MSADA Battle Plan

From the pages of the Massachusetts Auto Dealer Magazine, Vol 16, No 4, Annual Meeting 2003.

Massachusetts Auto Dealer Magazine is the official publication of the Massachusetts State Automobile Dealers Association, Inc.

Managers Praise Workshop

If dealerships saw their car sales rise in the month of May, they could point to the economy shifting, the weather warming up, or just good-old-fashioned luck. After speaking with sales managers, general managers, and F&I managers who attended the free half-day workshops at this year's Annual Meeting, we would say the reason could be Jim Ziegler.

One would never think that the day would arrive when folks in the retail car business would be pumped about a seminar. Any sales manager worth his closing ration will tell you, "Go to a what? If you're not on the floor... you're not sellin' cars."

Jim Ziegler may have single-handedly towed that long withstanding misnomer to the junkyard - once and for all.

The Auto Dealer spoke to a dozen or so attendees of Jim Ziegler's Battle Plan Profit and Strategy Workshop: mall shops to superstores, Borne to West Springfield, and everyone, without exception said more or less the same thing... Unbelievable. Incredible. Impressive. To be honest, we were a bit taken aback. We were prepared for the usual parity of replies about  how-to seminars, "I've heard it all before... boring... I could have been selling cars... etc."

Some Great Ideas

"I was very impressed," said Bob Dumias, general sales manager of Clarence H. Knight Inc. in Southbridge. "He had some great ideas. I liked what he said about getting into the deal.

"After the customer has had a few passes with the salesperson, as sales manager, I should sit down and ask the customer if we could do this in one pass. We  applied this right away. The first day, second day, third day... we're keeping a higher gross on nearly every deal. This guy definitely knows what he's talking about.

Damon Cartelli, GM of Fathers and Sons in West Springfield, had an epiphany about the size of his sales staff. "We had an idea that we wanted to explode our sales. We thought about how many sales people we'd need to meet our goal. We came up with six. After listening to Jim we figured out we really needed 10 to 12! We came back to the dealership psyched with this new plan for staffing."

Cartelli was so excited about what he got out of the seminar that he's sending his sales manager to Vegas for additional training with Ziegler.

Rethinking Radio Concentration

"Ziegler hit the nail on the head in everything," explains Ron Singer, business manager of Cadillac Village of Norwood. "He's a powerful speaker who reinforced many of the things we do here. It gives me a chance to fine tune them."

This was the first auto seminar for Brian Johnson, sales manager of Adams Chevrolet Buick Pontiac in Athol. Johnson recently left the furniture business for auto sales. "It was pretty dynamic," Johnson said. "I took back some key points about our advertising strategy. Sometimes in our ads we lead the customer down one path. It may be 0% financing or something else, but we offer so much more.

"He also made me think about our radio concentration," Johnson continued. "We spread out our ads throughout the day. Going forward we're going to have more concentration and hit our customer more often."

"Just what you need to hear in this market. Fantastic!" exclaimed the Used Car Manager Charlie Miller of Mandeville Chevrolet in North Attleboro. "The business has changed considerably on the customer's side. He or she is so much more knowledgeable now. It's still the basics for us. We can't skip steps. We must follow-up. It was a great refresher.

"You have to be reminded to treat everyone with respect when they walk through our doors," Miller added. "When business is slow you start to think that everyone coming in is a stroker. You loose sight of what you have to do. What Jim presented was enlightening."