CGC Media & PSX Digital Introduce the rebrew of DealerCast 2.0 - Episode 4: Dealership Sales Culture
0:00
49:00
LIVE
Hello, and welcome to dealer Cast two point oh, brought to you by CGC Media and exclusively sponsored by p SX Digital, a moto x company.
If you want to consume more bruised or for more information, go to p sxdigital dot com. Let's get this conversation started. Let's brew what's going on,
car guys and cargals. It's Luimirez, the car Guy. It's Felon
Arts Prime herero and we are excited to be brewin solutions with you on this dealer Cast two point zero episode with the one, the Only Larry Brew.
Here we go again with the one Joe. Awesome rhyming names. We love
it. It works out. Oh my god, I never even that,
never gone on me. I can't wow, dude, that's what it is,
and that's pretty awesome. I love it. But welcome to the show,
everybody. We are excited. If you're watching this right now on the
live, do us a favor, help us out and tag a car guy, tag a car gal and share, Share, Share, Share, share Share. Let's get this out there. Let's make sure that people know that
we have something great for you, folks. This is dealer Cast two point
oh Episode already number four, folks. We are moving along and we are
getting to you some great information and today we are bringing you even more information.
We don't just have one, just two, not three. We have
four amazing people on the show today that we're going to talk about some great stuff and something that I know each one of you all out there need a little help with. No matter how good you are, the room for improvement
is fast amongst all of us. And we're talking about sales culture. We're
gonna talk about that today, and if folks stay tuned for this, we're gonna have some great information. Make sure you get some people in here.
Sales managers, owner, sales people, come on, let's get in here.
Yeah for sure. Yes, it's funny. It's funny you brought that
we start this today because I was thinking about that over the weekend. What
a What is a sales culture? And it seems like sales culture really in
the dealership today is one of two things. The sales culture when I started
in the business, and I'm not gonna say what year that was, because rest assured it was a long time ago, a long time ago, but you know, the sales culture then was pretty much I are what I was introduced to was from a guy named Clint McGee, old school car trainer.
Great guy. Him and Jackie B. Cooper do not get enough. They
don't get enough recognition in this industry. I don't think but in any vehicle
in the sales industry, but it was my I was taught pay your dealer back. This is your own little business, within your own little business.
You you need to you don't have your dealer supplies you a telephone, they supply you in office, they supply you a desk, they supply you customers to talk to. You need to pay him back and run your business type
and make sure that you get them the return on the dealer, the return on investment he's looking for to have you as a salesperson. And that carried
on for a long time. And I think in the day of the professionals,
in the day of the professional salesperson, that culture dominated. That was
the culture, right, You had a bunch of guys who were running their own little business on the floor and over but over the years, particularly when you started a transition from the late eighties early nineties, mid nineties, that started to change and that we weren't getting as professional sales people. Most of
the people that I talked to didn't look at a car sales or a vehicle sales role as a career. They it was basically a stepping stone to their
next career, whatever that was, or their career whatever that was. And
you started to see I think about this time is when I started hearing the first rumblings or the first the first time i'd ever heard the sales manager called a desk man. Oh wow, yeah, I think I think that was
when I heard about mid nineties, when I started early mid nineties, when I started to hear this is the desk guy, and the desk guy's now, he's now the culture, he's now starting. This process of the process
doesn't start for me. I would literally sit down with the customer, talk
to the customer about the price. I would I was taught to write up
the buyer's order, write MSRP on it, spin it around and ask him to self sign it. I did. We didn't go to the desk first.
The first pencil came from me, and so I would spin it around and ask the customer to sign it. And then if I couldn't get anywhere,
then I would go to the sales energy, and that lived about where now it's the salesperson sitting the customer down, going to the desk, getting the pencil, and then bringing it back to the customer. Here's where what
we can offer you. And I think that's the first time the culture shift
started to happen. And you really, I would really more call this a
culture split because you had salespeople at that time who were used to doing it the way I did, and we're trying, we're working as a student of the business, as a professional car and vehicle salespeople. Automotive doesn't matter.
And then you had these other group of people that were looking at this as a step they had to be so what. You couldn't leave it to them
to start the deal because they would always put the deal from the customer.
Well what do you want? That's never how you wanted to just start it.
And so what ended up happening was this culture split happened. And when
that culture split happened, it really confused still today, I think confused a lot of people because if you asked a dealer today, what's your sales culture, I don't think they could tell you. I believe you on that Yep,
real quick, Larry. We got Derek Bumper who's an incredible trainer,
incredible car guy himself out there. He says, you got to be trained
on that. Though too often people are scared to train the replacement, which
is car sales tea. Go right. I don't want somebody to take my
job. It's true though. That is truth instead of just saying, hey,
I'm going to be so excellent at my job that it's if they come get it, they must be amazing. And that's the thing. So I
love that, Derek. It's great, great input there. I appreciate.
