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

Hello, and welcome to dealer Cast two point oh, 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. When you have a

deal and you turn it over to someone else to help you out, so you have to have that a too. 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 home, the exact same word 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 to 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, that's why what you were told. Yes,

a turnover, even when you're smelling a car, when you're done, when you close the deal, you're still turning over to finance. It's a sort

of finance. Now it's turn to take over, right, So it's the

same thing. So make sure you guys turnover always. Yeah. And I

don't like the term touch the desk because I shouldn't have to touch the desk.

Sales manager should be like a shark. He should be more rhom in

that floor. Should never stop moving, could never stop moving. That's a

whole other I think that's a whole other podcast, you know, on the floor manager and now that whole other thing. But you know, realistically,

you shouldn't have to test the desk come to you. You do you know

you don't want to at that all possible. You would like to be able

to geo and not ever leave the customer. That's the COLDI grail. Now

we accomplished it. There's technology accomplish that. We accomplished that with the mobile

app but you want to make sure that you can request a to O and the too come to you and you never lose, never leave the customer.

Leaving the customer is only good in one situation. In a car dealership,

or any dealership for that matter, Car power sports doesn't matter. Leaving the

customer during negotiation to allow them to privately talk, that's the only time that's good. Right, Yeah, I mean you should be going to the bathroom

with them. It's like ladies, when you got to know the bathroom.

I gotta get my god, let me show you right where it is.

Make sure you do give them directions to where it is. But I love

what you said there, Larry about the desks should come to you. So

let let's isolate a couple of things here, because the one thing that seems to get away from most car guys throughout the day is the t I m e. Time gets away from them. They don't know they If they are

not habitual in creating these meetings, it can turn into an hour two hour long meeting. I know I to be a little bit of a wordy individual,

especially when I get inspired and I'm pumped up. I mean, put

this drag on and we got a lot of business to go do for the day. At the same time, we have two different kinds of meetings.

You have a sales meeting and then a save a Deal meeting. Now,

oh yeah, my personal save a deal meeting would be the one on one sessions that I have with each salesperson. They know it's gonna come. I'm

calling you up to the desk or the desk is coming to you to be able to find out what happened with your specific deals, because me talking to Fred about all of Fred's upcoming deals, what he missed, and the coaching that I give for Fred may give a portion of encouragement or a portion of training and assistance to the other sales pros. But to the guy who's itching

during the meeting to get out of the meeting and go get to work, that's not going to help. Then no, no, you never have a

save a deal meeting. And sales meeting is all about what we need to

do to sell more what celebrating ourselves, what it takes, what that floor process should look like, and to sell more vehicles. That's it. You

see, Like I said, you should be in and out of this in thirty minutes. So once you're through with that too, you want to talk

about in stock unit opportunities. People that did not we're not we're looking for

something. We didn't have it, but now we do. Come on love

that. So you're supply in the sales meeting just for time and for those

taken notes for time that you should have a sales meeting depending on the size of your crew, we do recommend I recommend to be between fifteen to twenty minutes. That's what certified solutionaries each it should be anywhere between fifteen to thirty

minutes at the most. Whole lot of data go on. Now, help

give them a little bit of a contrast, because you did explain what a sales meeting should look like, So what should a save a deal meeting actually sound like and look like for a sales manager with their yeah yeah, to finish out the sales manager's report or sales manager's meeting. In stock opportunities and

these are just hey, look, Jared, we've got the units in stock.

You can get to get a hold of these customers see me after the meeting. We'll get in touch with them and we'll talk about what we need

to do to talk about get them back in, and then your current promotion, anything you've got going on right now, it's got to be in that meeting. And lastly, any deposit units that have arrived, units on order

units, or anything else that have arrived. Those things you round out your

sales meeting. And now this is all about how much more setting ourself up

for the day and how much more business we're going to be able to accomplish by doing this right. And you do it every single day because every single

day you can celebrate. Hey, look, Bill got you know that we

were looking for a Polaris or a Polaris expedition or this type of vehicle, and yesterday Bill got that customer back in and we sold them. Right,

You've got to continue to reinforce how these things work, because what salespeople do is they will go out and we'll do it and it won't work for us one time, and it will never work again as far as we're concerned.

