Success in Automotive Sales

David Lowe 0:00

Are you thinking about starting a new career in sales , or maybe you started selling cars and you're not getting what you want right ? This is the episode for you . Hi , I'm David Lowe , the Automotive Sales Coach . Welcome to Prepare to Win podcast .

David Lowe 0:24

Today's episode is going to be a great one , focused on maybe people out there thinking about changing careers , or maybe people just started selling cars and are not seeing the success they thought . So I've asked a new salesman , brandon Long , to be with us today . He's at the Academy Jeep dealership in Tipton , indiana , and , for those of you who don't know , tipton is a very small town and we're going to talk about what you've seen so far and how you've come along and what you think of the car business . Does that make sense ? So remember , every episode that we do is focused on giving you tips on how to live and work with excellence , and sometimes that means , hey , where am I at in my career and is this going to take me where I want to go ? Sometimes , living with excellence is self-examination Am I in the right road to get to where I want to go Now ? Obviously you thought your last career wasn't the road you wanted to be on and you made a decision to change right . Is that ?

Brandon Long 1:21

true , yep , and you had a good career , pretty good career .

David Lowe 1:30

Absolutely , man , I had it made . So let's talk . Let's kind of talk to . Let's start with you're in a job now . Is it the right job for you ? Should you make a move , and should it be car sales ? So let's just talk about the job you had ?

Brandon Long 1:37

Yeah for sure . So I was at FedEx for seven years , worked my way up from the bottom all the way to the top , was in a management position . I found out the hard way that I would either have to wait 10 to 15 years to get another promotion or just get lucky one day right , and I wanted to be able to put my own effort into what I was going to make out of a job and it just wasn't it . So I wanted to get into sales and I wanted to do it for somebody that was ethical . Chariot Automotive Group is really good in that sense and I'm able to get win-win sales and really make a change in people's lives and do it in a way that I like doing it .

David Lowe 2:07

So you went from a pretty good salary to a commissioned job . Yep , because the pretty good salary was capped Time and time served , exactly Right . So we talk about selling cars as being one of the best kept career secrets . One of the things we talk about , of course , is the fact that you're not capped by time served . Exactly that's how I became a manager at 23 . What you do and how you do it matters .

Brandon Long 2:35

So you had a secure job making good money and , just to let you know , 20 hours a week on a salary yeah , 20 hours a week , wow . Because I managed a team , I was able to get it down pat . Everybody did the work and did what they were supposed to do , so I showed up whenever I wanted and left whenever I wanted Wow .

David Lowe 2:53

Rock and roll . So that sounds like a cushy job . It was Okay . It's not going to get me to where I want to go Exactly , sell cars , right , yep ? And so you've been selling what ? Two and a half months . My first day on the floor was February 1st . February 1st , okay . And in February , how did you do ?

Brandon Long 3:12

I got 11 cars out , okay .

David Lowe 3:14

Yep , and let's talk about your income for a minute . Yeah for sure . If we would annualize your February income , what would it turn into ? So , your february income times 12 yeah , yeah , 132, 000 okay your first month selling cars made 11, 000 . Okay . Now march , oh my god . First first month was lucky , right . What'd you do in the second month , 15 . In the second month , my man , yep and income a little 11, 000 again .

David Lowe 3:41

Yeah , okay so here's the thing that we've tell everybody that this is the best kept career secret . We tell everybody that what you do and how you do it matters . So many people start selling cars and they're not seeing those type of results . As a matter of fact , we have people that were at this dealership already , that weren't getting those results , have been working here for a while . So I want to talk about what does it take to get those type of results ? And , by the way , I believe can I tell you something . That's what I found in the car business . I believe it's . I didn't know about it . I mean , did you get told about it in high school ? Absolutely , absolutely .

David Lowe 4:22

What a great current show and most people don't know . And then , when you think about car sales and you think , yeah , those guys right , and so we've got that stereotypical cultural thing , I found , though , when I started selling cars that , wow , these people selling cars five , six , seven years , I'm already selling more of them and making more . How can that be ? So that kind of turned me on thinking that I was in control of my own future and the fact that I could control my income based on how good I was and how much I was willing to do . You're finding that out Absolutely . So a lot of people that get in the car business , they get in it and they kind of show up and they kind of wait for things to happen .

Brandon Long 5:05

That hasn't been you sitting around the coffee pot , yeah , in a conversation , doing their normal thing , like they're , like they have that safety net . But that's the thing about the job is you have no safety net , yeah , so you got to bet on yourself every day yeah , so you know .

David Lowe 5:18

so those people who want somebody else to be responsible for exactly that's not the job for them , nope .

Brandon Long 5:23

Nope .

David Lowe 5:23

Because you're your own entity . Yes , right At the end of the day .

