10 minute read
PERFORMANCE
® THE SALE! Becoming A Triple Threat: How To Be More, Sell More & Make Yourself Invaluable
By Mark Rodgers
Would you like to be invaluable to your dealership? Become a triple threat! And I mean both literally and metaphorically.
In entertainment, a triple threat is an artist who excels at singing, dancing and acting. Think Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake or Jennifer Lopez. In football, a triple threat might be a quarterback who can pass from the pocket, throw on the move and run the ball. Think Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen or Carson Wentz.
In sales, that literally might mean being able to sell the bike, handle the financing and be able to fulfill managerial duties. In service, it might mean being able to perform a service check, file warranty claims and process incoming work. Metaphorically, in any position, it means being able to fulfill multiple roles in the dealership. Why is this so crucial? Stores are selling more motorcycles with fewer people than ever before. The more you can do, the more you can contribute. The more you can contribute, the more your worth. The more you’re worth, the more you can earn and the more secure your position on the team.
Here are ideas to develop your triple threat-ness:
Relentless Work To Reduce Your Labor Intensity
At first blush, this might sound like someone who’s trying to get out of work. It isn’t. It’s giving you the ability to focus on the important work. Mental and physical energy in any given day is finite. Now, some people have more energy than others, and there are techniques you can use to both maximize and expertly use these reserves. But much like the battery charge on Harley-Davidson’s LiveWire there is a limit.
You’ll often see sales managers burn an incredible amount of time and energy working on nonsense stuff like split deals. “But I talked to him first!” Or you’ll get division of labor complaints. “It’s not fair! I cleaned two more bikes than he did!” Petty energy sucking situations.
The Roman Senate had a great philosophy for this kind of situation: de minimus non curat praetor (Yeah, I can’t pronounce it either). Loosely translated it means: “the Senate does not consider trifles.” This should be your position. My mid-western approach would be: “I can either work to secure you more leads and get us more motorcycles to sell, or I can spend time on this who cleaned more bikes. You two are adults, go work it out.” (My east-coast language would be: “Get out!”)
If you want to become a triple threat save your battery for what’s important. Reverse engineer any task. Start with the end result and identify the most efficacious road to get there.
Create Check Lists
You can darn near run any dealership on high quality check lists. Taking a motorcycle on trade? Checklist. Putting together funding package? Checklist. Receiving an insurance estimate accident bike? Checklist.
The art of creating functional checklists is the detail. You don’t want to be so detailed as to have a 37-point check list for answering an email inquiry. Most functions in the dealership can be described in four or five, or perhaps seven steps. Less than that probably isn’t worth it. More than that is too complicated. My rule of thumb is a one-page bullet pointed check list. I create the task, the objective, and then a handful of the most important steps to get it done.
Perfectionism Is A Triple Threat Killer
For some, this takes them out of the running for becoming a triple threat. For most of what you do, 80% is sufficient to launch. The newsletter layout doesn’t have to be the Mona Lisa. The showroom needs to be clean, but not surgically clean. You get the idea.
Oh, I know the clichés: If it’s worth doing it’s worth doing well! Okay, but here’s the thing: the other person almost never sees or appreciates the extra 20%. And like the overused effort-expended-hockey-stick chart tells you, it takes a certain amount of effort to get you to 80% effectiveness, it takes twice that to go from 80% to 90%. Often not worth it.
Now, you have to use what is sorely lacking in far too many situations today. You have to exercise judgement. If I submit funding packages that are only 80% complete, my store is going to have a serious cash flow problem. If only 80% of my test rides are accident free, this is a problem. But for many other dealership tasks when you hit 80%, you’re on solid footing.
Self-Talk Matters
The single biggest thing preventing far too many of you from becoming a triple threat is you. You keep telling yourself you can’t do something. “I can’t talk to customers.” “I can’t use e-Leads.” “I can’t run the staff meeting.” “I can’t fill out a credit application.”
Stop saying that to yourself. Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, has done great work in the area of “abundancy” mentality. Abundance best described in the following under-used tale.
Two shoe salesmen were sent to a remote island. When they arrived, they discovered the inhabitants weren’t wearing any shoes. They both called their respective companies. The first said, “Send me a ticket home. This place is terrible. No one here wears shoes! The second called home and said, “Send reinforcements! No one here wears shoes!”
No matter what island you’re on, Dweck discovered that there was one key difference between the self-talk of high performers and others was a simple and learnable skill; using the word, “yet.”
