Salesmanship |
Prospecting for the Next
Generation Last month's issue had many stories that referred to the "Next Generation." Just what is the Next Generation? Do we have to wait ten years for it to show up at the dealership, or is it five years away? Neither, it is here right now and it is real. One of the greatest challenges for the RV industry today is to get the story in front of the people who can buy. Then it must get the people who can buy to visit an RV dealership or trade show to find out more about the RV lifestyle. Dealers cannot afford to wait for the buyers to come strolling through the door looking for an RV. It's not going to happen that way. The Go RVing campaign will generate new exposure for the RV lifestyle and dealers who are actively involved with this program will be the recipients of leads from the Next Generation. A lead, in any business, is only as good as the person wants it to be. Many sales people approach leads from a negative perspective. Some even complain about having to work with leads, as if they were a waste of time and money. How many times have you heard your sales team complain that they never get any good leads? Probably more than you would care to admit. A lead is simply an opportunity that must be cultivated. If you don't make any changes in the way that your dealership handles these leads then you will probably get the same results you have always had. One of the most frustrating situations for any manufacturer or association program is lack of follow-up from lead generation programs. People receiving the leads do not follow-up with the prospect. Companies supplying the leads do not follow-up to see if anybody has done anything with the leads. In many cases, there is absolutely no post-audit program or review that can substantiate the return on investment expected of the program. How will your dealership handle the leads that you will receive from manufacturers and the Go RVing campaign this year? Does your dealership have a formal program for lead follow-up? I've got a few ideas that may help you improve the sales activity and closing ratios for your lead follow-up program. Who should get the leads? What happens to leads that come into your dealership? Who actually gets the leads? Do you, as the owner of the company, look at every lead that comes into the dealership or is this task assigned to a General Manager or Sales Manager? The senior most person who is responsible for the profit of the business should be getting the leads. It should the person with the "big chair" as I like to call it. The one in the corner office who is responsible for managing a successful business operation, delivering profit to the bottom line, and providing a positive work environment for all the employees. Leads are blank checks. You can throw them in the trashcan, or you can write your own ticket to success. If you don't know what is happening to leads in your dealership, then you may be losing a significant amount of business and not even be aware of it. I receive every lead that comes into my business unit. I want to see where the lead is coming from and I want to see what company, department, and product or service the person is requesting information about. Frequently I will call the prospect, and here is why I do it. In your company, who knows more about the success or failure of your business than you do? In your company, who knows more about the RV industry than you do? In your company, who knows more about the source of the leads than you do? In your company, who knows more about what to do with a lead than you do? Probably nobody. In most entrepreneurial companies, the best sales person is the owner. Who best to tell the story about your company and convince the prospect to visit your dealership than you? Think about how leads are handled in your company. See if there isn't room for improvement that could lead to a better closing rate and bring new customers into the RV lifestyle through your dealership and not the one down the street. What happens to leads that come into your company? In many companies, leads are simply dropped on a sales person's desk and there is absolutely no follow-up program in place to monitor sales activity generated from the lead. Even worse, many dealerships can not even tell you what leads actually resulted in the purchase of a new RV. Consequently, without effective management of a lead program, everyone simply thinks that all leads are a waste of time and money. You should have some type of lead management program established at the dealership level. Ask yourself these questions. This isn't a test, the only person that will see the answers is you so answer them honestly and with the best information available to you on the day you are reading this magazine. 1. How many leads were received in your dealership from January to December 2000? 2. How many of those leads came from your manufacturers? 3. How many of those leads came from internally generated programs? 4. How many of those leads came from the Go RVing campaign? 5. Who were the leads assigned to? 6. What percentage of those leads resulted in the person visiting your dealership? 7. What percentage of those leads resulted in the sale of a new RV? 8. What percentage of those leads resulted in the sale of a previously-owned RV? 9. What was the total number of leads that resulted in a sale? 10. What sales rep in our organization had the best closing percentage from leads? 11. How many of the leads did you personally call? 12. How many of the customers did you personally call who purchased an RV from a lead to see why they did business with your dealership? 13. How many meetings did you have with your manufacturers representative to discuss the quality of the leads, the source of the leads, and your results from the leads? 14. Did you enter every lead into some type of database, manual or computerized, so that they would be included in future mailings, promotions or newsletters from your dealership? 15. How many of those leads did you meet in person and thank them for their business? I hope the fifteen questions noted above will cause you to stop and think about the value of the leads coming into your dealership and what you are doing with them. The difference with leads from the Next Generation. Years ago we all sold products. Today, whatever industry you are in, we sell solutions. Specifically, in the RV industry today we sell a lifestyle filled with dreams, hopes, adventure, relaxation, and quality of life issues. The lead you receive today is not interested in a product. At this point in time, they are not even interested in an RV. They were attracted to the industry through a program that sold the benefits of the RV lifestyle to a new audience. This is an audience that wants to learn more about the RV experience. If you have not trained your sales people to understand the Next Generation RV prospect, then they are not going to change. But they have to change. The person who responded to the lead is a different type of prospect or customer and the industry has an opportunity to convert them to buyers of the RV lifestyle if we understand their wants and needs. What are the wants and needs of the Next Generation? The Next Generation prospect wants to spend more time with the family. They want to spend more time in leisure activities. They want to retire sooner and enjoy life. They are an active group that pursues many different types of lifestyle activities that could be enhanced through RV's. Every dealership should be doing some type of sales training that is geared toward changing the way we look at prospects and how we want to sell to them. The potential for success is enormous. Unfortunately, so is failure. You have "X" amount of leads to pursue. How you handle them will determine if they wind up on the "success" or "failure" side of the equation. As I write this article, I'm on an airplane returning from a senior management meeting to review budgets and strategic planning. We had the top ten people in a $60 million dollar company together for three days. They included the chairman, president, chief financial officer, chief technology officer, corporate counsel and five managers responsible for delivering the business and growing the company. I would consider eight of the ten to be "Next Generation" type prospects for the RV industry. Except for me, not one of them had ever owned an RV and was not considering one at the present time. However, all led very active lifestyles (golf, skiing, motorbike racing, motorcycling, snowboarding, traveling and cruises). How do we get these people into RV dealerships? Through marketing and advertising programs that showcases the RV lifestyle. What you do with them when they come through your doors is up to you and your sales team. As many of them became aware of my involvement with the RV industry, they wanted to learn more about RVing. One expressed the desire to see the country when he retired but had never really thought about owning an RV. Another expressed the desire to take a summer off and rent an RV to tour the country with his family. Another thought it would be really cool to have a motorhome and go skiing in the mountains. And yet another was ecstatic to learn that he could actually take his Harley-Davidson and put it inside an RV. None of them had ever visited an RV dealership. Now the only thing wrong with this story is that none of them had yet been touched enough by industry outreach programs to go into an RV dealership. Four of the ten will now visit an RV dealer or rental agency in the very near future. What's the point of all this? It's the one-on-one discussion that takes place between the prospect and the sales rep. Their interest was developed through a casual conversation with me about the RV industry. That's the same thing our sales people have to do with the Next Generation prospect. They have to understand what we have to offer or they will never buy. In this case, I was the sales rep (selling the RV lifestyle) and my business associates were the prospects. The lead that you get is your ticket to a one-on-one discussion with a prospect. The success or failure of that conversation will be in direct proportion to the effort you put into your sales training, understanding of the Next Generation RVer, and your lead follow-up program. The potential is enormous. The people are out there. If we spend all this money to get them into your dealership, you better know what to do with them when they get there. Good luck and good selling.
RVN
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