Tag: Business Tips

The customer that cannot be pleased.

Posted on | by Tom Hampton Agency

By Tom Hampton

Every business owner has had customers that have issues that sometimes make doing business much more complicated. There is, however, a particular type of customer that cannot and will not be reasoned with or compromise their demands. For those of you experienced enough to have been around the mountain a few times during your career, have found these types of challenging clients get resolved by two general types of outcomes:

1. (Most Frequent Outcome) An unpleasant type of compromise is negotiated between both parties for a final resolution.

2. (Not So Frequent Outcome) The situation becomes unpleasantly distasteful and detrimental to both parties, with no resolutions whatsoever, and the loss of a customer (sometimes several by word of mouth, negative reviews & ratings, etc).

 

Losing an especially upset customer can be infuriating and frustrating (to say the least). Our pride has taken a hit, and our insecurities are rattled. So, what do you do when no resolutions can be met by either party?

 

First, if you have not already done so, examine the instance very closely and ask yourself, Did I do my best in the situation? What lessons can I take away from the situation to make me and my business better. 

 

Personally, when I lose a customer in events such as this, even after 40 years in the business, part of me still mourns. The only way I know how to describe it; It is humbling. I not only feel as though I have let my customer down, but I also feel I have let my team down to lose a customer without resolution. We all strive to serve our customers to the best of our abilities.

 

Secondly, remind yourself and your team that in any business, you can have the BEST customer service on the planet, yet the situation will still inevitability occur at some point.  As the owner, I am usually the one having that final conversation with the customer after my team has exhausted all other avenues. Unfortunately, in a lot of dealerships, the collections agent/manager is the one having these front-line battles. It is imperative you trust the people handling the confrontation before it escalates to you. These team members are much in need of your support, guidance, and sometimes, nurturing. Their frustration levels can bleed over into other interactions with detrimental results (they often do not even realize is happening) when becoming overwhelmed and feeling unsupported.

 

A weekly 20-minute one-on-one meeting with these team members just may help them vent, learn, and grow while meeting these challenges and company expectations. When things get heated, or an appropriate time presents itself, a great start is to have them unplug; Get up, walk around, take a breath, or maybe even a lunch break. The important part is they have a few minutes to clear their head and step away from the confrontation. I also suggest having them provide you with an emotion-free (practice makes perfect), brief, and factual statement about the incident.

 

Finally, before you find yourself neck-deep in a domino effect of fires to put out, provide your team with the training (such as courses, experienced management provided, or practice sessions), support, and guidance to be as successful as possible through these types of situations. Every day, as the owner, it would be best for you to be informed of any customer confrontations; What happened, what was attempted to resolve the situation, what the customer was demanding, and whether those demands can be met or not. These statements can become invaluable training tools.

 

You will always come across demanding customers. It is the price of admittance into the used car business. How we prepare ourselves and our team for these storms is what makes our businesses flourish!

 

As always, Car Guys Agency is here for all your Buy Here Pay Here needs! Contact us anytime to assist with solutions for your business! We have partners we have searched high and low for to provide our dealers with the very best available!

 

Create-A-Great-Day!

Tom Hampton 

Olympian or Spectator?

Posted on | by Tom Hampton Agency

Truth time my friends. This may be one of the most challenging pieces I have ever written. In November of 2019, my health took a turn, and painfully begin to control my every effort for these last 22 months.   

 

Short personal history: At 8 years old I was told I would never walk; With great perseverance and determination, the brace, wheelchair, and crutches were gone by 10 years old! I took 6 years of speech therapy as a child because I stuttered severely; I have since then, spoken freely and effortlessly. I have lived with chronic nerve pain ALL my life and put on mass doses of pain killers as a young adult; I have not taken a prescribed pain pill with any kind of regularity for over 30 years. For the past 14 years, 70 + hour work weeks were the norm and I traveled at a minimum of one week a month. For 7 of those years, I successfully managed my family’s business in conjunction with my own, after my dad passed.  

 

I tell you these pieces of my personal history to show you, my friends, that you are not alone. We are all overcoming personal and business hurdles of all varieties. Please, take care of your health. Drink plenty of water. Stay positive. And embrace challenges head-on with strength and determination! Through it all, with much support from my amazing team, I have been able to keep pursuing my goals to grow my business helping to support dealers in their own growth.  

