What Daily Activities Should Sales People Perform?
The daily activity of a sales person today is far different than it was just a few decades ago. Back then, a new sales person was given a box with index cards and was tasked to write down every friend and acquaintance they knew and organize them alphabetically. This was their book of business and this was their daily tool needed to make a living and become a professional sales person.
Times have changed. Today, sales managers are happy to find an individual who wants to be in sales or wants to give sales a shot. No sales experience is necessary any more. Training, discipline, and expectations are relaxed, and after a brief training period, sales people today are standing post while hawking the showroom floor and lot. Don’t forget, expectations of sales people in today’s world include being fed leads through dealership management.
As sales managers, one of their most important duties is to develop, train, and implement a daily schedule of activities to keep sales people busy and productive. If this schedule is properly developed, your sales people will consistently be busy, and it has the potential to continually drive additional leads into your dealership. If you need some help with your schedule, here are some specific suggestions that a sales person can do on a daily basis.
Daily Opportunities to do Business for Sales People:
- Set, follow-up, and prepare for customer appointments
- Seek and take advantage of all phone, walk-in, service drive, and internet traffic
- Walk inventory at start of shift to know what we have to sell
- Sales manager’s requests: meetings, briefings, special requests, etc.
- Entry of all customer information into CRM (from all sources)
- Follow up today’s and yesterday’s inquiries (from all sources)
- Follow up previous unsold prospects
- Follow up of recently delivered customers to ensure complete satisfaction
- Follow up on all deals in F&I for stipulations or billing delays
- Daily follow up of old owners from CRM (should be at least 4 times per month)
- Delivery preparations for tomorrow’s deliveries
- Delivery preparations for future deliveries
- Tidy work area to ensure desk is free of clutter, neat & orderly, and ready for customers at any time.
- Tidy showroom and lot to ensure cars on display are clean, seats up, no trash in vehicle, no stray brochures or miscellaneous paper work lying around showroom.
- Prospecting: owners, orphan owners, service department, etc.
- Practice: Practice sales skills with sales managers or colleagues, role play situations that have lost deals, etc.
- Review and prioritize list of activities for tomorrow at the end of each day. Get with sales manager to review days work.
All professional sales people care about their product and their customers. They follow a daily plan to succeed and they constantly look for ways to improve their skill set. Times have changed but following the foundational basics of salesmanship have not. Implement a training process and expect sales people to follow standard daily tasks is not difficult. It just needs to be taught and expected.
The Result
If you are able to work this into your business practices, you will see happier sales people that are busy and making a great income for themselves. Sales managers surrounding themselves with a team of professional sales people that all are following the daily work plan, and thus, selling the volume and producing the gross needed to operate a successful business.
If you are looking to improve your variable operations, you can learn more from Robert and our other automotive consultants by joining a 20 Group, scheduling a customized dealership consulting session, or registering for automotive training in the NCM Institute. Backed by our benchmarking and automotive reporting software, NCM Associates is ready to help your dealership overcome any business challenge.