Yeah, but well, I mean I was that was a part of the culture. I remember the Clinton Magee would Ted would say, hey, if
you want to move up, you got to train hup. You've got to
You've got to be if you want to be in if you want to be the sale the next step for you as a sales manager or floor manager or F and I manager, whatever that is, you've got to make sure your replacements trained. There's got to be somebody coming in behind you. If you
are the sales manager and you want to jump up to the general sales manager, you want to jump up to the GM or you want to move into finance director position. There's got to be somebody who can do your job.
So you've got to train up to move up. And but that was a
part of the culture. That's what we were told. I don't think today
I would be shocked if I walked into a dealership today. There's probably a
few, and there's got to be some, but I'd be shocked if you found one that would tell you here's your career path within my store. There's
not many. There's and I actually know a couple, but I'm talking a
couple, and I know hundreds of dealers, and there's a couple that have that that have a clear process on how to grow. Yeah, here's this
is your career path. This is how this works. But you've got to
train up to move up. And you know that problem you never and that's
a pard of your culture. You've got to address that right up front.
I'm not you're maybe the best sales manager in the world, but if nobody can come behind you and do your job, where are you going from here?
You're done. You are where you are and you're not moving anywhere else,
or you're doing what happens today the sales manager bingo right to where we just basically let this guy go. And it's funny when you think about it.
This just hit me. This happens in college football all the time.
Right. They can't the head coach can't move the program any further than they
are, and there their only option is to get a new head coach, right, you see it happen and put professional football. It's a new head
coach because there's nobody underneath him. He can't move to GM. That coach
can't, he can't move the program any further. All the people below him
don't, but they believe that. They don't want to lose their job,
so they're not going to tell you how well they coach the line. They're
not going to tell you how well they coach the defensive backs. This is
gonna, this is and this You created it. That's what you got to
realize. You as a dealer, created it and you are the only one
that can fix it. Thanks awesome. I think one piece beyond that is
creating a sales culture from the bottom up at the top is said, this is going to be a fun, engage an environment. We're all making money.
We're on the same page as an entry level sales guy. I want
to live in that environment, so I want to have fun and everybody to be swinging in the same direction. So there's layers. I think the culture
can be the bottom up. He's enjoying being there every day and having fun.
Maybe I want to stay at sales. Yeah, And that's where we
are today. We've got this, We've still got this lingering culture of this
is your own little business, within your own little business, you are it is your bottom. That's where you hear salespeople say, I got to take
care of my customers. And for a long time now, if you're a
salesperson out there, I hate to tell you this. I don't mean to
be the guy that bust your bubble, but I'm gonna go ahead and tell you in any way, they haven't been your customers ever. They've always been
the cut dealership customers. He's the guy paying for it to get the customer
to come in the door. He's paying the rent, he's paying for this
floor plan. He's giving you something to sell, a place to sell it.
He's helping you get people in to sell it. There. His customers
are her customers for that dealership. They are the dealership's customers. They are
not yours and have really never really been, even when we thought it was our own little business, within our own little business back then, there were probably most of our customers how I mean, we didn't do advertising in that broadcraft share relay in Baytown, Texas. We didn't do it. We didn't
do we didn't do advertising. I got customers by going. Literally, I
would take brochures to the local barbershots, hair salons and pass out donuts and brochures in my car. That's how I got my customers. Wow. At
that time, it was probably as close to my business within that business as it would it had ever been. But I still wasn't paying rent, no
overhead. You didn't have to buy the cars, didn't You didn't have to
have lenders that you signed up with. No, you didn't have. I
wasn't on the hook for the the insurance I didn't need. So at the
end of the day, I was still not my customers. I was doing
something outside of the ordinary to get more business, which is good. But
the day, none of those customers belong to me. They belong to the
store and Larry speak to format. That's the one growth happening. Salesperson can
do that, that's what makes them sort of their customers. Yeah, that's
towards the relationship building building part, and I agree with that. So for
those of you on the on the call, and I again I hope there are not many of you, but we find out every time we say this there are too many of you that know don't know what these acronyms are.
But format is basically family, occupation, recreation, motivation, animals and teams.
These are the six things you can talk to a customer about to gain rapport with them, to get on their level. Because people buy from people
they like, they don't buy from people they buy from people they like.
No, and trust. That's never going to change. I don't think that,
not in our lifetime. Probably not ever. I've seen digital retail.
