Dealerships, Free Access Articles, Management Workshop, Marketing

THE first week of a new month is crucial to a dealer’s sales success. Within days, the sales team will either engage and keep last month’s sales momentum going, or the energy and sales momentum will fade.

If this happens, the dealer and sales team have to push that much harder to get their daily sales rate back on track for a successful month.

A lack of sales momentum early in the month also leads to complaints from sales teams that the dealership’s programs, its inventory and its customers are not as good as they were last month. This makes it even tougher to bounce back.

To avoid this all-too-common situation, it’s key to build sales momentum early in the month with a consistent rhythm of sales activity.

How does a manager inspire their team to engage in sales activity at the very beginning of the month? By introducing a ‘What’s Changed?’ game plan – a powerful 60-minute sales-leadership exercise that maintains sales momentum.

A ‘What’s Changed?’ gameplan starts with the sales manager doing a strategic business analysis based on three key ‘What’s Changed?’ factors: inventory, market, and offers. This information is then used to identify new sales opportunities around which to create a selling story that the sales team can share with their customers.

Let’s break down the three ‘What’s Changed?’ factors to be analysed, beginning with the inventory. A thorough inventory analysis doesn’t just look at the vehicles on the ground, but also reviews the detailed list of inventory that’s been ordered: what’s currently in transit and what’s arriving later in the month.

It examines both the quantity and the mix of vehicles:

  • Are some volume models on the way?
  • Are some limited edition or exclusive models arriving?
  • Are new or refreshed models expected?

This monthly inventory analysis should also look at who in the dealer’s portfolio typically buys such models. Certainly, if inventory is tight, it’s important for sales managers to put a plan in place to sell the in-transit units, making the lack of inventory a reason for the customers to make, rather than to delay, their purchase.

Next, let’s analyse the market. Which used vehicles are in high demand and might allow the dealers to pay a bit more for trades?

Current trends to consider include:

  • Which models are your customers migrating towards when they upgrade?
  • Which models are most popular at this time of the year?
  • Which of the competitors’ vehicles has your dealership been winning on trades for your product last month?

These are all areas worth turning into selling stories, because when customers hear about who else is buying their dealer’s vehicles, it affirms their purchase decision.

Finally, let’s analyse the new offers, as well as how they enhance upgrade opportunities:

  • Is there an OEM offer, an affiliate offer, a finance incentive, or a dealer loyalty program that can make an upgrade either more affordable or more attractive to the customer?
  • If the offers haven’t changed much month-to-month, is there a model with a high residual resale value or one that’s in great demand that our team can feature in our upgrade offers?

We also need to keep in mind that offers and affordability are about more than just price or payments. Many new models have the potential to lower the customer’s cost of ownership with better fuel economy, lower servicing intervals and more efficient technology.

Once the analyses of the inventory, the market, and the offers are complete and the new selling opportunities have been identified, the next step is to create a ‘What’s Changed?’ selling story for each factor.

We need to leverage the two classic psychological motivators of ‘hope for gain’ and ‘fear of loss’ with language and conversation that doesn’t seem manipulative or ‘old-school’.

Intelligent Word TractsTM like “Best for You,” “Just Like You,” and “Courtesy to You” are of

significant value as we teach sales teams how to engage customers with the ‘What’s Changed?’ message as a reason to book an appointment or close a sale.

There’s one more crucial component of a ‘What’s Changed?’ game plan that’s key to unlocking your sales team’s success; that is ‘What’s Changed?’ for your customer. It’s important to find each customer’s unique reason to upgrade.

This can be as simple as training your sales team to ask their clients ‘What’s Changed?’ since their last vehicle purchase. Taking time to understand ‘What’s Changed?’ for each customer allows your sales team to connect the dots between their customer’s needs. It helps them to select the right product and to leverage a ‘What’s Changed?’ conversation into a reason to book an appointment or to buy today.

Best of all, you don’t have to create the ‘selling stories’ on your own. Bring your ‘What’s Changed?’ analysis to your weekly sales meeting to build a list of new sales opportunities and create the ‘selling stories’ with your sales team.

Empower your sales team at the beginning of every month with the ‘What’s Changed?’ game plan, so they can maintain sales momentum by making more appointments and selling more cars.

Jeff Williams is the president and CEO of Absolute Results

By Jeff Williams

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