Fire Up Your Sales Approach - Tire Review Magazine

Fire Up Your Sales Approach

Many of you consider yourselves to be retailers, and retailing is an important and proud industry. This is true whether one is selling clothing, appliances or, in this case, tires and automotive services.

At the core of retailing is a reactive approach to working with consumers. They come into your dealership – driven by an advertisement, a referral, a favorable prior experience or simply from driving by. Once in your dealership, you or one of your salespeople try to put together a solution that works for everyone.

Shifting the focus from waiting for customers to come to you to a more commercial approach for these same products and services requires moving from being reactive to being proactive. Thus, “protailing” is the mindset for success on the commercial tire side of your business.

In this article, we’ll look at the strategy and best practices of successful commercial market protailers. Sitting back and waiting for business to advance itself can be as successful as waiting to win the lottery. Even then, you have to be proactive enough to buy a ticket.

Centuries ago Confucius said, “Man sit in chair with mouth open for very long time waiting for roast duck to fly in!” Advertising can certainly bring a few ducks to drop in, but wouldn’t it be more prudent to go to the ducks?

Anthony Blackman, founder and president of Atlantic Tire & Service in Cary, N.C., emphasizes that to do extremely well in the commercial segment, “you have to attack it! Not a week goes by that we do not add at least 20 commercial customers. We have three stores, and send out 100,000 promotional communications a month, and that has been key to the success of our commercial business. We’ll never under-emphasize that. The consumer business, however, continues to be extremely price conscious. That is why we place greater emphasis on the commercial segment of our business.” 

A Numbers Game
The currency of the future is your database. For sales organizations, the list of prospects and current customers is more golden than the cash drawer. The value of your data “currency” is dependent on three primary factors: the number of entries, each entry’s completeness, and the accuracy of those entries. 

A data set of 10,000 with incomplete or out-of-date names and numbers is far inferior to 500 entries with complete, current information. This aspect of both traditional retailing and a commercial tire sales approach simply can’t be left to chance and spare time. 

In terms of completeness, for commercial customers, each entry should include names, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, titles, the person’s role in the maintenance decision, as well as timing, topic and dates of contacts made.

The timing of contact is one sales dimension that has changed dramatically in the last decade. Historically, a customer or prospect that heard from your company every three or four months was considered to be “well-contacted.” Today, with hungry and aggressive competitors everywhere, that frequency needs to be dramatically increased.

Not all of these contacts should be face-to-face. The challenge is to have your customers and prospects see your name in a positive light at least every couple of weeks. Contact could come by e-mail promos, newsletters (printed or digital), direct mail or a simple phone call.

We clearly live in a world where “out of sight is out of mind,” so customers who are not regularly contacted often feel that their business is not valued. Research shows that many prospects that go multiple months without contact from a service provider become dissatisfied and begin searching for alternatives. Don’t become a statistical victim of this phenomenon! 

“It had been so long since we heard from you that we decided to go with XYZ Tire. We will certainly consider you if we ever look into changing again,” you’ll hear. If XYZ Tire does a good job for them – and stays in contact – you’re history.

Besides contact frequency, success is based on knowing which types of organizations represent viable opportunities. Not all prospects are “good” customers, the kind you can build a business with. According to Chuck Norman, owner and principal of S&A Cherokee PR, which has worked extensively with Atlantic Tire & Service, the dealership’s focus has been on companies with at least five vehicles, preferably those requiring nothing larger than commercial light truck tires.

Large fleets and those needing larger tires are not a target due to their in-house capabilities and the expense attached to servicing them. “We have helped Atlantic Tire create a community of these targeted organizations via things like Facebook and Twitter. We set up a plan, and regularly communicate that Atlantic is committed to taking care of its customers.”

Activity, Activity, Activity
It’s said that the three keys to success in retailing are location, location, location. Well, the keys to success in protailing are activity, activity, activity. You’ve got to circulate if you are going to percolate! 

In keeping with the theme above, you and your commercial sales team need to know:

• The average number of calls needed to get a decision maker on the phone (including messages, voicemails, no answers, etc.). With most businesspeople being as busy as they are today, and all of the barriers that have been put in place, this number has increased dramatically over the past decade.

• The average number of conversations required to secure a face-to-face meeting.

• The average number of face-to-face meetings needed to get to the point of a solution presentation.

• The average number of presentations required to secure a new commercial customer.

