It’s Your Dealership

It is your dealership, and the best of the best salespeople treat it as such. You never hear a top salesperson say, “that’s not my job,” or “that’s not my responsibility.” They realize that it will be their customer who goes to get coffee when the machine is empty. Or it will be their customer that wants to look at and drive the car that will not start because of a dead battery. They realize they do not want any outside forces to control their destiny and cost them sales. Top salespeople recognize they do not want to allow outside forces to control their destiny and outcomes.

Top salespeople realize, this is their dealership and if you want to be a top performer the first thing you need to do is step up your responsibility and realize:

IT’S YOUR DEALERSHIP!

And you must treat it as such. The following are some of the most common areas that salespeople say, “that is not my job,” about however, they are losing cars deals because their customers are holding them responsible.

Things outside of the dealership:

INVENTORY – You must keep your inventory tight. You must treat every car as if it was your own personal vehicle and keep them in the same condition you would if you were going to sell it. That includes making sure it starts, it is clean, doesn’t not smell like fast food, and it is free of issues. Additionally, customers notice when a dealership takes pride in the display of their inventory. Make sure the cars are parked straight, lines are even, there are no ripped or faded stickers on the vehicle, and so on. Don’t let your customer be turned off by the condition of a vehicle when you could have prevented it.

TRASH ON THE LOT – I can guarantee you that at every one of your dealerships there is a truck on you lot what has a coffee cup, water bottle or some other item of garbage on the bumper or in the bed. We have all seen this. The first day it is there, you shake your head and say to yourself, someone should pick that up or I will grab that later. The next day, you see it again. And once again you say, someone should pick that up or that you will grab it later. The third day, you notice the trash, however this time no thoughts really go through your head and the fourth day you do not even notice the trash, even though it is still there. Don’t ask your customer to buy a $50k+ trash can, because they won’t. Even though it is not your trash, pick it up so it does cost you a deal down the road.

CUSTOMER PARKING – I do not have many pet peeves in this business; however, this is one. The other two are photocopied forms and bickering over half deals, but those are conversations for another day. Throughout the majority of my career, I have worked at dealerships that had limited customer parking. My pet peeve started with one day I was walking outside of my dealership, I quickly noticed that none of the customer parking spots were open and not only did I notice, so did the customer who was looking for parking. I watched this customer enter in one driveway, follow the customer parking signs, they also noticed there was no customer parking, and then I watched them drive out the exit driveway, never to return. The worst part about this story is our customer parking was not full because we had so many customers cars parked there. These parking spaces were filled with our cars. Cars that were not properly parked after test drives, trades that were never moved to their designated area, and we only had one customer’s car in the parking, out of nine spots. And from this my pet peeve was born. Even if you were not the one to beach your car after a test drive, even if you were not the person to abandon your trade, help out and clear out the customer parking, because the next customer who leaves your lot because they could not find customer parking might be the customer that was going to make your month.

These are just a few of the areas outside of YOUR dealership that you should take responsibility for and there are many more inside of the dealership. Take the time to think about the following areas inside of YOUR dealership and what you can do to ensure that your customers are in the best position to purchase:

These are all areas that can affect your customers, and in turn you. Not to say that everything is your responsibility to actually fix all of these issues. Some of these you are not able to take care of yourself, and in those cases bring it to the persons attention in a constructive and solution-oriented way to help get the issue taken care of.

Ask yourself:

“Would you buy a car from you and your dealership?”

If you cannot say yes to this, or you have any sense of hesitation, step up your game and control your own destiny and do not let outside forces affect your customers and YOUR Dealership!