Grace Lupoi: 0:00
Welcome to Prepare to Win, where we give you drive time tips on how to live and sell with excellence. In this podcast today we’re going to review conquering negotiation, gaining the upper hand in negotiations and really learning how to create win-win scenarios that benefit you and your customers.

David Lowe: 0:14
Right, this is a topic I think every salesperson wants to know, right, they’re always like how do I close better? In fact, the easiest way to sell training is tell people I’ve got the silver bullet, you need to close more deals. Right, and I’m going to tell you. It’s bigger than that and we’re talking about character, integrity. We’re talking about earning the right not just to sell a car but create excited, loyal, lifetime customer. Today, we’re going to talk about proper negotiations. Now, we have several of these podcasts to talk about negotiating tips. Today, we’re going to take a high view of conquering negotiation. Really, starting your mind, what does it take to set up a win-win scenario? Right, we talked about this podcast isn’t just about selling cars. Heck, no, no, it’s about winning more often. To win, you need a proven game plan right, we’re going to do that today for Conquering (objections). Here’s a proven game plan. But you also need to practice, develop your skillset, and then you have to play with passion. Right, you play with excellence, not perfection. The better you practice, the better you play, the more that you win. And we said winning isn’t just about selling cars, making money. It’s about creating excited, loyal, lifetime customers and it’s about building a healthy pride, and that goes beyond just today’s professional automotive salespeople, doesn’t it? Everybody can win. So what would tell them what winning is if they missed our first podcast? If you’re out there and you’re joining us and you may not be full-time employed and selling cars, but you’re still a salesman, selling is just to persuade others of the benefits of something. Moms, you’re persuading your kids all the time. Maybe even your husband and most of us are in the business of persuading others to do what we want them to do not manipulating. Properly, communicating right the benefits of doing something. And so if you’re joining us, what would it win like for somebody who’s not in a car business?

Grace Lupoi: 2:19
Well, I think winning really is. We go back to that joy, peace and satisfaction, right? What does it look like to feel like I can go home at the end of the day and it’s like what I have for how I’ve done. I’ve done it well, by full capacity, right? I worked with my whole heart, my whole mind. I can lay my head on the pillow and think you know, I’m proud of the work that I’ve done today. I have the confidence going into tomorrow that I know what a good job looks like, and that’s what a win is for me, isn’t that?

David Lowe: 2:41
awesome. So we now, we also say better today than yesterday. So when we talk about winning what you said, that healthy pride, that self-respect, we’re not talking about perfection. Oh no, because all of us, right, we rise and fall, all of us make mistakes, and I, you know, I don’t know why I keep making some of the same mistakes. But it’s not about not making mistakes, it’s not living in them, it’s about learning from our mistakes and becoming better today than yesterday. I only learn back, to learn not to penalize or right, not to downgrade myself, not to think wrong about myself, not to feel bad about what I’ve done, but say you know what I wish I hadn’t done that today. I’m not going to Better today than yesterday. So winning a healthy pride, and that’s all the way around. So let’s talk about closing and negotiating. How do most customers feel about this? How do most salesmen feel about it?

Grace Lupoi: 3:35
Right, Not great no nobody likes it.

David Lowe: 3:37
So why do we keep doing it the same way? So I’m going to tell you something we don’t know what came first, the chicken or the egg, and is it the scheming salesperson or the lying buyer? I don’t know. Solomon, 3,000 years ago, said it’s no good. It’s no good, says the buyer, then goes and boasts about to purchase. And I’d be honest, when I buy something, I normally lie. I use my wife my wife is not going to let me write and that’s just the tool that we use to make sure we don’t pay too much. I’m not mad at my customers, I’m not mad at myself, but we do want to come together and say what does win-win look like? How do we, as salespeople, conquer negotiation? How do we remove the fear that comes with it, and how do we make it comfortable for our buyer to say yes, isn’t that conquering negotiation? I think so. Okay, win-win. How do we win? We sell the car. We make a fair profit. How does the buyer win? They get the car they want and they got expert help, not just during the sale, but they can count on it after the sale. They get the car that’s going to change their life. People buy lifestyles, not cars. The car represents the lifestyle. So this really is win-win. And if you’re a sales consultant or sales manager professional in your automotive industry, you really have the responsibility to do this well, Because if you don’t, your customer is going to leave out without the car they wanted. Now we think we’re sadder that they left without the car, but the truth of the matter is who really loses when they come to get a new life and they leave without it? When they come to get that car, they’ve been online for three, four, five who knows how long that’s going to fit their new life and they leave without it. When we fail to do our job well, it hurts everybody. It does, it really does. Okay. So let’s kind of frame this up. You know about the sales process and you and we call the sales process what?

