David Lowe: 0:00

Are you thinking about starting a new career in sales, or maybe you started selling cars and you’re not getting what you want right? This is the episode for you. Hi, I’m David Lowe, the Automotive Sales Coach. Welcome to Prepare to Win podcast.

David Lowe: 0:24

Today’s episode is going to be a great one, focused on maybe people out there thinking about changing careers, or maybe people just started selling cars and are not seeing the success they thought. So I’ve asked a new salesman, brandon Long, to be with us today. He’s at the Academy Jeep dealership in Tipton, indiana, and, for those of you who don’t know, tipton is a very small town and we’re going to talk about what you’ve seen so far and how you’ve come along and what you think of the car business. Does that make sense? So remember, every episode that we do is focused on giving you tips on how to live and work with excellence, and sometimes that means, hey, where am I at in my career and is this going to take me where I want to go? Sometimes, living with excellence is self-examination Am I in the right road to get to where I want to go Now? Obviously you thought your last career wasn’t the road you wanted to be on and you made a decision to change right. Is that?

Brandon Long: 1:21

true, yep, and you had a good career, pretty good career.

David Lowe: 1:30

Absolutely, man, I had it made. So let’s talk. Let’s kind of talk to. Let’s start with you’re in a job now. Is it the right job for you? Should you make a move, and should it be car sales? So let’s just talk about the job you had?

Brandon Long: 1:37

Yeah for sure. So I was at FedEx for seven years, worked my way up from the bottom all the way to the top, was in a management position. I found out the hard way that I would either have to wait 10 to 15 years to get another promotion or just get lucky one day right, and I wanted to be able to put my own effort into what I was going to make out of a job and it just wasn’t it. So I wanted to get into sales and I wanted to do it for somebody that was ethical. Chariot Automotive Group is really good in that sense and I’m able to get win-win sales and really make a change in people’s lives and do it in a way that I like doing it.

David Lowe: 2:07

So you went from a pretty good salary to a commissioned job. Yep, because the pretty good salary was capped Time and time served, exactly Right. So we talk about selling cars as being one of the best kept career secrets. One of the things we talk about, of course, is the fact that you’re not capped by time served. Exactly that’s how I became a manager at 23. What you do and how you do it matters.

Brandon Long: 2:35

So you had a secure job making good money and, just to let you know, 20 hours a week on a salary yeah, 20 hours a week, wow. Because I managed a team, I was able to get it down pat. Everybody did the work and did what they were supposed to do, so I showed up whenever I wanted and left whenever I wanted Wow.

David Lowe: 2:53

Rock and roll. So that sounds like a cushy job. It was Okay. It’s not going to get me to where I want to go Exactly, sell cars, right, yep? And so you’ve been selling what? Two and a half months. My first day on the floor was February 1st. February 1st, okay. And in February, how did you do?

Brandon Long: 3:12

I got 11 cars out, okay.

David Lowe: 3:14

Yep, and let’s talk about your income for a minute. Yeah for sure. If we would annualize your February income, what would it turn into? So, your february income times 12 yeah, yeah, 132, 000 okay your first month selling cars made 11, 000. Okay. Now march, oh my god. First first month was lucky, right. What’d you do in the second month, 15. In the second month, my man, yep and income a little 11, 000 again.

David Lowe: 3:41

Yeah, okay so here’s the thing that we’ve tell everybody that this is the best kept career secret. We tell everybody that what you do and how you do it matters. So many people start selling cars and they’re not seeing those type of results. As a matter of fact, we have people that were at this dealership already, that weren’t getting those results, have been working here for a while. So I want to talk about what does it take to get those type of results? And, by the way, I believe can I tell you something. That’s what I found in the car business. I believe it’s. I didn’t know about it. I mean, did you get told about it in high school? Absolutely, absolutely.

David Lowe: 4:22

What a great current show and most people don’t know. And then, when you think about car sales and you think, yeah, those guys right, and so we’ve got that stereotypical cultural thing, I found, though, when I started selling cars that, wow, these people selling cars five, six, seven years, I’m already selling more of them and making more. How can that be? So that kind of turned me on thinking that I was in control of my own future and the fact that I could control my income based on how good I was and how much I was willing to do. You’re finding that out Absolutely. So a lot of people that get in the car business, they get in it and they kind of show up and they kind of wait for things to happen.

Brandon Long: 5:05

That hasn’t been you sitting around the coffee pot, yeah, in a conversation, doing their normal thing, like they’re, like they have that safety net. But that’s the thing about the job is you have no safety net, yeah, so you got to bet on yourself every day yeah, so you know.

David Lowe: 5:18

so those people who want somebody else to be responsible for exactly that’s not the job for them, nope.

Brandon Long: 5:23

Nope.

David Lowe: 5:23

Because you’re your own entity. Yes, right At the end of the day.