 

Things are changing, both here at Car Guys Agency and with me personally. Most of you are used to having me pop by your lot, check up on you, and dish out some awesome advice while I am there! (Toot, Toot!! 😉)  

 

Those days my friends can sadly be no more. As much as I dislike it, my decreasing mobility has become the reality of my days. So, in the future, I will be reaching out to you via telephone, email, and text. By the way, as always, my team and I are here in any way we can help support our fellow dealers.  

 

I know how hard you are pushing yourselves, especially in this unstable market, just to keep afloat. We are not out of the woods yet. Markets are predicting there are another 6 to 8 more months of retail-priced units rolling across the auction blocks nationwide. It is unnerving to have a 60-car lot with only 14 units on it. I am also betting we will soon see Floor Plan companies start dropping dealers and smaller dealerships with limited financial resources who just cannot buy. Sooner, rather than later, the public will start pushing back at the higher retail prices and sales may just keep tanking.  

 

The nationwide market is constantly readjusting itself. The dealerships that survive and thrive over the next wave of challenges, yet again- must reinvent themselves and how they do business.  A growing dealership will be operating with new resource partners, rely even more on their communities, and embrace & adapt to changing paradigms.   

 

The large dealerships have 20+ groups of high-paid professionals that use their collective knowledge to market the company. So, with my own advice in mind, we too are adapting and redesigning how we grow as a company. To our loyal readers and longtime customers, we want to personally extend a VIP Invitation to be a part of our newest upcoming project! In June/July of 2021, Tom Hampton Agency will be forming a new group focused on bringing together like-minded dealers motivated to be a part of creating Strategic Growth Plans for the benefit of all.  If you are interested in joining and growing with us, email us here! 

 

Change is uncomfortable and often painful. I remind you; Olympians never won a medal because it was easy. They got it because they pushed, shaped, and molded their potential until the dream met reality. You have got to MOVE and DO to accomplish your goals. Repetition WILL create change in you, your salespeople, and your entire organization.   

 

To best survive this next incoming wave of industry evolution, we must grow; Grow new resources, new alliances, and more courage to jump in and start now. Waiting to see how things may go, could leave you left behind to play catch up. With great new products added to their lineup, Tom Hampton Agency is a great place to start finding those new and inventive (additional income bringing) resources! 

 

Here is to YOUR bright and successful future! Let us face this evolving world together to do and create what others say is impossible!   

  

Create-A-Great-Day,   

Tom Hampton 
832-723-3976  
[email protected]  

A KEY TO PROSPERING DURING COVID-19

Posted on | by Tom Hampton Agency

Weeks of continuous communication across the nation and across the industry has allowed me to put a few tick-marks under some points on my TALLY sheet! 

These conversations are all the same: 

  • HOW are you (the owner) Re-Inventing in all areas (personal/business)?  
  • WHO are you collaborating with (friend & foe)? 
  • WHICH areas would you recommend an immediate change in? 
  • WHAT communities are you a RESOURCE for and which communities are a resource for YOU? 
  • WHERE would you concentrate MORE effort into and why? 

The conversations have lasted from 10 minutes up to 4 hours! The answers have been insightful, inventive, original and most of all … full of HOPE! 

The point on my tally sheet that got the most tick-marks? 

A REFERRAL PROGRAM!    

Using Texts, Calls, Emails, and/or Video Chats. All have been fruitful. Integrating your referral program into your Social Media is PARAMOUNT to prospering. 

That being said, 

HOW is your referral program? Old School Simple to the rescue! It is very simple, very effective, and no complications necessary! It also provides a very powerful income stream to your previous customer (scared & financially insecure)! 

A Simple Referral Program example: 

You (previous customer) notify me (the owner) that someone (referred friend/family) is coming to do business with me. I (the owner) roll out the covid-19 sanitized Red Carpet for the client (referred friend/family). When the referred potential customer (referred friend/family) does business with me then You (the previous customer) that referred the new customer will receive a pre-determined MONITARY amount!  

Example:  

I sell used cars, you bought one from me 2 years ago. You got my Rewards Program email and are in need of extra bucks during this crisis. So, you tell every Tom, Dick & Henrietta to see me if they need a car! 