I've seen digital retail literally start and stop three times now. The first time
it happened was back in the late eighties and early nineties with the Ford Collection, where Ford was going to run all these stores. They lost four hundred
and sixty million dollars. Proven they can't run a store. I'm going to
credit that to Jim Ziggler. That's his line. He's right. Shout out
to Ziggy. There's so many of us that have seen so much of the
dealership cultures throughout the time, and to your point of they never really were the salesperson's customer. There were the dealership's customer. And where I would kick
back on that is in some cases, yes, sometimes it is the salesperson's customer. But what tends to be true and what is across the board is
that regardless of who paid to get that customer, who paid all of the overhead to make sure that they were serviced and taken care of, who's paying the check the business within the business salesperson that's personally there, maybe the dealership, but in the end, most salespeople leave with a book of business.
They end up leaving the store with a bunch of clients that have done business with them, and they were the only face of the dealership that they recall that they build a relationship with, and they took them with them. A
real issue amongst dealerships is that they recognize they can't keep their customers if they can't keep their people, if they don't keep their people in place and building and digging roots within the culture of the store establishing their business as the big dealership as their overhead. Then those customers run on down the road or wherever
Joe goes. I'm sure that you've left Larry and gone to another store,
gone to another location, and all of a sudden, everybody's finding you where to get that experience from you. It's been the same with Fred, it's
been the same with Lou And to Derek Bumper's point out here, social media can help with that example. If he's back inside of a dealership, he
will make sure that people do come and see him. The name of the
door is completely irrelevant. It's all on who they know that's calling them.
And so many times the customer that's a committed Ford customer will quickly become a Nissan or a Hyundai person depending on what their car guy is telling them is the best for them today. And because of that, it is cultural that
has been the car business. All of my people are gonna meet me at
the dealership up the road because I'm only gonna be here for a year, so I need to go ahead and call all of them up. The problem
is most customers can't find their salesperson anymore. That yeah, then you split
that now you're back just splitting again, right right, You've got Now you've got a CRM, whether it's psacs in your store, whether it's another CRM in your store, everything's there, you're working it there, that's owned by the store. When you leave, it doesn't go with you, and it
shouldn't, right unless, of course, unless, of course, you want to pay for part of that CRM. I don't think you do. So
it doesn't go with you, and you're not cultivating that to go with you, and you realistically, the reason I left Ronancraft Chevrolet, and I left Roncraft Chevrolet in nineteen eighty seven, eighty eight, Yeah, I know, and wan reason I left Roncraft is I wanted my career to move up, and in order to do that, I wanted to move into fri And I convinced a gentleman, a very great dealer, still one of my friends.
They actually lives literally across the street from me right now, Carol Smith of Timbers Chevrolet in Baytown, Texas or in the Passiday of Texas at the time.
I convinced him that if I would come to work, and I would work for three months in sales, and I would do these things and if I did those things, then he would let me pay for my own Carl Singer Finance school and move into finance. And that I did, and to
his credit, he didn't let me pay. He actually paid for the finance
school and I got into finance and that's how I moved my career up.
But in order to do that, I had to leave Roadcraft Chevrolet. I
couldn't stay there and do it because I was told this, and I guarantee you, there's a salesperson on this show right now who's heard this. You're
too valuable on the floor, you're selling too many units. Oh yeah,
oh yeah, we both have heard that, Lou, haven't we Yeah, And okay, you're right, and I grant and I get it. What
my, my, what my? What I would have if, knowing what
I know today, I would have probably tried to grab somebody else and train them up so I could move up. But that's a hard thing for a
salesperson to do, to take that initiative and find a person on the floor to do that. But that's realistically what you'd like to see what happened.
And as a dealer, if you see a salesperson and that's a quality guy.
You do everything in your power to hold on to that guy. Whatever
it takes, you do that. But that's what I would have done.
Instead, what I did do was switch dealerships, and that causes problems for every dealership. And today I would be I'd be absolutely floored if more than
one percent of the customers who came into a dealership, any dealership, our courts are otherwise cars, doesn't matter, came into a dealership and knew who they who knew that person and had bought multiple vehicles for that person. They
might have bought mode of multiple vehicles from the store, but they haven't bought multiple vehicles from that person. The unfortunately, in our industry, the professional
salesperson seems to be dying, which is a culture we've got to change.
Correct. Yes, and inside of that it is it's been culture. We
would raise up one to two superstars that would recognize what's in their hands, what they have the potential to do, and they would stay firm and hold it down. Those are the people that aren't going and taking ups anymore.
Those are the people that generally aren't really eating too much of the chicken that's getting ripped off of the bones inside of the sales meeting because most of the you're screwing up doesn't apply to them because they're running a business like a business, and they've recognized that personal development and keeping your customers close to you, staying active with them constant communication is critical to keep building the business. But
it is a cultural thing. In our belief. We think that because there
isn't cultures of personal development for all levels of the dealership personnel is why we don't have a succession plan type of culture that says, let us constantly be developing ourselves to constantly be developing somebody else. If it's not a part of
the culture, it will never be something that people get motivated about. To
Derek's point, earlier, people will be scared to develop something. People will
be scared to share their information. People will be scared for the next person
coming in only because they don't recognize that everybody's investing in getting better and that we all should be doing the same thing. But a personal development culture is
something that is hard to develop. There are a few people that do it.
