steve stauning

Terry Lancaster 0:02
Great to everybody Welcome to the How to Sell More podcast how to sell more cars podcast. I got a special guest today is my buddy Steve stalling Sistani is the he's the author of ridiculously simple car selling. He's got a whole series of books that he's that he's that he's written about ridiculous selling and sales management and how to reduce ridiculous customer experience we're going to be staged talking about those in a little bit. My all time favorite is shit sandwich Steve is my all time favorite, favorite podcast guests because when I had him on my original get you some radio show several years ago he sent me a couple of dozen of these and I've been I've been sending them out since the 70s about ever since they were talking about his new book ridiculously simple car selling is how to quickly become the laziest most successful automotive salesperson in the world. Verbally there in the world, but lazy and successful. We're going to start right there, Steve, what does that even mean? And how's it going to happen?

Steve Stauning 1:08
Yeah, you know, I enjoy a little bit of humor every now and then it will hyperbole as well. But the key is is that people think when they when they see a 30 car seller you know if I'm an eight car guy or a nine car gal, and I see a 30 car scelera It I rationalize in my head well I want to work that hard right? I don't want to work those many hours. The fact is, is that you can sell 30 a month without spending one extra minute at the dealership. You don't have to work 14 hours a day six days a week to sell 30 cars a month. The key is how you spend that time at the dealership and we didn't really hit on this concept of books so much but it comes down to one very simple concept that can change your life for everything and that is delayed gratification versus Instagram application. So the 30 car sellers believe in delayed gratification, meaning they do some things now that are going to pay dividends down the road and long term, they're happier and then there's the Instagram patient of checking your Facebook all day long and hanging out in the vaping circle right those things feel good for the moment. But then at the end of the month when you look up at the board and you got Senator right out you know and you look at your paycheck in one How you going to make brands, that instant gratification cost you and then you ultimately feel worse. And so that's sort of the concept of how you can be both the laziest and most successful is that we're not spending any time we're just using our time wisely. And that's really what the books about. It's a great it's a great concept

Terry Lancaster 2:44
the best the easiest way I've heard it said is to work while you're working. We put all that time we're using if we make it productive, I guarantee you can get more done one of my favorite stories in the book you talked about the instant gratification of banging away on Instagram or hitting standing around the circle, but you actually tell them to book by guys losing deals, losing deals because they got over the hump of work maybe a second julong and they needed that next cigarette and they're not paying attention to their personal health and that's getting in the way of them being the best.

Steve Stauning 3:17
Yeah, indeed. And all of this, all of it comes down to these little choices that you make. You know, I'm talking about in the book, you're not flipping burgers, right? If you were flipping burgers at Wendy's, you're gonna make the same amount of money for your shift whether you flip 1000 Burgers 100 Right, it doesn't matter. But But if that's what you want to do, if you just want to put in the hours look forward to Wednesday, so we're coming down there at 16 bucks an hour in our market. But if I'm going to be at the dealership for eight or 10 hours, why don't I do eight or 10 hours worth of work, right? The day goes by quicker I make more money, I'm happier. My personal life gets better. I buy more cool things right? I have a better future

Terry Lancaster 3:57
is that hourly wage mentality. It says I'm going to be here and not being able to get past that this is my job. And I'm not making an investment in predicting but we've all seen salespeople just lose it over a sales customer that they thought was wasting their time someone they prejudge and they're not going to put in the time because it's not going to give them that instant

Steve Stauning 4:21
kick. And it got worse through the pandemic and people haven't gotten out of order taker mode yet. The market the car market was driven by availability for years. Today it's driven by control the salesperson that can grab and maintain control of their prospect whether that's starting over the phone or starting as a fresh up on the lot is gonna find out some more cars, but we've all these folks out there, you don't want to waste their time with a tire kicker. And so the easiest way to make sure you don't have a tire kicker is I'll vomit all the information on them and if they walk great, I didn't waste my time with them. And so you know anybody who's sold cars for more than a month has sold someone who started the maybe the first words out of their mouth for I gotta be under 300 A month or on that line. If you follow a road to the sale and saying control that person leaves two hours later at 500 a month extremely happy. And what happened was is that we stuck to our processes in that respect, right? We didn't tell them oh 300 a month. Let me take your word and Barney nation right. We're gonna take a look at those vehicles. So you can't afford anything over here. And too many people forgot about that then it will you know 2019 We'll order take your short. We had a lot of automotive sales professionals who understood that it takes a process to sell cars. And then inventory shortages started and it became about availability. I had the car and sell it right and I didn't even waste my time with people because the next guy that I took up, he was going to use our mind anyway. Now the breaking out of it's a tough part. That's why we actually we sped this book up short of it's a second book we released in 2023 in ridiculously simple series. Our next book was going to be ridiculously simple leadership. And this one was going to come out late next year and we thought no, you know what, it's important that we get this out now because everywhere I turn, dealers are asking me how do I break my salespeople out of order taker mode.