Bingo! Now I (the dealer/business owner) have an ARMY of salespeople giving the BEST kind of recommendation on the planet – Free positive advertising via word of mouth! 

****Note: Be sure the reward paid out is fair and intriguing enough.  

In the previous example that dealer would have started his referral fee at about $250 and climbed up to a preset limit. Think about it; Previous customer sends a buddy that buys a $25,000 truck – caution if paying out a $100, that customer will never send YOU (Mr. Dealer or Mr. Business owner) another referral.  

On the other hand, if you own a carpet cleaning business and you do the whole JOB for $250, then that referral may look like a nice Thank You card and a $20 gift card (about 10% of the job). 

It is all relative, however, the KEY is the referral program. There you have a little nugget, that if worked properly, may well be you/your companies’ lifeline for a while. At the very least, it will be fun adventure! 

Remember. If you don’t CREATE your future, then your future WILL create you! 

Create-A-Great-Day, 

Tom 

STARS & SWIPES!

Posted on | by Tom Hampton Agency | 2 Comments on STARS & SWIPES!

NEWS FLASH – THE WORLD IS NO LONGER FLAT!

Most of you, if not all of you know this fact! or do you?

First, let us relive a bit of the past – Math Class. We learned how to graph on “Y” and “X” axis, given a set of “points” we could use these axes to pinpoint the location – on a FLAT piece of paper!

Those of us with a propensity for math also understood the “Z” axis – 3D.
With all the “points” we could pinpoint the EXACT location in space – not just a flat piece of paper.

Well, my friends welcome to the wild frontier of the Internet. Unfortunately, most of you still are based and run your business on a FLAT model that is over 100 years old! The car business is the most dynamically changing industry on the planet, and yet many do business like it’s 1985! You still cling to the past ways of doing business because they work. Do they really?
Most of you I talk to are moaning about the poor selection and high price of inventory, not to mention the lack of “buying” customers. I have said this to almost ALL of you at one point or another – INSANITY (and poor business management) is defined very simply:


DOING THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER
EXPECTING DIFFERENT RESULTS!

We no longer live in a FLAT world! Our success is determined by stars (literally) and swipes. Our stars determine our position on that crucial “Z” axis – are we ABOVE or BELOW standard? Swipes determine if we’re going to pay our bills that month or not. What REASONS do your “potential” have from buying from you – if you say PRICE, then you have already lost!
Let’s look at it from this perspective – would you rather be a port or a ship? A ship can bring prosperity to new and gloriously new markets. A port, on the other hand, IS prosperity attracting numerous “ships” laden with treasures for her inhabitants and their future. Most of you out there are “ships” looking for ports to “unload” your merchandise.

Those of you out there that are “ports” have labored hard with your inhabitants to make it “the destination” of prosperity.
In simple terms, PORTS build relationships with their ships and merchants!
Far too often in this business it’s “sell it and move on” to the next customer (that would be the price model) with never enough time to build any sort of “relationship”. Hell; only a handful of you even understand the POWER of a simple yet sincere, handwritten Thank You note mailed out!
“Port Dealers” find ways to constantly keep in touch with not only potential customer, however, they also go “above-and-beyond” to keep past customers in their community “loop”.

Newsletters, videos, emails and most importantly a “stunning” web presence. They have become a vital part of their “ELECTRONIC COMMUNITY” They build VALUE into themselves, their product and their web presence.

OK, so that is the long-and-short of my message here people. I think I’ve broken my own record for metaphors and analogies in one paper. Over 50+ years of communicating with folks I have learned a way-or-two to “pitch” an Idea and I am sincere; that’s one of the reasons people see value in me when we do business together. What do people see in you and your business?
Where are your STARS and how many SWIPES sent you and your website to electronic oblivion? Time to up your game folks – if not now, then when. There are numerous tools and services out there at your disposal – some of it even free! You have to make it a PRIORITY in your day and your business.
If you spent ½ as much time in a month growing your business electronically as you do hunting down inventory and going to auctions, well my friend you would definitely be on the BETTER path to success (lasting and financial).
So there you have it April’s nugget of wisdom to ponder upon ( & hopefully act upon).