Brandon Long 5:25

You make your own schedule , you make whatever you , you get whatever you put into it , yeah Right . So if you need constant guidance and assistance every minute of your day , not the job , not the job for you .

David Lowe 5:38

I agree with that . So let's talk about you then . What made you different ? What made you a success ? Talk about what you did to get here .

Brandon Long 5:48

Yeah , I'll tell you , if I started in this business right out of high school , I would have been one of those guys , so I had a little bit of experience under my belt under a Fortune 500 company . It gave me a lot of just experience in general . Life experience working for businesses and then , not to mention , I have a five-year-old , so that's an easy one to come to work for .

David Lowe 6:09

You know what I mean .

Brandon Long 6:11

Knowing that down the road , if I want her to go to IU or wherever she wants to go , that's really easy

Personal Responsibility in Sales Success

Brandon Long 6:16

. And that's a huge thing is that you see a lot of guys , especially in a business like this , that they don't have a why yeah , and they just come to work and they sit around the coffee pot and they don't care about that safety net . You got to have a reason why , and a huge thing that I learned is you have to ask really , really high level questions . That's how you learn , yeah .

Brandon Long 6:34

And just to be honest , I went through your sales training three times total . Yeah .

David Lowe 6:39

Wow , so yeah , three times .

Brandon Long 6:40

In the first month . That's all I did . When I went home , I watched it . I watched it the first time , did all the videos and then watched it two more times .

David Lowe 6:46

Isn't that cool , so yeah .

Brandon Long 6:48

But once you have a resource like that , you have't know how to utilize them . Wow . So that's . That's a huge one too . You know what I mean .

David Lowe 6:58

So so let's just talk about that . So , yeah , we have training all over . We have so many rooftops and so many salespeople , yep , and I hear managers all the time . How do I get them to train ? Exactly , right , and you know . So . There's different things there , where this is not a management or leadership course we have plans for that , by the way setting expectations and helping people become better right , absolutely . A manager's job is to help lift people up , maybe people without your life experience that haven't taken personal responsibility yet .

David Lowe 7:33

But you said it . That's how I got in the business . Nobody told me I didn't get training , so I walked around with a three by five card and when I heard something I liked , I wrote it down and then I would practice it . And I remember we had a walk around contest . I mean , I just started selling cars and it was to present a car in 10 minutes . Right , I don't know cars , I'm not mechanically inclined , especially 20 , yeah , um . But I took home the books and I practiced and I wrote my walk around out word for word . I did it over and over , and out of this big group of salesmen I got second and that kind of solidified uh the career for me , thinking that . Right , if I could just start and prepare myself , I'm already better than all these other guys . Right ? What can't I do ? Exactly , but it takes personal responsibility . So I had that , you had that . What do you think you think the why is why people aren't taking personal responsibilities or something else ?

Brandon Long 8:35

Yeah , absolutely . You know , I heard I heard this about a month ago I'm not going to say who it was A guy made a really really good commission check off a car deal North of three grand , right off one car . It's really good Take home . And I said , how'd that car deal go ? And he goes well , I don't have to work the rest of the month , which is funny . You probably hear that a lot , but in my eyes I want eight more of those for the month .

David Lowe 8:57

You know what I mean . So it's .

Brandon Long 8:59

It's it's a why , and you have to have that fire lit under you . You know , and I could definitely see I've only been doing it for a couple of months I could definitely see getting a couple of years down the road , kind of declining , falling into that slump , you know , not being as motivated , just like with every other job you never have right . So it's , you got to keep that fire burning . You got to find a way and a why and a motivation every day to come to work . And the biggest thing is you don't have a safety net . So you have to have that or else you won't be able to pay your bills . You won't be able to do this . But you know , some of these guys don't have bills lucky them , right . So it's a little bit different for some people .

David Lowe 9:33

Well , Well , but see , I feel like your why it starts with your five-year-old . You're thinking about their future , but I think it's bigger than that . Do you want to come here and suck , can you ?

Brandon Long 9:44

live with that ? Absolutely not . Yeah , it's about that , do you want ?

David Lowe 9:46

to come here and coast . Can you live with yourself for that ? Heck , no , heck , no . So I like I don't need that much money . By the way , greed is terrible and wanting money for money's sake to get things is not really going to make anybody satisfied . But money's not a bad thing and a lot in sales . Money is a representation of how good you are and what you do , how consistent you are . That's what it becomes right . There's no reason you can't . This is gold .

David Lowe 10:18

He's right , there's no reason you can't make money Exactly , and it's not greed , and it's not whatever , it's just simply wanting to do your best at the given job . You have so many people show up and coast , or just when they get enough , they stop . That's really character and integrity issue , right , yep ? So this is funny , so you may not know this . Well , actually , some of our classes you've been to training three times , which was impressive . I love that and it works doesn't ?