Terry Lancaster 6:22
I liked the point of view that you talked about maintaining control. And you kind of pointed out in the book suddenly that a lot of this a lot of the word Baba did you talked about and this self judging of people pre judging people, we prejudge people, a lot of that is so that we can kind of fudge the numbers so that we can make ourselves look better and take control and not not not not take not put quite as much energy into it and look like we're really not look like five car Friday when we actually are. Yeah,

Steve Stauning 6:57
we did some math. In the book we showed how you know the same number of UPS, how some people can sell eight and how somebody else can sell 24 And it all has to do with just one belief that one everybody's a qualified buyer wants to buy today right when you have that believe which was the cornerstone of assumptive selling book No one needs to buy it's too long right and in too expensive. But I wrote it just so you know, not downplay somebody else's book. But this first this concept that everyone's qualified buyer wants to buy today. And then too if I you know if I believe the first thing I'm going to see and control through my process. And by doing that I get more people in the CRM, fresh shops and I get more people in the CRM who are phone ups and so and I work my internet leads a little bit differently right with this belief that I have a buyer of course ready has just the opposite belief right and that is everybody's thinking tire kicker until they prove me different, right until they prove you're wrong. And and that's a you know that that's that attitude part and we talked about the attitude, Chapter attitude activity

Terry Lancaster 8:04
that I got and how you go about it. What's going on Jerry, how are you? I'm good brother. Hey, Steve, you ruined you ruined my set out there because I was going to talk to you about the seller or your favorite. You're my favorite podcast. Guest ever because you sent me so many of these books. But you didn't send me that nine $50 or something selling book.

Steve Stauning 8:30
I wasn't sure I'll send your house. You know what, I'll make a note. I'll send you some copies. You know, author copies on Amazon are dirt cheap. So I have no problem saying these

Terry Lancaster 8:39
copies of that. No, because I was gonna say when I was reading the book, he didn't say me. And then you're in the book telling me it's the only book I've ever read. We're the author is telling people please don't go buy my book. It's ridiculous. Do not buy that book. So my next question is Why pay 16 bucks for the new book on assumptive selling costs three times as much?

Steve Stauning 9:00
Yeah, well, you know the problem is software selling is it has the lessons in it are ridiculously simple, because I'm a simple guy. I don't I don't know how to make things complicated. I wish I did I make more money. But the problem is it's just too darn long. You know, it's over 400 pages. And I'll tell you every time I was 20 years ago, I was handing out copies to the dealers in the 20 group when I first released it. The first thing out of anybody's mouth is do have an audio version, because nobody wants to read a 400 page book. And so this one's about 137 pages, aren't we pages and it really is kind of the cliff notes version of assumptive selling. And the other part the other reason salespeople don't want to buy a Sunday selling is there are parts in there for managers that are parts in there for BDCs that are BDC specific. ridiculously simple car selling is one 100% of the Automotive Sales Professional. It's not written for b2c. It's not written for managers. It's just written for people who want to sell more cars without spending one more minute dealership

Terry Lancaster 10:00
yeah there's one line that's maybe one more bid at the dealership no reason the word unveiled about no reason to worry about making a living, you know leaves up time to live a life so that's what that's my left. We want me to jump in the book. The book is great 140 pages like you said 20 chapters ridiculously simple where you keep listening short chapters, but they're there you gotta know you know, chapter is about overcoming objections chapters about social media. You didn't have a chapter and I wondered if it was on purpose. There's no chapter about closing the sale.

Steve Stauning 10:32
Yeah. A couple of reasons. One, the the process for closing is so different in every store, right? There are still stores where the close I've got stores that are that do box clothes today still today very successful. And the fact is, is that they don't you know the salespeople have zero to do with closing the deal at that point. And I've stores that are still old fashion and that the manager comes out or they have a floor manager or they have a team lead that does the closing the other pieces that if you follow the road and sell properly, just like we talked about the negotiations chapter or the overcoming objections chapter. You know, you don't have to get involved in negotiations when I say that, you know, here are the ways to avoid being stuck in negotiations, but if you're stuck in here, a couple of neat tips. But if your salespeople are finding they're having overcome lots of objections, and salespeople are finding that they're having to learn 52 Different closing techniques, and if salespeople are feeling like they have to go by Chris Voss, his book never split the difference. So that they learn how to negotiate because they're always going to negotiations. Well, they're doing it right. They they're not, they're not falling assumptive selling everyone's qualified buyer wants to buy today, and they're not taking control and using the road to the sale. They're jumping. They're skipping steps. They're letting customers take them and pull them down the sink and rabbit hole. That's how you get caught up in objections. That's a call for negotiations. And that's how you get all the way through the process. And all of a sudden, I've got to close in the right. And the fact is, is that it's just not as necessary today, which I did leave it out on purpose because I can teach a few closes in there and then anytime I've done closing training classes, I get bombarded with Yeah, but what if you have a What about the guy? What about Yeah, okay, you know, it's, it never ends

