Why You Should Never Say NO to a Guest

Why You Should Never Say NO to a Guest

Never say NO to a Guest!

“To my customer: I may not have the answer, but I’ll find it. I may not have the time, but I’ll make it. I may not be the biggest, but I’ll be the most committed to your success.” – Unknown

Last weekend I took my granddaughter out for ice cream to a new gourmet ice cream parlor that recently opened in our neighborhood. My granddaughter Kailee does not like chocolate ice cream. So when I ordered, I asked the young lady taking the order if she would be able to arrange a ½ and ½ in an ice cream cup. A half cup with cherry and half cup of bubble gum ice cream.

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“No, we don’t do ½ and ½’s” she told us. She may just as well have said, “We don’t want your business, it’s just too fussy!”

Needless to say we left and went to find the familiar established ice cream parlor we had visited many times in the past. We knew they would be more than happy to accommodate us and take our “fussy” order.

This is an obvious situation whereby I could have been helped but wasn’t. There are times however, when a guest comes into your dealership looking for a particular vehicle with a particular budget, wanting the transaction to only benefit them and we are not familiar with how to solve their particular PAIN, so our first inclination is to say “NO, we just don’t do business that way at Nalley”. So what’s next then? What do you do as a sales consultant when you cannot immediately satisfy the guest’s needs? Well let’s see… is it because your dealership does not have the vehicle in question on the lot and there is not a vehicle in route, or we don’t stock a particular item, or the guest needs some creative financing that you have never seen since you have been there?

Lets face it, no guest ever likes to hear the word “No”! This is a word that they believe is their exclusive domain. Despite this, many ‘average’ retail dealership sales consultants simply say, “NO” to the guest. “NO, I‘m sorry but we don’t do anything like that here at Nalley.” Saying NO to a guest means that the money invested to bring that individual guest in to your Nalley dealership has just gone to WASTE!

According to the late Sam Walton founder of Wal-Mart “there is only one boss – the customer – and he/she can fire everybody in the company, from the chairman on down, simply by spending his/her money somewhere else.”

Would you say NO to your Sales Manager or GM? The chances are great that you wouldn’t (assuming that the request was not totally unreasonable). When you say “NO” to the guest you become part of their problem and not their solution.

Did you know that the Norwegian word for sale is derived from the word selje, which means to serve? It is part of the sales consultant’s role to find a way to say YES!

Make a decision that you will never say “NO” to a guest no matter what. Decide that you will always attempt to show them alternative automotive products or help them find an alternative solution, which they may not have even known existed. When you follow this approach it saves both you and the guest time, effort and in some cases money.

Never saying “NO” also means you enhance your ability to manage the guest’s expectations and requirements, while at the same time keeping them as happy satisfied customers. When you say “NO” you risk the guest finding the automotive product in another dealership and thereby losing out on a sale. Remember the maxim: “If we don’t take care of the customer… somebody else will!” We didn’t win “The Consumer Choice Awards” as the best in Atlanta for saying “NO”

Make It A Champion Day!

“SALES TRAINING MATTERS”