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excepts from Trevor Cole's
DEATH OF THE CAR SALESMAN
DEAN
SAMPANO RISES EVERY MORNING WITH
A MISSION TO
help car salespeople change. He meditates
for about 15 minutes. Then he gets dressed in something snappy, something with
a little flash to complement his sly good looks, and gets ready to knock them
all, the "green peas" and the veterans, out of their chairs. "Maybe 10 years
ago you could make it with a smile and a bunch of funny stories, but he says not any more." Now it's a buyer's market and if you don't have real skills to
listen and create buyer emotion you are never going to make it.
Sampano suffers nom such unnecessary friction. He's on the glide path to
some higher achievement plane. In addition, to Mass Consultants Ltd., his
sales-training company based in Toronto, Ont., he is a partner in 3 other
profitable firms.
Some liken Sampano to the other greats of auto-sales trainers such as
Jackie B. Copper but in Sampano's own eyes, he's unique equipped to help today's
salespeople make it in a brutal world. He started selling when he was 19. By
24, he was the lead trainer at the GM Dealers Association. Its reported
that when he was general sales manager at an import store in Windsor, Ont., it's
bottom line went up more the 700% in 12 months. Who else can do that and quote
Solomon and Archimedes too? That's why some 50 client dealerships pay
him thousands per day to teach salespeople how to sell without annoying the
customers.
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At 9:30 am., wearing a crisp grey double-breasted suit with a red tie and red silk puff, Sampano enters the room like a dancer, with bold moves and a showbiz smile. He opens his arms wide and bellows, "Are you ready for some high-flying sales training today?" He is very smooth, fast and vibrant, and slams the table repeatedly for emphasis. He yells and he whispers. He dribbles an imaginary basketball and shoots an imaginary hoop. He tells inspiring stories. He keeps their attention, and he never breaks a sweat. When he senses someone's not listening, he points to them: "You'll find this interesting." To cement each example, he says, "Watch this." His heat could spark a fire, and it's utterly alien to everyone in the room.
Finally, Sampano wants to stress the importance of not letting a customer's aggression get in the way of a sale. "Let him take control and learn to deal with the negative with out taking it personal is the first key to be great in sales. We teach sales people the skills on not only how to listen but also on how to ask questions that lower buyer resistance. In the service business, we have to stop the judgment and show people we care by making them people feel important. Then he shouts: "We Gotta” eliminate their negative mind-set!"
"The bottom line is most salesmen rely too much on the easy customers and therefore are stagnant with their skill level. The sales people that are going to make any money these days are the ones that are trained to handle even difficult customers. He says by learning to serve those customers, you could triple your income. He says the sales people without real training and a true commitment to go the extra mile for customers don't stand a chance. Sampano gets annoyed by "flaky car dealers" who hire the wrong ones, don't follow up on their training and then don't let the lousy performers go. Sampano says "to make it in today’s market you have to learn to get out of the product business and back into the people business and only companies that train their people to win, will survive in the challenging market that lies ahead".
For more
information on Dean Sampano visit.
Massconsultants.ca
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