Grace Lupoi: 5:35
The ultimate closing rule.

David Lowe: 5:36
All right. So why? Why do we do that? Because if we want to frame negotiations, we need the process before, don’t we?

Grace Lupoi: 5:43
Right, and I think you’re exactly right. We need the whole process to close the deal Right. I have to earn the right to ask my customer to buy. I have to earn the right to play the game, to negotiate Right. If they’re not committed buyer, why do I expect them to take my first pencil?

David Lowe: 5:57
Right.

Grace Lupoi: 5:57
And so it all goes back to this the whole idea of our sales process is not just to sell the car but really create that relationship and trust with our customer. That’s our foundation. If I don’t have the foundation of what that looks like, how do I know my customer? I know what they want. I know why they want it. Do I know who they are? Yeah, If I know those three things, I can create that relationship. I’m going to, I’m going to commit that.

David Lowe: 6:17
So the first part of that sales process really is and here’s our points for today conquering negotiation. You need relationship and trust, absolutely. If only there was a way to teach you how to learn how to build relationship. The dealership playbook has all that training Right. We show you how to welcome a buyer, make them feel comfortable, connect and lead in a way that makes them you know what. This person understands me, this person knows me. I feel like this person can help me. So relationship and trust is that critical to closing a negotiation. You’re going to listen to somebody you don’t trust no way. So you have to like them to trust them, and so we’re going to build that. That’s the first one. Now you mentioned the sales process as it continues. Now we’re talking about value, right, so we’re going to build value in what we do, so builds value in us, but also in the car and the pricing. Talk about that.

Grace Lupoi: 7:10
Yeah, so we, of course. We want to create the value and also desire. Right, I value and desire two different things. I want to value it and desire to create that bond that’s hard to break. Ultimately, it’s going to get me that commitment of them saying, hey, can I please take this thing home today? Right, and the way to go about that is huge. So I got to not only show them the vehicle but say, hey, you know what this is, how it’s going to fit in your life and your life better. We know that buying a car is not really a logical decision. Most of time, really, it’s an emotional decision. We’ve got to create that emotional decision and create that bond that’s hard to break. How can I tie their lifestyle to this car? Where they say, if I leave without this car, my life might suck?

David Lowe: 7:46
That’s right, that’s it. So people don’t. There’s only what you said was it’s emotion, not logic. All buying decisions are 80% emotion, 20% logic. That’s so true. And our process, like the exploration steps some of you might learn, walk around. But really the walk around is how we do it. Explore is where we explore the features and talk about how it’s going to make the effect their life, how their family, their work, their play, how it fits in it. Right, so you’re talking about building that desire and value in that car is it’s going to make the life? But that’s part of that process, isn’t it? So the sales process is so important because it keeps us on track to build value and desire and make sure they feel like this is the right car. They’ve got four questions to answer what should I buy? Where should I buy it? When should I buy it? How much should I pay? And if they don’t know, I’m not sure if this is the right car, how low can you go? And then nobody feels, nobody’s satisfied then. So the sales process, ultimate closing tool, builds value and desire and commitment. Not only is it build relationship, tip one, tip two we need value, desire and a commitment. Let’s talk about resetting expectations.

Grace Lupoi: 8:59
Oh gosh.

David Lowe: 9:00
So I don’t know about you, but whenever I go to do something, I’m gonna sell them one of my guitars online. Oh, this is in mint condition. I should get the. Don’t we all want more for our stuff than the market says it’s worth? We totally do, okay. So our process does it give them the opportunity to reset their expectations on how about trade?

Grace Lupoi: 9:18
Yes, yeah, so we have a step called the silent appraisal, or, of course, we’re gonna walk around that car with them and really look at it from a different perspective. Right, we’re not gonna do this in the old ways, by making them feel bad about it Wow, you’ve got some scratches, now you have crappy tires. We’re gonna do it in a way that creates our relationship and builds on it, makes them feel great about what they’re trading in, which again goes back to creating that foundation and write that relationship and that trust, helping us move forward.

David Lowe: 9:43
Help them devalue the trade, not us. So we keep that. We’re gonna be the, we’re gonna facilitate them devalueing it, but not you know. And so that’s so different than typical salesman. Right, I’d give you more if your car wasn’t crap. I mean, that’s kind of sales training that we see online. And then there’s resetting their expectation on price because the pricing model has changed. If you don’t know that people buyers, customers, people that aren’t selling cars and people who are selling cars a lot of people don’t know that the internet has changed everything. We don’t have time to get into that, but the marketing, the pricing on cars has changed Now that there’s three or 400 models back when I started selling cars were 50 or 60, competition is fierce, so the pricing model on the window has changed. There’s not as much markup as there and they use cars. Oh my gosh, with the onset of V auto and internet, people are online looking for car and pricing. So dealers are pricing the cars aggressively. Right, we call it competitively low, but aggressively online. But a lot of buyers don’t know it. So we have a step in the process called the value story. Value story. Do we tell them how it works?