That's right, acts, So you want to go through that. So that

Saved Deal meeting. Now, you know, everybody talks about how the Savid

deal meeting works, and there's a lot of different versions of Savid Deal's meetings, Right, in my day, the SAVID deal meeting was held with the management in the F and I office and we looked at the big whiteboard and how we put these deals together. How much more down payment this one needed,

how many the steps this one needed. It was all about what we

wrote and that was important. But there's so much more out there now,

you know now, but now with technology, that SAVID deal meeting really should go back to now we're inside with it should be with management. But that's

the way I look, I've always done it. Let's talk about with the

management, you know. Now I'd be talking to the sales the floor manager.

Look, yesterday Kaylin had two people that she walked without too Now this is what I need you to do. To go talk to k to make

her understand you just don't walk people because I don't want to have the conversation and you don't want to have the conversation with Kaylen, And I don't want to have the conversation with Kaylen. Why she's no longer with us because she

walked a customer. Walking a customer who's here in the floor, on the

floor is probably the most egregious thing that I can think of in any type of dealership because again, and you've heard me say this before customer visits one point two car dealerships or one point two dealerships, you don't want to be the point too, It's right. So walking a customer is just it's just

not done. It's just not done in my store, and it should be

that way in every store, I think, but from my from perspective, it's just not done. So we're going to have we're the first thing we're

going to talk about are the salespeople that walk customers yesterday and why you should what you need to go talk to them about how you coach them, because for me, the floor manager is the coach, the DSM, the GM, he's the head coach. The floor manager, he's the offensive line coach.

It's right, you know, the desk guy, he's the offensive coach.

Amen. And so I look at this, Okay, I need you

to get on the line and talk about why we don't want to lose customers, why we don't walk them those customers, and then you know, getting down to each of the each individual salesperson on what appointments did we have yesterday that didn't show up? Was it if we haven't already called him. We

need to right now and a manager needs to do that. Pick up that

phone. Is there anything I can do? Anything, I can help you

with, anything, we can do that we missed this. Come but you

want to get you want to get back on the phone with that customer that an appointment because they need to be reappointed. They should have been reappointed yesterday.

Should have never made it to today. Come on, come on.

But if they did, yeah, but if they did, manager, does it mean if you make it twenty four hours and you didn't get reappointed.

I want a manager talking to a cut customer today. You know, for

us from in my in my world, in my stores. The bottom line

was is that the sales manager was a coach. If I could go,

I call them sales coaches. They are sales coaches. You are not a

desk guy. I hate that term. I'm going to find the dude that

made that term. I'm gonna drive a railroad spike to his head. Because

the minute, the minute he did them, the minute weeks called them desk guys. We chained them to the desk. That's what happens, because that's

what they they hear it. I stay here and so you're you're sitting on

the dead don't want to come off. As a matter of fact, even

Becka showed us they want them to the salesperson to come to the desk.

No, I don't want to touch the desk. You tell me, I'll

come to you. I will come to you because that's how important you are

as my salesperson. That's how important that customer you're with is to this store.

Will come to you. You don't need to come to us. We'll

find you are. There's so much that gets stuck inside of the habits of

the dealership operation to where a desk manager can get away with is calling themselves a desk manager, and that's where they get trapped. If you're one of

the leaders out there that we've had the pleasure of being able to train, you've heard us say to you all how important it is you recognize your main objective isn't to work card deals. Your main objective as a leader is to

make sure that your sales pros and all of your people are set up for success for the day. This is why it is so vital that you have

these meetings that don't take and are so small compared to the rest of the time that you're spending at the store. But if you're not actually being active

about setting them up for success, the day is going to get away from them. The day is going to get away from you. And we're always

having these reactionary sessions where we're reacting to what we did or didn't do as a cause to what the market's doing to us, rather than being intentional about how we set up our day and the intention that we put inside of each and every hour to the minute of each day. But if a sales manager

or GSM or whatever the role isn't getting together with their people periodically and regularly, it doesn't become a habit. And then from there they have to touch

the desk. Otherwise that chairboard and ranger never leaves because they're not actually making

themselves do what it takes to set everybody that's in their charge up for success.

And sales managers, that's why you're there. You're not there because you're

a great salesperson. As many of you managers that are out there have a

habit, and I know a lot of you salespeoples go to a lot of meetings where you find out how awesome every time the meeting is you found out how awesome your sales manager is at your job, how great they were at your job one day in the past, they close this many people. If

that customer was in front of them, they would have shut them down.