Terry Lancaster 12:32
as most things in life the problem and the problem is how you're dealing with. There

Steve Stauning 12:38
you go. Yeah, you just said it. You just said it in four words, and I said it in 8700 words,

Terry Lancaster 12:44
that's why I can't make a living as a writer is everything. You you had some great stories. And I assumed that there was a sort of a softball, I gotta love that to you because I knew you didn't. Supposing it ever. exactly that reason because you spend so much time talking about, about about maintaining the maintaining the relationship and building the relationships. You talked about social selling, but most people when we talk about social selling people, a lot of them their eyes roll back in their head, and they think you're talking about social media and Tiktok and Instagram and Facebook or whatever. But it starts even before that. My favorite story from the book was the bartender who had been selling bars for six months. Tell us about that guy.

Steve Stauning 13:28
Yeah, so I don't want to get away to get even the city or state that he lives in because I don't want to embarrass him. I assume he's still selling today. They were a client pre pandemic and then their their county got shut down for a really long time. So we parted ways. But yeah, he'd been selling cars for six months and it was at a dealership that had a very senior sales staff in a very relatively small town in a big state but a relatively small town. And you know, he's trying to catch fresh shops trying to catch friends up fresh shops, and everybody comes down already knows somebody at the dealership and so he was losing these deals. He was getting split deals with a guy wasn't there and I said well, we're talking about his background. I said, you know, what's your background? He had background in music where the backgrounds bartender and and I said, Oh, that's pretty cool. They said he actually bought you know, I only get a few so I'm still bartending, I said is a popular place. He said oh, you have real popular so the pop your local. She said, Oh yes locals. So he said no. to why he said, Why haven't told him about selling cars. I just thought oh my gosh, I mean, who do we trust, right? I mean some people trust your doctor, but everybody trusts the bartender, don't they? Right? Yeah, exactly. And yeah, I was just it was it was absolutely shocked that they you know, we talked about social networking. How about networking, networking, right. And if we're going to network How about we start with the people that I know, the people who are closest to us. We will run into salespeople who a month into the job haven't haven't told their friends and family. They're selling cars. Lead doing right I mean, everybody wants a friend as a car business, and to let people know that that's what you do and that you're helping and make no mistake. His his dealership was selling they had before rooftop and a cdjr rooftop that he could sell out of but, but he can get any make and model and that's that's what people need to understand. Right? Maybe not, you know, zero mileage Chevy Silverado. But if the guy wanted a Silverado, we can find him by letter auction. We can find one in the dealer trade. There's all sorts of things that can happen and to just assume that, you know, people are going to come to you through osmosis or something. It's just it's, it's so wrong. It's so it's so minimalist that not minimalist. I think that would be good. If not thinking you know what I mean?

Terry Lancaster 16:02
I've had this conversation with salespeople. Why on earth why doesn't every human being in your life know that you sell cars because because the one thing I know that dominant is every human being in your life is going to buy a car somewhere someday, somehow. So it's always confusing and the answers I get are a they're gonna want. I don't want to deal they're gonna let me make anybody or be there more trouble than they're worth. There's overall a month down deep into it, you know, Thanksgiving dinner.

Steve Stauning 16:37
Yeah, well, one. You're always gonna make money with friends and family. I've never paid I've never paid more for a car than when I worked. At the Asbury Automotive Group. And one of our hottest stores had a deal for me. You know, and I just, I let it go. I just let it run. Right. And then two days later, I'm doing the math. Whoa, wait a minute. This is not the right lease. You know, I think they messed with the rates residuals on me but anyway, and then to you know, the I'm going to be here about it. Well, wait a minute. You know, we have the chapter in ridiculously simple car selling called Spock, single point of contact. This is the second step that lots of folks don't understand about selling cars. They want repeat referral business but they will become the single point of contact for their buyers. I want my relatives a Thanksgiving dinner to talk to me about the problems that they're having with their cars because I want to help them with those issues. Because I want them come to me the next time they want a car and anything that they need. I saw you do a post on this actually on LinkedIn about it. Just right right before right after we released the book about just and maybe it was somebody who comment on your posts but but the idea is if I sell a vehicle to somebody, I want them and if they need anything if they need floormats if I if they want to schedule change, I want them to call me. I'm not going to transfer service. I'm gonna say when you go to bring it in, look, I'll go get a schedule and you'd call back in firm right? Because Who's that guy going to call me wants to buy a vehicle you because you've done something for him in between the last sale and the next sale?

