Status Quo: Risky Business

Long time no see.How have things been going?The last time we "spoke" it was about the subject of grooming yourbusiness. I mentioned to that I did not want to get into that subject at that time. You see when I made that statement I was thinking about some moderate risk involved in giving you the impression that not dealing with people he would rather not deal with might be an option.I think I was wrong to think that way. Whenever it comes to risk, you need to weigh both ends of the equation. The bigger risk that I would be taking, would not be telling you. I would risk not exposing you to one of the biggest benefits of prospecting the I have personally experienced. This benefit is shared with many others who have become successful in their businesses.So let's take a step further and think about the risks involved in prospecting itself.Let me see, what are some of the risks?1. I suppose our investment in time could be considered a risk.2. Then there's the risk of offending someone.3. About the risk of embarrassment.4. Or the risk of feeling foolish when you're prospecting and someone catches an up on the floor.5. And here's the whopper, what about the risk of realizing that you have them taking a wrong approach to your business.I think we'll stop and talk about the whoever. It is just human nature to guard and protect our "rightness" about ourselves and what we do for a living. I mean, after all, if we can't be right about ourselves what else can we possibly be right about? Overcoming this natural tendency of humans so you can explore new techniques and become successful is very risky. I will never diminish that fact. It is so risky in fact, that many people fear it to the point of paralysis. What are some of the symptoms of this paralysis? Well they might come out at statements that sound like this "I tried that, it will never work"; "I just can't seem to get the hang of this"; "I don't quite have the perfected yet" and on and on. The term psychologist use for this is, creative avoidance. Some of the symptoms are the phrases you just read, or their close cousins. Slovenly work is another one. Inefficiencies, inability to schedule, filling one's time with busy work are examples of others.Real quickly, let's take a look at that busy work. I mean really, if we are not in the process of getting onto new business, building relationships, satisfying customers, the act of selling a vehicle, or the act of delivering a vehicle, just exactly what are we doing? Take a look at your day see if you are suffering any of the symptoms of the paralysis that will render you unable to create the wealth that you should in this business. Whenever you find yourself not being productive you are cheating yourself and your potential customers. You're cheating yourself out of the income that you deserve and all that goes with it. You're cheating your customers from being served by a professional consultant who can help them feel good about one of the biggest investments they make.You probably don't remember this but one of Dombecky's quotes went something like this "It's what you do when you think you have nothing to do, that will make you all the money you can spend, in this business".So, there you have it. You have all the tools necessary to be a huge success in this business. All you need to do is pick them up and use them.More coming next time.Your pal, Curt

Service Series

Thank you for signing up for the series that is designed to improve your income and professionalism, while making your job easier. Now! If you would be a professional, have that status and the income, you would do the things the "pros" do.
One thing that we constantly hear about professionals that excell in their fields is continuing eduacation and practice. You have already taken a step in continuing your education. Now,let's practice!
The first is the most basic, but it is the one that is often missed by non-professionals all of the time. A professional greeting when you answer the telephone.
You remember how we practiced it when I was there. Practice it out loud, in your vehicle, have your boss call you name it, but make it a reflex. Part of what makes what we went over when I was there word to make your job easier is practice. If you practice, after time, what you practice becomes a reflex. You do not have to think about things that are reflex, they just happen. If they just happen, would you agree, they are easier for you?
A couple of tips:
The first thing out of your mouth should be a thank you.Let the customer know that they have called the right placeUse the entire dealership name along with "service"Identify yourself, remember they cannot see you.Ask "How can I help you today?"
It might sound like this:
Thank you for calling ABC Motors Service. This is Curt speaking, how may I help you today?
Now all you have to do... is do it.
More to come.

