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CGC Media & PSX Digital Introduce the rebrew of DealerCast 2.0 - Episode 2: (Great Leaders & Leadership) | Part 1

CGC Media & PSX Digital Introduce the rebrew of DealerCast 2.0 - Episode 2: (Great Leaders & Leadership) | Part 1

Car Guy Coffee Apr 30, 2024 25 min
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About this episode

Great leaders in the automotive industry emphasize the importance of daily sales meetings to boost team morale and productivity. Hosts Lu Ramirez and Frelin Art discuss how these meetings can set the tone for success, focusing on positive reinforcement and accountability. Special guest Larry shares insights on effective meeting strategies, including celebrating wins and utilizing data to drive discussions. The conversation highlights common pitfalls in sales meetings and offers actionable advice for dealership leaders to foster a more engaging and productive environment.

Topics: daily sales meetings positive reinforcement team accountability celebrating wins effective meeting strategies data-driven discussions common pitfalls leadership in dealerships
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Hello, and welcome to dealer Cast two point zero, brought to you by CGC Media and exclusively sponsored by PSX Digital, a moto x company. If
you want to consume more bruised or for more information, go to psxdigital dot com. Let's get this conversation started. Let's brew what's going on solutionaries.
It's lu Ramirez, the Car Guy. This is frelin Art, Subprime Hero,
and we are brewing solutions on the Car Guy Coffee Podcast with a special edition, trying to make sure that you know all about what's brewing with our friends and partners over at PSX Digital. And we have the incredible, the
one, the only, only letarry And there's probably plenty of people that said, probably plenty of people go, thank goodness, there's only one, no question. I assure you that that's awesome. Now we're super excited, folks.
This is a new SERI this is dealer Cast. I call it two
point zero because this is new and improved. It's ready for the next level.
We're gonna be bringing you education every single week. Ways that you can
do better inside your dealership, ways that you can use tools and tactics, and of course how to encourage your people to do. So, we have
three brilliant minds in here. I believe mine semi brilliant, So I'll say
two brilliant minds in mind, and I'm excited to really dig in. I
know that Larry has a lot of great information to share. I know lou
does also, and I know that this industry is ready for it. So
let's bring it. Let's have some fun. Dealer Cast two point zero.
Let's go. So, Larry, we were talking a little bit about what
to talk about today and some of the common issues that many dealers actually have that kind of get away from them. Which man we get the chance to
go to dealership at the dealership all throughout the country, and one thing that we noticed that some of them just aren't using is a daily sales meeting.
What are we talking about? Everybody? Every single day we have the opportunity
to set up our day for success. But Larry, some people just are
not taking advantage of the little bit of time that it takes to get a regrouping to find out where we are for the day. Why do you think
that is, Larry? I think Larry lost his sound right now until we
can get him back on there figure out what his audio is. It's okay,
we're still moving. We're grooving Larry as we're waiting for Larry to come
in here. We're going to talk about some really great stuff today. I
know that Larry's trying to get his audio back on, But the subject is what's going on with your desk managers? What are they doing? Are they
having daily sales meetings? Are they having save a deal meetings? These things
are really important to do. And where are they getting this information from?
Are they just asking their salespeople about deals that we're missed. Are they looking
at tactics that they're just assuming they need, or are they knowing it through data? Are they looking at their CRM and figuring out what deals were worked
and where they're at. Are they able to read and get behind what their
salespeople are doing this way that they can really have a focused sales meeting.
This way they can know exactly what to talk about, what's happening right now, and I know Larry's going to be doing that. Larry, you getting
your sound back yet? Still working on his sound right now at one time?
Oh good? While he's checking that piece out solutionaries, those of you
that do lead people. One thing that we want to make sure that we
are clear about that we've taken from the military is that every time we get together for a mission, or for a formation or just to go for a run, we have an accountability moment where we check to see where is everybody at, is everybody in the right uniform, and what is the mission today?
There he is, There goes Larry. He's back. Can you hear
us, Larry? Check, we can hear you. We can hear you
can't hear us. So strange, awesome. Piece by piece it's coming together.
