Auto Sales "By the Numbers"

Selling will always be one of the greatest occupations you can choose. In sales, you have the opportunity to make unlimited income, or you have the opportunity to make very little income. Either one is up to you. But the one thing I've realized is that everyone has the potential to make more money. And in most instances, it won't necessarily take more skill, but it will definitely take more work. It's going to be the work above and beyond your current selling process that will take you from one level to the next. Once you understand this, you'll be on your way to developing a plan for how to make it happen.

The first thing you need to do is to stop looking at yourself as a salesperson, and start looking at yourself as a businessperson. These are totally different ways of how you perceive yourself. Psychologically, if you look at yourself as a salesperson, than you look at yourself as an employee of the dealership. And it's the dealership's responsibility to get you business by providing you with prospects. But if you look at yourself as a businessperson, it now becomes your responsibility to generate your own business. You're not likely to just sit back and wait for things to happen, you'll now take the initiative to make things happen. This will become the basis for developing your work ethic. Wouldn't it be great if you made most of your business from sales you created, and just used the dealership sales as cream on the coffee? How much money do you think you could make with this type of philosophy?

When you got hired into this business, they gave you a free desk, a free phone, a free telephone answering service, a free advertising budget, and a million dollars worth of inventory, without any investment on your part whatsoever. All they asked you to do is go out there and run it just like it was your own business. Well, that got to be the problem. Most salespeople didn't know how to run a business. A typical salesperson will simply come into the dealership in the morning, take whatever the day has to give, and leave the dealership at the end of the day without having much say on whether the day was productive or not. And keep in mind, anytime I use the word "productive", I'm always talking about profit-generating. You can spend the entire day cleaning your desk, and think that your day was busy. But was it productive? Did you do anything today to generate profit? And for any successful businessperson, profit is the bottom-line.

Since we're talking about profit, let's focus for a second on the money part of what you do. It used to be that if a salesperson took a job on a commission basis, it was because he/she was money motivated - the high risk yields high rewards philosophy. You have the opportunity to make a lot of money, or very little money. Someone once said that selling is the hardest highest paying job, and the easiest lowest paying job. The rule in the auto industry is, most salespeople get used to living on the money they make, instead of making the type of money they want to live on. If you're currently making $35,000 per year, you get used to living on $35,000 per year. You buy or rent a $35,000 home, drive a $35,000 per year vehicle, eat at $35,000 per year restaurants, and go on $35,000 per year vacations, if you can even afford to go on a vacation without worrying whether the electric bill is going to get paid that month. The fact is, there's so much more money to be made out there. And to get it, it's not going to necessarily take more skills, it's just going to take more work. How many of you would be willing to do a little more work if you could make an extra $1000 per month? Well, here's something I can assure you. If you make an extra $1000 per month, you'll know how to spend it.

I want you to be able to have all the things in life that money can buy. Someone once said, "Money isn't everything," but it was probably said by someone who didn't have any. One of the reasons you got into auto sales is because someone told you that if you got into auto sales, you'd have the opportunity to make unlimited income, sky's the limit. Well, where is all this unlimited income? It's out there. Somebody's making it. Your whole concept needs to be, "why shouldn't it be me, and how am I going to make it?"

If you really want to make more money - you can. But not everyone wants to make more. Some people can live very meagerly. As long as they can pay their bills, and have enough money left over for a movie once a month, and maybe a night out at a decent restaurant, they're happy. These individuals will not develop the work ethic to make more money. But if you're the type of salesperson that likes "things", this is the concept for you. Making more money means you need to become money motivated. You need to love the money, and all the things it can buy. In fact, you should be working to buy things, not just to pay bills. If you're working to pay bills, you're basically working a survival method for living. I don't want you to just survive. I know that money won't buy happiness, but believe me, money will buy you a lot of things that will make you happy. Ask yourself this question: Is there something that you want right now that you can't have because you don't have enough money? If there is, you can have it. And it's not going to take more skills, but it's definitely going to take more work.

I've focused the initial part of this article on money because let's face it, it's really hard to live in today's economy without it. But success isn't just determined by the amount of money you make. Someone once said that "success isn't the destination, it's the quality of your journey." All of the things you'll do along the way to have a better life, a loving family, a strong mental attitude, will add to your definition of success.

Anthony Robbins, a very successful and famous motivator and trainer said, "Success leaves clues." Successful people have left clues all over the place on how to become successful. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. All you need to do is to find out what those clues are, and then do them. Well, that gets to be the problem. It's the doing them that many salespeople have an issue with. You've all heard the phrase, "knowledge is power." Well, knowledge isn't power, it's the utilization of knowledge that's power. You can know everything about everything, but if you never use it, then what good is it?

Let me leave you with this last quote: "Successful people do all of the things unsuccessful people don't want to do." If you believe this, than get to work.