal trainer creating a

daily exercise plan, your team will need
your help to build a daily appointment
activity plan. You will need to work with
them to determine how much time is
needed for emails, text message and calls,

the team to celebrate success stories,
encouraging each other in their appointment efforts. For sales managers, weekly
rallies are a valuable mile marker, and if
their team is pacing behind, they can be
proactive and initiate an appointment
blitz to get them back on track.
First of the month meetings are a great
time to review last month's appointment
efforts along with the previous month's
sales results. When a sales manager can
show their team the direct correlation
between appointment efforts and sales
results, it takes the mystery out of sales

TWO APPOINTMENTS

EVERY
DAY
EQUALS

TEN
SALES

EACH

MONTH

D
L
O
S

...without factoring in
any sales from walk-in traffic.
and how many calls are needed daily for
both prospect follow up and portfolio
activity. Together, you can also schedule
the ideal time for these activities to take
place.
Once you and your team have finalized
and committed to the plan, it's time to put
it into action. At this point, sales manager
should create check-in routines to inspire
and coach the team, just as good personal
trainers do with their clients..
Daily One-on-Ones provide the perfect
opportunity to check-in on each day's
appointment activity. A top sales manager
will also use the One-on-One time as an
opportunity to review the game plan for
each upcoming appointment. This is also
the best time for them to help by calling
to lock in an uncommitted prospect, adding another appointment to the schedule
and building your sales team's belief in
the process.
Weekly sales rallies give the sales managers the chance to pull the team together to
review the weekly appointment board. At
these meetings, the team members with
the most appointment successes can share
valuable tips and techniques. This allows

success. As the team discusses " What's
Changed? " for the new month, new appointment strategies can also be created
and trained, empowering the team to
stick with their Appointment Culture
resolutions.
A successful Appointment Culture
resolution starts with a leader's resolve to
elevate their sales team. This is followed
by working with team to calculating the
benefits of the Appointment Culture resolutions, candidly assess the appointment
activities required, and helping them to
create their own daily activity plan that
will lead to their success. Daily, weekly
and monthly check-ins and coaching by
the sales manager will keep them inspired
and on-task.
Help your team add sales to every week
- and years to their career - by training
them to be " appointment fit " in 2021.
To learn more
about how to
develop the
Appointment
Culture, scan
this QR code:

Automotive News Canada - January 2021- v2

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