But this is why it's so important to get together with your team, is to be able to hear them out and make sure that they hear the mission that's underway at the moment. The important thing about making sure that everybody
is on task for the day is that you know where you are, you know where your people are, and you know what it is that has to get done today. It's not always gotta be a what you're not getting done
session. So often the general sales meeting inside of most of the car business
has been the what you're not good at meeting, what you suck at meeting, or the you suck meeting, and nobody walks away from that encouraged.
Nobody walks away from that happy, nobody walks away from that empowered to go do what it is that they're at the actual dealership to do. And one
way to make sure that we get that completely off the table and that it's not something that leads into distress or impedes your own success of the day is to just make sure that you all know that at this time we're going to meet and these are the things that we're going to go over. We also
always love making sure that it is led with one important big piece is great news. We encourage a great news meeting inside of any of your gets togethers
with your teams, but just to be able to set them up to requirement for some great news as they get ready to activate the day. But Fred,
what is it about great news that's so good about making sure that your people have before they get into the whole nuts and bolt of the day, It's basic, simple positive mindset. When we are what we think, we
are, what we say we are, how we act right When you come in every single day and everyone's just dragging, they look like they're sad to be there, and you don't do anything but perpetuate negativity by saying, hey, get to work, do this, and do that. It just stays
on that negative cloud where the energy isn't quite there. Customers are gonna feel
it. You're gonna feel it. Your salespeople are gonna feel it. It's
never a good environment to be in. So let's just change that a little
bit. Let's be something different. Let's come in and no matter what the
day was the day before, let's start with some great news because we need that. We need to start every single day what I consider like gratitude speaking.
When you speak, good things tend to be noticed. Good things tend
to be attracted to you. Light attracts light, my friends, and light
kicks all darkness out. So know that we need to make sure that we
keep light going inside that showroom. We keep light everywhere around our salespeople.
But if you expect your sales people to show up a light and you don't bring the light, they're just gonna fall down. Everything is follow the leader.
If you come to work with this energy, you pull the great news out of them. They're gonna know what's great in their life, why they're
doing what they're doing to where their next day, their next moment, is phenomenal. They're gonna go through that day. Even if they have an off
day where they miss a couple of deals, or people don't say yes, their banks are not giving them the approvals, they're still great news in life.
They still are alive, they have family, they had a great weekend, they sold three cars on Saturday. Whatever their great news is, you
cheer that on and they're gonna have something to lean on through the thickness.
Right. So that's why great news is important. That's why you should always
start with you day that way, even if it's by yourself. You need
to start your day with that inside your mind. Start with some gratitude,
Start with some great news. It'll change everything. Let's not finish the day
that way, Let's start the day that way. I like the idea that
we start the day and we finish the day with some great news. Make
sure that it's all sandwiched together in there. There are a lot of different
reasons why maybe sales managers don't want to have that first meeting of the day or why they don't. To me, it's unfathomable that we would be at
work and not be able to get the time to get with the team.
But so many times we are so reactive to our day. We just let
the day plan us and tell us what we're going to do, rather than us saying, hey, we have this much time that we're going to be together, and we don't do it. So many times managers don't actually activate
that meeting because they either don't want to hear what's going on, they don't have a habit of building that meeting together, or getting salespeople all inside of one spot is like hurting cats, and so many times it's hard to get everybody out of their roles. But Larry, I think we got to back.
I think we got audio man that was interesting dropped and I couldn't figure it out. But we're good now. Yeah. Yeah, the herding of
the cats awesome. Yeah you think it is so hard? Or why do
you think you've seen this business? You've seen so much more than either one
of us have seen. But in it, what do you think the major
common objective or common objection is for most leaders to even have that meeting to begin with, Well, most leaders, most sales managers have never been they've never been taught on how to have a sales meeting to begin with, right, So they go into the sales meeting either one of three ways you go into the sales meeting. The prop the most I guess popular way is you
go into the sales meeting raw rap. It's always ra rah rah rah rah.
And there's only so much raw rae you can do before the sales people start going, Okay, there's no value you in this, and they stop.
They start finding ways of not coming. They are not showing up for
the meeting. The sales manager doesn't want to push it or does and whatever,
and it ends up being this kind of just basically hodge fives of nothing.