When I think of who comes to mind and helping a personal development culture, I think of that's right. Certified solutionaries we can help with that.
Yes, there's no doubt that you you know, we talked about it in the last show that the sales meeting show how to have a sales meeting, And I think, Lou you just hit on it that we have sales meetings today. Tell us all about stuff we did poorly right, that's not going
to be good sales meeting. Follow the sales meeting at PSX. Follow the
sales meeting in a box. Do not talk about what you did wrong.
That's a one on one coaching moment, not an in not a coach coaching moment in in general. But at the end of the day, there there
is the there's still the attitude of the head coach. I don't think anybody
in the in the car industry could can hide their emotions the way some people do in business. I think I look at most of us in the car
industry as head coach like Nick Saban. Yeah, when you screw up on
the field, I'm gonna be pretty pissed off about it. There's gonna probably
be a headset come off. It's gonna it's probably gonna happen, and I'm
probably gonna grab you on your way back to the sideline and we're gonna have a discussion and it won't be a two way discussion either. It will be
a one way discussion me to you. But at the end it will be
on national live TV. I get. I know all these things you're not
gonna care for, but that's what's going to happen. But it is in
the vein of making you better, making you elite, because you're either if you're on the ps X team, if you're on my dealership team, you're either excellent or you're elite, or you're not hereof love it. That's the
thing, and I get it. There are people that are going to that
that don't want to be in that deal That's okay, Yeah you're in.
At some point you're going to You're either going to You're either going to get I'm either working you towards getting excellent, and I can see the coaching move you moving that way. But if you're not, then I gotta let then
I got to move on and you need to go find something you want to be excellent at. Yeah, I've told my kids over the years, if
you don't like what you're doing, you're not going to be excellent at it.
You're not even going to try to work to get there. You're just
fulfilling a day to day job, and you don't want to You don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be that guy. I think
the culture of the culture is split now to where we've got salespeople who are still in the old vein very few. They're in the old van of this
business is my business, but they are that culture, and that thought process is also in the mind of sales managers. And so we end up with
these dealerships where we're literally leaving it to the salespeople. But we just hired
this guy last week. We didn't really give him a whole lot of training.
If at all, you probably got trained. You probably may not even
today got trained as well as I did. I didn't get trained at all.
I was handed as said, there were eight go tapes, cassette tapes and dating myself. Oh anyway, eight cassette tapes that Clinton McGee gave that
they gave me this is how I got trained. And I would listen to
them in the morning, gett dressed. I'd listen to them on my way
to work. I listened to them when I got into work. While I
was doing my follow up, I would listen to these things over and over again all the time. That's how I got trained. That is not a
good training program, I gotta be honest with you, and it's not one for today at all. But it did get me at least a foundation for
selling vehicles, right, And so you've got to give your people the foundation.
And now the culture is okay. Now we've got a sales process,
and I think this is a very good thing. This is, but it's
got to be your process. And here we go, and now you get
into what's in the really bad part. The sales manager being got because we've
all heard this. Here's a new flavor of the month, right, we've
all heard it. Yeah, this is a new sales manager who's got a
new way of doing things. I gotta go figure it out. That way,
he's going to beat me into conformity, into my way, and I'm going to have to deal that realistically. Mister dealer, if you are a
dealer listening to this show, please make the process yours. I guarantee you
you do not go to Apple and change the process. You go to Apple
and you get to work within the process. Apple hasn't. If you can
improve our process, that's great. We want to talk about it and we'll
eventually get into a point where we can incorporate your ideas to improve our process.
But make no mistake about it, it is that's right, and it has to As a dealer, this has to be your process, not someone else's process. You want to get a sales culture, a process, a
sales culture, it's got to be yours. It can't keep changing with every
new sales manager of a new GM, every new GSM who flies in the door. That can't happen. When you hire a new GSM, you hire
a new GM, you hire a new sales manager. Hey, this is
our sales process and this is how things work here. What I need you
to do is make this work. And if you have ways to improve this,
that's great, then that's okay too. But you keep this process going.
But what you don't do is come change my entire process to fit what you think works. That we can always talk about it. We can always
talk about making improvement. Matter of fact, we should never not talk about
making improvements. But it's improvements to my process, not completely changing my process
to what you think you need to be or I'm not hiring you to be the process. We saw this happen in the CRM world and in the mid
ninety, late nineties, early two thousand. You buy the CRM and you
thought that was the process. Let me give me some of that CRM.
