It's the middle of the month, your day is spiraling out of control, you couldn't sell the last customer,
you couldn't sell the customer before that. The next customer entering your office is a guy that you
couldn't sell the last two times he was here and he's a cash customer. You know there's a
person on the sales floor who is getting a check from a local credit union and oh, look at that,
the sales person is letting him walk out the door to go get that check without ever talking to you.
What a mess right? Your mind is one of these.
Just a disaster. What do you do? Well you know I always tell my F&I managers a sports analogy,
and I know not everyone watches sports, but I think even if you don't watch sports you can
understand this: a lot of times in sports one of the teams will just be getting demolished. They'll
be getting their face beaten in. They'll be down 35 to nothing and they keep at it and they keep
going and they keep chugging away and at the end of the game they win. It doesn't always happen
but it happens sometimes. Why is that? Why is it that some teams are able to come back from the
brink of disaster, getting their face pushed in to winning a game? Let's think about it. The players
on the team didn't change. They're same players that came to the game. The venue didn't change. They're
at the same stadium. Their coaches didn't change, the other team didn't change. So what changed?
How are they able to come back? Well a lot of it is process, okay? They went into the game
with a game plan. They want to either run the ball a lot or pass a lot or play this defense, whatever
it may be. And the first half didn't go so well because they messed up a little here, they messed
up a little there, they got a little unlucky. But in the second half instead of changing everything,
instead of taking the game plan and ripping it all up and starting a new one and trying to learn
that new great game plan on the fly and turning their mind into one of these, what do they do?
They keep following the game plan that they have made, that they know is successful
and they keep following that plan. They keep following that process and they keep doing
the same things over and over and over and over because they know those "over and over" things are
the right thing to do. They know they work in time and one play leads to another and one score leads
to another and they're consistent. And they come back and they end up winning the game.
The same thing can happen in the dealership, think about it.
Last week when you had that awesome day and you sold everyone who walked in the door,
are you any different? Are you a different person? No you're the same. You're the same finance manager.
Do you have the same skills you had that day? Absolutely. You had the same skills
that day. Are you in the same place? Yup, you're in the same dealership, same office.
So what can you do to turn this day around? Simple: you can follow the process.
It's very tempting to take a really bad day and to say: "What I'm doing isn't working. I'm gonna rip it up and throw it out. I'm going to take my gameplan, I'm going to take my process, I'm going to take everything I've learned, I'm going to take my skills and throw it out the door because it's not working today.
And I'm going to try something totally new and see what happens". And you know what ends up happening?
You go from a really bad day, to a worse day because your process is gone.
So here's what you do instead. You don't sell the first customer. You don't sell the second customer.
The third customer you know is someone who hasn't bought me before and is a cash customer and you just
don't think you can do it. The fourth customer is already walking out the door heading to the to
the credit union to get his check without him talking to you. You know what you do? You bring
that cash customer in the office and you follow your exact process and you sell them something.
That's what you do. You present 100% of your products to 100% of your customers with 100%
exuberance and with 100% honesty and with 100% information
and you sell them a product. And then the next customer who comes back with that letter or check
you tell them: Mr. Customer I'm really sorry that the sales person let you go get that check because
you weren't given the all the options that you needed to make a wise purchasing decision. Let me go over
a few of those with you and you sell a product to him too, if not a full package. You follow
your process 100% of products to 100% of your customers 100%
of the time with 100% exuberance and 100% of information. Every.
Single. Time. Because if you take that game plan and you rip it up and you toss it out the door,
you're going to careen right off of a cliff. I guarantee it. I guarantee it. You stick
with the game plan you don't change it. When you're having a rough day you focus,
you think of your game plan again, and you go ahead even harder. You sell that cash
customer, you sell that customer who went to the lender down the street and after you get that
confidence you're gonna start rolling again. And by the end of the day you won the game.
Do not let a bad start take you down. Do not let a bad start derail your process. Do
not let a bad start rip up your game plan. If you do you'll go off that cliff. if you
don't you'll win the game. Until next time, this is Ryan at Finance Manager Training.