It's time to get something done. The first question?
Why are we doing it.
The "why" has two parts:
1. The Practical. These are the real, tangible benefits that will result. The paycheck, the house, the car. Things I can touch and feel. The money. But there's a second part we don't always think about:
2. The Purposeful. This is the mission. Without purpose, there's no meaning. Without purpose, we're just doing it for the money. For some that's enough, but human beings need purpose to achieve greatness. The practical gets it done, (with tremendous success for some), the purposeful lights you on fire and keeps you in the fight, even when it gets desperate.
We all understand the practical ($$$), but what's the purpose of a salesperson? What's your mission?
Simple: A professional salesperson guides others through the process of making big decisions.
That's a powerful distinction.
Your missions isn't to sell the car.
Your MISSION is to serve the customer - in a specific way that helps make their decision easier.
This is the service that salespeople provide. We're like counselors.
Confident decisions aren't made based on what YOU tell people to do.
Confident decisions are made through self discovery. Guiding others through the process of discovering for themselves enables them to draw their own conclusions, and confidently make their OWN DECISION. The best part is that when they get there, they feel like it was easy.
What's the best compliment we can get?
"Wow, we did NOT expect to buy a car today, but you just made it SO EASY."
Why are we doing it.
The "why" has two parts:
1. The Practical. These are the real, tangible benefits that will result. The paycheck, the house, the car. Things I can touch and feel. The money. But there's a second part we don't always think about:
2. The Purposeful. This is the mission. Without purpose, there's no meaning. Without purpose, we're just doing it for the money. For some that's enough, but human beings need purpose to achieve greatness. The practical gets it done, (with tremendous success for some), the purposeful lights you on fire and keeps you in the fight, even when it gets desperate.
We all understand the practical ($$$), but what's the purpose of a salesperson? What's your mission?
Simple: A professional salesperson guides others through the process of making big decisions.
That's a powerful distinction.
Your missions isn't to sell the car.
Your MISSION is to serve the customer - in a specific way that helps make their decision easier.
This is the service that salespeople provide. We're like counselors.
Confident decisions aren't made based on what YOU tell people to do.
Confident decisions are made through self discovery. Guiding others through the process of discovering for themselves enables them to draw their own conclusions, and confidently make their OWN DECISION. The best part is that when they get there, they feel like it was easy.
What's the best compliment we can get?
"Wow, we did NOT expect to buy a car today, but you just made it SO EASY."
Let me tell you why there will always be salesperson.
We surveyed salespeople, and asked them two questions:
This is a word cloud compiled from their answers:
We surveyed salespeople, and asked them two questions:
- What is your job as a salesperson?
- What service do you provide for your customers?
This is a word cloud compiled from their answers:
Not surprisingly, one of the most common words mentioned was: Sell -
“Myself, the dealership, the vehicle.”
The second most common answer was “make a friend.”
“Get them to like you, then just go shopping with your new friend.”
Other common phrases:
“Provide service, be a problem-solver, find solutions, build value, give information.”
And finally all the buzzwords like being transparent, genuine, personable, honest, knowledgeable, etc.
Also lots of references to making money, holding gross, being profitable, of course.
But interestingly, and also not surprisingly, the word that’s tied to most of these phrases is the word “Help.” It’s not surprising, because one of the basic things that we want to feel as humans is a sense of contribution, the feeling that we’ve helped someone.
So in answer to the original two questions, salespeople are pretty much in agreement that their job is to make friends with the customer, and the service we provide is helping them.
Ok, great!
That sounds really nice!
These answers make me afraid for the future of automotive retail.
But they also give me hope.
I’m afraid, because nobody starts their shopping process with the goal of “making a friend.”
The customer doesn’t gear themselves up as they’re getting ready to walk through the front door thinking “Ok - I’m here to make a friend, let’s go.”
No!
They start out looking for a car that meets their needs at a price they can afford, and they end up at a car dealership talking to a salesperson because that’s mostly how it works, and sometimes as a byproduct of that experience they realize it wasn’t as bad as they thought it was going to be and actually they rather enjoyed the experience and yes, when asked, they would say they enjoyed their experience with the salesperson.
But initially, before all that, if there was an easier, faster way to get the car they wanted, and the main thing they would lose out on is the opportunity to make a new friend with a car salesperson, that’s not going to be the difference-maker that turns them away from online retailing.
I’m also afraid because, while all the salespeople know it’s their job to help, almost none of them provided meaningful insight into specifically what they’re going to be helping with. Maybe nobody took the time to really sum it up well, or maybe nobody really has a good answer.