Grace Lupoi: 10:45
We absolutely do.

David Lowe: 10:46
Transparency is key right.

Grace Lupoi: 10:48
I want to make sure that I have that full trust, and to do that I have to be transparent. I can’t tell those white lies. It’s perfect.

David Lowe: 10:54
And then, of course, before, if you want to conquer negotiation, you want to earn the right, you want to have this relationship and trust. You want to see the buyer says yes, I like this car, it’s a good buy. And they’re like you know, yeah, maybe I was a little high on my trade and boy, I didn’t know there was this much car for the money. The value story, resetting expectations. Number four if you want to conquer negotiations, you need a commitment, because if the buyer says I don’t know if I want it, how low can you go? That’s not actually negotiating, that’s quoting. Negotiating requires a committed seller, committed buyer. How about this? You want it, I don’t know if I want to sell it, but how much would you pay me for it? See, you can’t go anywhere with that. There’s no win. And the opposite is true I don’t know if I’m buying, but what would you do? Most salesmen are afraid to ask people to buy. I don’t understand. So we built into our sales process the ultimate closing tool, a commitment stage called the trial close.

Grace Lupoi: 11:53
My favorite step, by the way, right.

David Lowe: 11:55
And we don’t have time to go through that today. Today, we want to let you know that to conquer negotiation, you need a way to have your buyer say I’m buying this car, what are my options? What’s it going to cost me, versus? Yeah, let’s see how low you can go and then I’ll tell you. Most salesmen wait to put the numbers down to ask them to buy, and that’s wrong, isn’t it so wrong? Yeah, so we want to get a commitment and basically, isn’t that good for the customer? I think so. Before we go on and finalize the numbers, grace, let’s make sure we have the right car. Let’s talk about it. How did you, what did you think about it? Right? And we want to check Does it have the equipment and does it perform the way they want? Right, Are they comfortable driving it? All those things make check marks, for our buyers say I want this car and if they commit to themselves, they’re buying it. Are we set up for a comfortable close? Absolutely, absolutely. It’s very important and we’re set up for five. This is a big one for us, by the way building value. There’s so many other stuff, something like the dealership tour we can’t get into in the short podcast, but we want to give you drive time tips and for some of you people that have been on our dealership playbook and you’ve been training us, these are reminders. Are you serving your customer with your whole heart and whole mind? Because if you’re not using your sales process, you’re short cutting them and you’re short cutting yourself, aren’t you? Yes, long to transparency. You want win-win. How do you do that without transparency?

Grace Lupoi: 13:18
That’s a great question. I don’t know how you do it without transparency.

David Lowe: 13:21
Oh my gosh. So in the old days, and I’m going back to when I started selling cars. It was the old days, the 80s.

Grace Lupoi: 13:27
You’re dating yourself.

David Lowe: 13:28
Yeah right, terrible. So there was all these trick techniques. I wanted to call it the four square. Give them the high down payment and high payment and low trade and determine, peel them off the ceiling, then get an offer. That was the point. You know what? Doesn’t that create a lot of ill will.

Grace Lupoi: 13:45
Heck, yeah, absolutely.

David Lowe: 13:46
That was the game. I think the internet has made selling cars so much simpler. Buyers can go and get so much information and I can treat them with respect that they have information. And, by the way, doesn’t everything cost? Yes, can you get cheaper coffee than Starbucks?

Grace Lupoi: 14:05
You can.

