James Braden Ford/Lincoln - Grant Cardone Automotive Sales Training

About The Company

How do you use the training?
“I have guys that can handle 7 or 8 objections back to back. My top guy practices handling objections for 2 hours every single day and he sells 60 units per month. We tested him one time and he could handle 32 objections back to back.
How do we get everyone on the other guys’ level? We’ve used closer’s survival guide books to drill objection handling so much we had to buy another set. When you put the closing material online we had everyone at the dealership start training on it. Every day we practice how to handle objections without creating confrontation with the customer.”

Challenge

How has training impacted your hiring process?
“We have Grant’s training which is better than anyone else. I don’t focus on hiring the BEST sales guys, rather I take reasonably intelligent people that aren’t gifted at sales and I train using Grant Cardone and teach them how to sell. Then the aggravation of dealing with naturally gifted salespeople is gone.
The opportunity in the industry is the need to be an ambassador. I think we can last longer if we look after customers and break through the stereotype we have. That’s why I’m an advocate for Grant’s product, because it’s different.”

Approach

Why do you train using Grant Cardone?
“We were so deep in Joe Verde that my guys didn’t want to switch over. I’d first seen Grant in 1985 and I told them that when I saw him in Ottawa 20 years ago and we saw how he handled objections using information, the “give give give”, that it stands out and makes you different when the customer comes in the door. We became really good at overcoming confrontation. That’s the thing, no other dealership in the city can handle overcoming objections in the close.
When someone tried to sell me Cardone On-Demand I didn’t hear them talk about why we should be with GC rather than Joe Verde. Grant hits to the stuff that’s wrong in the industry and why it is that most people that buy a car are aggravated with the process.”

Results

“The Canadian Automotive Dealers Association gathered financial statements for 5 years from the top stores in Canada and sent it to the to the top ivy league business schools to go through a panel of analysts. Then they questioned why we think we achieved the results we did and from over 3200 dealers we were nominated and selected to receive the CADA laureate award in retail operations. They ended up picking us because they saw something unique in our thinking and how we train our people.
With ten salespeople we outsell all of the dealers in our area and win all these awards for CSI; because we have the best tools. When we first started we were selling about 400 units a year and now we can sell over 1300. We’ll probably need more space for inventory but I still think we can sell another 1000 cars per year.

My guys earn more money at my place than they’ll earn anywhere else. The sky’s the limit on how they’ll get paid. You get one guy that starts making over $100,000 and then when most are starting to make that money and they hear that at other places they don’t, the challenge becomes how do I get them to the next level.”