People who were suffering from scarcity mentalities and therefore were low performers would reinforce their limitations with their self-talk. They would remind themselves over and over again. “I can’t talk to customers.” “I can’t use that computer program.”
People who have an abundant mentality (i.e. triple threats) would almost always add the word, “yet.” As in, “I can’t use that computer program, yet.” But I’m going to work to learn how. Small word, HUGE difference. Add this to your self-talk and expand your horizons.
Most customers do NOT need to know that their motorcycle will cost $15,283.73 before they say yes. They don’t. They simply need to know the bike runs around $15K. Or better yet, that we often see monthly payments on bikes like this somewhere between $330 and $350 per month.
Closing business using reasonable, and realistic, ranges is one of the key skills that a salesperson can have. Now, I’m not talking old-timey car dealership stuff like, “Scrape ‘em off the ceiling!” Where you present extremely high dollar amounts so that anything you show them after that seems good.
I’m saying quickly and easily let the customer know what this motorcycle, or this performance upgrade, or this riding gear package will approximately cost so you can cover a lot of ground quickly. Far too many salespeople get stuck in the weeds when it comes to price… And waste far too much time on the wrong product.
One way I often start my Accselleration motorcycle sales workshops is by asking the question: “Have you ever spent three hours with a guy talking about a CVO Road Glide (Hey, I’m Harley-Centric, what can I say.) – a $40,000 motorcycle – only to find out they are looking for a $200 a month payment?” I get groans of painful agreement all around.
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Don’t do that. When you can frame monthly payments or price quickly and early in the sales process, you can more expertly guide the customer to what fits them. You always have to “fit” the customer, both physically and financially. I don’t care if it is a motorcycle, a jacket, or a helmet. You have to fit both.
Effective Use Of Language
You also need to know where you are in the process and use your language to move to what’s your next most important step. What I see most often here are motorcycle salespeople who get pulled off track when it comes to customization or performance upgrades.
The customer will say something like, Can I … make it lower? Can I … make it faster? … make it louder? … make it bluer?! And salespeople often divert from closing the bike and start talking accessories and hop up stuff. Hey, you did say become a triple threat, right?
Yes, but here’s the rule: you close the bike first. Always. You don’t go on some accessory tangent potentially wasting time, remember, ruthlessly reducing labor intensity. This is why language is so important. When the customer says, can I … I respond with, “Absolutely. If you can dream it, we can do it. What we will do is find you the right bike, get rolling on the paperwork, then introduce you to Chris, our customization expert, and we’ll get to work making your dreams a reality.” Then I move back to the bike.
With the effective use of language, I almost effortlessly stay on track. And this works whether you are leading a staff meeting, having a performance conversation with someone, working with a vendor, almost any situation can be nudged forward to your objective with language.
Learn How To Learn, Fast!
Probably the single most important skill you can develop on the road to becoming a triple threat is the ability to learn quickly. Here are the components of accsellerated learning:
Identify specifically what you’re trying to accomplish: e.g. Not just answer the phone. Rather, answer incoming calls and capturing customers’ contact information.
Understand why it matters? E.g. the dealership spends big money on marketing to get customers to contact us, if we don’t capture their information, we may as well put that money on the showroom floor and set it on fire.
Watch a high performer do it? This is called behavior modeling. It is imperative to successfully accsellerate skill acquisition.
Ask the high performer for one suggestion: What is the single most important thing to remember about doing this task? You’ll be surprised what you can learn from them having learned.
And then try it immediately. Whether it’s just you and a co-worker simulating the situation, or whether it’s live fire with a customer, the clock is running. The faster you can try this new skill, the better you will be.
The Road To Triple Threat Success
Now, more than ever, we need people who can be cross functional high performers. And when you expand your capabilities and your contribution, you too, will be invaluable to your dealership.
Now, go sell something will ya?!
Be sure to tune into: SALES SUCCESS IN 60 SECONDS OR LESS as sales expert and award-winning Dealernews columnist Mark Rodgers shares how to accsellerate® your sales. Watch Mark explain the guiding principle of how to succeed in the motorcycle business even in these stormy times. (FYI, Mark only counts the content after the whizbang video open in his time limit, so start your stopwatches then!) Mark Rodgers is an awardwinning speaker, best-selling author, and sought-after consultant, who has spent 33 years working in the Harley-Davidson industry. Check out his 60-second sales tips twice a week at Dealernews social media channels or contact him via e-mail: Mark@RodgersPC.com
