The presentation! Apart from how you present yourself in the Auto Industry. Which is a whole other topic. The presentation (for me) means your steps with the client from hello to sale to – (after sale – the biggest mistake made by all salesman).
First impressions! I do not believe I need go through the cliches of how important first impressions are. On top of physical presentation, you need to master a psychological presentation. Here are my steps and thoughts behind why they are important and when to use them. This applies to a fresh walk in, a phone appointment you meet for the first time, or anyone your meeting at your store who may be looking for a vehicle.
My Top 3 Greetings
- Hi, Welcome to (Name of Dealership)! My name is Brendan, how may I serve you today.
- Hello, welcome to the store, my name is Brendan. How are you?
- Hey guys! Are you just looking around?
Here are my top 3 ice breakers or introductions. It’s important to have these in your pocket so you skip saying something awkward, regular, or low status. I normally use them based on the client(s) I see and what kind of person I think they are. This is where the psychology comes into place.
Welcome!
I normally use the first opener if there are 2 or more people present who have paged sales at reception or if I believe the single person waiting is a positive person or in good spirits. This is my go to for a few reasons. It is pretty difficult to say Welcome! without being positive and smiling. Trust me that is the first thing you want them to see and that is how you will bring your own energy up. Now, we say welcome to the dealership name for two reasons. 1. We are establishing that this is our house, they are our guest, and we are reinforcing the brand of the store. The second reason, is status and transfer of emotion. Think of every fancy hotel concierge when you enter. Welcome to the Shangri-la, Welcome to the St. Regus. It presents a certain je ne c’est quoi. It is changing their environment and opening them to a new experience. Elevating their emotions. A new experience with you and your store, way better than the last store they were at, they were not welcomed there.
Lastly, after presenting your name, the cherry on top to the greatest opener is, how may I serve you today. Do you remember, being a child in school and asking your teacher. Can I go to the bathroom? I’m sure they mocked you and even in your own head now, you are repeating to yourself, May I go to the bathroom? See, if you do not prepare, you will probably say something generic like How can I help? And you will be met with with a generic reply, we are just looking around. In this case you will have deserved it. Going back to my previous post about objections, it is your fault you are getting resistance. When you say the word serve, they have never heard this before, their game plan, generic answer has gone completely out the window. When the game plan is thrown out, the real comes in and now they follow your process. Trust me, everyone comes to the store with a game plan and an exit strategy. They have had discussions of what they want from this experience. Most of those are to not make a quick or rational decision because they want to avoid buyers remorse.
How are you?
The second greeting, I use for a one on one interaction, specifically when I can see we may have an A-type personality. Knowing your client’s personality type is probably the single most overlooked step by many salespeople. If you treat everyone as the same personality, you will lose when you try to overcome objections and before that you will lose when you are trying to build rapport. Lose-lose is not a good strategy. The reason for asking, the simple question we use everyday, how are you? What happens with this question, is a type A personality will be short with you. Good. Fine, thanks. Not bad. When we hear this, we immediately start to adapt. We still want to raise the energy and emotion but we are not going to win this person by being high energy. We will take a different approach, you are now talking to a calculator and excel sheet or a big ego and you need to feed that machine properly. On the other hand, if you get a, Good, thank you! How are you?! anything with a smile and positivity and we have misjudged the personality type and we next say Welcome! How may I serve you and continue or normal track.
Just Looking?
The last opener is a golden egg. When you have the customer that has snuck their way into the showroom without paging, or maybe it is the service client you do not want to dismiss, maybe it is quite frankly someone who should not be there. Here is how to approach them like a boss. 90% of the time when you ask, are you just looking around? They will say, yeah we are just looking! This is what they were programmed to say when they knew they were going to be asked by the salesperson. Your reply is the killer here, and you must use a confusing tone to execute it properly. You will repeat, “Oh? That’s ok, what…what were you looking for?” From here, if executed with the right tone and pause, 70% of customers will tell you why they are actually there. The remainder may get sassy, and say something like, “Well I’m not looking for apples!” Or something sarcastic. To this you just smile and reply something along the lines of “haha, yeah we don’t have any apples here, I was just wondering if you were looking for a specific trim or model, not all of them are in the showroom. Were you looking for something specific?” Then you proceed to welcome them to store and introduce yourself.
- One pro tip with this one is to follow your prey with your eyes first, if they are just loose necks in the showroom and not sure if they can even touch the showroom vehicles then step in right away. If they are already inside the vehicle, opening trunks, let them guide you to the vehicle they are really interested in.
All these for just a Hello? If you want to be the best, there has to be a method to your madness as they say. There is a step to every process, there is a word, a tone, or body language that you need to use in each moment. It is up to you to piece together what flows with who you are. In the race to the finish line, we have just got the green light, we have got that Mario Kart boost off the finish line but we still have the whole race to go. We just made an impression and now it is time to make a friend. The next step is the interview…
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