One to chew on

It's unwise to pay too much. But it is worse to pay too little.
When you pay too much, you lose a little money, that is all.
When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do.
The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot. It can't be done.
If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run.
And if you do that, you will have enough to pay for something better.
There is hardly anything in the world that someone can't make a little worse and sell a little cheaper ... and people who consider price alone are this man's lawful prey.
John Ruskin1819-1900

Think for them

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Wow, just back from two service consultant seminars in the title cities. I had not been to either city before. Both were outstanding. It was not very suprising to me that we often come to the conclusion that in the process of selling needed services on our customers' vehicles that we satisfy them as well.
Why no suprise? I mean let's face it we are always hearing or reading about people being taken advantage of in service facilities.
But, let's analyze what a customer really is looking for when they do buisness with any facility.
1) Someone who cares about them and their vehicle.
2) Someone they can trust.
3) Someone who is knowledgeable.
4) Someone who takes the three above and gives them the best advice on how to spend their time and money.
If we take a look at the last point above, maybe how to budget their time and money would be more accurate. I have never met someone that had so much of either that they did not have to make choices.
Here is a good example that should bring what I am talking about into focus.
My service consultant recommended that we rotate my tires last June. This was not unusual, but the reason was. He said that it looked like the tires on the front wheels were a little worse off than the other two. We would put those in the back and then when winter got here we would take the replace the worst two tires and put the new ones on the drive wheels for the winter.
Wow, I thought. This guy really carse about my vehicle and my money and my time. Of course, guess what time it is? You betcha. Time to buy my two new tires. And guess who as a real easy tire sale? Right again, that service consultant who showed he cares. What really was important to me was that I did not have to think about caring for my tires or the rest of the car for that matter. The biggest benifit of how he takes care of my vehicle is that I do not need to spend anything other than time to take it in and the money to have that work done.
For old Curt that is a huge benefit of doing business with that dealership. Thought free car care.
Think about yourself and what your loyalty factor would be if someone cared for you in any aspect of your life to the point where you would just have to show up and pay the bill. When you think about it, those are the easy parts of doing buisness if the rest is something that you can trust to an expert. Be a professional consultant and watch your life change.

Risky Business

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Long time no see.

How have things been going?

The last time we "spoke" it was about the subject of grooming your
business. I mentioned to that I did not want to get into that subject at that time. You see when I made that statement I was thinking about some moderate risk involved in giving you the impression that not dealing with people he would rather not deal with might be an option.
I think I was wrong to think that way. Whenever it comes to risk, you need to weigh both ends of the equation. The bigger risk that I would be taking, would not be telling you. I would risk not exposing you to one of the biggest benefits of prospecting the I have personally experienced. This benefit is shared with many others who have become successful in their businesses.

So let's take a step further and think about the risks involved in prospecting itself.
Let me see, what are some of the risks?
1. I suppose our investment in time could be considered a risk.
2. Then there's the risk of offending someone.
3. About the risk of embarrassment.
4. Or the risk of feeling foolish when you're prospecting and someone catches an up on the floor.
5. And here's the whopper, what about the risk of realizing that you have them taking a wrong approach to your business.
I think we'll stop and talk about the whoever. It is just human nature to guard and protect our "rightness" about ourselves and what we do for a living. I mean, after all, if we can't be right about ourselves what else can we possibly be right about? Overcoming this natural tendency of humans so you can explore new techniques and become successful is very risky. I will never diminish that fact. It is so risky in fact, that many people fear it to the point of paralysis. What are some of the symptoms of this paralysis? Well they might come out at statements that sound like this "I tried that, it will never work"; "I just can't seem to get the hang of this"; "I don't quite have the perfected yet" and on and on. The term psychologist use for this is, creative avoidance. Some of the symptoms are the phrases you just read, or their close cousins. Slovenly work is another one. Inefficiencies, inability to schedule, filling one's time with busy work are examples of others.