That's going to be my sales process. No, that's that didn't work out
for a long time. So realistically you have to have the process, and
that CRM needs to fit your process. Yep, I agree. If it
doesn't fit the process, don't buy it. Yep. Aimen too that it's
not a reason to hear the thing about process. It's fundamental. That's all
it is. Just be fundamental, but be very clear and precise and multiple
accountable. That's what culture is. When somebody walks into a workplace, they
Lou and I were both prior military, so for us it's really simple.
There was processes for us. We were told what we needed to do to
even include how we fold our t shirts and how we made our beds.
It was like, hey, it's this way, yeah, for you, there's no choice. That was culture. Though we became uniform, we all
knew what was right, what was wrong. We all can help each other
fix things. We could see it down a line, our beds were dressed
right dress you would look down and make sure that thing was dead on straight.
Everything was perfect right. But that was it took a team to do.
You couldn't do it by yourself. Right. The same thing here is
we have a team, but we also have great software out there to help amplify it, not change it. Like to your point, to amplify what
we're doing. It's to help assist be able to really take time and bend
time a little bit. Sometimes you used to take us three hours and now
can take us an hour and a half. Now I have an extra hour
and a half to be more productive. That's what it's for, not to
Hey, I used to do it this way, Now we're going to do it this way. No, it still works. You still can sell cars
that way, but let's do it more efficient. That's it. That's one
of one of my one of my favorite videos. If you guys have never
seen it, it's a commencement address at the University of Texas by an admiral.
Oh yeah, ma bed every morning, yes, yes, and when you think about when you know, when I think about my kid, my middle son, who told me one time. It's bad. I'm tired of
being up here and doing this stuff. I was doing all this stuff in
high school, and son, you don't realize what that is. That is
to get you into understanding how to do things when when your parents aren't around, you're away at school. You're learning basic training. When you make that
bed and you make it right, you're learning to be excellent. You're the
whole precision and per and perfection of that bed is teaching you excellence. It's
got a purpose. Yes, I know it doesn't sound like it at first,
but when you really start to think about it, it's got a purpose.
It does. It's a notch you can knock off the first thing in
the day, something simple and easy to get confidence going, knowing, hey, look I've already started the day off good. And I'm gonna tell you.
I make my bed every day, and I love the way it feels to get back to my house, even my hotel room, make my bed because I love the way it feels to get back and see them made bed.
Yeah, Mary, I loves you. They still come in and they
redo it their way. My point is that I feel like it's a win
for me. I leave there and I'm like, I'm already won today.
All I gotta do is just keep adding on to it, and I'm just going to keep that it feels great. It doesn't matter what happens. I'm
always got that knocked out before I show up to the dealership, before I show up to my break whatever I'm going to I got a w Yeah.
Man, Yeah, I'll tell you. If you're interviewing with us at PSX
and you're you're from the military, you've already got a fifty percent better chance.
Me too. Actually, at most businesses, car dealers all should be
aiming at military personnel. We are strong advocates obviously for our veteran community,
but they understand process. And this is why I think that many military people
walk away from the car business back into a process driven lifestyle when they walk into a dealership that doesn't have process and has chaos running a muck. It
doesn't have to be perfect. Vince Lombardi said, perfection is not attainable,
but if we can chase perfection, we can catch excellence. That's right,
we can catch excellence. If we chase perfection, that means that the process
is going to be adjusted and turned from here to there as we deal with the many different snowflakes of customers that we deal with. But we have to
have a defined process. If we don't, well, we're falling victim to
the one that we actually have, which is the lack of one, which is the one that just can I think we talked about it last week.
Right, there is a process, whether you believe it or not. In
your store, there's just like thirty of them, right, there's one for each. Yeah, hope is not a strategy, no doubt. Good book.
I appreciate that, Jeff. With that, So, Jeff, help
us understand a little bit more on from your vantage point what it is that you see as some of the biggest challenges to implement a new culture with the store, because so many times the sales meeting and training can sometimes feel like punishment. Right, we're only going to train the people who didn't hit their
mark, or we're going to train on this now because we all keep screwing up on that, and now it's not necessarily part of the culture, it's part of the punishment. What have you seen concerning that, Jeff, It's
funny you asked that, Larry and I see this a little different than we roll new infectations out of our system. It's really set up. If you
talked to an ON and a GM, it's a very characters stick kind of a thing. Every owner wants these things and that's the stick, right.
