How do you deal with those periods in your career as a professional salesperson when your sales are in a bit of a downward spiral? We all have them, and my advice to anyone who finds themselves in this position is simple – stop selling cars. That sounds crazy, so let me explain what I […]

C ustomers need the comfort of comparison before they purchase, because they want to convince themselves that they’ve got a good value for money offering. Retailers understand this. It’s why the basic ‘Was £…… Now £……’ type of promotion works so well. It often helps to satisfy the customer’s need to compare without them having […]

What do you do with people you just can’t get through too? Whenever you phone, they just never seem to be there!! To actually get through to your prospect, you might want to try an even simpler approach. Call after six o’clock in the evening. Most people who can afford to buy cars tend to […]

Two of the most powerful words in the negotiation stage of the sales process are ‘Feasible’ and ‘Flexible’. Typically, when we’re with a customer we might turn around and say, “we can’t keep those payments at £350 a month, what would you buy it at?” There’s a problem with words like ‘Can’t’. If you ever […]

I sometimes think we’re too quick to make a judgement call on behalf of our customers. We tend to decide if we think they’ve spent enough, rather than offering every product to every customer every time and letting them decide if they want it. That’s why I always urge all Dealer Principals, Service Managers and […]

You need to be careful when putting a sense of urgency into your response to telephone enquiries because, if you build urgency in without any credibility, the danger is that your customers won’t believe it. If the customer has seen the car on a site like Autotrader, you can say: “Autotrader gives us lots of […]

Are you thinking of your customer? Set the agenda correctly first at morning drop off! • Make sure you’ve told the customer you’re going to do a complimentary vehicle health check on their car. • Make sure you’ve told them about the different colours on the VHC report, and what they mean. Because if you […]

A lot of salespeople tell me that they often feel like a driving instructor when they’re doing a demonstration drive, and that can make customers uncomfortable. So here’s an alternative approach that you might want to try. Drive halfway round your demonstration route. This is when I tend to do all of my talking and […]

Sometimes, they can be very insistent that they only want to know the best price you can offer them, especially if they live some distance from your showroom. “Well, sir, I take it you don’t want to waste your time or your money? I don’t blame you! I’m so confident I can get the money […]

What do you do if a customer calls about a particular car? Especially a specific used vehicle, or a ‘hero car’ where you only have a limited number of units available. This is one of my favourite hooks: “I’ve got a funny feeling one of my colleagues may have taken a deposit on it. Now, […]