by Michael Hargrove Tweet
Unit and Gross Profit Production.
In order to find what our current average is, we need to go back for the last three months (or start to track for the next three months). We need to list our:
- number of units per month
- gross average per unit
- total gross per month
Then we can put together realistic goals of improvement.
Although we all have different levels of talent or ability, a 10% improvement per quarter is substantial. Just ask your manager how the owner would feel about a 10% net improvement in the sales dept. and you’ll see what I mean!
We set ourselves up for failure if our current average is 12 units per month and we set a goal to sell 22 units next month. That’s defeating the whole purpose of goal setting! In order to get to 22 units per month, we must first get to 13, and then 14, and then 15 and so on.
The road to success is paved with lots of little victories. Also, just because we’re currently selling 12 units a month doesn’t mean that we’re only a 12 unit per month salesrep. It only means that we currently have the knowledge, tools, abilities and work habits to produce 12 units per month. If we can expand our knowledge, acquire more tools, enhance our abilities and develop new work habits, then we can improve our performance.
So how do we track our knowledge, tools, abilities and work habits?
First, we need to track the number of customers we work with. Separate the face to face contacts from the phone contacts but do track both. Then we need to track the number of demos, write ups, commitments, and closes we perform and their corresponding ratio to total face to face contacts.
A good target to shoot for would be 90% demo, 70% write-up, 50% today commitment, and 30% close. Actually, anywhere within 10% of those numbers (high or low) would be a very good job compared to the national averages. Now, if we ever find ourself off track with our monthly or weekly unit and gross projections, we can identify the specific activities we need to work on to get back on pace.
Look, everyone is different and everyone else’s performance is irrelevant. The only relevant numbers are our own and we must always strive to better ourselves, not necessarily everyone else. As we continue to track our activities, we can set realistic goals for improvement in these areas also. If we want to sell one more car this month than last, we can then break it down to the daily activities necessary to achieve that goal.
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