Say Goodbye to Mini Deals Forever, Without Missing a Deal

The first sale that I ever made was a mini deal.  Luckily, the second sale on the very same day was the biggest of my career and yet, I was arguably just as excited about both deals.  Ok, yes it was my first day selling, but it wasn’t long before I began to feel the sting of the notorious mini deal. At the time a mini deal paid $50, make it a split deal and reduce that to $25, add in the fact that it was a referral and there was a bird dog paid and you can drop it to $12.50 minus taxes.  Oh yeah, did I mention that it was a locate, and that the salesperson had to go pick it up two hours away from the dealership?  I decided long ago, NO MORE MINIS!

But how do we take that stance and not miss deals?  We can do this by “selling in the red zone”. As we all know, in this business our success is measured by a calendar month.  My entire career has been about cramming as many deals as possible into a calendar month, all driven by the dealer’s pay plan. It didn’t take long to figure out that I was getting paid more per deal the closer I got to the end of the month, but inevitably the board gets erased and we go back to the starting line.

Take a look at your sales board and allow your eyes to move to the far right. This is where you find the red zone. The place where the real dollars start to show their faces in the form of fast starts/finishes, unit, retroactive, and salesperson of the month bonuses.  Just like on the field, the red zone is the place that provides me with the biggest opportunity to score and is my answer to saying goodbye to the mini deal.  And just like on the field I want to spend as much time in the red zone as possible.

There are two opponents that challenge our arrival to the red zone, the first is the clock (remember that calendar month?) and the second is lack of deals. That’s right, it takes units to get into the red zone and the faster we get there with them the more time we will have to score big. This means we have to be obsessed with getting deals! There is no time to waste. So, yeah I’m going to take any and every deal possible, never missing a deal even if it means a mini, split, locate with a bird dog fee taken out. Why? Because I know I’m taking that mini deal with me to the red zone where I get to exchange it for a bigger commission like a free upgrade from an economy to a luxury car at the rental agency.

By the way, there are many other benefits of taking every deal.  One particular mini deal comes to mind. Her name was Betty. Betty was a professionally conditioned Spartan Ninja Warrior shopper that worked me over like Floyd Mayweather. After what seemed like a hundred visits to the store she finally stopped threatening to purchase and actually pulled the trigger. Of course, it was Betty’s new car that would come to have a trunk leak and every time it rained I would see Betty. Eventually, the problem was fixed and a few months went by and here comes Betty. Every time Betty had come in she was always accompanied by her close friend who always seemed to tag along. To my surprise Betty wasn’t back with a problem, she was back to help her friend buy a car. I wasn’t sure I could do this all over again, but Betty proceeded to tell me that her friend couldn’t afford a new car like she had so we would have to look at a pre-owned car. Two hours later I had delivered another career high commission that originated from my marathon mini deal with Betty. But, I can’t lie because I also took Betty’s deal into the red zone with me and said goodbye to that mini too.