Every time I ask a group, whether it be dealers or salespeople, what the goal of a sales call is they tell me it’s to “set an appointment.” No, it’s not! Let me explain with two scenarios.

Scenario A: You take a sales call.  Everything goes great: You get their name, you get their number and, yes, the caller sets an appointment. You hear barking in the background, and you start talking to the caller about their dog. Now you’ve got some Golden Doodle-rapport. Unfortunately, that appointment does not show up.

Scenario B: Someone calls, and you get their name and number. That’s no problem—you again use the highly effective technique that I call “asking them for it” that works just about every time. This customer will not set up an appointment no matter how hard you try. They just won’t commit. But, later on, that evening, they come in and buy.

Which would you rather have? (And that’s not a trick question.) Clearly Scenario B, right? But they didn’t have an appointment! So what? The goal of a sales call is not to set an appointment but to have someone actually show up at your dealership!

Show-ups count, not appointments

There’s a big difference between setting up appointments and having people arrive. I’ve had plenty of salespeople come up to me excited at a dealership and tell me that they just used one of my word tracks on a customer on the phone, and it worked great. My question is always, “did the caller show up yet?” If not, nothing has worked “great” yet. Not until they show!

Now, I’m not telling you not to set up appointments, so relax. Of course, you want to set up appointments. But let’s face it, nobody comes into your dealership because you got their name and phone number: “Hey honey, that salesperson at Friendly Kia just got our phone number! Let’s get down there!”

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NCM Associates