Real quickly, let's take a look at that busy work. I mean really, if we are not in the process of getting onto new business, building relationships, satisfying customers, the act of selling a vehicle, or the act of delivering a vehicle, just exactly what are we doing? Take a look at your day see if you are suffering any of the symptoms of the paralysis that will render you unable to create the wealth that you should in this business. Whenever you find yourself not being productive you are cheating yourself and your potential customers. You're cheating yourself out of the income that you deserve and all that goes with it. You're cheating your customers from being served by a professional consultant who can help them feel good about one of the biggest investments they make.
You probably don't remember this but one of Dombecky's quotes went something like this "It's what you do when you think you have nothing to do, that will make you all the money you can spend, in this business".
So, there you have it. You have all the tools necessary to be a huge success in this business. All you need to do is pick them up and use them.
More coming next time.
Your pal, Curt

Sell To Who You Want To

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Yes, there is opportunity everywhere. It all starts with your perspective on how your business should be.

Remember we were talking about looking at the size of the fleet of vehicles that you need to have control over to meet your income and unit sales goals?That is perspective.

Some people like to call this attitude. You call it what you would like, the results of the same.

Your perspective (or your attitude), directly affects what you will see as an opportunity. So I guess the next thing we should do is explore what affects our perspective.

Remember the PT Barnum quote, "Those who don't have goals in life hit their target with amazing regularity."?

Well, that's one of the main things that affect your perspective is your goals are targets.

You see, once you set a target; a system in your brain called the reticular activating system goes to work and allows you to see things that will act as supports to get to that target.

We will call the supports the pay values.

Now here's the real funny part. The things that we see as pay values once we have a target in mind were there before we had the target in mind!
But, because we did not have a target in mind, the reticular activating system did not allow us to see them. The dog gone thing only lets in pay value or threatening items!

So you're real mission in this prospecting lesson is to make sure that you have your targets clearly in mind.

That is why we went through the exercise in determining the size of fleet that you need to be in control of an order for you to make what you want to make.

Make sure you have targets or goals for every aspect of your life.

We certainly would not want you wasting any ammunition.

Catch you later, Curt.

This Business is What You Think It Is

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How are things going today?

Are you happy you started your prospecting efforts when you did?

Or, do you wish you had been a little bit more diligent?

I think you really starting to see that the old bromide "your reality is what you think it is." is so very true.

Now it is time for another dose of possibility thinking.

You know, seeing those opportunities that are always there, but we need to condition ourselves to see them. (Remember the reticular activating system?)

I've been talking a lot about prospecting people who are not your customers. But what about those people you sell vehicles to?

Here are a couple of techniques that you might try that can help you service your owner and pick up a few prospects along the way.

Way number one:

Personally delivering license plates or anything else that your client needs after the delivery, to their place of business. A little caution needs to be observed here because of the world we live in.
Make sure client is going to be in the office when you decide to go and make sure that they have time to see you for literally five minutes. Oh, yes, and make sure you can get in into the building!

I made this discovery over 20 years ago, and it still works today. Inevitably, someone who works with your customer will ask who you are.
This could be a receptionist, or a coworker, a security guard, or just someone you're asking directions from. It really doesn't matter.
They all drove to work.
Once you tell them who you are and the purpose of your visit, you'll have just separated yourself from the competition in their minds.
Not to mention opening the door to a conversation that could lead to another couple of vehicles in your fleet.
I'm not a gambling man, but I'm willing to bet that their sales consultant did not deliver similar service to them when they purchased their vehicle.

Way number two:

Help your client sell their trade. This one will require you and reward you for getting all of the information about all of the vehicles in your clients place of business or home.
Tell your client, that one of the ways you like to service their account is to help them get top dollar for any vehicle that they own if they decide to replace it.
Ask permission to call them about any of their vehicles. If you have someone that's interested in a similar vehicle at the dealership.
Two pluses on this one. First of all, telling your client that you want to get top dollar for any vehicle that they own.
When they decide to replace it, is a great way to finesse information from a client who might not be as willing to give you that information at first.

And secondly, you have a larger fleet of vehicles to work with with any of your used car prospects. Even if you are not able to pick one from your client database, it will keep you in the running with a used-car prospect you have.

Oh yes, and this is one of the best ways, I know of keeping multiple vehicles in your fleet at the top of your mind.

These are just a couple of quick tips to get you thinking about opportunities that are there, but you're not seeing right now.

Stretch your imagination, and you'll stretch your income!