But I think when we try to roll it out and train it. I
was going to say this earlier, but twenty twenty four, I think that we have to be very empathetic about the culture that we're training too, and we have to have a lot of explanation of the watse Here's what's in it for you at this level. So you think about the technology that we can
now embrace at the stores, it's amazing. But if they don't understand the
win of hitting the green too button to get an easy too to manager without having to operaly, walk away or make it a topic they don't understand, we don't teach them the why for them and what the big win is, it all breaks down. So I think I'm a big fan of working and
supporting and using it as a tool to help them get better instead of the fear to turn a oh my gosh, they're micro managing me and I'm just gonna get beat up over this. Information training people up, not necessarily out.
Eventually they might go out. The hope is that you can really embrace
twenty twenty four in the millennials that everybody wanted to be easier and technology should be able to help with that, and we create an amazing platforms that allow you to do that. But if they don't understand the why and the wins,
it all breaks down. From what I see, And I'm the worst,
world's worst at that, right, I come from that. I come
from that old school culture we use stitch. The carrot was never I don't
remember ever getting a carrot. As a matter of fact, I'm trying to
think back to the carrit and I'm not feeling it. I don't think I
ever got the carrot. I got the stick plenty of times, but the
carrot was never there for me. And I think there's a lot of people
that have proven that the carrot works well with the right coaching culture, and the carrot doesn't always. The carrot's not always really the soft kumbai ya thing,
and it's not always bam bam bam beating you over the head. There's
a place in the middle where you know yes and I and I'm the guys of my age or it will struggle with it more than guys of you guys's age. We'll struggle with it more because we got the stick man. That
was it, you know, and when we learned by the stick. We
you know, we live by the rod. But we'll we'll struggle with it
more than most. And that is, you know, on this culture of
coaching. But you'll but but you know, you've got to. You can
feel it when even when somebody, for example, I'm a big college football fan, as you guys know, I see Kirby Smart or Nick Saban yelling at at a kid. It's out of carring. It's not they one care
for those. You can feel that. If you are getting that level of
basically stag and you don't feel the carring, then that's a problem. Have
a conversation. But they they wouldn't get that upset if they didn't care.
They wouldn't. There's just because I just you just get replaced. You just
move the next guy in that. Since we're talking about football, I live
in Kansas City, twenty twenty four, two years of a row Super Bowl.
I watched Kelsey go up and yell at read last year you're gonna just let it roll off like a duck of water. May seem happy together.
So definitely different ways to get there, yes, for sure, And there's different ways of training. There's different techniques of training. We are so thankful
that we get to call ourselves thoroughbred car guys, coming from this equestrian state of Kentucky where there are some real thoroughbred car guys. And when considering the
training that goes into thoroughbred there literally is the stick, the carrot, the whip, all of these things. And the one thing about recognizing that that
whip is used in the early stages of development, that everybody gets a little bit to know when to move faster, when to kick it up a notch, when to really chase the person in front of you. And then eventually
the impact of that whip turns into just a little brush. You don't really
need to hit it, doesn't. It just needs to be even pivoted just
the lean doesn't. You don't have to be bridled and yanked like you would
have to be in the beginning parts of your initial teaching. You just have
to feel the lean, and as time goes on, then it becomes habit.
The problem that we often have inside of our training culture is we don't train things to habit. We train for the immediate need, come to an
agreement on what needs to be done, and just so many things in the car business that end up happening. We find something that works and then we
stop doing it. It goes on analogy. I bought that with the horse.
Yeah, I think I told you guys this before. I used to
participate in Jim Ziegler's Bad Sales Managers meetings every month and every without question, without without fail. He would always bring something up and somebody would say,
we used to do that, and his exact almost instant, what did it used to work? Well? Why did you stop doing it? Was like
clockwork man, you could count on it every one of those meetings. I
love the alpha dog. I missed I missed doing those meetings with him.
He was He truly is an icon of this industry. I don't mean to
plug Jim so much, but so many things we're talking about, how many things we're talking about, we keep We've been talking about him for years.
It's it's it's fundamental sales, and it's applies to so much, but it never changes how we do things. Maybe how we communicate changes, but why
we communicate and how often we should does not. The way that we talk
to customers, way we treat customers the same, it's just that how do they want it and how can they talk? So we just got to be
able to communicate having tools. It's great. I love technology. I do.
I embrace technology. I have to because it's not going anywhere. But
I don't make it the only thing. It's not going to do my job.
It's just going to help me do my job. And I understand that,
Hey, I have something that can If I have a tool in front of me that could save me a three hour job, bring it down to it hour. Yes, it's no different than getting a hammer instead of a
freaking rock. Hey, I'm going to use their hammer instead. Way,
more proficient, way quicker, way easier, way better. So I think
the way we've looked at technology is the technology. But you can now buy
some of that CRM and get a process. We're down to these two cultures,
right, We're down to these to this culture of process and this culture of your own little business. You run it the way you want. I
think we're at the tipping point where you at where as a dealership, you're now going to have to decide you can no longer let the salesforce just do it the way they want it to there no longer allow this business within your own little business. This is my business. I'm the guy guaranteed to be
or the only guy guaranteed to be around or has a better guarantee of being around five to six years from now. I have to have my own process.