How many of you all nearly do backflips hearing your sales manager go on and on about how great they are. I don't give a rip how great they

were at my job. I need to know how great they can make me

at what it is that I am doing. And sales managers, that is

the mission that you have. That is for your people to be commandos when

it comes to the phone, when it comes to the lot, and then when it comes to setting up a structure for their day. Do you believe

that there is a misconception sometimes, Larry or Fred, of what it is that a salesman is supposed to do? I do, I do? Thank

you. Oh, it's not a misconception. It's been we made it this

way. What are you talking? No, no, no, no,

no, no. You gotta go back. You got to go back to

the mid late seventies early eighties to really understand what a sales manager was supposed to do, because back then we taught Clinton McGee, Jackie Cooper. These

guys taught sales managers what they were supposed to do. And then somehow when

those guys went away in sales manager, it all became about the desk and who can manipulate the computer to get to this and that, I mean, it was non The reality is a sales manager's job is just exactly what it says, sales sales manager. Sales manager, you are here to manage the

sales. You are not here to desk the deals. But then we go

in further and we started calling them desk managers so that we could make sure that the what they're doing fit the title, fit what they're doing. That's

silly. Realistically, your sales manager's job again, you should never be on

the desk. If I never was on the desk, I walked around with

a clipboard and a pin and if I went back to the desk, it was just a configure payments and or to write up a deal for a salesperson or pencil a deal for a salesperson. And I just needed that computer with

me. I wish I had if I've had technology today, if if I

had the technology these guys did today, I might not have built the technology these guys that to day, I don't know. I would love to have

done this for all from a iPad and I'm just moving around and I'm just moving around with the iPad in my hand. Oh, that would have been

fantastic. You know, at the end of the day, that's what you

want. You want your sales manager on the floor talking with the customers,

playing with the people, and also you know, doing one on ones at the desk with this customer or with the salesperson. Right there's nothing more powerful

than for you to pick up the phone to one of those customers, follow up and get them in instant credibility. Bam, thank you. That's good

stuff. I love that and I'm gonna jump in really quick. I agree

with everything that's being said here. And that's the thing we as leaders,

we tend to get into like very bad lulls, like we think this is what we're supposed to do because we've seen someone else do that. But yet

when we were in those seats of salespeople, we always said, when I'm a manager, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to do it

differently. I'm gonna But yet we get into that same pocket. We need

to change it up, folks. If you're not going to do that,

you need understand that the way you felt is the same way your salespeople are feeling right now. You have to be more proactive. You have to be

a leader. You have to show them what they need to do every single

day, and then inspect what you expect one hundred percent of the time, because if you don't inspect it, they're going to do what they want to do. And it's not that they don't want to sell cars. It's that

that they want to do the least amount of work and not get caught doing it. And that's it's sad to say that, but that's people's nature.

So it's our job to encourage them. Why is it beneficial for them to

do so? What know? They're whys know all this stuff? But the

technology we have today, there's no excuses anymore. You you don't have to

go through and count up all this stuff, read through these handwritten things, ask people to give you information if they are using the CRM one hundred percent of the time the way that we tell them to do it, and you hold them accountable for you can just look right on there, look at everybody's deals from the day before, the week before, the month before, and see where they're at and ask them about those deals. You could even jump

in those deals and help them. But here's the thing. When you get

to these sales meetings, you can have the data. You can go straight

to where it's at, save the time, give them information that they need right now for customers that they're currently talking to, and they don't have to say a word. You can literally just drop it on them and it's powerful.

That's what we have, these tools, this software. I'm telling you

folks like Larry was talking about, imagine having an iPad in your hand because this is actually part of the ps X digital you can actually it's a desk managing tool. Not desk managing tool, it's a sales manager tool. I

should say, exactly, what's a tool that you take with you if you can walk away, go be a sales manager. Salesperson is with somebody,

you know, how long. What's part of the process they're in. You

can jump in. If they've been in a if they've been showing the car

for two hours, you're like, what's going on? If they've been just

qualifying them for an hour and a half, you're like, dude, this should be a lot quicker than this. You can go in without them even

asking. You could be proactive and you walk in. You could be like,

hey, how you doing. I just want to come say hello,

I'm just making sure everything's going good. I appreciate you coming in. Whatever

it is, you can be that face. You can be that person that

helps that step go a little bit faster. But then you also readcognize when

your salesperson is struggling. Man, imagine the data too, the data of

your salesperson who has a problem qualifying every customer that comes in, takes way too long or never gets to the next step. Now we know what to

train them on. They get a customer that gets all the way here,

they test dry, they do all this stuff, but they can't get them to look at any numbers or stay long enough. Now we know what we

need to train them on. This is what the power of software does for

us. It speeds up that you want to work more deals at the desk

and be able to not have to Then you can use this tool. You

can do all these stuff and this will help you speed that up. There,

you know what we used to do. Right, this is so much.