David Lowe: 14:06
And yet you can’t even I can’t get in line here and get one and get to work on time. It’s backed up all the time. People are paying $5 for a 25 cent cup of coffee, or the same basic cup of coffee they can get for a bucket McDonald’s. Mcdonald’s has great coffee, by the way, but the truth is we pay for what we value, isn’t it true? So it’s really not about price, it’s about value. And value goes way beyond price or trader payment. It goes to experience, right. It goes to trust. It goes to what am I getting for my money, right? And I don’t know anybody that wouldn’t tip higher for good service, right? So transparency is one way we do it. I like to show by all the numbers, as if they’ve already bought the car. And if you haven’t learned how to do that, join us on our Deal Ship Playbook. We show you exactly how to present the deals if it’s already done, and double your first pencil closes by using these techniques, right, all right. The last one we have time for today is when the buyer starts talking about price negotiating. We always go to value Most salesmen, the buyer. We hit them here. The buyer goes lower. What if I could meet you in the middle. Right, there’s all these crappy negotiation. If I could, would you? How’d you come up with that? Let me talk to my man All these terrible things that come from untrainin’ it. I used all those things my first year selling cars. I made a lot of money selling cars. I didn’t know I was doing everything wrong. Once I learned the proper way to talk value in that price, the proper way to negotiate a car deal, my income went way up. My customers were happier, I was happier. So we’re talking about framing, conquering negotiation. Framing an offer that creates win-win is so much more than closing lines, lines that close things. It’s really about making the customer feel comfortable. I really want the customer to feel like they’ve made the decision, not me. In fact, our trial closed. Grace sounds like we found the right car. If I work out the whole financial package. Are you wanting to drive your new Jeep home today? I sure do. There’s no pressure and there’s tremendous power in that when it’s coupled with the sales process. So we are going to talk in future podcast about how to present the numbers, about how to handle I want more from my trade. About how to handle that payment. I can’t afford that payment, about down payment. We’re going to talk specific tips and techniques for today’s internet driven marketplace, not for the 1980s or not 1090s. Things are different today and you got to be better. Today we’re going to do that, but today we wanted to frame the total negotiation process. You can conquer it if you have these six things. So relationship and trust, right. All comes from the sales process. We talked about value desire, right. We talked about resetting expectations. We talked about gaining commitment. We talked about transparency and we talked about, during negotiation, always remind the buyer of what they’re getting, why they’re here and why they want it. In other words, the value is springing to their life.

Grace Lupoi: 17:22
One thing you tell me, Dave, that has stuck with me is when focus on price is high, focus on value is low and vice versa. Such a great thing to keep in mind as we’re going into this negotiation and as our people following our podcast are thinking the same thing. And if they’re focused fully on price, what do we have with value? How?

David Lowe: 17:40
can I?

Grace Lupoi: 17:41
bring value back on the table and make that the sole focus.

David Lowe: 17:44
Isn’t that right? So today we hope you’ve learned something about this. And listen, if you’re not selling cars, we want you to know be a good customer, Right. And that doesn’t mean that doesn’t mean lay down for help your salesperson, be better than they are. You know what, when we go out there and we focus on other people, we seem the benefit, don’t we? So I try to. When I’m out buying something, I’m trying to be a good customer. I want to pay more than I have to, but I do want to be a good customer and have it be a win-win experience. Heck, I might need them again, right? So it’s kind of selfish, but I don’t want to be a good customer. And if you’re a sales professional and you’re closing deals and you haven’t had the training to do it with excellence, get the training. If you’ve had the training and you’re not using it, use the training If you’ve learned what to do and why to do it and how to do it, especially from the dealership playbook, which is a customer experience, team member experience, salesperson experience. It’s driven to create satisfaction and you’re not practicing it. Shame on you. We’ve already talked about the proven road to success is a game plan and it’s preparation. You can’t play with excellence if you don’t prepare with excellence. Isn’t that true? I agree that’s what this podcast is about. We’re talking about preparing daily tips right On living and selling with excellence so that we can become more. We will get more, but our goal is to become more. As we become more, become more of a benefit to other people right, and when we’re more of a benefit to other people, we have a healthy pride. Healthy pride naturally creates joy, peace and satisfaction, and the cycle continues. That joy, peace and satisfaction drives me to be better today than I was yesterday.

Grace Lupoi: 19:26
It’s so great right Beautiful thanks hey thank you again for joining us.

David Lowe: 19:29
We really appreciate your time. Time is so valuable. We always say you can make more money but you can’t make more time, so you choosing to spend it with us. Thank you so much. We trust it was a benefit to you and if so, we’d love to see you come back and seek excellence with us. Please follow us or subscribe Whatever podcast you normally use. We might be on YouTube. If it’s a bit of a benefit to you, please share it with a friend. We’d love to hear your comments. Even if you found something that was a benefit to you, we call that a win. Shoot a video about it. We would love that and appreciate that. Now we’re going to keep moving forward, and next podcast is going to be kind of build right off today. Today we’re really talking about conquering, negotiating at this level. These are the principles and how the sales process helps you achieve those principles Right. Next podcast is really going to be kind of getting down to the nitty gritty. Talk about that Great.

Grace Lupoi: 20:27
So next podcast we’ve got navigating price objections, discovering proven strategies to handle price objections effectively and close the deal without compromising profit margins, OK, so we’re going to talk about specific right.

David Lowe: 20:39
There are three types of objection Price postponement and product Right. We’re going to talk about the price ones, which typically comes to us in three forms trade, payment or actual price Right and strategies for overcoming those. Are just going to be a great podcast. You’re going to learn a lot from it. So until next time, listen, be better today than yesterday. Right, seek excellence and impact your world.