My customers that I'm paying for, my dealership, that I'm paying for, everything I've got on the line has to run by my process. I
can no longer hire you and leave it up to you. It's time to
roll out of that. And I think a lot of us are trying to
roll out of it. But it's hard because their managers came up that way.
We came up that way. It's so hard to roll out of that
thought process. But at the end of the day, if I ask a
dealer today, you know what do you want? I get the same thing.
I want to know every opportunity that I've gott in real time. I
want to know what happened, and I want to know what you plan to do next to get it to the down the road so that I can help down the road to the sale, down the road to getting them to come into the dealership so that we can help you close that deal. Yep.
And I can't help you close that deal if I don't know these things.
And today we can know these things better than ever. But we as a
as a dealer body, the dealer body, it's time that you start realizing that. And I've said this many times. I know you want everybody to
buy in, but I have a philosophy on that you get to buy in when you buy in. So you want to peel off some of your money
and buy into my store, then you get to buy in until that time you buy into what I ask you to do. And now, granted,
you can't just say what I used to say when the dealers, when your salespeople ask you, why, you can't just say because I said so, that's why you can't really do that. You got to give them the red.
You got to give them the backstore. You've got to give them the
red reasons. They've got to see the winds they're going to get into when
they see the winds. But at the end of the day, whether they're
seeing the wins whether they're seeing the reasoning behind the process. Whether they are
or they aren't, it's relevant. It's my process. We're going to do
it my way. Period. It's got to be that way. Ben Stock
set it recently is if I get to run my store the way I want to run my store, I get it. I think we all are struggling
right now with the new kind of salesperson. Who does who does? Question
why? Who does not do things because they don't under either one don't understand
it, two don't want to do it, or three don't have the attitude to do it. And if it's three, you just need to move that
person out. If it's one or two, you need to try to raise
them up and make them understand it. But Brian, Hey, I can't
remember the post, but I saw it on LinkedIn where I get to run my store the way, I'm going to ask you to do something, and then but if you whether you want to do it or not, I'm going to tell you I need you to do this. And then you, as
a salesperson, when you're given that directive I need you to do this, you need to go at it with one hundred percent. Whether I agree with
it, or I don't. I'm going to make it work. And that's
that is the piece of culture that does need to be seared together, where the leaders are recognizing the why of the person sitting in front of them, the why of the person that they're trying to leave, and they tether that together to the why that the dealership has to do what they want. Now,
we're all about asking the why, and we understand that the generations have come before and really caught the stick if they ever did ask the why, and it was the answer was because it's my store coming here outside. Let
me show you the name on the building. Right. Ye. All I
did was get everybody super motivated. Right, No, it didn't. It
didn't get anybody motivated to listen. And nobody ever received what was actually being
taught to them because they never recognize how it was actually benefiting them in where they wanted to go. And I thank god for a new generation that's in
here and asking the why because so many of our season vet's say, I don't know why we do it like that. But remember when Matt would hand
us his business card, he goes go grab one of those cards because it wasn't the same undneath my name'll get it done. I got the same thing
I had. Charlie Thomas on many occasions say whose names on that sign out
there. I always laughed at it. I still do. I think it's
funny because I come from that school. That's all you got to tell me.
I get that. I understand. I'm here, I have a job.
I'm fortunate to have a good job. I'm gonna do what you asked
me to do because I'm sure there's a reason, but you don't have time to tell me right now. Got your boss, and that's okay. But
at the end, it's like one of those things you'll find out when you're older, Like just like being a parent. You look now, you see
why your parents were the way they were. So it's the same thing.
But a lot of times today they want to know the why. And I'm
not mad at them for that. I'll be honest with you. I think
that it's good that they want to know that because I think that if I would have known more whys during that time, I probably would have been more take ownership of things or write a little bit harder for stuff, because I would have realized there was more purpose. Besides, because I told you to
Pertunately, the people were hiring today just don't have that. When Charlie told
me whose name is on the science, Yes, sir, I'm going to go get it done. And I put one hundred percent effort in what he
wanted me to do here. But it was never even a thought that I
wasn't going to put one hundred percent effort into it. Whether it was my
idea is it didn't matter. Back to the matter, is that this is
my directive. This is what I'm going to go get done. That's my
objective. That's the military training. I never went into the military. I
was too big of a smart ass to do it. And they after Top
Gun, they told me I wouldn't be able to fly one of those jets for about fifteen years and that was way too long for me. That never
my military training never materialized for that. But I always had that culture of
I'm going to go to work because my dad, my mom put it into me. My dad put it into me. If you're going to go to
work for somebody, go to work for them one hundred percent. Yeah,
I love it. There's no don't you know. So no matter what,
at the end of the day, you go give one hundred percent to what you're trying to do, whether you agree with it or you know, you give one hundred percent. So with that and in the military mindset, those
of you that are watching on the live, those of you that are watching on the replay, those of you that are listening to the podcast, write this tip down because you want to be able to run your culture and your business to the t tether together training, tactics and technology. If you can
tether these things together inside of your culture, inside of your business and make sure that you supply the why, then everything is moving in sequence, just like a military unit, because they do secure and tether together all of their training, which is regimented and consistent and has to be their technology. They
have to understand their technology and tying that with how we tactically use each and every bit of this is how they achieve successful missions. If you can pull
these things together and make it part of your training regiment for your dealership and your constantly developing them, you will take your business to the next level.
