The Right Tool For the Job by Greg Martin

Let me talk a bit about "the right tool for the job".

When business gets a bit more challenging, you tend to notice it a bit more, but it's right there all along.

When a customer visits your lot, it is important that you make a good first impression. I'm sure that every one of you will agree. We want our salespeople to be knowledgeable, more knowledgeable than any other dealership. We want him to know features, benefits, availability, or lack of availability, market trends, capacities, the list goes on and on. We train them, the factories have "Certification Classes", new product launches. We are cutting edge, right?

Why then, would we allow a salesperson to "up" a commercial customer without the proper knowledge to perform a proper fact finding interview?

A number of things might happen and a couple of them may happen at the same time;You might sell the customer the wrong truck, misquoting capacity and serviceability, putting the dealership in a tremendous liability position, not sell the vehicle at all because you didn't have the proper knowledge of incentives, availability or options, or lose the customer forever because he was not ready to buy "NOW".

That is why I believe that all commercial customers be directed to a knowledgeable, trained and successful Commercial Truck Salesperson. They work this program everyday. They know that most commercial customers may take weeks, months, sometimes years to conquer. They have been following up with such customers their whole career, have seen the fruit of their labor produce that way time after time.

Why then would we allow an untrained retail salesperson to attempt to work a deal on a commercial truck? Greed, laziness, ego?

Maybe. Maybe all of the above.

If you were to calculate how much lost revenue is involved by losing just one medium sized construction company, you might think differently. The losses can be measured in the 10's to 100's of thousands of dollars in a lifetime!! Each and every one!! Perhaps millions of dollars in each dealership over the course of your careers.

Think about it... 4-5 deals per month @ $2500 each over a 25 year career is nearly $4,000,000!!

What if it were 10 or 12 a month?? Makes you want to re-think the whole "right tool for job" thing, huh? -- Greg Martin, Victory Chevrolet