Is your sales team staying in tune?

Everybody enjoys a good musical performance. The singer producing an amazing melody on the microphone and the band backing them up with their instruments.  The whole show goes smoothly from start to finish, thanks to the band’s preparation and coordination.

Your sales team needs to be in tune to make sure your day-to-day operations are running smoothly too. The same processes that a band follows can be applied to your sales team to ensure your dealership is staying in rhythm.

Proper Preparation for The Show

Before a band is ready to perform, they need to have a clear idea of what’s needed for the concert. The proper equipment, instruments, and the songs they plan to perform. Having a full picture laid out for the concert allows everyone to know what they should focus on.

While your sales team isn’t going to be worrying about what song they should sing, it’s still important for them to have a list of tasks to complete each day. This allows them to prepare what customer information they might need and how they want to best utilize their time. The difficult part is knowing which tasks to prioritize ahead of others. You want your team to focus on the most important tasks and pursue the prospects that have the highest likelihood to buy, but it’s not always obvious what or who that is. Utilizing a tool that can help your sales staff properly prioritize their tasks will ensure that they get the most out of each day.

Stick to the Sheet Music

During a concert, the band has lyrics and sheet music prepared to ensure a song is performed correctly. If the guitar player decides to skip to their solo, it throws off the rest of the band as they try to match up to where they are in the song. This leads to a poor sound being produced and leaves fans confused.

Similarly, you want your sales staff sticking to the sales process. If they skip steps in the process, they have a higher chance of losing the sale, upsetting the customer, and even causing confusion internally. A guided sales process that is easily trackable, helps keep everybody on the same page, and improve the process. For example, if a manger knows that a sales rep is out on a test drive with the customer and it’s going well, they can prep the paperwork before they even get back from the test drive.

Know When to Deliver an Encore

After finishing a set, if the band has done well, they’ll typically perform an encore. However, the band only performs the encore if the crowd is chanting for one. They don’t just decide to randomly start playing a song out of the blue. It’s all about proper timing and selecting the right song.

Knowing the right time to follow-up is just as important in sales. If you send something at the wrong time, you risk not resonating with your customer. Proper follow-up isn’t just messaging someone after a couple of days or wishing them a happy birthday. It should take into account how a customer has reacted to previous interactions and where they’re currently at in their ownership journey. This allows the messaging to be more relevant and engaging to the customer because it’s based on past results.

Delivering a quality performance is important whether you’re playing with a band or selling cars to customers. Finding the right tool that can help you implement processes like task prioritization, enforcing a sales process, and proper follow-up is the key to keeping your sales team in tune and running smoothly.

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