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One salesperson we have worked with over the last four years is Elizabeth Aoun. This week, Elizabeth launched her own web site. Congratulations, Liz. You can see her site at www.elizabethaoun.com

Wheels Magazine June 2008

Wheels Magazine May 2008

The May 2008 edition of Wheels Magazine has just been released. As usual, it's got an adundance of great information and articles.

Ged Bulmer's editorial reflects on the Mitsubishi plant closure and surrounding issues.

Toyota increasing its shareholding in Subaru's parent company, Fuji Heavy Industries

Nissan Dualis TV Ad

Nissan produced this TV ad to promote the new Dualis in Australia. Personally, I think it's a crap ad for a good car. The ad gets your attention momentarily by being "different" and "artistic" but once you've seen it, you'll probably give it no attention next time you see it. Here is a car that got the highest ever scores in the EuroNCAP crash test and was the first car to score the maximum 37 points. It has sold phenomenally well in Europe, causing Nissan to expand their factory and hire an extra hundred construction staff. The UK advertising (it's called a Qashqai in UK) is cool and focuses on the message of the car being tough, practical and manouevrable (urban-proof). In Australia, we get the nessage it's a bit of something and a bit of something else, but overall, a weird freak. Nissan are probably wondering why it's not selling as well here as it is everywhere else in the world. Could it be the marketing?

Product Launch Formula

Mercedes-Benz AMG Drive at Bathurst

Last week, Mercedes-Benz Australia hired the entire Mount Panorama race track at Bathurst and had a week of test driving of their AMG range for the media, the dealers and Mercedes-Benz sales staff. What fun!

Wheels Magazine April 2008

Wheels Magazine April 2008 edition has just been released.

There is an summary of the Geneva Motor Show, including:

New Ford Kuga and Ford Fiesta

Bentley Zagato GTZ

Mazda 2 3-Door (reportedly due here in May)

Toyota IQ

VW Scirocco

New Honda Accord Euro including a diesel option

Rinspeed Squba

Fiat 500 Abarth

Other articles in this issue include:

Subaru / Toyota joint project for a sports coupe.

Commodore Ute and HSV Clubsport being exported to the USA and marketed as Pontiac models.

New Baby Rolls-Royce

Kia Soul

Alfa Romeo seeking a rear wheel drive Joint Venture partnership

Porsche buying a larger stake in VW

Mitsubishi’s Revival Strategy

Holden’s Coupe 60

The new Ford FPV Range

HSV’s 427 Sledgehammer

Profile of industry personality Tony Hyde

Mazda Furai

Bolwell Nagari

Bathurst 12 Hour

New 2008 Honda Accord

Bentley Brooklands

Audi RS6

New Jeep Cherokee

Honda FCX Clarity

Subaru Liberty Diesel

Peugeot 308

BMW X5 3.0 sd

And some excellent and interesting vehicle comparisons:

Porsche 911 Turbo v. Nissan GT-R

Volkswagen Golf R32 v. Subaru Impreza WRX STi

Subaru Tribeca 3.6R Premium v. Ford Territory v. Mazda CX-9 Luxury

Long Term Evaluations of the Ford Focus TDCi and Mitsubishi Outlander.

Yet again, a great read from Wheels Magazine, particularly recommended for people in the industry.

Melbourne Motor Show 2008

Brisbane Motor Show 2008

We attended the launch of the Brisbane Motor Show this week. It is one of the better Motor Shows we have attended in 20+ years in the industry. The show is very well organised. It is far more welcoming than Sydney, for example, with an abundance of places to sit and rest, places to eat and drink, and reasonable prices for food and drink. A ferry ride up the river to get there also adds to the appeal.

Land Rover News Page

BMW News

No. 1 for Auto Sales Training

Sales Movies

I've been asked in training quite a few times whether I can recommend any good movies about sales.

There are several movies that I recommend. One is 'Wall Street'. It stars Charlie Sheen, Martin Sheen, Darryl Hannah and Michael Douglas. Charlie Sheen plays, Bud Fox is a stockbroking salesman.

His character shows some great examples of the differences between effective and ineffective sales prospecting and the value of persistence in sales. Bud also gets 'sold' a number of times by Gordon Gekko ( played by Douglas, who won an Oscar for his performance ).

Go with the Flow!

If you have, it seems you're not alone. Our web site traffic has increased steadily for the last few months. When I checked our web statistics today, I saw that there were a LOT of links from search engines and listing the search criteria that led to our web site.

