Houston Independent Automobile Dealers Association August Issue: Increasing Sales | Page 14

Ask Joe: “How much money can I realistically expect to make selling cars?”

That’s a great question. The short answer – the sky’s the limit on your realistic potential. At least that’s true for someone who is willing to take their career to the max.

The problem is that the words realistic and potential, depend on the person. How high your sky is depends on you, who you choose to hang around, and where you choose to work.

Education

Assuming you work in a dealership that encourages, allows, and helps you reach your full potential, one of the biggest issues that hold people back is your education in sales.

Yes, you can learn a lot through experience, good and bad. The problem with bad is that it’s worse than the flu because 80% are afflicted with more bad skills, habits, and attitudes from their experience than they are good ones.

You’ve heard the old sayings...

Keep your axe sharp.

When you’re green you’re growing, when you’re ripe, you’re rotten.

When you learn more, you earn more.

You will never reach your full potential by simply bumping into enough good skills, work habits, or by just developing enough good habits on your own. Why?

Because you don’t even know

what you don’t know about selling.

You will never accidentally bump into all of the ‘ah ha’ moments, skills, processes and other information without getting some sales training.

I guarantee you that without continuous training, at some point, much sooner than later, you will flat-line and stop growing. When you stop learning, you will stop growing.

Goals

To reach your realistic potential, you have to have goals.