
I was writing this article at a dealership whose sales volume had doubled in the past three months year-over-year. The company had no aged inventory, its gross average beat the marketplace, its back-end gross rose significantly, and the sales staff has had zero turnover since the dealership’s last hire two years ago.
This dealership is not perfect, nowhere close, but its drastic improvement this year is tied to management’s follow-through of the company’s sales system.
Like many dealerships, your organization has a wide skill and performance range and all the challenges of working in a people business. Sales has always combined many factors to enable someone to thrive, including opportunity, motivation, creativity, practical experience and social intelligence.
I want to pinpoint a specific upgrade that enables everyone to perform at a higher level: systems.
Why do certain coaches always have winning teams regardless of their team’s talent? Why do these coaches always seem to bring out the best in their team members?
To explain how systems help those at every level increase their income, I will use two adages. First is that systems create a minimum productivity level. Second is that systems unlock individual capabilities.
Systems Create a Minimum Productivity Level
Everyone has good days and bad days. Work performance can be affected by personal issues, as is often the case. For example, someone dealing with a lack of sleep because they have a new child at home will have a hard time listening to their customer, being empathic or creatively solving problems.
The salesperson’s performance will take a big hit until life stabilizes again. By then, of course, the child may bring home illness from daycare or some other personal issues arise.
The extra motivational push we love to see in sales can come and go. When big, positive life events happen, salespeople often push to be more productive. However, that energy always fades over time. Sometimes, salespeople have a stretch where they are focused more on other life ventures than on work. That does not mean they are not good employees, just that they are not spending the extra energy to make them great in sales.
However, by incorporating systems, we create a minimum productivity level. Although we work in a human business and must take care of people first, we can train daily to keep systems in place and create great work habits. By doing so, bad days, weeks, or even months will not prevent an individual from making the money they need to stay in business.
Good sales systems and their accompanying techniques create a floor to support the sales team. Even if salespeople have bad days and cannot keep an empty head, effective systems and techniques will keep them productive. Because at their worst, a salesperson still can perform ingrained actions.
Systems include having a manager check before showing inventory to discuss options. The checkpoint will prevent so many silly mistakes on the lot on a good day. On a bad day, the checks will give the salesperson a chance to be productive.
Systems Unlock Individual Capabilities
The lack of systems or systems that artificially limit productivity often weighed down sales performers. Without established systems in place, dealership employees have no expectations of what happens when. The result is chaos.
If a manager knows a salesperson is saying a specific line a specific way to explain to a customer why they should finance in house, the manager knows how to follow up the conversation. Managers do not know the salesperson-customer exchange may be repeating something the customer did not care for. Worse, managers may even fail to explain to the customer how in-house financing can help them.
Every business has endless examples of how a lack of following guidelines created much more work to clean up rather than doing it right the first time.
When everyone knows where to be and what to do, everyone spends much less wasted time communicating to catch up. The communication time previously wasted on catching up can now be spent on developing leads and professional or opportunity development.
Top salespeople perform even better when coached well in a good system. A salesperson who worries about what to say and do cannot actively listen. As humans, we have a hard time actively listening and thinking simultaneously. The struggle is why my wife always knows when I am fully present in a conversation or not. By having set systems where top performers can execute the techniques, their minds can be as creative as possible.
Top performers who know what everyone else is doing are miraculous at using the tools available to help the customer.
The better the base system is functioning, the wider the outcome range you can expect. Systems create a minimum productivity level—but instill a good system and the sky is the limit.
Dramatically Reduce Turnover
About five years ago, I received numerous requests from large dealership groups to help them reduce turnover. The companies found new salespeople were turning over quickly, and even many veterans were looking for and taking other opportunities. As I dug deeper into the root of these groups’ issues, the same problems occurred. Hiring and onboarding processes were not set systems to create a long-term, productive employee. Salespeople were not earning as much as they believed they could.
Every dealership I enter has its own culture and challenges. Systems create a baseline from which they can all improve.
When companies actively manage onboarding processes using development tools that provide techniques salespeople need to sell in our industry, the turnover rate drops dramatically because people are put in a position to succeed. You cannot expect someone to succeed if they are not given the right tools.
Systems that artificially limit productivity or lack functionality often weigh down higher-level sales performers. When good people see their employer is investing in, they stay. I am yet to meet someone who truly does not want to improve. They may be skeptical, they may be nervous, but that all melts away as soon as they see how the education I offer improves their productivity and limits wasted opportunities. At the end of the day, the sales systems make more money. People go into commission-based jobs to create a better quality of life. Good systems enable them to perform and build their lives as far as they take it.
Dealerships Perform at Their Training Level
The dealership where I wrote this article worked hard to increase its sales process quality. Over the past year, the dealership implemented the first manager checkpoint to select which RV to show. By adding the checkpoint, the dealership eliminated its aged inventory problem. The sales team practiced diligently to learn word tracks that put the customer in a better position to be helped.
The dealership’s managers are structuring deals before the trial close step because everyone is on the same page. The company’s new employee underwent our new hire training program with 20 days of well-structured classroom time.
When I show up to train, they show up ready to learn. Their customers are happier, they have less internal miscommunication, and the whole staff is having more fun and earning more money. I look forward to my next visit to this dealership when we push their sales system execution even further.
Jered Sobel serves as president of Sobel University, a company providing training for management, salespeople and consumers across North America. He is best known for designing the industry-standard onboarding sales training manual and co-authoring the consumer guide to purchasing an RV. Among his previous work experiences are roles as a dealership salesperson, a general sales manager and hiring dealer staff.