Brandon Long: 5:25

You make your own schedule, you make whatever you, you get whatever you put into it, yeah Right. So if you need constant guidance and assistance every minute of your day, not the job, not the job for you.

David Lowe: 5:38

I agree with that. So let’s talk about you then. What made you different? What made you a success? Talk about what you did to get here.

Brandon Long: 5:48

Yeah, I’ll tell you, if I started in this business right out of high school, I would have been one of those guys, so I had a little bit of experience under my belt under a Fortune 500 company. It gave me a lot of just experience in general. Life experience working for businesses and then, not to mention, I have a five-year-old, so that’s an easy one to come to work for.

David Lowe: 6:09

You know what I mean.

Brandon Long: 6:11

Knowing that down the road, if I want her to go to IU or wherever she wants to go, that’s really easy. And that’s a huge thing is that you see a lot of guys, especially in a business like this, that they don’t have a why yeah, and they just come to work and they sit around the coffee pot and they don’t care about that safety net. You got to have a reason why, and a huge thing that I learned is you have to ask really, really high level questions. That’s how you learn, yeah.

Brandon Long: 6:34

And just to be honest, I went through your sales training three times total. Yeah.

David Lowe: 6:39

Wow, so yeah, three times.

Brandon Long: 6:40

In the first month. That’s all I did. When I went home, I watched it. I watched it the first time, did all the videos and then watched it two more times.

David Lowe: 6:46

Isn’t that cool, so yeah.

Brandon Long: 6:48

But once you have a resource like that, you have’t know how to utilize them. Wow. So that’s. That’s a huge one too. You know what I mean.

David Lowe: 6:58

So so let’s just talk about that. So, yeah, we have training all over. We have so many rooftops and so many salespeople, yep, and I hear managers all the time. How do I get them to train? Exactly, right, and you know. So. There’s different things there, where this is not a management or leadership course we have plans for that, by the way setting expectations and helping people become better right, absolutely. A manager’s job is to help lift people up, maybe people without your life experience that haven’t taken personal responsibility yet.

David Lowe: 7:33

But you said it. That’s how I got in the business. Nobody told me I didn’t get training, so I walked around with a three by five card and when I heard something I liked, I wrote it down and then I would practice it. And I remember we had a walk around contest. I mean, I just started selling cars and it was to present a car in 10 minutes. Right, I don’t know cars, I’m not mechanically inclined, especially 20, yeah, um. But I took home the books and I practiced and I wrote my walk around out word for word. I did it over and over, and out of this big group of salesmen I got second and that kind of solidified uh the career for me, thinking that. Right, if I could just start and prepare myself, I’m already better than all these other guys. Right? What can’t I do? Exactly, but it takes personal responsibility. So I had that, you had that. What do you think you think the why is why people aren’t taking personal responsibilities or something else?

Brandon Long: 8:35

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I heard I heard this about a month ago I’m not going to say who it was A guy made a really really good commission check off a car deal North of three grand, right off one car. It’s really good Take home. And I said, how’d that car deal go? And he goes well, I don’t have to work the rest of the month, which is funny. You probably hear that a lot, but in my eyes I want eight more of those for the month.

David Lowe: 8:57

You know what I mean. So it’s.

Brandon Long: 8:59

It’s it’s a why, and you have to have that fire lit under you. You know, and I could definitely see I’ve only been doing it for a couple of months I could definitely see getting a couple of years down the road, kind of declining, falling into that slump, you know, not being as motivated, just like with every other job you never have right. So it’s, you got to keep that fire burning. You got to find a way and a why and a motivation every day to come to work. And the biggest thing is you don’t have a safety net. So you have to have that or else you won’t be able to pay your bills. You won’t be able to do this. But you know, some of these guys don’t have bills lucky them, right. So it’s a little bit different for some people.

David Lowe: 9:33

Well, Well, but see, I feel like your why it starts with your five-year-old. You’re thinking about their future, but I think it’s bigger than that. Do you want to come here and suck, can you?

Brandon Long: 9:44

live with that? Absolutely not. Yeah, it’s about that, do you want?

David Lowe: 9:46

to come here and coast. Can you live with yourself for that? Heck, no, heck, no. So I like I don’t need that much money. By the way, greed is terrible and wanting money for money’s sake to get things is not really going to make anybody satisfied. But money’s not a bad thing and a lot in sales. Money is a representation of how good you are and what you do, how consistent you are. That’s what it becomes right. There’s no reason you can’t. This is gold.

David Lowe: 10:18

He’s right, there’s no reason you can’t make money Exactly, and it’s not greed, and it’s not whatever, it’s just simply wanting to do your best at the given job. You have so many people show up and coast, or just when they get enough, they stop. That’s really character and integrity issue, right, yep? So this is funny, so you may not know this. Well, actually, some of our classes you’ve been to training three times, which was impressive. I love that and it works doesn’t?