The second least popular way, but happens too often, is it becomes a beatdown meeting. As a matter of fact, I used to be in
those when I was first started in the car business. I can remember my
my sales manager bringing in the what we call the salesperson samson I, which is a vaveling box from the parts department where you put your stuff in it and you leave because somebody's getting fired. So that was that was our That
was my sales meeting back in the day. And then the last one is
the sales manager just talking about is very bland, it's very it's it.
There's just no value. And that's why you have to heard the cats is
because there's no value in the meeting and there's no value in the meeting because you've never been taught how to have a meeting. And then if you have
been taught how to have a meeting, gathering the data to have a meeting is really hard and there's so much data that you need to gather to have this have a proper meeting. It's one of the reasons why at PSX we
built a report just for the sales daily sales manager sales meeting, because there's so much more data now that you can and should go over in your sales meeting that we just don't. And then because we'd have to go pull fifty
five different reports from wherever we're pulling it from to get it done. And
then if you but if you do pull all that together, then this meeting takes maybe twenty thirty minutes max. And you knock it out. And that's
one of the things that I think that's why they don't have it on a daily basis because it's so hard to pull together the data and then or that they have it on a daily basis and it just doesn't have any value so the dealer, so the salespeople are hard to are hard to round up.
Yeah, that's factly, that's good stuff. So Larry, help us understand
what if I say I don't have PSX digital as you probably should, but if you don't, right, and what data is needed for a good effective sales meeting? You know my experience and as we went through this my in
my first fifteen years in the car business, my experience told me that we know we should start out every meeting on wins. So let's just flat start
out with what did we who sold stuff yesterday? And who sold what?
And how many? You know, if you're if the hat trick always a
great way to start out a meeting. Hey, Marty had a hat trick.
Here's one hundred and fifty dollars cash. Bingo boom. Now you want
to heard the cats. Let me tell you. The cats come to catnip,
all right, the cats come to catnip hat cash. Yeah, and
then you will see the salespeople will show up. So bring cash to the
cash, Bring cash to the cat, Bring cash to the to the meeting.
Start the meeting on the wind, look for the hat trick. Look
for the guys, all the spiffs that you were running, run, you know, give try to give away cash here and there on a regular basis.
That the way we got spiffed when I was early on. Some of
the best ways to do the hat trick is a good is a good way to do it, or twenty five bucks for every sale, bring cash, or we used to have a standing spiff if you could get someone in the trunk of a car and the salesperson could see and the sales manager could see it, and I would drive it literally right up on the pad. There
was no way you could miss it. I'm getting my fifty bucks. I
get it. I'd make a buck and a half a day easily of the
and one And on one of these episodes, I'll give you the word track to get it done, because it still works today. And I can still
do the word track because I did it hundreds of probably thousands of times in my career. It's still you work your play. They're going to work their
pay plan. So the hat trick's a good one. The just spiffs on
vehicles are a good one. The best ones are hat trick and hitless units.
Get brain cash for hitless units. Get rid of that old inventory.
It is never too early to start getting rid of old inventory. It's smart
and it's old the minute it gets here bingo, you should be looking at it before it's old, like before it hits the thirty sixty day. You
have to be proactive. Yes, that's what. Yeah, So start out
with the wins, brain cash, get everybody excited. Yeah, then one
on you. Once you've passed the wins, you want to talk about open
customer records. I always talked about who didn't get closed up yesterday? Now,
we didn't have the technology we had today. In the dinosaur days when
I was selling Z I was selling the gazelles dan canran Wackens. When I
was back in the olden days, we didn't have the technology we have today.
I always would wanted to talk about who let somebody out of here yesterday?
How do we not get get this customer's information today? Yes? Actually
we started with open customer records? Who left the record record open yesterday?