We assure you that I hope you wrote that down. Tell those together,
everybody, because if you want to have a culture that succeeds that wins on a consistent basis. There has to be changes that make sense to everybody that
achieved the goal that you're trying to achieve, regardless of the generations. Because
to Fred, the three t's yeap other technology that's right, get them together and if you need some help on the technology side of it, PSX Digital is definitely down to help you assign the technology that gets you the results that you're looking for. Ain't that right, Jeff? I was going to add
to that, and really I remember the quote from David Kine years ago, what CRM should I buy? And it doesn't matter whichever one you're going to
use. I'll think about what we do though, and part of what makes
it so special is you got a forty year veteran's brain that it's built something around current technology and so much of what helps us out dealers the word tracks around it and the why here's why you say these things when you walk up to a customer. Here's the transitional thought and the process. It's not just
the technology, it's the processes around how we train people to use the technology and the wins for them. So agreed. Amen. Amen. The bonus
T would definitely be tracking. You need to know a great track it all
together, the bonus T I like that, man, here goes. We're
gonna call that the T bone. That's right on that bone, baby,
that's right. Yeah, we're gonna call that the T boat. Not to
be confused with the guy I used to play football with his name T Bone.
That was a different, different, totally different than the story of different guy. And you didn't want to meet him, but T Bone. I
love that. There we go, Bred, you got any last words before
we get ready to wrap up this show. No, man, I'm glad
that we had Jeff here. Hope we get to have you on the show
some more often. Jeff, Obviously you were in a room full of four
of us who love what we do. I love that the people who are
watching the show understand what we're talking about. Derek, thanks for shot coming
out here making some comments. Brother. We love what you're doing out there
in the market. Keep changing the world, my friend, and for all
you all out there who are making a difference, keep growing. Understand the
dealership culture is massive, and if you don't have the right culture, it's just gonna crumble. You may sell a few cars, but you're not going
to sell as many as you can and you're not going to ever achieve excellence.
So make sure that you get the processes right, all the right people in there, people product, people, process, then product, get it right, and try to have some fun every day. That's what it's all
worth it withatory fun, you understand, that's like number seven on our map that we say every single to everybody we train. You have to have mandatory
fun every single day or it's not worth it. Yeah. Yeah, if
you won't like it, you won't do it. There's not going to be
the final words that I remember from Clinton McGhee where if you didn't want if you're not having fun, if you can't be if you can't have fun doing what you're doing, you're not gonna have You're not going to be that person.
Go get a job driving a dynamite truck. Nobody wants to talk to
that guy, Nobody wants to be around that gain you won't have to worry about it. Facts. Some people like the dynamite guy working them by themselves
are having a blast. Yeah, maybe are having a blast. This is
Cordy joke day here. Oh yeah, said the dealer gat let's go.
That's a free one, folks. We appreciate your time today, everybody.
Thank you so much for tuning in. Jeff Loose and Larry Bruce over here
with Fred and Lou on this wonderful beginning of April fools Man. Folks,
it's been an incredible show already. Make sure that you go back listen,
watch, share around, comment and ask some questions on some of the other episodes that we've had. But we're so thankful that you take this time with
us. We only got one thing left to really do, and that's drop
those f bombs that don't offend the moms. Everybody, and make sure to
forgive focus and fly so that we can keep growing. If you don't have
the culture, forgive focus, fly and look for the culture that actually takes you to the next level so that you can keep growing. Let's deal with
everybody on three one two. Jeff hands on the shoulders. There we go
one two three, Forget focus, focus, fly, and keep growing.
Appreciate you all, Honor you all, thank you so much for tuning in.
I'm Lou Ramirez, the car Guy, and I'm Frelin Arts sub Prime Hero and you've been brewing solutions on this dealer cast two point zero with the incredible duo of Larry Bruce and there, let's go
0:00
49:00