Employee Keepers

Hi All,

Attached are the forecast spreadsheets for October. The old addage you hear me quote for ever,

“If they are not selling they are not working!”

Minimum effort will not get the job done today. I am convinced, based on recent activity in Hutchinson Kansas, LNCJD/Mazda, I and the sales staff found there is opportunity out there, you just have be very disciplined to find the opportunities.

Russ Singleton,GM at the above location contacted me on Monday this week and 3 of the 5 deliveries made Saturday were from our appointments made Thursday/Friday.

As I have always said, it is appointments, appointments, appointments, appointments. What does you appointment analysis look like for the month of September? Who made less than 20?

That is a minimum acceptable benchmark, period………..

Are you getting the Delivery Survey collected at delivery for other vehicles (see Attachment)

You have the next 3 month to get a minimum of 600 contacts to your owners per salesperson, to cover the challenge months of Jan., Feb., and March. also, see the attached phone script.

As always, thank you for using my products and services.

Don Prendergast

Prospect Development Corp.
1900 East Lakeview Ave.
Pensacola, FL 32503-5780
Mob. 850-380-1061
Fax 850-469-1249

SERVING PRESTIGE AUTOMOBILE DEALERS 30+ YEARS BY REFERRAL ONLY
PS. I will post the forms he refers to very soon.

This is a copy of a typical email Don Prendergast sends out to his clients on a regular basis.
Don is the man who showed me the car buisness in 1983.
If you ever need help in these interesting times, call him at the number below. You will not find a more able cosultant in this buisness…anywhere at any price.

Donald Says:

Hi All,

The below copied, came from this mornings Automotive News Digital.
Recently I have re-addressed salespeople performance! They have to contact your owners and all un-solds on the guidelines established when you started using my services. I have said repeatedly, they can’t sit and guard your yard on limited inventory.

Please have all of the non-producers (less than bring their File Box to your office and show you they are contacting your owners! Those that have CRM run the contact report and have available when they come to your office. Please do this before the end of September. This will set the stage that it will take an all out effort to hit marginal numbers the last quarter! Are they taking care of your money, or, are they hoping you will spend more and more and more while they sit idle!

Sept. sales could be lowest in 28 years
Chrissie Thompson
Automotive News
September 21, 2009 – 12:01 am ET
September’s light-vehicle sales rate will fall to 8.8 million units, the consumer auto site Edmunds.com said. That would be the lowest rate in nearly 28 years, tying the lowest figure on record.
After the cash-for-clunkers program boosted August sales to their first year-over-year increase since October 2007, demand has plunged. In at least the past 33 years, when comparable records began, the U.S. seasonally adjusted annual rate has dropped as low as 8.8 million units only once, in December 1981.
U.S. sales fell to 13.2 million units in 2008 from 16.2 million in 2007. The slide continued, with demand ranging from rates of 9.1 million to 9.9 million units in the first half of this year.

All articles still stop short of the 5 million manufactured in 1980 and 1981, when interest was 21%……….

As in the past, are they turning in the 2nd 3rd vehicle report, this is where you are going to get your future Used Cars for sales and service enhancement. Please make this mandatory, tie it to bonuses! they will understand.

Please give consideration to Owner Repeat Sales Incentives for the last Quarter. 5 per month gets…….10 per month gets….. 15 per month gets…….20+ gets the real big bucks!

As Always, thanks for using my products and services.

Don Prendergast

Prospect Development Corp.
1900 East Lakeview
Pensacola, FL 32503-5780
Mob. 850-380-1061
Fax 850-469-1249

SERVING PRESTIGE AUTOMOBILE DEALERS 30+ YEARS BY REFERRAL ONLY

On an unrelated topic.

I just had a guy tell me one way to e-mail him was his phone number.com.

Which begged the question. How did you do that?

He just registered his cell phone number as a domain name on Go-daddy and pointed it to his email server.

Thought I would pass this along, because it’s a great way to give someone your e-mail when you are having a phone conversation with them.

They probably already have your number captured on caller I.D.. Just tell them to add a .com to it.

You can usually get coupons at registration services that make it cheap…like under $5.00 per year.

Let us know what you think

Curt

So many people have been asking me about this lately, I thought it would be a good idea to make it easy for you to view. Here it is. Talk about changing a culture…

P.S. if you see a little red x in the upper left hand corner of a white box instead of a picture, put your mouse pointer on it and right click and select “view or download picture”

Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.
William James

Need we say more?

Have a great holiday weekend. Then get that unfinished “stuff” handled!!!

Curt

It is not too often that you have seen an article on this blog containing a movie, but when it comes to prospecting, or sales, or leadership…we all have “frogs” that we need to gurge…if you get my meaning. If not, you will after the “flick”.
The movie is really short and to the point, like a minute and a half (I know how busy you are!!).
So, just click on it an enjoy. Leave a reply and let me know how you liked it.
Ask me about John Richardson too.

P.S. if you see a little red x in the upper left hand corner of a white box instead of a picture, put your mouse pointer on it and right click and select “view or download picture”

I once listened to a radio program whose guest speaker was a noted authority on problem children. She stated over and over again that you can’t spoil a child by loving them too much.
I would like to paraphrase what she had to say in this article today.
Before we do that, however, I wish to remind you of the two things any customer who comes into our retail facility in the automobile business spends. Time. Money.
Now for the paraphrase, just like you cannot spoil a child by loving them too much, you cannot spoil a customer by thanking them too much. Remember, every time we see a customer they are, at the very minimum, spending at least one of those two scarce resources. Two resources that no one has too much of, that’s why they’re scarce.
We are always in the business of looking for reasons to recontact our customers. Let’s not overlook the obvious. Thanking them for time and financial considerations is a great place to start. Whether they bought from your not!

Until next time

Curt

Just Click Here and you will hear about the easiest way that I know of to keep traffic at your web site.

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.

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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.