By Sean Wolfington
March 2005

In last month’s article we introduced the four traits that drive successful behaviors and hold the key to peak performance.

Dealers, managers and sales people alike are aware (and sometimes painfully aware) that the same 20 percent of the sales force is consistently at the top of the sales board while the other 80 percent will reach a mediocre plateau and stay there. The four keys to integrity selling determine whether a sales person will struggle to sell 10 units a month or become a top producer who earns into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Selling with integrity means focusing on building value and believing that selling is something you do for your customers, not to your customers. This article is the second in a four-part series that will examine the four key traits of top producing sales people so that you can nurture those traits in your staff and seek out those traits in prospective new hires.

“The four keys to integrity selling determine whether a sales person will struggle to sell 10 units a month or become a top producer who earns into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

The Key Traits That Drive Successful Beliefs And Behaviors Are:

1. Achievement Drive

2. Goal Clarity

3. Healthy Emotional Intelligence

4. Excellent Social Skills

In the February issue, Achievement Drive was defined as the power everyone has, to some degree, to beat the odds, to triumph over challenge and to tap into deep reserves of persistence, determination and a never-give-up attitude. Building on this need to achieve, Goal Clarity means having clear, specific, written goals that you truly believe are attainable and that you feel you deserve to achieve. Goals can be personal or professional in nature, but to achieve strong goal clarity they must be clear, specific and put in writing. For example, “sell more cars” is a professional goal and “improve my health” is a personal one, but neither is clear or specific. To gain clarity, it helps to ask the following questions: When you say “more”, how many more? What will that enable you to do? What is the time limit?

A good internal dialogue can transform “sell more cars” into “My April goal is to sell two additional cars each week to hit 20 total sales and take over the top spot.” Once you’ve used the most specific terms possible to write down a goal that is clear and measurable, you will need to break down the goal into small daily steps and list the obstacles you will have to overcome. For sales people, those small daily steps include every activity on the road to the sale such as:

• Inbound calls
• Internet leads
• Follow-up calls
• Follow-up e-mails, postcards and letters
• Appointments
• Appointment confirmation calls
• Client interviews
• Product selection and demonstration
• Dealership tour
• Write-up
• Turn to management

To increase these activities, sales people will need to track and measure what they’re doing to establish a benchmark and identify the areas that represent the best potential for improvement. Once that area is targeted, he or she can define the action steps needed, the skills to build and the obstacles to overcome to make sure he or she is working toward an attainable goal and not reaching for a wish. For example, if analysis shows that a person’s greatest opportunity to improve sales lies with increasing success with inbound calls, a sales person might find he or she needs to get faster when reaching for the phone, more comfortable with a script, more profi cient with product and pricing questions and more skillful with setting an appointment that sticks. This knowledge holds the key to creating a meaningful daily action plan.

So, how can you cultivate goal clarity in yourself and your staff? It helps to conduct a self-evaluation to determine where you are, by rating yourself on a scale of 1 – 10 (1 being never, 5 being sometimes and 10 being always) in the following areas:

1. I write clear, specific and measurable goals for sales and income.
2. I revise and update my goals each month.
3. My goals are consistent with my values and I feel worthy of achieving them.
4. I break my goals down into small daily steps.
5. I identify the additional skills and training I may need and any obstacles that may stand in my way.

If your score is less than 50, it might be time to heed the Nike slogan and Just Do It. Consider starting your day a few minutes early to tackle additional sales activities and steer clear of obvious time-wasters that may distract throughout the day. If high Goal Clarity is a trait you’d like to seek in prospective new hires, ask them to complete the survey and provide examples. Sales people with high degrees of Achievement Drive and Goal Clarity will often find a way to succeed, selling volume and gross regardless of product and market, but they can wreak havoc with your CSI scores and the morale of your dealership if they lack emotional intelligence and social skills. Look for the third installment in this four part series next month in which we will turn our attention to Healthy Emotional Intelligence.

Sean Wolfington is the owner of BZResults.com. He can be contacted at 866.802.5753, or by e-mail at swolfington@autosuccess.biz.