David Lowe 10:47

it works like a charm yeah , we'll talk more about because so real quick , just just interrupt .

Brandon Long 10:51

I had I had made this decision to come sell cars back in june of last year , but I was going to give fedex the rest of the year because they were down bad and I had just gotten into a new team , whatever long story short . So I had six months to prepare . So I'm watching , you know all different sales trainers all over the world and then as soon as I get to the dealership playbook , I'm like this is legit man if I learn this , I can make 11 grand , my first month , yeah that's awesome .

David Lowe 11:17

I mean thanks for that once once you find the resources .

Brandon Long 11:20

That's what's talking about earlier you got to capitalize on yeah . So yeah , it's huge very smart .

David Lowe 11:23

So , um , so we talk about Truett , cathy , right , and I started Chick-fil-A and he said you only really need three things to be a success . That's it . And the first one is desire and drive . You talked about it . What drives you , the why , right , the motivation , he said . Then you have to develop the know-how what to do , why to do it , how to do it , practice it until you can do it . And then he said number three you got to do it . He says everywhere I go , people say they want to be a success , but most people won't do what it takes . Is that true , absolutely true . So I think what sets you apart was your willingness to those three things . You had the desire and drive , you took the time to develop the know-how . You knew how important that was , exactly . And then every day you come and take action , yep , yep . So it's interesting to me that when I walked through the showroom , or yesterday , we had a phone call right and you're like , hey , I ran into this dude Exactly .

Brandon Long 12:24

This is what happened and it happens every day . Right , you want to capitalize . You said you want it to be 100% , but when you're in the people business , it's hard to be 100% . Yeah and yeah . So you got to take those scenarios and ask questions . But yeah , go on . Yeah , that's great .

David Lowe 12:38

But that means you're a student , yeah , so you're still looking for ways to improve . Absolutely . So , when we talk in a dealership playbook and we talk to people about becoming a success , that's what it is the best always want to become better . That's why we call it students of excellence . Right , that's why we say you need to be personally responsible for your attitude , your knowledge , your skills , your actions and , ultimately , results , right ? Yeah , so we have a lot of , I bet , salespeople that aren't living like you are right now in that success , maybe even struggling , right ? So if you were to talk to them and they came to you and Brent , what do I do ? What would be ?

Brandon Long 13:25

your advice . The main thing is ask questions . The second thing is have you , have you went through the day low process ? What do you know ? I would ask them questions about the actual process itself . But but the biggest thing is we have so many resources available to us Whereas , like you said when you started , I mean , I'm sure , a lot of people in the car business if you're watching this , you've been in the car business . If you're watching this , you've been in the car business for 10 plus years .

David Lowe 13:48

They just took you like a crane machine and told you to go sell a car , right no ?

Brandon Long 13:50

training at all , right . So when you have those resources , make sure you're asking good questions . And the huge thing I did , man , is I keep a notepad in my phone , the notes , and I remember my first month I had . I still have it just as a reference , but I had a hundred questions on there , At least when I would go home at night I would just type in there and then the next day I would come in . I wouldn't exhaust it all on one person .

David Lowe 14:10

I would kill them all in one day .

Brandon Long 14:12

Right , but I would have everybody I needed there to ask and go that route . So make sure you're asking good questions and just staying on top of everything

Pursuit of Excellence in Sales

Brandon Long 14:21

, and that's a . You talked about always getting better right , even when you're the best . There was a video on Steph Curry the other day I watched . He takes 500 shots a day . You do the math . Over his X amount of years in his career he's shot over 2 million practice shots right and he's only made 3,000 shots 3,000 three-pointers on the court . So less than 1% of a 10th of his shots that he's taken in his career are actually put into place in the game .

David Lowe 14:47

Yeah , so yeah , Steph Curry , he practices over and over for that opportunity , so I don't have the ability to be a pro athlete .

Brandon Long 14:56

Yeah .

David Lowe 14:57

In fact I don't really have a hole to make a great income . I wasn't really gifted I'm not a doctor level intellect , whatever but I do know this In sales if you commit to becoming better , there is the resources out there , and if you're a dealership playbook subscriber , you definitely have the resources . You want to be careful what coach you hire . Having a coach is one thing , Having a bad coach is something else . So a lot of these guys you probably watched for six months before were the negative reinforced trainers . Right , it's kind of pressure . It's like 160-pound 10-year-olds .

Brandon Long 15:39

Kill them , get all their money .

David Lowe 15:40

And you can sell cars that just feel bad and eventually that's ending . We'd rather be a skilled surgeon , absolutely right , yeah , so , um . So your first advice would be ask a lot of questions and do the training . Now here's a big one for you . What if they lack the why or the motivation ? What if they just took a job ? What would you say ?

