SELLING BASICS 101

The 123's of Selling Powersports

The quickest way to become successful at selling is to learn what customers are really looking for and it may not be what you’ve heard before. There are multiple ways to sell things to customers but there’s only one way to become successful at it. 1) You can stand and wait for customers to walk-in the door. 2) Wait for customers to phone in and ask questions or 3) Wait for internet leads to ask questions about your inventory. All three ways will allow you to become a salesperson and even make average wages. Which method are you going to choose? 

Walk-in customers

The most common type of customer is the one that walks through the door “just looking” to see what you’ve got to offer. 20% is the average closing ratio (2 of the 10 customers in the store). An average dealership has 2-3 of these people show up per salesperson that works in the store, which translates into 1 potential sale per day per salesperson. With this customer, you can simply wait near the door each day and you’ll sell 18-20 units per month if you’re in powersports sales or 8-10 cars in the car business. (powersports stores get more customers). 

The strategy with the walk-in customer is to give each one a professional presentation but since many are still going to leave without buying, you have to collect their contact information before they leave. Now this is where you will no longer spend a career waiting for these walk-ins to come and buy from you. Take their information, place it in your CRM and begin nurturing them until they buy (note: I did not say pester them). 

The professional salesperson (<10% of us) will call their unsold customer up within a few hours of them leaving the dealership just to thank them for coming in while also offering more information and to answer any lingering or new questions they may have. Understand that your unsold customer is still going to buy but the question is, who will they buy from? Nurture them (phone, text & email) until they realize that you are a professional that will take care of them before, during and after the sale. 90% of your unsold walk-ins will come back and buy if you nurture them.

Phone-in customers

Unlike the walk-in customers, phone-in customers will never tell you “I’m just looking”. They’ve done their research and are ready to buy but they’re just ruling out the salespeople that they don’t want to go visit. 9 out of 10…90% of phone-ins are going to try buying within a week. 

In order to take advantage of this sales traffic you need to once again, get their contact information. They’re typically only going to give it to you if you ask for it and as long as you once again, act like a professional. 75% of callers are never even asked for their contact information. 

Over 90% of the time the salesperson never even tries to schedule an appointment with the customer. An old saying is, no name, no number, no appointment equals no sale. An average salesperson takes 3-4 phone calls per day, sets zero appointments but sells 2 or 3 phone-ins per week. 

A good salesperson will take 3-4 phone-in customers per day, set 3 appointments with them and keep 1 to 2 of those appointments. An average salesperson will sell 50% of their phone-in customers that keep their appointments. That’s at least 1 sale per day because of the phone.

Just like the walk-in customers that don’t buy from you it will require nurturing them. That’s right. some of your phone-ins will not buy immediately but they’re going to. Nurture these people just like you do with the walk-in customers (phone, text & email).

Internet customers 

More and more buyers are shifting to the internet. These customers have done their research (online) and they’re similar to the phone-ins. Ready to buy! An internet lead should be responded to (not auto-responder) within 15 minutes. A majority of these customers have good credit and they want a quick buying process. 

An internet buyer is as serious as a heart attack. As in the longer you wait to respond, the less likely they are too buy from you. The 3-step process to handling an internet lead is 1) email a response to them 2) text a response to them and then 3) call them. 

Remember that they might be at work, asleep or driving so if they don’t respond back to you…don’t quit. You need to continue nurturing these customers until they buy. Most average salespeople call these customers without realizing they never wanted to talk to a salesperson. That’s why they emailed. However I’m not saying to not call them but I’m saying to email, call and text them.

Sold & Unsold Follow-Up

All three groups of buyers that I just talked about are people that will buy from you along with many that will not buy from you. You’ve spent the time talking to them, building rapport, investigating, demoing and probably presented a lot of numbers to them so don’t waste all of that effort. 

Some days at work will be slow with a lack of walk-in traffic, the phone won’t ring and you’ll swear that someone shut the internet down but that’s the time professionals know exactly what to do. We never, ever, ever stand or wait around for customers to walk-in, call-in or email us. We nurture our customers until eventually we have so many in our pipeline that there are no more slow days. 71% of people buy because they liked their salesperson.