After your test drive, if you are on the right vehicle for your customer, it is now an excellent time to ask for their business. If at this point your customer likes you, the dealership and the vehicle you will probably get a yes, however, there may be some problem or problems you have to solve before they say yes to doing business with you today.

Developed initially by Socrates, getting a yes to some basic questions before asking for the order might be helpful to you. On the way back from the test drive, within maybe 1,000 feet or so of the dealership, you could get the "Yes" momentum going with questions like "did you like the way it drove? Does it have the options you wanted? Is the right color?" etc. things that you know will get the answer yes to, this is also an excellent way to make sure that you are just not assuming you are on the right vehicle for your customer.

When your customer pulls into the dealership, tell them where to park right up front of the dealership "in the sold lane." A study was done that proved, not knowing where to park at a dealership is one of the leading causes of anxiety for customers when going to a dealership. When they stop ask them if they have any questions. After that ask them to buy the vehicle, there are many different ways to form these questions but you could say something like "If I can get you the right kind of deal on this car(truck or SUV) today would this be the car you would buy?" or "If I could make you a deal that could make you feel so warm and fuzzy you just can't say no, could I earn your business today?" another option might also be merely asking "have we selected the right car for you and your family?"

Some will say yes, and if they do, I have seen many salespeople get overly excited that their customer just agreed to do business and therefore losing credibility as a professional as well as a sale. It is best to be calm and make sure not to act like it is not something you had never heard before. Calmly say, "Great, follow me. "and walk them inside.

Most people will probably have some problem you will have to fix before they agree to do business with you, it is perfectly ok to express a real feeling of disappointment but never get irritated or shut off by hearing no. If you did everything right and all is well you can ask for more information like it was unexpected to listen to a no and reaffirm the specific yes's you just got and other things they agreed with you they liked during your walkaround and the other hot buttons they mentioned earlier, you can do this by saying(in a friendly not confrontational way) "well you did say you liked ____, ___, and ___ right?" and when they say yes, you could reply with "Well, just to clarify my thinking, how come?"

If they give you an objection, that is great, and now you have a problem to fix. It is an excellent practice to take that objection and verify that it is the only objection you must overcome before your customer agrees to do business with you today. Also, something to keep in mind is that generally speaking, some people will say no, simply just to say no. After you get your first objection affirm that it is the only thing stopping them for doing business by asking something like "Other than____ is there anything else stopping you from buying the vehicle today?" and continue that process repeating precisely the thing they say is the problem until there are no more such as "Other than ____, _____ & ______ is there anything else?" and once you have gathered all of the objections into one phrase you could say "great, so if I can fix____ and ____ and get you an incredible deal that fits right into your budget, then I could earn your business right?"

After you have all of them together, and you get some agreement, you are now well prepared to solve their problem or overcome the objections if needed but usually after you go over all that and get a yes to buy you can just say "perfect follow me" and walk them inside, ask them if they wanted anything to drink and start your credit app, trade appraisal and writeup and if they bring up those things again you could reassure them that you just want to get it all taken care of at once especially if it is reasonable to fix things such as a need to make a dealer trade because of color, the vehicle price or a need to repair a dent and just write it down on your foursquare or whatever writeup form your company uses. We will go over the writeup process in the next blog post.

Sometimes your customer will tell you no and not give you any reason why, such as "I just have to think about it." If that is the case, I have been told that it is usually one of three M's that stops your customers from doing business and those are the Man, the Money and the Metal (the vehicle). If this is happening to you, you need to get some objection to overcome in order to move forward, giving your customer an objection to tell you is one way to accomplish this, you could do this by telling them something like "I understand, it is a big decision, it is a lot of money, which part do you feel you need to think about?" and it if their problem to buy is the money, at this point they will probably tell you that and then you can repeat the process that has been detailed above. Also, it might not hurt to ask if you did anything to stop them from doing business if you keep getting a no.

After all of this if you still are getting a no or a maybe or possibly that they have to speak to their significant other before doing business, assuming your dealership allows proposals, you could just tell your customer something like "No problem but before you go allow me to provide you with a proposal, something you can take home to think about, your best price, payment and figures on your current vehicle. That way, you have something to talk about that is greater than how it drove and who knows maybe we can work something up so great you just can't help but to buy it."

If you cannot get to the next step turn.

As with all of our car sales training blog posts, please email or place a comment below if you have any thoughts about changes or additions that you think should be made to this post because the goal is to provide the most value to the readers.