Creating an Appointment Culture – Part 1


 

Creating an Appointment Culture – Part 1

TRANSCRIPT: The first lesson addresses how to develop an appointment driven culture in your car
dealership. These lessons do not just apply to car dealerships, but to various other business settings
as well. This lesson as well as the other lessons in this set of video sessions are recommended to be
watched by owners, general managers, sales managers, or any other person in a management role
because creating appointment culture starts from the top down. It is difficult to sustain this culture
from the bottom up.

Appointments have become everything in a car dealership because the “Up-bus” doesn’t arrive as much
as it used to. If you are a car dealer or any other business that relies on customer sales, and these
customers become less frequent, what would your plan be? Are you going to spend more on TV and
radio? More in the newspaper? How are you going to drive visitors to your dealership or business?
Another problem with some dealerships today is that the sales teams are “cherry-picking”. Whether it is
with internet leads or actual visitors to the dealership. Their pay plan probably encourages it. “Cherry Picking” costs you sales.

Consumers are trying to eliminate you. If you are a car dealer, consumers don’t just say “Ah ha, that’s
the car I want.” Rather, they look at all of the available inventory out there on sites like cars.com or
autotrader.com where there are more than 3 million vehicles to choose from. How customers search on
sites like this is to begin a series of eliminations. They are trying to eliminate you. A dealership can make
it easier to be eliminated in the process. With an appointment driven culture, you can get way beyond
that. The key is that appointments really are everything. This set of video sessions will teach you that if
you fail to get an appointment that actually shows up at the dealership, it will be difficult to get the sale.