You have to hire a gal who would sit at a desk and write down Larry's with a guy in a green shirt, tight date time, yep, and what we paid this gal anywhere from two to twenty five hundred back in those days, would have been more like three to thirty five hundred to maybe four grand a month now these days, to just write that down and just watch everybody. Now software is available. I know immediately when you've taken

it. I know how long you've taken that up. I know exactly when

to get And it's not hard to interject yourself as a sales manager into a deal. I used to do it with humor. There's a lot of ways

to do it. I used to tell him, Hey, look, is

a friend taking good care of you? Let me know if he's not off

fire him right now, yeah, exactly right here right If he's not taking good care of you, just let me know. You know, it's not

hard. Hey, by the way, what are you looking to buy?

This is that's a great vehicle and we just got that. Have the story,

have everything ready, it's right in front of you. If you're with

If you don't have a CRM that has a manager's app that tells you what every salesperson is doing right now with every customer, what vehicle they're looking at, find a new CRM. It's because there's nothing more important than the floor.

It's so funny how that happens. We're getting off the we I love

how we go down these littlerabbit holes. These are awesome the way. But

let's let me finish up there. I'll go to finish up a saving deal

meeting. From my standpoint, you guys, let me know what I missed,

because I don't think i'd but I would. I would always want to

know, you know. So it's appointment no shows. Those are important.

Those those you want the manager to do. You don't do it in the

sales of Savid deal meeting. That's after the Saviy deal meeting. But we

are. They're right there and we talk about them. What anybody might know

about that desks not sold? How many times you how many customers came to

the desk and we didn't sell them? And talking about that as a manager's

group, somebody's going to have something in there of value many times that will help you get that deal back and close it somebody's going to have I mean, you've got a finance manager there who is the expert closer in your store.

You've got the general sales manager who's got the experience. You've got the

sales manager slash desk guy who was in the middle of the deal. Yep,

somebody's If that group that hasn't with that experience fifty sixty one hundred years worth of experience sitting in that can't figure out a way to close that deal or get that deal back, it's probably not closable. But talking about that

amongst with your group, that's important. One thing we realized when it came

to these meetings, you know, is that the growth is not in the deals you write. This is why I always hated we were only talking about

in the statement deal meeting, the deals we wrote. The growth not in

the deals we wrote. The growth is in all the deals we missed.

That's where the growth is. Right. And so if your sale, if

your CRM is not helping you find the areas where you're missing deals and close those gaps, then you're not going to grow. What's the point how do

you do it? If not? That? That was always important was where

was the growth and desks not sold. We're one of those. And then

everything that's in F and I right now that we need to help close.

Hey, this guy needs steps, this guy needs this guy needs two thousand dollars more down. Where are the conditions? Where are the things that are

in FNI. Let's talk about the deals that are in FNI that we didn't

roll for whatever reason, or the deals that are an F and I that need something to get closed up. Those were how we ran. That's that

was our savior deal meeting, and it was always managers, what you're what Lou alluded to, I would do we in my stores, we would have called that a floor manager. And I think the floor manager is about to

have a big renaissance. Let's be honest, guys, we're just not getting

the sales professionals that we used to. We're just not and it's a big

part of our it's a big part of the industry's fault in general, power sports, automotive. It doesn't matter, it's our fault. It's our fault

because we don't give them a pathway to success. We don't give them a

way to move up. We don't make that job prestigious. We don't.

There's so many things we don't do that causes us not to get professional salespeople anymore. And I'm afraid that window may have passed us by to the point

where we're going to have to, you know, get back in the habit of hiring good people that don't have experience, because you don't don't want the retreads. No, so hiring people that don't have experience. But then there's

gotta be somebody on that floor ready to help, always ready to go.

Then for me, I called that guy the minute man. He's got gun

in hand, powder and hands drys, ready to go and any moment.