Terry Lancaster 18:17
As a salesperson complained to me one time that that he was doing a lot of stuff on the plane but he was just caving in on a little bit that he's really done a lot of stuff on social media and people were calling him but he was getting all these random calls about you know, right, you know, how do I how do I set the transmission levels? Or how do I adjust the lights all of your questions not not from customers, but from you know, general people in Cincinnati or wherever who saw his video and then now they want to ask him questions. So he's having spent a lot of time following up on that. And I said you just you just completed the tropics, but as you have replaced Google in their life, you are more and you're in the conversation you got inside.

Steve Stauning 19:05
Yeah, if they're willing to ask you those questions. They're gonna win. They're gonna ask you questions when Hey, I needed a new truck. What kind of traction I bought, right? What's the difference between you know, I don't live in a lot, an area with a lot of snow. But I'm thinking about getting a four wheel drive. Does it make sense? You know, those kinds of questions. You know, that's part of it though, too. When you're when you open yourself up on social media. This is one of the reasons why why I want people to focus on Facebook first, Facebook is facebook is local, right? I mean that you're the bulk of your reach is going to be local. When you do YouTube, hey, if you're if you want to create a brand for yourself and do YouTube if that's your long term goal and not necessarily sell cars, YouTube all day long tick tock all day long. You get you make more money on YouTube, but the fact is, is that those those the reach of those when you go viral is international. The reach on Facebook when you go viral is your friends and their friends and then maybe their friends. And since most of those people live or work in your market, you can have the greatest impact on the sales side.

Terry Lancaster 20:13
Yeah. I love seeing that in the book, that when you talk about Facebook, because when I say social media, it's just the shorthand for Facebook. Facebook is real and I have to explain that to people. But the thing is that all the others, the ones that you mentioned, you can go viral and have millions of followers and be overseas and they're great about building this maybe image but Facebook and little bit maybe LinkedIn are great about building a connection. They're very about building this, this interpersonal engagement of people that you can communicate with back and forth most most are than on Instagram. It's all one way and maybe you get a heart or

Steve Stauning 20:53
something on it. Yeah, no, you're right and Facebook, again as the as the ability to go viral. locally. LinkedIn to your point. That's a great That is That is terrific for careers, right. So if I'm a salesperson today, I'm going to be on LinkedIn, and I'm going to be active on LinkedIn. I may not sell any cars for any at all on LinkedIn. But as I grow in my career, I become a sales manager. You know, things change, I get laid off, I get fired, whatever. I decided to leave this if I already have this big LinkedIn network and then I put the open to work circle around me. I'll have it I'll have a sales manager job or DSM job, you know, within a week,

Terry Lancaster 21:31
but I haven't moved from one scene to the other because just because of their LinkedIn presence and social media agree. So my favorite thing about the book you were telling people don't buy the book and cost too much. And I always tell people when they buy a book of mine, don't buy this book, expecting it to change your mind this is the book Dude, seriously. These are just words, the only thing is going to make anything happen is you making something happen. And so at the end of every chapter, you're telling people how to make something happen. Here's what you got to do, because, you know, setting those goals is a wish list. Have you talked about building to do lists on each one of your chapters? So we're about to wrap this up. In just a few minutes. I'm gonna give you one last thing before we come back when we're talking about the rest of your books. But one last thing I'm ridiculously simple car selling. Give us the one action step one thing that a salesperson and listening to this tonight can jump into the dealership tomorrow and do to be the laziest most successful automotive salesperson in the world.