David Lowe: 10:47

it works like a charm yeah, we’ll talk more about because so real quick, just just interrupt.

Brandon Long: 10:51

I had I had made this decision to come sell cars back in june of last year, but I was going to give fedex the rest of the year because they were down bad and I had just gotten into a new team, whatever long story short. So I had six months to prepare. So I’m watching, you know all different sales trainers all over the world and then as soon as I get to the dealership playbook, I’m like this is legit man if I learn this, I can make 11 grand, my first month, yeah that’s awesome.

David Lowe: 11:17

I mean thanks for that once once you find the resources.

Brandon Long: 11:20

That’s what’s talking about earlier you got to capitalize on yeah. So yeah, it’s huge very smart.

David Lowe: 11:23

So, um, so we talk about Truett, cathy, right, and I started Chick-fil-A and he said you only really need three things to be a success. That’s it. And the first one is desire and drive. You talked about it. What drives you, the why, right, the motivation, he said. Then you have to develop the know-how what to do, why to do it, how to do it, practice it until you can do it. And then he said number three you got to do it. He says everywhere I go, people say they want to be a success, but most people won’t do what it takes. Is that true, absolutely true. So I think what sets you apart was your willingness to those three things. You had the desire and drive, you took the time to develop the know-how. You knew how important that was, exactly. And then every day you come and take action, yep, yep. So it’s interesting to me that when I walked through the showroom, or yesterday, we had a phone call right and you’re like, hey, I ran into this dude Exactly.

Brandon Long: 12:24

This is what happened and it happens every day. Right, you want to capitalize. You said you want it to be 100%, but when you’re in the people business, it’s hard to be 100%. Yeah and yeah. So you got to take those scenarios and ask questions. But yeah, go on. Yeah, that’s great.

David Lowe: 12:38

But that means you’re a student, yeah, so you’re still looking for ways to improve. Absolutely. So, when we talk in a dealership playbook and we talk to people about becoming a success, that’s what it is the best always want to become better. That’s why we call it students of excellence. Right, that’s why we say you need to be personally responsible for your attitude, your knowledge, your skills, your actions and, ultimately, results, right? Yeah, so we have a lot of, I bet, salespeople that aren’t living like you are right now in that success, maybe even struggling, right? So if you were to talk to them and they came to you and Brent, what do I do? What would be?

Brandon Long: 13:25

your advice. The main thing is ask questions. The second thing is have you, have you went through the day low process? What do you know? I would ask them questions about the actual process itself. But but the biggest thing is we have so many resources available to us Whereas, like you said when you started, I mean, I’m sure, a lot of people in the car business if you’re watching this, you’ve been in the car business. If you’re watching this, you’ve been in the car business for 10 plus years.

David Lowe: 13:48

They just took you like a crane machine and told you to go sell a car, right no?

Brandon Long: 13:50

training at all, right. So when you have those resources, make sure you’re asking good questions. And the huge thing I did, man, is I keep a notepad in my phone, the notes, and I remember my first month I had. I still have it just as a reference, but I had a hundred questions on there, At least when I would go home at night I would just type in there and then the next day I would come in. I wouldn’t exhaust it all on one person.

David Lowe: 14:10

I would kill them all in one day.

Brandon Long: 14:12

Right, but I would have everybody I needed there to ask and go that route. So make sure you’re asking good questions and just staying on top of everything, and that’s a. You talked about always getting better right, even when you’re the best. There was a video on Steph Curry the other day I watched. He takes 500 shots a day. You do the math. Over his X amount of years in his career he’s shot over 2 million practice shots right and he’s only made 3,000 shots 3,000 three-pointers on the court. So less than 1% of a 10th of his shots that he’s taken in his career are actually put into place in the game.

David Lowe: 14:47

Yeah, so yeah, Steph Curry, he practices over and over for that opportunity, so I don’t have the ability to be a pro athlete.

Brandon Long: 14:56

Yeah.

David Lowe: 14:57

In fact I don’t really have a hole to make a great income. I wasn’t really gifted I’m not a doctor level intellect, whatever but I do know this In sales if you commit to becoming better, there is the resources out there, and if you’re a dealership playbook subscriber, you definitely have the resources. You want to be careful what coach you hire. Having a coach is one thing, Having a bad coach is something else. So a lot of these guys you probably watched for six months before were the negative reinforced trainers. Right, it’s kind of pressure. It’s like 160-pound 10-year-olds.

Brandon Long: 15:39

Kill them, get all their money.

David Lowe: 15:40

And you can sell cars that just feel bad and eventually that’s ending. We’d rather be a skilled surgeon, absolutely right, yeah, so, um. So your first advice would be ask a lot of questions and do the training. Now here’s a big one for you. What if they lack the why or the motivation? What if they just took a job? What would you say?