On Google with the search term 'GL 450 news' we rank 1^st in the world from 54,300 competing sites!

On Google with the search term 'Car Sales Training' we rank 2^nd in Australia from 1,050,000 competing sites!

On Yahoo with the search term 'Premium Automotive Industry Solutions' we rank 1^st in the world from 832,000 competing sites!

On NineMSN with the search term 'Auto Sales' we rank 3^rd in the world from 28,076,066 competing sites!

On MSN with the search term 'Auto Book' we rank 7^th in the world from 8,722,391 competing sites!

On NineMSN with the search term 'BMW Sales Career' we rank 3^rd in Australia from 310,528 competing sites!

On MSN with the search term 'Premium Auto Sales Training' we rank 3^rd in the world from 429,789 competing sites!

On NineMSN with the search term 'Car Sales Training' we rank 3rd in Australia out of 81,934 competing sites!

It's nice to be so popular!

We haven't spent a cent yet on ads ( like Google Adsense ). One of the key tools we used to achieve our traffic results and search engine rankings was XSite Pro, combined with the professional services of J-Six Solutions.

Mercedes News

Sales Management, Anyone?

Sales Management has been the topic of discussion this week. Not only Sales Managers, but Sales Trainees, Salespeople and Dealer Principals have all been discussing Sales Management with me.

One of the questions that I've been asked frequently this week is: "How might Sales Managers work effectively with salespeople who ambitiously declare that they'd like to be Sales Managers but haven't yet shown any Sales Managemant aptitude?"

The question reminded me of a telling exercise that a football coach gave my team and I at the start of the 1997 season. For many years of playing football, I had seen coaches wasting time and effort every week ( before, after and yes, even during games ) diplomatically trying to justify selection choices and match-tactics to a whole range of people who had varying degrees of knowledge of, commitment to, and interest in the team ( all of them with less than the coach's knowledge, commitment and interest ).

The coach in question began the 1997 season like this: a week before our first game of the year, he issued all the players and the other 'interested people' with a player list and asked all of us to select the playing team, with each player selected in position, for the first game of the season. He also issued a list of criteria to consider in our selection, including winning focus, player fitness, player skill, position aptitude and experience, training attendance, pre-season work, etc. He told us that we had to justify every inclusion and every exclusion. We also had to be aware that we were open to accusations of bias for selecting our friends before other players.

My first observation when I was completing this 'homework' was how complex the decisions were, with so many people and so many criteria to consider. My second observation was how much time it all took. When we returned our team selections at Thursday training, the coach read each person's team selection and easily found fault with just one selection of each. It made us all realise that we had overlooked at least one factor in our decisions. He then asked us what we had learned and although the answers varied, I don't know of anyone that questioned the coach's decisions that season ( and we had a good season, reaching the finals after getting the wooden spoon the previous year ).

So how does this relate to the Sales Management of ambitious salespeople? Well firstly you may want to delegate some basic management tasks to these salespeople. That may provide them with enough of a taste to realise that they don't want to be Sales Managers. If, however, they excel at the tasks, it may be the beginning of gradually grooming them for management.

How Cool!

More Great Service

After the recent challenges in getting my motorbike serviced, I finally had the work done today and I was impressed with the service.

They did everything that they said they would and even fixed a problem I gave them at the last minute. They had all the work itemised before and after the job, and kept me informed on progress.

Coming Soon: More Open Training

Liar, liar, pants on fire!

Yes, believe it or not, car salespeople hear lots of lies from clients. If you work in car sales, do any of these sound familiar?

"You are the first dealership I've been in contact with" ( then when you appraise the trade-in there are three or four brochures with business cards attached sitting in the front seat of the client's trade-in).

"We bought a different car because they gave us more for our trade-in / better payments etc." then you see the client a month later still driving their old car ( or even better, they visit you again ).

“We’ve been offered a price of $ ____ ( $ 2 to $ 3 thousand below dealer cost )" and the ubiquitous: "We'll definitely come back and see you before we do anything."

So why do customers lie? In most cases, customer lies are substantially created by fear. This includes a fear of the unknown and/or a fear of what might happen if they do tell the truth to a salesperson .

In addressing these situations effectively, it's important not to take the lies too personally. There are strategies and skills to use to reduce the incidence of client lies and there are ways to work more effectively with the lies.

New Web Site for Elizabeth