More to come.

What I heard about Dealer Profits in New York

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Dombecky.com

So there I am, teaching a seminar in New York. We are talking about the usual; relationship building, customer retention, service selling, profitability.......

One of the attendees tells me that there is a Reynolds and Reynolds Service Selling Program that generates a letter for him to send out to every one of his customers the day before.

It is a personal letter, individualized for each customer, thanking them for the visit. It also solicits their feedback on the repair and the visit. He just signs and mails it.

What a great idea. My participant has been a service consultant for 22+ years and says this does more to bind customers to him and the dealership than anything that he has seen.

I think that ADP and UCS probably have similar systems. I would check what you are already paying for already with your system. I would say there is a fair chance you are paying for something like this in your software package and are not using it.

Unless you do not want to use something that is the best thing, to grow your buisness, add to the bottom line profits and retain customers to come along in 22 years. Don't take my word for it, call your software provider.

See you next time, Happy Dealer Profits

Curt

Big Paychecks and Dealer Profits

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Dombecky.com

It's good to see you again :-), as if I can see you.

How's that script coming? I guess we did call it a word path. Well, how's that word path coming?

Let's talk about how prospecting can change everything about your business.

There are going to be times in your business or have been times in your business, where you're not going to have as much for traffic as you would like to.

A major benefit of getting your prospecting efforts to become part of your daily activities is that these lulls will become less and less.

In fact, instead of peaks and valleys your business will be more like an upward sloping graph.

Take a simple piece of data that the average family who comes into your dealership owns 2.3 vehicles.

If you labor, under the correct knowledge, that every person you speak with his potentially controlling more vehicles than the one you're looking at, or the one you're talking about, you will naturally ask about the other vehicles.

Think about it this way: If you are talking to one of your friends about their children, and only ask about the oldest one you would be missing a lot of information.

If there was more than one child, you also give the impression that you might not care about the other ones.

This can be a very subtle impression, but it is still there.

You would never want one of your customers to think that you didn't care about, or you didn't wish to offer your professional services to all of their vehicles.

If we didn't ask about those other vehicles, that is exactly the impression that we would risk making.
It's really just a matter of how you look at that number.

The 2.3 vehicles per family is going to be there, regardless of how you see that you can use it.

The trick is taking any bit of information that you have in seeing it as an opportunity to support the efforts that you're making in building your business.

Business is run on money; we make our money in this business by selling vehicles to people.

If you can sell the same amount of vehicles by dealing with less people, you’re better off. Your customers are better off as well.

It doesn't take any more time or effort to develop a relationship with a person who owns 15 vehicles, versus one that just owns one.

So the bottom line is, you can devote more of your effort to the owners of those vehicles, if you have less of them per vehicle sold.

Now please don't mistake this is me telling you, "You just need to go out and look for people who own multiple vehicles".

That's not it at all. What you need to understand from this is the average sales consultant, does the opposite.

The average sales consultant thinks that most of his or her customers just own one vehicle, because they never find out about the other ones.

And even worse, the customer gets the impression that they need to go somewhere else to replace the other vehicles!

This is lose, lose to the max

Prospecting

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Dombecky.com

My how time flies when we're having fun!
It seems like only yesterday we were talking about prospecting.
Let's recap a couple of key points that will make your efforts bear more fruit.
Point number one:
Revisit your numbers; you now have an idea of the exact effort that you need to make on a daily basis to achieve all that you want from this business.The next thing you need to do is plan every day to do that.My suggestion is start the day off prospecting. Get into the habit of determining your prospecting efforts that day, get them taken care of first and you'll be successful at building your business.
Point number two:
Keep the phrase, "Who do you know," at the top of your mind. This single phrase can make you more money than you'll ever make by just prospecting or just waiting on floor traffic alone.Remember, when you ask somebody that question, it also puts a take in their memory that you would like to know if they knew somebody looking for another vehicle. So the chances of them calling you, even when you're not asking at that moment are greatly enhanced.Always make a personal thank you for any referral, whether you sell the vehicle or not.