Here’s why I’m hopeful: We, as salespeople, are good at making friends, and we do want to help. So there’s a whole world of able and willing participants who just need, in my opinion, a little better direction regarding what their job really is, and why the service they provide is so essential, and so helpful for customers.
If you had an option to sell your own house, and do all the work yourself, OR, have a realtor (a really great realtor) do it for you, and
the realtor wasn’t charging anything, would you still do it yourself?
If you had the option to pull your own tooth (with the guidance of a few do-it-yourself articles and videos) or to have a well-repudiated dentist do it for you, and the dentist was free, would you let them do it?
If you were going through a tough time, and had the opportunity to get three hours of personal counseling from a well-known and well-liked local therapist to help you through the issue and point you towards resources that would help you, at NO COST TO YOU, would you turn it down and instead try to find the answers by googling and watching videos on youtube?
By now maybe you can see where I’m going with this. Why would anyone in their right minds turn down the opportunity to receive personal guidance and assistance from a professional salesperson, and instead click a button and hope they made the right choice.
The answer is, the customers don’t know what we do, so they don’t think they need us, we generally get a bad rap from everyone, so when it comes to working with a salesperson, they’d just as soon NOT, provided they could find a faster, easier way to get it done on their own.
But we’re going to change that. Because we’re good at making friends and we genuinely do want to help.
So what exactly do we do?
Here it is:
The salesperson exists to help guide others through the process of making big decisions.
I teach people to identify the psychological keys of human decision-making, and to facilitate an interaction that helps guide the customer through the process of making a large purchase decision.
And let me just tell you, there IS a right answer to the question of how to do this.
It’s not different every time.
And it’s not just word tracks and body language and guessing.
It’s science.
It’s psychology.
The word tracks, the little things we do to get through the transition points, like getting the customer to come inside, getting the customer to drive the car, getting the customer to sign on first pencil for all the gross, all of that is just managing the flow of the interaction.
And all the “how to” stuff like presenting the features on the car, walking around a trade-in, presenting the financial proposal, doing all the paperwork, that’s just nuts and bolts.
But to get confident, positive buying decisions, there is a scientific, psychological, understandable, and repeatable process that informs human decision-making, and guidance through that process is the primary service that salespeople provide.
The problem is in our industry, we’re largely unaware of this.
We don’t have the full picture.
We know bits and pieces…
We know there are some things that work and some things that don’t...
Sometimes we guess right, sometimes we make the sale, sometimes we don’t.
But getting the full picture gives us the power to answer the one burning question that will keep salespeople relevant into eternity and that question is:
“Why didn’t they buy.”
“Why didn’t they buy.”
You see because that question is virtually impossible to answer intelligently, accurately, or correctly, unless you have a full and complete understanding of the human decision-making process, AND of the human being making the decision.
Now our role is not to manipulate the process.
Our role is not to use jedi mind tricks to get the customer to lay down and buy whatever we put in front of them…
We leave that up to the marketing people - the TRUE scumbag salespeople hiding behind their computer screens and their data and their fancy commercials and not even having to deal with the general public! What a gig!
They’ve already done their job by the time the customer arrives in front of you.
And your job now, is to get that customer to the point where they can confidently make a decision. And IF we can do that, IF we can get them to actually DECIDE on something, their decision will most likely be in your favor, and it will most likely be YES.
But if they CAN’T make the decision, you’ll know exactly why.
Which tells you exactly how to follow up, to help them complete the process of their purchase decision.
If we know why they didn’t buy, like, truly and accurately --- not just “they’re not ready” or “they’re just starting out” or “they have to talk to their spouse” or “they need to think about it,” ---
If we truly know why people don’t buy,
THEN we can begin taking proactive steps early in the process to help make the decision easier.
THEN we can start streamlining our sales process and tailoring it to customer preferences.
THEN we can customize the road to the sale without fear of missing anything.
THEN we can get really good at a eliminating objections BEFORE THEY EVEN ARISE, so that when the customer gets to the end of the process, and we’re handing over the keys, we get to hear that most glorious compliment that makes the very WORLD of a salesperson turn, when they say,
“You know, we didn’t plan to leave here today with a vehicle, but you just made it SO EASY. Thank you.”
So that’s what I’m here for, that’s why I do this. Because I believe that every person that spends the money to buy a car, whether it’s two thousand, twenty thousand, or two hundred thousand, that it’s a lot of money to them and it’s a big decision, and they have a right to the personalized, individual attention of a highly educated sales consultant to guide them through their decision-making process with compassion, with empathy, and with proficiency.
I believe that quality salespeople are, and will continue to be, an essential part of large consumer purchases like homes and autos far into the foreseeable future, and likely, forever.