Brandon Long: 16:04

um, that’s a tough one, isn’t it? You might be in the wrong business. Your vocation in this place? Something else exactly, yeah, or you can answer the phones, you can just be a receptionist I love that answer.

David Lowe: 16:15

So, yeah, can I tell you something? I think that a lot of people have never developed that inner flame, yeah, so I think so many people that are living below the potential right now, right, they’re not doing the training like you did, they’re not asking the questions. It’s not because they don’t really know they should do it, but there’s not a driving force moving them forward. Right, and it’s hard to explain more of that driving force comes from Everything, comes from vision. Where there’s no vision to people. Paris Solomon said your vision, vision, the why is your family, right, your child? Um, you’re what you would define success at right. So the person out there, who’s who’s struggling to get motivated? They got to make a decision, don’t they? Yeah, are they in or Exactly? And you’re saying if you’re out, get out. Yeah, go somewhere where somebody will tell you what to do every minute.

Brandon Long: 17:10

Yeah, because somebody like me. We’re a manager that’s done it for a long time. Think of how many hours they’ve invested in the people that just end up leaving, so you don’t want to invest your time in somebody that doesn’t actually want to be there. Doesn’t actually want to be there. If you want a 9-to-5, go to Geico.

David Lowe: 17:26

So this is not a job to come for a paycheck, no absolutely not man.

Brandon Long: 17:32

And this has unlimited possibilities for the people that take responsibility. The best thing is anybody can do it. Anybody can do it and they can be really good at it if they want to. Yeah.

David Lowe: 17:40

I couldn’t agree more with that. I know some people are selling high in the sky type aspirin hey, sign up for this train. You’ll make a half a million dollars. A lot of people want to lie to you about stuff, right, but what we’re talking about is real income, income you will have which is more than most airline pilots make, more than a lot of lawyers make. It’s a professional job with professional opportunities, and when it comes to professional responsibility, that responsibility is to constantly train and improve yourself, isn’t it? Sharpen your blade, Sharpen the blade and do it every day. So that’s cool. So, if you’re out there and you’re struggling, take this. I think that you’re right. I think that anybody that, um, you’re right. I think that anybody that says I want this yep can do this. Isn’t that kind of crazy? Absolutely, that’s what I really kind of fell in love with no other careers like that.

Brandon Long: 18:36

I don’t know one.

David Lowe: 18:37

You know, I went to school to be an accountant, I mean, and so I didn’t have sales attributes, but I, wow, I could look at this. This is obtainable, but it’s not free, it’s not automatic, and I think so many people want to show up and have success. Come up Now. Truett. Cathy again started Chick-fil-A. Before his death he went around and did not motivational speaking, but educational speaking to young people that didn’t have guidance. Yeah, and his main message is what you just said. Everybody says they want to be a success, but are you willing to do what it takes to get there? I think it was Bobby Knight who said the will to succeed is important, but what’s more important is the will to prepare, and I think that’s what so many people aren’t doing and that’s what set you apart.

Brandon Long: 19:33

Everybody wants those results, but they don’t want to put the work in to get them right.

David Lowe: 19:35

That’s right, or they get some and stop In the car business. You sell cars, just answer the phone. Be the person who answers the phone for the person calling with the right car at the right price, exactly, so that could fool you into thinking that skills and process don’t matter. Yeah, because you can sell some cars with absolutely no. Be a nice person and we’ll call it. Yeah, exactly. But what we’re talking about here is living with joy, peace and satisfaction. That can only come from a healthy pride, absolutely. That can only come from the pursuit of your best self, and the rewards come right with it. No doubt you can’t improve yourself without improving your results. No doubt Very cool. Is there anything you want to add before we cut off?

Brandon Long: 20:17

No man. It’s a great career. Dave Lowe’s process is patented, it’s foolproof, it works. There’s no gimmicks, there’s no games, there’s no. You know, I mean money’s very important, right. I mean money runs the world, but it’s not a course on how to go from $200,000 to $400,000 or $300,000 to $500,000. It’s just how to live with excellence, how to get better every day and how to do it.

David Lowe: 20:38

The right way as well. That’s awesome. Thank you for that endorse. We appreciate it. Listen, if you’re not part of the Dealership Playbook, hit us up and ask us how you can become part of it. Or go see us on Automotive Sales Coach’s Facebook and hit us up there. If you’re a Dealership Playbook subscriber and you’re not engaged with training, hopefully Brian’s story can encourage you and inspire you to get engaged today. The level of your engagement you said the level of your success and we see it right here, all right. Well, thank you so much for being with us. If you like this podcast, please like it right and share it with your friends. We’d appreciate that and we look forward to seeing you next time. Good selling.