“You might be interested in a new vehicle and we’d possibly like to buy yours” said the sales consultant I overheard while my car was being serviced. Sure, it could be a “one-off” opening line for a voicemail, but this line was used multiple times for the new vehicle they were trying to sell. To make matters worse, the ending of the calls was “so, um yeah just figured I’d give you a call you know, and ugh yeah let me know.”
Let’s be serious – if the customer were to listen to this voicemail, they’d most likely pass it over, right? It doesn’t sound very appealing, you know?
It’s voicemails and calls like the above that continue to plague our industry. The way your Sales Consultant or BD Agent presents the offer can make or break your chances of selling the customer a vehicle.
So, despite continuing to live in a world where inventory is low and used car pricing is through the roof, having good phone skills is still required.
This also isn’t saying they’re not a good Sales Consultant, either. What this is offering is that even your best Sales Consultants still need refresher courses on best practices to effectively handle phone calls and voicemails.
But, all too often, our response to the above voicemail is “well they’re not good on the phones so we just have a BDC handle the calls.” But really? Do they all not have phones on their desks? What about in their pockets? Do their business cards have phone numbers on them?
Sure, you might have a BDC handle calls – who could also benefit from a refresher course – but just like in today’s experience, the Sales Consultant was the one handling outbound calls and leaving voicemails. Not the BDC.
Even if your Sales Consultant only makes a few phone calls – those phone calls still count. Every phone call, no matter who’s making the call, should be handled with the same level of etiquette. Every phone call that’s not handled with proper phone etiquette is potentially a missed opportunity. How many opportunities are we willing to throw away because we didn’t want to train our Sales Consultants or BD Agents?
Take 30-seconds, complete a complimentary Stealth Test and see what it can do to help build strong phone skills for your Sales Consultants and BD Agents. From there you can continue to our Automotive phone training.
As the COO | Partner of Phone Ninjas, Chris delivers leadership, coaching, and mentorship to 55 team members providing software sales and phone skills coaching. He fosters powerful partnerships and collaborations with leaders across various business sectors, establishing expectations, communicating vision, and escalating performance to maximize productivity and effectiveness.
Chris is an innovation-driven business executive with over 25 years of experience delivering leadership to teams of up to 75 overseeing development, launch, and sale of website lead acquisition, reconditioning process software systems, and technology that support automotive dealerships across the U.S., Canada, and Europe.
