Men and women who consistently put big numbers on the sales board are farmers.
No, they don’t grow organic vegetables, but they do know the value of the law of the harvest.
This law says that what you sow you reap.
With 100% certainty, if you plant tomato seeds the end result will be tomatoes.
In other words, if you sow or plant future sales opportunities by working your customer database you’re certain to convert many of those opportunities into sales.
These sales will happen, not always in the same season, of course, but because you plant seeds – plant future sales opportunities — every day. Because you do, you reap a harvest every day as well.
Unfortunately, most sales associates are not farmers
They’re waiters… waiting on a fresh showroom up, a phone up or an internet lead. Statistically, their sales tend to carry low grosses, their customer CSI is lower, and their deals earn them only mini commissions.
Break up your fallow ground
In agriculture terms, acreage not used for crop production for a season or two is called fallow ground. In car sales terms, this acreage is the customer database. The farmers in the dealership know that it’s by breaking up their fallow ground – working the database – that bountiful harvests are secured for the months and years ahead.
Farmers make great car sales professionals
They take control of their future. They don’t complain, don’t waste time in huddles, and they show up on time to work, not read the newspaper and get themselves “settled.”
Farmers work their ground regularly by calling customers and asking them for referrals, to obtain names of other members in the household who own or drive vehicles and they routinely promote themselves through community networking and personal public relations efforts.
Farmers in the dealership, compared to hunters:
- Plant seeds with the 30 percent of everyone in the associate’s database who has someone in their family or among their friends and associates who will buy a car within 90 days, according to Joe Verde.
- Go after the 33 percent of customers who leave a dealership unsold and who would return if prospected. Research shows that 67 percent of these deals will close!
- Work the odds that just 15 percent of customers are pursued after the sale – this is fertile soil for farmers.
- Capitalize on the fact that 2 percent of customers in a database are always in market. Only those who work this soil, farming for harvests, will prospect them.
- Pursue the three other drivers, on average, in each customer’s household.
- Take the long view, recognizing and working the advantage that each seed harvested has the potential to buy 12 vehicles in their lifetime.
- Seeds planted consistently over time help farmers harvest 15 to 20 or more units a month, often at higher grosses because they’re selling to existing customers. This is real money, folks; money an individual really needs to have success selling cars today.
Farmers fall into a sales category I like to call unconsciously competent: They innately possess the kind of sales attitude that drives them to create their own opportunities. Farmers instinctively do what is right, consistently.
Farmers know that selling cars is like raising crops – a process, not an event.
They embrace the truth that their success is theirs to achieve, no one else’s.
They manage their time, they work hard, they understand the statistics are on their side, and they make great money.
By Patrick Kelly
CAR-Research XRM
http://www.carxrm.com
pkelly@carxrm.com
713-275-3500
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