Brandon Long 16:04

um , that's a tough one , isn't it ? You might be in the wrong business . Your vocation in this place ? Something else exactly , yeah , or you can answer the phones , you can just be a receptionist I love that answer .

David Lowe 16:15

So , yeah , can I tell you something ? I think that a lot of people have never developed that inner flame , yeah , so I think so many people that are living below the potential right now , right , they're not doing the training like you did , they're not asking the questions . It's not because they don't really know they should do it , but there's not a driving force moving them forward . Right , and it's hard to explain more of that driving force comes from Everything , comes from vision . Where there's no vision to people . Paris Solomon said your vision , vision , the why is your family , right , your child ? Um , you're what you would define success at right . So the person out there , who's who's struggling to get motivated ? They got to make a decision , don't they ? Yeah , are they in or Exactly ? And you're saying if you're out , get out . Yeah , go somewhere where somebody will tell you what to do every minute .

Brandon Long 17:10

Yeah , because somebody like me . We're a manager that's done it for a long time . Think of how many hours they've invested in the people that just end up leaving , so you don't want to invest your time in somebody that doesn't actually want to be there . Doesn't actually want to be there . If you want a 9-to-5 , go to Geico .

David Lowe 17:26

So this is not a job to come for a paycheck , no absolutely not man .

Brandon Long 17:32

And this has unlimited possibilities for the people that take responsibility . The best thing is anybody can do it . Anybody can do it and they can be really good at it if they want to . Yeah .

David Lowe 17:40

I couldn't agree more with that . I know some people are selling high in the sky type aspirin hey , sign up for this train . You'll make a half a million dollars . A lot of people want to lie to you about stuff , right , but what we're talking about is real income , income you will have which is more than most airline pilots make , more than a lot of lawyers make . It's a professional job with professional opportunities , and when it comes to professional responsibility , that responsibility is to constantly train and improve yourself , isn't it ? Sharpen your blade , Sharpen the blade and do it every day . So that's cool . So , if you're out there and you're struggling , take this . I think that you're right . I think that anybody that , um , you're right . I think that anybody that says I want this yep can do this . Isn't that kind of crazy ? Absolutely , that's what I really kind of fell in love with no other careers like that .

Brandon Long 18:36

I don't know one .

David Lowe 18:37

You know , I went to school to be an accountant , I mean , and so I didn't have sales attributes , but I , wow , I could look at this . This is obtainable , but it's not free , it's not automatic , and I think so many people want to show up and have success . Come up Now . Truett . Cathy again started Chick-fil-A . Before his death he went around and did not motivational speaking , but educational speaking to young people that didn't have guidance . Yeah , and his main message is what you just said . Everybody says they want to be a success , but are you willing to do what it takes to get there ? I think it was Bobby Knight who said the will to succeed is important , but what's more important is the will to prepare , and I think that's what so many people aren't doing and that's what set you apart .

Brandon Long 19:33

Everybody wants those results , but they don't want to put the work in to get them right .

David Lowe 19:35

That's right , or they get some and stop In the car business . You sell cars , just answer the phone . Be the person who answers the phone for the person calling with the right car at the right price , exactly , so that could fool you into thinking that skills and process don't matter . Yeah , because you can sell some cars with absolutely no . Be a nice person and we'll call it . Yeah , exactly . But what we're talking about here is living with joy , peace and satisfaction . That can only come from a healthy pride , absolutely . That can only come from the pursuit of your best self , and the rewards come right with it . No doubt you can't improve yourself without improving your results . No doubt Very cool . Is there anything you want to add before we cut off ?

Brandon Long 20:17

No man . It's a great career . Dave Lowe's process is patented , it's foolproof , it works . There's no gimmicks , there's no games , there's no . You know , I mean money's very important , right . I mean money runs the world , but it's not a course on how to go from $200,000 to $400,000 or $300,000 to $500,000 . It's just how to live with excellence , how to get better every day and how to do it .

David Lowe 20:38

The right way as well . That's

Dealer Training Success Stories

David Lowe 20:40

awesome . Thank you for that endorse . We appreciate it . Listen , if you're not part of the Dealership Playbook , hit us up and ask us how you can become part of it . Or go see us on Automotive Sales Coach's Facebook and hit us up there . If you're a Dealership Playbook subscriber and you're not engaged with training , hopefully Brian's story can encourage you and inspire you to get engaged today . The level of your engagement you said the level of your success and we see it right here , all right . Well , thank you so much for being with us . If you like this podcast , please like it right and share it with your friends . We'd appreciate that and we look forward to seeing you next time . Good selling .