Steve Stauning 22:37
Okay, I'm gonna get them to one is already given the one which is everyone's a buyer wants to buy today. Everyone's a buyer wants to buy today. No offense, people don't like visiting car dealerships I don't like home and car dealerships. No offense is their calling us. They're not taking a poll, right. They're not trying to make sure we vote for their person. They want to buy a car. The second thing is moneymakers. And that is create a list of things that you call us do lists that a minute ago, or a list of things if you do them it'll make you more money or disfavor, put it in your pocket and every time you are not in front of it up. Pull out your moneymaker. Listen to one of them. And they find my blog ask the manager.com look at moneymaker list. I will list all over the place on that but the idea is this. I'm a I'm here eight or 10 hours a day and I'm here eight or 10 hours whether I do work or not. Why don't I fill it with moneymakers instead of time wasters? And that that will change everything about them. I mean it's it truly will because they'll be happier the day will go quicker they'll make more money

Terry Lancaster 23:43
is easy peasy lemon squeezy brother. Books you got a ridiculously simple car selling but then you have several other ridiculous books and they're ridiculously expensive books. But these are the these are the ones that tie in with that but they're not all about business or they're no

Steve Stauning 23:59
in fact ridiculously simple customer experience which also came out this year. That is really for any business that has customers. And as you can see, it's the same sort of 130 to 140 pages. Each chapter ends with key learnings and and chapter exercises. But you know, I would recommend that that for car dealers that they buy this for their leadership team, especially for their service team, their service advisors, anybody who answers authority at the dealership and then the first one in the ridiculously simple series is ridiculously simple sales management. And while it's not written for the automotive industry specifically, of course I have lots of automotive examples in there and every chapter in there applies to automotive, but it's really about getting more out of your team and getting rid of this concept, this concept that we have in in sales management, you know auto industry which mean which is you know, more is more and if the CRM don't ask me for two calls to be backs, let's make the CRMs or 10 calls over 10 days because more is better, no more. It's just more it's, you know, less is better sometimes right money, you know, make sure he calls him money, all that kind of thing. So really, it talks about keeping them keeping the team motivated, helping them sell one today all of those pieces that we that we need to be doing in our business.

Terry Lancaster 25:25
You talk about the lazy salespeople always referred to myself as pragmatic. I don't know. We're not for the sake of work anyone here. We're reasonably get up in the late mornings. Yeah, you got a question brother. Yeah, I'm very interested in these books. Are they on Amazon? They are. I don't want to call Steve any money. You go by the other two, but I've got a ridiculously simple car sale and I want to send to you for popping in I always send out the books. That's what it says and I'll send you a copy shipped sandwich too. So you're getting both the Steve's books. I'll drop those in the mail to you. Then you go buy his other two off Amazon and spread those around. A little bit on very interesting. Actual

Steve Stauning 26:11
claimant. Look, I would be remiss if I didn't say please give me a five star Amazon review.

Terry Lancaster 26:18
Of course. I absolutely see the last word is yours. My brother.

Steve Stauning 26:24
Wow, I didn't know I was gonna get a last word. Look, I really appreciate your time, Terry, I really do. And all that you do in the industry and all that you do for for dealers both on what you do as a business and what you do as just a human being and I can't thank you enough for what you do for me. So I appreciate your time today.

Terry Lancaster 26:43
Appreciate you being in my life brother. Terry, Thanks for Thanks, guys, everyone. Thanks for tuning in. And it was awesome. We'll see you next time. There we go, boys. Thank you, sir. Save. Always a pleasure. Hey, I think I think I'm gonna send you actually I'll post it right now. Put it in the chat here real quick. I had some notes sitting on my screen over here of where I was planning on taking the conversations you know, I'm where I was going to take the conversation. And every time I looked over it, that's what you were talking about so that we should talk about Facebook. Wait a second. He's already talking about Facebook. thing oh, wait a second. Steve's already talking about the smart thing guys too. Funny. Yeah. Funny, was good. That means you know what you need. And we were thinking on the same way. So I appreciate that.

Steve Stauning 27:44
Oh, my pleasure. And hey, if you ever want any thought copies or extra copies of my books this Sunday now that I mean that the author copies are so nurturing

Terry Lancaster 27:55
that so as I tell you, you so mine how to sell more cars you're talking about No, you're taking the big one in everyone's head. Nobody was reported. So I wrote this and somebody stick it in their back pocket. It's got to be it's got a big time and it sits on desk like a little teary business card. And then do they did they pick it up and read a chapter with it? We've done God's work that day. I was

Steve Stauning 28:20
introduced to that book by our friend. Well, actually, Steve Johnson didn't introduce me but it was at his own route of zum zum wrote a foreword where I did a couple of people had copies on their desks. The time to read it. So great book,

Terry Lancaster 28:35
you know, it's a key key to keep it nice and simple. We're going to use as few words as possible, pragmatic that's what it is.

Steve Stauning 28:44
Take care thanks, money. Bye.

Terry Lancaster 28:46
Hey Quinn. The bail email, email and original ensures I don't know where he's at now. I'm going to get him good as Andrew as I talked to my brother thanks

Steve Stauning 28:55
Bye

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