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My New Adventure - Al West Nissan

We're all invested here, Bill! Waiting for you to setup a workday live stream so we can get our fix in real time.

Edit: Wonder how many people would watch dealership operations POV style if this many are watching someone work fast food.
I honestly thought about doing something like this. Thanks for your support, Zack!
 
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I've talked before about sucking at outbound. One of the recommendations I received was to go back to past opportunities that we didn't close and reach out again. I went back to April and reached out to about 30 customers where I felt like there was even the slightest shot at. This took me about 45 minutes. So far one person messaged me back to tell me they already purchased. This feels like a waste of time. Am I wasting my time?
 
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Updates:

Sometimes it’s the simple things. Several customer facing issues. Things laying around for no reason, no one responsible for coffee in the customer waiting areas, other amenities not taken care of, dirty floors, etc.

Also, listened to some phone calls. Clearly no phone training and probably minimal training period. Installed the phone script that I built and trained on it today. Will be watching for the follow through.

Threw the old "price them when they are through recon" out the window.

Pushing for 3 to 5 days recon time.

Making sure we review used vehicles after recon rather than just throwing them on the lot.

Notified the sales staff that we will be extremely CRM focused. We will establish standards and monitor performance.
Hey Bill,

I don't know if you're using ChatGPT yet, but if you take the transcript of a phone call and paste it into a chat and then instruct chat to give you tone analysis and a tone map you will be amazed by what you see the AI will break the phone call down and illuminate where it's working and where it's not by analyzing both the salesperson and the customer responses if you decide to try this use the model 40 in chat. If you need any help just message me and I can assist.
 
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Hey Bill,

I don't know if you're using ChatGPT yet, but if you take the transcript of a phone call and paste it into a chat and then instruct chat to give you tone analysis and a tone map you will be amazed by what you see the AI will break the phone call down and illuminate where it's working and where it's not by analyzing both the salesperson and the customer responses if you decide to try this use the model 40 in chat. If you need any help just message me and I can assist.
Really appreciate that. I'm still trying to figure out our call tracking system. It doesn't seem to do a very good job of allowing me to find sales calls easily. Unfortunately, we don't have the funds to get a really high quality system.
 
I've talked before about sucking at outbound. One of the recommendations I received was to go back to past opportunities that we didn't close and reach out again. I went back to April and reached out to about 30 customers where I felt like there was even the slightest shot at. This took me about 45 minutes. So far one person messaged me back to tell me they already purchased. This feels like a waste of time. Am I wasting my time?
I won't say that you are wasting your time, because as soon as I do someone will tell all of the stories about how they kill it with 6 month old re-engaged shoppers.

I will say that it is a very low percentage of success when following up with those people. I guess it depends upon what else you have to do as to if it is a waste!
 
That 5 star review is a good idea!

Too much off topic ... but are reviews part of check out? "Hey! could you scan this qr code and leave us a review?"
While developing messaging and training around reviews in our AI training program, the AI offered an interesting strategy: Set up the review at the beginning of the sales conversation, something like, "We here at x dealership strive to be a 5-star dealership. After you buy a car we want you to to be confident in giving us a 5 star review. Please let me know if I am not providing 5 star service." By telegraphing upfront, when you ask for the review they will feel compelled to give 5 stars if they didn't give any feedback during the process. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Have you tried it?
 
I've talked before about sucking at outbound. One of the recommendations I received was to go back to past opportunities that we didn't close and reach out again. I went back to April and reached out to about 30 customers where I felt like there was even the slightest shot at. This took me about 45 minutes. So far one person messaged me back to tell me they already purchased. This feels like a waste of time. Am I wasting my time?

You spent 45 minutes and found out one person definitely won’t buy, that’s still better ROI than most Facebook ads
 
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I've talked before about sucking at outbound. One of the recommendations I received was to go back to past opportunities that we didn't close and reach out again. I went back to April and reached out to about 30 customers where I felt like there was even the slightest shot at. This took me about 45 minutes. So far one person messaged me back to tell me they already purchased. This feels like a waste of time. Am I wasting my time?
Content is king when doing this. If you did a “I’m the GM and want to help you” kind of message, people don’t believe that. Too many crappy managers spoiled it. If you sent them a price or payment or enticed them with more money for their trade, then you may get something.

We help a lot of dealers with this with an enticement to see today’s latest payments personally constructed for them. That gets a lot of activity and pulls the old/dead leads back into active.
 
Hey Bill—really digging what you’re building here. Love the “back to basics, forward with intention” vibe. The way you're resetting culture, process, and expectations—without gimmicks—is the kind of leadership this industry needs more of.

I’m working with dealers right now to bring AI into the mix in ways that make salespeople’s lives easier, not more complicated. We use ChatGPT (3.5 or 4) to arm them with tools that give instant, almost magical insight into customers—before they even step on the lot.

Here’s one simple use case that’s been turning heads:
Just drop a customer’s name, with some accompanying information like where they work or live, into the ChatGPT, using the 04 mini model, and ask it to gather tone, background context, and possible communication style—based on publicly available data. You’d be surprised what it pulls. It’s not about snooping—it’s about prepping your team to align with how that person prefers to be communicated with.

Salespeople get a read on whether they’re likely analytical or casual, direct or relational. That changes how they write that first follow-up, how they greet them when they arrive, or even how they frame options during the close.

It’s wild how much rapport you can build just by meeting people where they are right out of the gate.

Not trying to pitch you anything—I just thought this might be a practical tool you or your team could try out while you’re rebuilding your foundation. Would love to compare notes sometime if you’re game. If you haven't used chat, just message me on this thread and then we can figure a way that I can show you how to do it. It's really amazing and it's a game changer.

Keep the updates coming—I’m watching this thread closely.

Jamie
 
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