If you've got a CRM and you can do it that way, then you want to do it that way. Start with who left the customer open,
because hey man, there's a reason why we don't leave customers open. This
is what we do. This is what happens as a result of getting that
closed. Let's make sure we get these closed up. Move on. You
don't need to say anything more than that. Just keep reinforcing the positive of
the reasons why you want to get this thing closed. Once you're past those
two things, then I always like to talk about the number of calls we got yesterday. We used to we would track those with the receptionists, but
today you can get even better. But how many of those calls did we
took in this many calls yesterday? Who took the calls? What did did
we close them out? Do we have records for them? Do you have
them not brought right down? When are you going to follow up? Again?
It's important you know the salespeople. Then they haven't changed and they're probably
not ever going to change. Okay, equip trying to change them, help
them, work work with them, right, But they're very focused on what's going on the here and the now because this is where I make money.
It's beanie when user steak every single day and it starts so it starts over every single day, and what's not here is hard for me to put my head across that I'm going to sell because if you're not here, I'm probably not selling you. So it's the planting we're not getting. We're hunters,
we're not gatherers, so we're not planting the seas to grow the crops later.
You can sit there and talk about it all you want to. We're
not listening. We're salespeople. We want to kill it. It's here.
Yep, you know, keep reinforcing that positive. Hey, look, you
took this many calls yesterday. Did you get them locked down? That type
of thing. In PSX, we provide the entire report. Did you get
because not every call is going to be in a lot of these calls are going to be unknown. Did you collect the information? Did you get it?
And did you get name, email address, the mobile nuber because if you didn't, then how are you going to follow up? And now we've
got a speed to lead study that we normally do. And here's the interesting
part we found about the calls versus leads. Leads take about right out around
fifty to sixty days, and they're there to close a call closes in seven days somewhere. Wow, good step. If it ain't with you, it's
somebody they mean to that. That's a great stat you know. So calls,
you know, when somebody wants to talk to your salesperson, that means they want to buy something. When somebody wants some information because I'm trying to
figure out if I'm going to buy or when I'm gonna buy, or what's going to happen, they submit lead. Yep, that sales cycle is five
times longer. Calls are where you should be absolutely focused. And that's what
always bothered me about CRMs that didn't bring in the calls because if it's happening over here in car wars or call Bright or who's calling or whatever, if it's happening out here, it ain't happening then here in my CRM. And
if it ain't happening to my CRM, it doesn't exist. Come on.
So, just knowing how many calls I got for the people in the back say talking about if it doesn't happened in the CRM, it doesn't exist, boom. Feel every leader should feel that way. And if you're not one,
yeah, yeah, my gosh, I love that you said that Larry, that's from old school to new school to future school. This is what
it doesn't matter. Yeah, that's never going to change. If it doesn't
happen in my seat. It's basically it's like a tree falling in the forest.
We didn't hear it. Come on. Yeah, So at the end
of the day, if your sales, if you're all your just knowing, you know, for me, it was always if I knew how many calls I got, Like I would look at my old school Who's calling report, and it was really super neat. I got three hundred and forty eight calls
you know this last month. All that was telling me was all the business
that I missed. Yep, because none of them made it my CRM.
And if they don't make it my CRM, it's not real. Come on,
nobody's following up on it. And so that's what that's extremely frustrating.
And so the thing that getting those calls into your CRM are it's critical.
I mean, it's set, that's a seven, that's a customer's gonna buy in seven days. I promise you it's gonna it's gonna happen, and you're
gonna you're gonna get you're gonna end up for calling. You're gonna end up
asking one of those sales guys, Hey, did you call that guy back that called last week? Thought that about the you know whatever vehicle that we
now have, and he's gonna get the oh you DIDs? I love those?
Oh you did? When you call the customer and he says, man,
I wish you to call me. I just caught bought one yesterday.
Oh you did. Yeah. Every salesperson's gotten the oh you DIDs and you
don't want those. Man, it doesn't matter. I don't even care.
At that point, it's over for me. Unknown calls are tracking your calls.
If you're if you don't have a CRM, that's bringing it into your c into the CRM. If your calls aren't coming in directly, I can
tell you the less ninety five percent of them is not making it there.
If you are good lying on your salesperson to enter the call that they just took, good luck, it's never going to happen. It's a horrible thing,
but it's the most important lead. It's still the most important lead,
more important than any Internet lead, more important than the third party lead, more important than anything else. It is the most important thing. When that
call comes in, you've got to stay on top of it. So you
want to talk about the unknown calls you had yesterday. Then you know,
for me, we were one hundred percent too store, and as you should.