And that's the most fun job in the dealership. I'm gonna tell you that

I have. I enjoyed that. All I had to do is go around

and shake hands, keep people excited, listen to my salespeople talking to customers, making sure I interjected at the right time, and close a ton of deals. That was the best job ever. That's ultimately what you want to

do. It's like being a salesperson on crack, Like literally, you're like

non stop and then you're done. That's exactly what a salesperson wants to do

every day. So if you're a sales pro, that's the best job in

the dealership period, hands down. I always loved it. I know Lou

loved it. It was something fun. And then you get to pour into

these salespeople. You get to show them your word tracks, you get to

tell them, hey, come sit with me. Do you just keep your

mind shut? All right, don't work. I'll point at you and I'll

ask you a direct question. Then you answer. So that's the idea.

But you teach them so much at that point. It's such a blessing.

But closing car deals is so fun. But when you have your team hum

in and you know that you taught somebody to close their own deals and you don't really have to help them as much except for just a quick glance by and just to welcome to the dealership type stuff, it's the bet you've done something with your team and you've built something renaissance. We need to take this

show to a close, everybody, and we are definitely going to be brewing more solutions as we talk about the tools that you can bring inside of your stores. Now creating the culture where teos are consistent, the meetings are consistent,

and your people are being developed properly. Make sure that you do reach

out to Fred and myself at Certified Solutionaries to be able to find out how to actually create the culture that creates what it is that you need to happen with your people. But if you need the technology to be able to help

make sure that you get to the next level, because us together our tactics, our tools helps us to be able to make sure that we go to the next level. How do people get a hold of you, Larry,

to make sure that they do get the actual technology to tie together with these tactics. Yeah, but if you want to reach out and look at how

to do it to get to get a one click sales manager's meeting in a one click save a deal meeting, you can email me at Larry L.

A. R. Y at motors m O T O I X dot com,

Larry Atmotoris dot com or Larry at powersports x dot com, either one you know, just shoot me an email. We'll be happy to show you

how to get that done. Get all of these things done. Technology is

not about the coolest thing. It's about solving a problem. Come on,

So if your technology is not solving a problem, you're a then you've got the wrong technology. Never buy technology just because it's cool. There's a lot

of cool things technology can do, but you don't buy it for coolness.

You buy it to solve a problem. Effectiveness, my friend's, effectiveness is

more better than coolness. It's truth. There's things that still work use it,

you know. But if you really want to edge and you want to

make these meetings better and stronger, go to Larry at m O t oi x dot com and I promise you he'll reach back out to you, set you up and let you get some great information. If anything, it's a

great conversation to learn a little bit how you could do better. So,

and Larry's definitely about that. He's trying to make a change. He's trying

to explain that this industry got soft. It's time to get tough again,

y'all. It's not going to be as easy as it was the last couple

of years. It's time to really put the bolts down and tighten it up

a little bit and make sure that your sale staff is ready to go.

But as a leader, you need to have the tools and the tactics in the training that you need to be able to give them, so let's go.

That's right, Larry. We appreciate and we honor your time. As

most part conversations tend to go, we tend to go a little bit over.

This is why you have to be deliberate with those meetings, to make sure all the great talkers of this industry that do gather together don't take too much of your time. Be intentional about your meetings. We appreciate each and

every one of you that have chimed in, whether for a few moments or for the entire show. Thank you so much. If you're watching this on

the replay, make sure that you show some love, add some questions.

We'll make sure to go back and answer those questions. If you don't know

some of the jargon that we said, so be it. Just ask the

question. We'd be glad, yes, what it means that we've been talking

about. There's been a lot of great information today. We appreciate each and

every one of you joining us, and I'm thanking you for that. Guy.

I just want to say one thing real quick, folks. This is

a show that's going to be every Monday, every Monday. Be tuning in

every Monday at noon Eastern or if you're on the Pacific clock. It's nine

am. So make sure you guys check us out. This is going to

be live every Monday. We're gonna have some edited versions passed out. You're

gonna be able to get little bite sized pieces of it all. But if

you want to watch the live version, join us every Monday at noon Eastern, and you guys are gonna have a great time and get some edutainment.

Let's go. That's right, Let's go ahead and forgive focus, fly and

rock out the rest of the day. There we go hands episode Say we

Go one, two three, took Fly rowing because we deal of past two point zero. Let's brow, we're out, see you soon.

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

Ford Ranger

About this episode

Original notes