If you run the numbers for your organization, you will likely see as high as hundreds of phone calls just to get to the point of presenting your solution. Divide by 240 workdays each year and you will quickly see the level of daily activity that must take place to reach a targeted number of new customers. 

Most protailers that do the math are shocked by their “performance gap.” They start to see how far their current activity level is from what’s required to hit their target. They also find themselves at the end of the year betting all their chips on landing a “blue marlin” fleet of a couple dozen vehicles.

Another approach is making “drop-in calls” without phoning ahead for an appointment first. Some protailers find this as productive as working by appointment, if not more productive. If you want to go this route, make sure you have a decent leave-behind that explains your dealership’s products, service, backing and reputation.

The cardinal rule is that success is directly proportional to the calls made – quality and quantity – whether in-person or on the phone. The highest performers compress more achievement into a given measurable time frame by aggressively making calls with great vigor and few allowable interruptions. They turn exceptional “call count” into cash in short order.

The 3-2-1-0 Principle
Verl Workman, noted sales consultant, developed what he calls the “3-2-1-0 Principle” to provide discipline and strategy to the daily activities of sales professionals. In many cases, it has been a very successful approach. Here’s how it works:

• Three: The number of “radar screen” contacts per day. This includes both existing commercial customers and prospects. Only decision-makers are included in this number; if the salesperson doesn’t speak to the decision-maker, the call doesn’t count. You may be calling simply to thank them for their business, or share an idea to lower their overall vehicle costs, or to get their e-mail address and permission to send them a newsletter, or to congratulate them on an award they just received. There needs to be a purpose, and that purpose needs to be clear and of value to the person you contact. At 240 work days per year, that will result in 720 purposeful contacts every 12 months; and this is a minimum number.

• Two: This is the number of new prospects that you need to generate every day. These prospects could come via referrals from other prospects or customers (don’t be afraid to ask!) or from new businesses opening up in your area. Again, at work 240 days annually, that is 480 prospects per year. Anthony Blackman is even more aggressive in his approach. He keeps a note pad with him at all times, just to write down the names and phone numbers he sees on the sides of commercial vehicles. “My goal is to identify five new future customers each and every day.” Do the math and that comes to a whopping 1,200 prospects a year from him alone. As you can see, it starts with the boss.

• One: Learn one new thing about the tire and vehicle service business and how to sell it each and every business day. Ask yourself: How many new ideas did I learn about this business last week? The honest answer can be quite sobering. The places to learn are everywhere. Reading this article should get you covered for this week; reading this issue of Tire Review (or a visit to tirereview.com) will cover you for a month. Talking with your own team members over lunch from time to time should gain you a few additional days. Attending a conference or webinar can take care of several weeks. You get the picture – but you have to force yourself to do this or you will rapidly become irrelevant to your customers and prospects. Add it up and that’s at least 240 new ideas, tactics or pieces of information each and every year.

• Zero: This is the number of people you’ll allow to steal your confidence in your company, its services and your processes for success. Be determined, keep your attitude positive and remember that periodic rejection is required to earn the right to get to Yes. Keep the doomers and gloomers and those stuck in a quagmire out of your life; they sap your energy and lead you to believe that nothing is working in the world today. Walk away and leave them behind.

Capitalize on Opportunities
Consider what is required to increase your success rate, and the average amount of revenue produced from the opportunities you generate through these activities. If you follow the discipline of 3-2-1-0, your team should have ample opportunities to meet your realistic objectives. 

The challenge is to advance the process and skills to efficiently convert those prospects into customers. When you’re in retailing mode and someone comes into your store, they already know they need to buy something. When you’re in protailing mode, most of the time your prospect is not actively looking. They may not be happy with their current tire and service solution, but they have not moved it to the “front burner.”

Making that move happen requires persuasive communication skills and becoming intricately familiar with their needs.

It all starts with discovery. A building must be built on a solid foundation and, likewise, a sound sales process must be built on the solid foundation of discovery. That discovery should begin before you even make the initial phone call and continue to expand and deepen as the process advances. 

The good news is that in the electronic age, advanced discovery is more efficient than ever before. It can be as simple as Googling the name of the organization. This will give you background information about the company, its history, what products and services it provides, as well as its mission/vision and recent accomplishments.
Remember: Experience shows that the more you know about the prospect before you meet with them, the more they will be willing to tell you.