I think everybody should be. But we were one hundred percent too store
back in this is in the nineties. Yeah, and I think you should
have been back from the fifties. You should have been one hundred percent too
store. I don't care when you were. That's we were one hundred percent
too store. So we always talked about how many did not get too no
toos. If I saw you with the seal a customer and that didn't coome
a t O that's realistically two times, and that's grounds for firing. You're
done. And I don't care how long you've been here. You can been
here for forty years. I don't care. You will too every single customer.
I don't care if it's your next door neighbor. I don't care if
it's your you know, brothers, sisters, cousins by a previous marriage, I don't care. Everyone gets to oed. You know, when this becomes
your business and you're on the hook for the millions of dollars of the building, and you're on the hook for the land and the rent factor, and you're on the hook for the advertising budget and the payroll. You can do
whatever the hell you want to do. Yeah, but until that time,
we do what I want to do, which is everybody gets to oed.
I'm going to get a shot at every single customer I have to. We
can't. We're going in, We're going back into this whole lull of COVID
and it's like we've forgotten everything that ever worked and decided. Yeah, were
digital retailing's taken over. We won't have to work anymore. We won't not
have to do anything. We just make orders and get paid. Really,
but yeah, you're starting to find out that's not so good. Everybody gets
one hundred percent. You know what the hardest part about getting a t O
is. It's not what you think. The hardest part about getting the t
O is what do you tell the customer to go? Get the manager here?
Yeah, here's because here's what happens. This is what you say.
This is the standard word track for everybody. Hold on, one man minute,
let me go get my manager and the customer. You're either in a
book or they're already coming up with excuses while you're gone. We're gonna what
ye did? I say? This one of my favorite things there, Larry,
and I'm sure you got something great. It was always hey, hold
on one second, I got a great idea, be back. And the
reason why I would say that is because they had a great idea, let me go. So they would be like, my idea is go get my
manager, is to get my manager. Or some times, Larry, sometimes
we walk away and we go, oh shit, I know what to say here, I'm gonna go right back. We just needed that moment. But
a lot of case you go get that manager. They come, but you
got to have your customer waiting on something great, not on somebody's gonna come hammer me right, And that's what they don't. So I love that.
It is because we do generally get into a lot of vernacular that is car guy jargon. And there are a lot of people that are newer to the
business. I'm not really sure how long Beca Todd's been in the business,
but her question was what's a t O? And you know what, there's
a lot of salespeople that we say that today they say, oh, a time out? What is that? Yes, exactly, it's a time out.
Well, you know it makes sense. No, you're right, you're
absolutely right. And that's a tragedy that we say that, and that the
people on this podcast don't know what it is. That's a tragedy. I'm
sorry. I'm sorry Becka that you did not get. I'm sorry. But
let t O stands for turn over, probably take. It's not that t
O. Not everybody gets the torell Owens would be a nice little catch.
But but so BECA turn when you when you have a deal and you turn it over to someone else to help you out. So you have to have
that a t O. It's a touch. It's to make sure that that
deal is being touched by everyone, so we all know that everything was done, all avenues were exhausted before somebody leaves. Because sometimes it's the smallest thing.
Most of the time, it's the smallest thing BECA that makes the difference, and a different tone, the exact same words said by somebody who has a little bit more authority in the store will make all the difference. Sometimes
confidence is a big part of it, but having that t is it's necessary.
One hundred percent of the time. It's for you. It's your job
to slow your customer down enough to be able to recognize, hey, I need some help, and guess what, it's okay. That's why we have
the leaders that we do, because they are as great as they are.
Yes, a turnover is powerful. It's the most important thing we do once
we get to that spot. Oh yes, touch the desk. Amen to
that, Yes, the desk. That's probably what you were told about.
Yes, a turnover if even when you're selling a car, when you're done, when you close a deal, you're still turning to get over to podcasts until the finance Now it's turning to take over, right, So it's the same thing. So make sure you guys, turn over always

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