Golf is a great sport. I’m no good at it, but I still love to play. One of the things I like about golf is all the quaint little bits of wisdom you pick up along the way, like . . . “There’s no room on the card for how.” Which means that, if you hit a ball and it takes a wicked slice to the right, disappears into the woods, bounces off a tree, pops back out of the woods, takes a lucky hop, lands on the green, then rolls right into the hole, you made the shot. Doesn’t matter how bad your swing was, or how ugly the shot looked, or even that a lot of luck was involved— the ball went in the hole. And that’s the only thing that counts in golf. There is no room on the card for how.
Car sales is the exact opposite.
At some dealerships, management is so focused on the How it’s almost like they don’t even care if a car gets sold. Imagine, if you will, a game of golf in which the game is broken up into different phases — which they call “the Road to the Hole” — and you’re graded on every phase. First, you’re scored on how well you address the ball, then you’re scored on your grip, your stance, your backswing, your follow-through, and so on. You’re also scored on club selection, chipping, pitching, putting, getting out of sand traps, etc., etc. Whether the ball goes in the hole is almost an afterthought in this kind of game because it’s given no more weight than any other phase of the process. That’s how the game of car sales is played at some dealerships.
In this wacky system, there’s a lot of talk of “process.” At every sales meeting it’s the same: process, process, process. First, you’re graded on how many people you say hello to every day. It’s called the “Up Count,” and it’s noted on a daily log kept by the sales managers. If you don’t “up” enough people, points are deducted. Then you’re scored on how you say hello to people. There’s even a name for this. It’s called “The Meet & Greet.” After you get past the “Meet & Greet” successfully, you’re supposed to get the customer in a car and test drive it. If you can’t, points are deducted. Whether they drive a car or not, your next job is to get them inside the building for a “T.O.,” or introduction to a manager. This part is called “Control,” and if you don’t get control of everyone who sets foot on the lot and get them inside for a T.O., more points are deducted. Suppose you succeed in upping them, greeting them properly, taking them on a test drive, getting them in the building for a T.O., but don’t do a “Write-up” (present them with numbers). Guess what? Yep. Points are deducted. And so on. Here’s a little chart that’s in use at some dealerships today to record a salesperson’s score in each of these vitally important categories:
| Process: Scoring the Salesperson | ||||
| ACTUAL | TRACKING | PROJ. | % | |
| Ups | 62 | 62 | 67 | 93 |
| Control | 53 | 60 | 67 | 96 |
| Demos | 36 | 41 | 54 | 65 |
| Write-ups | 28 | 32 | 34 | 51 |
| Sales | 12 | 14 | 20 | 22 |
At this point you may be scratching your head and asking yourself, what’s the point of all this? Well, the point of all this is to sell as many cars as possible. The people who run car dealerships want to sell a car to every single person who walks through the door. Yes, that’s right. Every single one. (And they believe this is possible, too!) In order to achieve this, the thinking goes, you can’t just have a bunch of salespeople running around willy-nilly, doing whatever they feel like. You have to have a system. You have to have a process.
In order to come up with a process you first have to study sales as if it were a science, like biology or physics, and discover its hidden laws. Once you discover its laws — what results in a sale and what doesn’t– then you distill it down into a step-by-step process that your salespeople can follow, a process so simple that even a monkey can do it. If you succeed in getting all your monkeys, er, salespeople to follow this process at least 90% of the time, the result will be sales, SALES, and more SALES!
There are only two problems with this theory. First, sales isn’t a science. It’s an art. A car sale isn’t the result of timeless and immutable physical laws, like gravity. It’s the result of things that are anything but scientific, like timing, the “chemistry” between a salesperson and a customer, the economy, the time of year, the weather, and, most of all, luck. Of course, no sales manager wants to hear that, because what they want is results, not “excuses.” So they keep pounding on Process.
How do you get your sales people to follow the process? Simple. You threaten the hell out of ‘em. Every day. And sometimes you even call them all up to the sales tower in the middle of the day to threaten them for not following “The Process.”
What no sales manager I’ve ever met seems to realize is, rigorous scoring of every single aspect of a salesperson’s performance can have a negative effect. By emphasizing process over results — and by linking it to pay — you can make your salespeople so gun shy they’re actually afraid to take an up because they might lose control of the customer and hurt their percentages, which could result in their commission going from 30% to 25%. As a result, they become so fearful they spend half their time trying to “game the system” to avoid punishment, rather than going out and enthusiastically selling cars. And if punishment cannot be avoided some salespeople will actually cease to function as viable salespeople — or quit to avoid the stress.
The thought process that goes through a salesperson’s mind in a “process oriented” dealership is something like this: “Oh no, here comes another car turning into the parking lot! What do I do? Should I go out and up them? They don’t look very serious to me. If I go out there and they get out of the car I HAVE to test drive them, and then I HAVE to get them inside for a T.O., otherwise my boss will see me and take points away and there goes my percentage. I think I’d better just run around behind the Service Department and hide.”
And make no mistake about it. The customers can feel the pressure, too. “Why is this guy insisting I come inside to talk to his manager?” they wonder. “It’s a total waste of time.” What they don’t realize is that by refusing to come inside to meet the manager, they can actually cost a salesperson his job. No, I am not kidding. At one dealership I worked at, the General Manager was so obsessed with process he actually fired a 15 car-a-month guy for not T.O.’ing a customer. He said he was “trying to make an example for the rest of us.” But the effect of this kind of attitude can be paralyzing.
Will the process fascists ever be overthrown? I doubt it. As long as sales exist people will keep trying to figure out the secret to selling every-body every-time. Until they figure that out, they’ll continue to cling to whatever process they have, and enforce it with an iron fist that would make a Marine Corps Drill Instructor proud.
More Car Salesman Confidential here:
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