As you are doing your discovery, you are in essence diving into the organization to gain as clear a picture of its operations as possible. In doing this, you should get into three levels of need discovery:

• Level 3 – The specific needs and constraints involved in making a fleet vehicle maintenance decision

• Level 2 – The role of fleet vehicles – and tires and service – in the company’s success (how important are the company’s vehicles, and how much do they need servicing?)

• Level 1 – The company’s objectives and initiatives (what does it do, how does it do that, and what are its future plans?)

Most salespeople only swim at the surface level – Level 3. This depth of discovery tends to commoditize their effort with every other tire and service organization trying to sell them. As one dives to deeper levels, the success rate dramatically increases.

The good news is that the deepest, Level 1 information about the organization is the most readily available on the Web, which is why it so surprising that so few salespeople ever venture deeper than Level 3.

Levels 2 and 3 discovery usually takes place via direct conversations with decision makers. The importance of Level 2’s needs-based information should never be underestimated. The smarter your prospect is when it comes to the impact of their fleet operations costs, and the lost revenue from a down vehicle, the better it should be for your organization. Far too many small commercial customers only look at the cost of each service item, not the overall cost of vehicle operation – including downtime. They also tend to underestimate the lost productivity and customer goodwill (perhaps including the customer’s business) when a vehicle is not available. 

Look at it this way: How much does it cost a prospect if one of its salespeople’s company cars is incapacitated? What about that plumbing contractor when one of his six vans is crippled?

Level 3 discovery focuses on the specific issues/constraints faced by the customer/prospect in managing the fleet. This is the shallow end of the pool, where far too many discovery efforts begin…and end. Effective Level 3 discovery requires solid, active listening skills:

• Construct open-ended questions. Instead of asking, “Are you expanding your business this year?” try, “Last year you expanded your operations to serve customers in two additional counties. What are your plans for 2011?” Here’s another: “Many of our commercial customers are telling us that higher gas prices are forcing them to leave no stone unturned when it comes to improving the efficiency of their fleet. What steps have you taken to reduce your operating costs?”

• Leave the customer or prospect ample time to respond and elaborate. And use those responses to ask follow-up questions as needed.

• Probe for more information that goes beyond their first answer (i.e. who, what, when, where, why, how, etc.). Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it will be critical to your discovery success.

• Ask for clarification when the answer is not clear. (“How soon is ‘soon?’” “You say that vehicle downtime is a big issue; is that one of your top five items to address this year?”)

• Confirm what you have heard before moving to the next question. (“So, if I hear you correctly, your three most important concerns are…”)

• Always take notes. To not do so implies that you aren’t really interested in the answers. It is imperative that you build a follow-up file of information on each client, and this information will be invaluable.

If you and your team are following these guidelines, by the time you get to the next step, the prospect is already thinking, “These guys seem to actually be interested in my business.”

The Number 1 Key
Before change will take place, you have to get the customer/prospect to admit that their current approach to vehicle tires/service/maintenance is not optimal. Until this self-realization happens, they will simply take your information and offer that when the company does something different, it might be with you. 

Remember the adage: “People change when the pain not to change exceeds the pain to change.” It has been proven accurate time and again. Keep this in mind as you prepare to offer your solutions.

Solutions Presentations
This can make you or break you. With discovery complete, you should be able to clearly show how your dealership can meet tire/service/maint-enance needs and improve results.

This should be a relatively easy process if your discovery is complete, but it has to go beyond, “Well, we have those size tires” or, “We have an ASE-certified mechanic on staff” or even the dreaded, “We can get any tire you need and fix any vehicle you have.”

Unfortunate, too, are the solutions presentations that are mind-numbing downloads of everything the salesperson knows about their own products and services.

To make any solutions presentation work:

• The prospect should be the “co-author” as you feed their words back to them (e.g. “You said that each hour one of your vehicles is not in working order it costs you $XXX. Is that correct?”).

• The prospect must be engaged in the presentation, which you can do by asking confirmation questions (e.g. “Is that accurate?” or “Have I missed anything?”). At this point, close-ended yes/no questions are appropriate.

The solutions you offer have to be based on a clear Feature-Advantage-Benefit linkage. Far too many presentations consist of an endless list of: “We will do A,B,C,D and E each quarter, and K,L,M,N and O every year…”

“So what?” they will respond. “That sounds very expensive!” And they’d be right, because you just showed them the menu, not the food.

