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A Salesperson’s Buy-in
Danny James: I think of the dealer that was always concerned about getting a salesperson's buy in on a system like this, and I know I've heard you say, you know, they can ... The salesperson buy in when they buy-into the store, you know?
Larry Bruce: Right.
Danny James: Yeah. But there is ... I mean, you have to respect both sides of that coin. You do want the sales people to buy-in. You want it for the right reasons, but at the end of the day, as they say, the dealer does still own the dealership. And it is their process. It is their set of tools. It's their method that the sales person has to embrace if they want to have a career at that facility. Is that not true?
Larry Bruce: Well, it is, but you know, so define buy-in, right? Because if you say buy-in, what a dealer comes to in his head is this Utopia where all of the sales people go, ahhh! When you put this thing in, right? And they don't do that. But what you can do, to get buy-in, I have to have something to sell you. How does this make my life easier? Well, when you can tell a sales person, look, here's what's going to happen.
When you come in, and you go to inventory, you're going to easily be able to get to inventory. You're not going to have to be searching all over the store only to find out the bike they're looking for, the machine they're looking for is in the back in a box.
Larry Bruce: I mean, so instantly my job and my life just got easier, right? I can find it faster and I know it's not in a box. I can go find something else, right? This helps with getting the salesperson buy in.
Larry Bruce: Secondly, you're not going to have to run up and just immediately try to get uncomfortable and ask the customer for their driver's license right off the bat. You're not going to have to do that.
You can naturally progress through your root process and five, 10 minutes later, then get the customer's driver's license. Then, while you're doing the test ride, scan that, so you don't even have to enter anything. Scan it, the only thing you have to do at that point, ask for an email address, ask for a mobile phone number. That's it. Boom. You're done. Again, my life just got easier.
Larry Bruce: Now, moving on, as you move through the process, you can immediately put them for a test ride, and I know I'm keeping track of you ... This is the sales manager. I'm with you every step of the way, so if things start to look like they're getting out of control, I can step in and help. If I don't know where you're at in the process, I can't. So, again, you're making my life easier.
Larry Bruce: Then, after this whole thing is done, whether you take a lead, or you've got an up, you know, something had to happen. You sold it or you didn't. You have to do a follow-up, so the system's just going to immediately schedule you a follow-up. You're not going to have to do it. The system's going to do it for you. So, schedule you a follow-up. This will help get the salesperson buy in to the system.
Larry Bruce: After so much time, you know, two, three times you attempt to follow up, if you're not getting ahold of the customer, the system's just going to take that follow up away from you and it's going to start it for you.
It's going to start emailing the customer and talking back and forth with them, and trying to get them back to a level of being a hand raiser, but at this point, you don't need to waste your time on somebody who won't call you back. So you're only talking to the people that are highest-value. That's saving me time. That's helping me sell.
Larry Bruce: When you can explain that to a sales person, then you don't need buy-in. They're already bought in.
Danny James: They're in, yeah.
Larry Bruce: Right. A typical sales cycle for a dealer over a 60 day period, which is what we look at as a normal sales cycle, would have 900 Thousand in a sales cycle in a store of 150 units a month.
Danny James: Okay.
Larry Bruce: That's an insane number of customers to follow up on. Four people can't follow up on that. Hell, 10 people can't follow up on it. Even if that's all you were doing, you couldn't follow up on it. So this notion that the CRM system will collect and organize everything, yes, it will. It will collect, organize, and overwhelm. If you did it right, it will collect, organize, and overwhelm your sales force to where they would look at it and go, I've got ... Today I've got 65 follow ups I've got to make today.
There's no way in hell I'm doing that. And you scratch your head and you wonder why CRM's not working. It actually is. It's collecting and organizing this overwhelming number of people that your sales people could never follow up with, even if they had all day to do it, if they were doing it 24 hours a day. Getting the salesperson buy in is key.
Larry Bruce: It has to get smart. You can't just have CRM that collects everybody and says you'll follow up everybody. CRM has to look at it and say, who should you be following up on?
Danny James: Yes.
Larry Bruce: As a sales person, who's the highest value and who should the system take over and start nurturing to try and get to a high-value situation? That's a smart system, right. That's the difference between CRM and sales automation. CRM, done right, will eventually become unmanageable.
Danny James: Sure. I mean, it's a numbers thing. If you're not letting go of people then eventually that bucket gets full.
Larry Bruce: Exactly, and at that point, then you arbitrarily start dumping people, and you have no idea if they're the right people. And then when they get dumped, what happens? Nothing. They go into oblivion and they buy somewhere else.