My New Adventure - Al West Nissan

[Carsten]

Another thought, IF you did go on a corporate bonus style system what would motivate people to sell?

I had a business luncheon and a similar conversation came up from the other side. That person was saying that he's come across a lot fo sales people who would only do the bare minimum to collect their pay.

 

[joe.pistell]

You know that I'm 100% in on your product...

Bar Rescue comes to Auto...​

​

Dude, you are going to nail it and I want to be a player in this turn around. Our platform is in the midst of a big upgrade, once we go live, I'll find a way to make this happen.

 

[joe.pistell]

IMO, this thread is going to be yet another DealerRefresh classic.

Lurking vendors, @BillVaughnAlWestNissan's play by play here reveals how deeply connected to the sales floor great GSMs' are. If you are a leader in the SAAS space, this is an EPIC USER STORY to share with your team.

SAAS leaders, be like Bill V, partner with Bill, roll up your sleeves and offer your SAAS at no charge. You will discover that lead gen. is such a small part of 'getting cars over the curb'.

 

[BillVaughnAlWestNissan]

Another thought, IF you did go on a corporate bonus style system what would motivate people to sell?

I had a business luncheon and a similar conversation came up from the other side. That person was saying that he's come across a lot fo sales people who would only do the bare minimum to collect their pay.

I would find new salespeople.

But seriously, you can tell who the people are that are sandbagging.

Ultimately, I have a few key things that a salesperson must be for me:

1. Good with customers
2. Good coworker
3. Trustworthy
4. Reliable

I don't value people solely based on how many cars they sell. So I don't value the 10 car person any less than the 20 car person. They both have to fit under these 4 things.

I believe in people's ability to decide their own work-life balance. Pushing the person that is happy selling 12 cars a month to try to sell 15 doesn't makes sense to me. As long as they do those 4 things they will probably always have a job with me.

BUT

If they start bombing leads and follow up or if they aren't being a good coworker, their leash would end up being shorter.

 

[BillVaughnAlWestNissan]

IMO, this thread is going to be yet another DealerRefresh classic.

Lurking vendors, @BillVaughnAlWestNissan's play by play here reveals how deeply connected to the sales floor great GSMs' are. If you are a leader in the SAAS space, this is an EPIC USER STORY to share with your team.

SAAS leaders, be like Bill V, partner with Bill, roll up your sleeves and offer your SAAS at no charge. You will discover that lead gen. is such a small part of 'getting cars over the curb'.

Lead gen is the result of all the other work that we do. Vendors who have not worked directly in automotive would be stunned to learn all of the moving parts that happen in a dealership just to sell one car. I hope this thread will highlight some of that.

 

[Ryan Thompson]

I'm looking forward to this thread! I was in a similar situation back in 2016. I attempted to create a "Dear Diary" right here on DealerRefresh. Don't give up on documenting Bill! It sounds like we are going to witness a serious turnaround.

My biggest advice - Don't worry about fancy marketing and driving traffic to the srote without the process in place to CONVERT (People + Process). This is something I overlooked.

 

[BillVaughnAlWestNissan]

I'm looking forward to this thread! I was in a similar situation back in 2016. I attempted to create a "Dear Diary" right here on DealerRefresh. Don't give up on documenting Bill! It sounds like we are going to witness a serious turnaround.

My biggest advice - Don't worry about fancy marketing and driving traffic to the srote without the process in place to CONVERT (People + Process). This is something I overlooked.

You are 1,000% correct in my mind. We paused all marketing and are in the process of an entire retraining.

 

[BillVaughnAlWestNissan]

Today was my most unproductive and frustrating day yet. My number one goal was to re-shoot all of the inventory possible now that the snow has melted off. I got 2 done. Here is why:

We are incredibly inefficient. Too many people handling multiple sides of the same job. We need to have one person responsible for various components. For instance, we have 3 people getting involved in ordering cars. We also have three people managing used car related activities. Just today I had 3 people ask me if we were wholesaling a car or retailing it because they needed to know for something they are responsible for. I have to clean all of this up.

There is no clear process for reconditioning. We had a car go through detail that the shop hadn't even looked at yet. So I had to document a written used car reconditioning process.

The lack of urgency in the reconditioning process is astounding. There was a car at the body shop for a week. When I asked when it would be done, I was told at the end of the week. Two weeks to get a front bumper painted. And that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was that it was just so acceptable that a vehicle might take two weeks just to get to a body shop and back, let alone the process to get it through the shop and then over to detail. The lack of urgency is unacceptable. I had to explain to everyone how much each day a sitting car costs. It was foreign to them.

This might sound like a silly one, but today I heard a salesperson tell the sales manager that they were running a vehicle somewhere. He just said ok. I had to stop them and explain that we have 3 salespeople here and two are working a customer. So why would we let the only free salesperson leave the store. I'm going to have to work with my sales manager and keeping and knowing the picture.

My day started off by finding out that a vehicle that had a transmission put in it needed a lot of body work. When we went out to the car, the below is what I found. Turns out, the vehicle had gone through our shop and they let the sales manager know that it needed a $7,500 transmission. Turns out, the sales manager never even went and looked at the car when appraising it. The shop never mentioned the damage. Not really the shops job, IMO. And guess what the total amount of reconditioning the appraiser put on this 2016 Rogue? Yup. $7,500. I had to explain to him that you have to ADD it to the recon you would normally expect. He thought that if it needed any more work then the shop would have told him. Then we moved on to an appraisal that was done yesterday. Turns out the tailgate needs replaced and there was hail damage. Going to be a couple thousand dollars above the expected recon as he missed it on the appraisal.

Not beating up on the manager here. As I've mentioned, he's very fresh and he obviously received ZERO training. So I took the time today to install our appraisal process and checklist and walk through an appraisal with him. Will have to plan on doing this for a while.

 

[Carsten]

I'd a 5.
5. someone who cares about the customer and the dealership

Sounds frustrating but it sounds like you going to fix this ship eventually!

 

[BillVaughnAlWestNissan]

I'd a 5.
5. someone who cares about the customer and the dealership

Sounds frustrating but it sounds like you going to fix this ship eventually!

That starts at the top. Yesterday a customer came in who bought a used car a month ago and the motor went out. They said, "I hate it, but she didn't buy a warranty and we couldn't have predicted it." I said, "Fix it." She traded out of it (received the price she paid) instead. She bought one of our oldest new vehicles on the lot and bought a warranty this time. It has never ceased to amaze me in this business how things just work out when you do the right thing by the customer.