The Features you suggest need to be directly linked to Advantages, or performance characteristics. “Therefore, your vehicle downtime will be reduced by X% or $Y.” At this point, it’s time to get to the payoff. They are likely asking themselves how they are going to be better off with your company, so make it easy for them. “That will save you an average of $Y per vehicle per year, and that is net to you after the investment in our services. Given that you have X vehicles, that totals $W to your bottom line – more as your fleet grows.”

That sounds far more impressive and important than, “We can save you a wheelbarrow full of money.”

In the end, clearly-stated Benefits kill the status quo every time.

One thing that Atlantic Tire & Service has found to differentiate its fleet service solution is that it fills all vehicle tires with nitrogen. According to Blackman, “It is not just that we do it (Feature), we explain the impact it has on the performance of the tire (Advantage), and make certain they understand the overall operational costs savings nitrogen generates (Benefit).”

Use success stories from other customers to get across more information; with their permission, you could even encourage the prospect to call those customers.

The left side of a human brain can only process three to four pieces of information at a time. This is our rational decision-making capacity. The right side of the brain, our emotional side, can process a massive amount of information, so long as it is built into a relevant story.

This is why we can’t recall more than a couple of computer passwords, but we can remember every detail of a story our grandfather told us decades ago. If you are not using stories in your solutions presentations, you had better hope your competition isn’t doing it either. Such is the impact of a strong story.

Seek Commitment
Sales guys like to talk about the “ABCs of selling….Always Be Closing.” But closing is one of the most negative mindsets in the sales process. Seek prospects’ commitments instead. Customers and prospects do not want to be closed, they want a partnership, a two-way commitment.

In today’s highly-competitive business environment, they already have enough people trying to “close” them. Instead, they want to make intelligent decisions about how to improve vehicle operation costs. Their decision to move the business to you simply can’t be thought of as the end; it is the beginning of what will hopefully be a mutually beneficial, long-term relationship.

Welcome their concerns as you seek their commitment. They likely have issues they don’t fully understand. Make sure they feel comfortable sharing them with you instead of letting them stew. Take steps to draw them out. “What questions do you have about these aspects of our comprehensive vehicle maintenance solution?” When they do share concerns, the following process has been found to be highly effective in dealing with them. Building on how we learned our vowels in grade school, we call this process the A-E-I-O-U approach:

• Attend to the concern; listen without interrupting.

• Empathize with the concern; this is not an expression of agreement, but understanding how they feel.

• Investigate to ensure you fully understand its true nature.

• Overcome the concern (if possible) with different perspectives or additional facts.

• Update the concern to determine if it is no longer an issue, “Have I made it clear how that will help you have better control and predictability with regard to your costs?”

Upon agreement, summarize and document what is going to be done, by whom, by when and with what investment (people, time, equipment, dollars). Far too frequently, the buying side and the selling side leave a fleet maintenance presentation without a clear agreement about where things stand. Don’t allow this to happen. Memories get fuzzy, but documents last a long time.

Never Get Complacent
Anthony Blackman gives a lot of the credit for the success of Atlantic Tire & Service in the commercial segment to his organization’s diligence in this area. “You have to work to build relationships. This is what sets us apart. We promptly follow-up on all service calls, as well as any issues or problems that we hear about. We work to get commercial customers to our location, where we can meet with them and introduce them to our team and our process. We wash their vehicle and vacuum the inside. The vehicle always leaves in better condition than it came in. If they have doubts about your commitment to be the very best, you are vulnerable.” 

This ongoing relationship-building, this nurturing of both the consumer and commercial sides of the business, also were instrumental in Atlantic Tire being recognized as North America’s Top Shop in 2008.

What Are You Waiting For?
If you haven’t already started your local fleet tire and service initiative, the time is now. If you’ve done a small amount of commercial business, it is time to make the investment of time, money and brainpower to take it to the next level.

In the words of Blackman, “Ongoing success in the commercial segment must be based on having a plan and making the investments to support that plan. We have two team members totally dedicated to our commercial initiative. They arrive early in the morning, and they are gone all day. When they come back in, we lay out our follow-up plan that includes a packet that communicates what we can do and how it will benefit them in their operations.

“We know that our two-prong approach on both the consumer and commercial markets is our ticket to success,” he says. That sounds like an entrepreneur who gets what it takes to be successful as both a retailer AND a protailer.

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