Would you agree that great people drive greatness and without good people your business is just a sound check getting ready for the real show? I do, and that is the message I wish to expound upon. There is a new concept that the new market economy is taking stock in people. Without motivated, well-trained salespeople, CRM loses its most important component – the relationship. Consider this – without first building solid relationships, it’s difficult to have loyal customers to manage. While obvious, this reality is often overlooked. The solution is either re-tooling your current sales team, or finding a new one equipped to build lasting customer relationships.
Now, if you haven’t been living on the Lost Island for the last few years, you’ve likely viewed the TV commercials for eHarmony.com. Yep, I’m comparing automobile retail to online dating because eHarmony.com has a truly remarkable feature. Behavioral profiling, like the method utilized by eHarmony, serves as a foundation for deep, lasting relationships. If behavioral profiling is strong enough to launch long, loving marriages, its positive impact on your people and your customers could possibly be outstanding as well. And while behavioral profiling can improve just about anything that involves people, we’re going to delve into two specific situations for you to use in your dealership today.
Behavioral profiling for your employees
There are essentially four types of behavioral profiles, each having sub-profiles with various attribute traits. However, for the most part each of the four major profiles are easily identified and there in lies the secrets or instructions in how to deal with each exactly the way they want to be treated. Each behavioral profile has its strengths, as well as its weaknesses. As a manger it’s vital that you understand the behavioral profile of each person belonging to your staff. This insight will help you affirm each person’s positive actions, and alter his or her negative traits. Thus, help them be more successful in the long run.
Does your dealership have people who just don’t get along, or a team that just doesn’t seem to gel? If this is the case, the solution may be found by utilizing the first step of behavioral profiling – awareness. As a manager, you should implement a behavioral profiling program. Through the utilization of this type of program, each of your employees will learn about their own behavior tendencies, and how their tendencies impact the people they interact with daily.
This will have a greater rippling effect than you would probably imagine because, by in large, most people aren’t aware how much their actions, language choices, and verbal- and non-verbal communications affect how their communications are received. The result of this hit-or-miss interpersonal connectivity prevents a group from totally harmonizing, and creates unnecessary animosity among teammates. Once your people grasp the concept, continue to challenge each person to modify his interpersonal communications to create harmony.
Managerial tip: The mouth can be used either as a weapon or a tool, hurting relationships or building them. Sadly, it is often easier to destroy than to build, and most people have received more destructive comments than those that built them. Every person you meet today is either a demolition site or a construction opportunity. Your words will make a difference. Will they be weapons for destruction or tools for construction?
Behavioral profiling for your customers
The most basic foundation for selling vehicles is building relationships with your customers. If you don’t believe this, stop reading this article and head back out to coerce and hammer on another fresh up. However, if you’re one of the many dealerships to embrace this concept, behavioral profiling may be the missing link. Ten years ago, customer relationship software was touted as the key to building and keeping relationships, and it’s taken most of that time for people to realize CRM software is only a 10 percent part of the solution. CRM software is there to facilitate and help your people and processes. The missing link, however, was and continues to be the human element, and more importantly, modifiable interpersonal communication.
So here’s the solution: train your sales staff to identify its own and each customer’s behavioral profile and adjust its message accordingly. If they can effectively, in a repeatable manner, practice active listening and message modification, everything will get better! Sales will go up because more leads will be converted to completed deals. Gross margins will increase because the focus of conversation will be moved off the topic of price and onto the relationship part of the business. And CSI will go through the roof because customers will be sold directly at the level they are comfortable buying.
Getting started
If you have a regular training firm, give them a call to ask if they offer a course emphasizing behavioral or personality profiling with communication adaptability. However, if you don’t have a training firm, or if your firm doesn’t have an applicable course, send me an e-mail and I can point you in the right direction. The most import item to take from this article is that you need to start embracing behavioral profiling while you’re still ahead of the curve. Make it a great place to work and your customers will make it a great place to buy.
They are looking and watching.
Chuck Barker’s experience ranges from an executive with a Fortune 200 computer corporation to the automobile business. He has held positions as business development manager, sales manager, acting GM, ADP executive regional manager specializing in CRM and his own current company, Impact Marketing & Consulting Group, LLC, located in Virginia. His firm delivers CRM process strategies, 21st century CRM sales training, CRM e-business deployment and CRM management leadership workshops. More information can be located at his web site: www.impactgroupcrm.com.
