 Hey guys, how you doing? It's Andy Elliott. Today I'm going to talk to you about thinking strategically. This is something that I don't think that we've talked about enough. And literally, I was sitting there last night and I probably get, man, a couple hundred text messages a day. I reply to all of you. You guys are all very important to me. Currently at this time, which is amazing, I'm training over 5,000 salespeople. Now, some people go a couple weeks at a time and I don't hear from you. Why? Because you're killing it. So guess what? I seem to be the guy that gets the quick text that says, hey, Andy, just sold 15 cars in seven days. I'm destroying it. Or, hey, it's been seven days straight and I've only sold two cars. So me and you go and have a Zoom meeting real quick. We get it fixed and you get to rocking and rolling. I think strategic thinking is something that we all need to think about, okay? And I'm going to get into some of that here. But what I would like to ask everybody to do real fast because this is something I need to get into a habit of doing is asking you, please give me a thumbs up on this video. This video will help you make more money. And by the way, shoot me a quick text in the comment below. Andy, I appreciate you. Maybe you're struggling with something. Maybe you just throw me a thumbs up. That will help me with the YouTube algorithm, okay? I need that help from you guys. And by the way, I'm grateful for you and I appreciate you. Hey guys, it's Andy. I'm going to be giving away a couple beach vacations, lots of free content. Make sure you're following me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. Guys, have a great day and don't miss some of this great stuff coming out. All right, so when I talk about thinking strategically, what my primary deal is to go over today with how times have changed and how if you don't get up with the change, you're not going to make the big money you want to. I've got guys that I train that are making $40,000 a month and I've got guys that are making $4,000 a month. Some of it is time and experience, but I got guys that I've been training for two months that are on the verge of making almost $20,000. So I don't think that time and experience is the top salesman or the most money made in a dealership. I honestly think it has a lot to do with strategic thinking, okay? And strategic thinking is along the lines of how times have changed and also how salesmen don't plan out their day. So I'm going to go through all of that in this video, but one of the big important things is that in the 2000s, this is when I started selling in cars in 1999. In the 2000s, this is how things work. In 2010s, this is how things work. In 2020s, this is how the things are. Would you agree that each decade you would have to change up your thinking? Yes, because the customer's changing and because the internet is pushing into our business so hard, you can't do things the same way. So what happens is you come into your dealership, you learn from a guy that's been doing it for 20 years, what does he tell you to do? Go outside and take ups. Guess what? That ain't going to work. That is a way to make money, but strategic thinking, if you're just going to go outside and take ups, you're not going to consistently make a ton of money and me and you won't become one of the, I definitely won't become one of the best-selling people in the country, but we won't push together because you don't have a plan. I'm going to go over two salesman's type of schedule over here, that way you can see physically what it looks like when one guy has priority and when another person has no priority and I want you to identify who you are. So let's get into this, all right? And also, by the way, here's my cell phone. I want to tell you something. Send me a text real quick, right? 918-210-0254. 918-210-0254. Let me tell you what I want to send you. I want to shoot you, it's a little piece of paper for the bad habits, the most worst habits that salespeople can have and I want to send it to you. And as you go down that piece of paper, I want you to print it off. If you find any of those things on that piece of paper or something that you're doing, immediately get it out, audit it and get it out of your life, okay? So let me send that to you because I'm talking about strategically thinking, it's also getting rid of the stuff that's junk, okay? So shoot me a text and I'll give that to you. All right, strategic thinking and creativity are vital to a successful salesperson. Look, creativity, okay? This is huge. The better you get at selling cars, the more creative you'll become. Also, strategic thinking rolls into areas like this. Most salespeople are unclear on how to think on a strategic level. Why are they unclear? Because most times management doesn't teach us how to think strategically. They say, hey, go outside, make 30 phone calls, take enough and that's it. And that's why you're gonna find this guy over here who's struggling not making a lot of money or he's not consistent with this paycheck. Most salespeople seem to be stuck in the last century. The reason why I say you're stuck in the last century is because look, man, times are moving. So what happens is, man, I'm 40, so I'm pre-internet. So I wasn't raised with an iPhone or something, right? So everything I have physically had to learn, but guess what? A lot of the people don't learn stuff. So in this business, if you don't wanna get stuck in the last century and get dusted by your competition, guess what? You have to learn to use new technology in social media and not just technically social media. I'm gonna get into all that right here, but other ways to leverage strategic thinking in our business. And this is how you can dominate it. My last year when I made 700 grand a year selling cars, these were the areas that I did. I'm gonna tell you exactly how I did it and I want you to go through. There may be an area here in your dealership that says, hey, you can't do that. I'm okay with that. But look how many options there are and let's think strategically for a minute to how many things you can do. If you are not using, I put here video, Craigslist, Facebook, Facebook remarketing, which is different. We teach on that. Self branding, your service department, every list available to you at your company. List would be like an equity list. People that bought two years ago that have equity in their car. There's a list for those people. High interest, people that bought a car two years ago that paid 15% or more if you're not working those lists. Or if an owner list. Then the internet leads, the phone pops, the fresh ups. You cannot crush your competition at all. Most people go out, they wanna take phone pops which are phone calls coming into the dealership. They wanna take their internet leads. They wanna take fresh ups. They leave all the strategic thinking out of the way. So this is why you're getting killed. Let's not complicate this though. Let's go over your day and let's go over how much money you're worth. This is gonna be your schedule here in a minute. And I want you to look at this and identify what does your day look like compared to this guy's schedule and this guy's schedule. But before I do that, and I told you don't get stuck in the last century, in the 2000s when I first started selling cars, this was our life. 100% of the customers came in through fresh ups and they came in through phone pops. 100%, there was no internet. The people drove in, we were the horses now at mouth, we told them what was going on and guess what? They asked for brochures and stuff like that. We sold them a car, we gave them the information, we handled it, the phone rang, we took the phone call. That was what we did. Now you got the 2010s, 50% of the people came in on fresh up and phone pops. The other 50% were internet. At that point we had to realize that man, we really got to get on board with internet. We have got to start pushing the internet really, really hard. But there was still a ton of fresh ups coming in. So every sales person didn't have to think strategically to make giants amounts of money. They didn't have to yet because all these people were still coming here. Now last year, NADA said in 2019, 95 to 99% of the people that purchased a car will have started out online. Man, holy smokes. All right, let's shift to the 2020s. 10% are fresh ups and phone pops, 10%. Okay, the other 90% are internet leads. So once you think about that, if you're not on the internet, if you're not working another avenue that has to do with other than taking fresh ups, can and will you destroy it? You may get lucky sometimes. Okay, you know that guy in your dealership that made 12 grand one time and then four or five grand for four more straight months and then he made another 10 grand month? And then people like, oh, that guy's a 10 grand guy. You know he's not, you know he's not. That guy made 60 grand last year. That guy's a five grand guy, okay? I'm telling you this, I want you to be consistent and I want you to learn how to start making big money. So strategic thinking is crucial. Let's look at these two people's schedule here. I wrote them out. This person is, how to plan strategically? This is the kind of person that I think is gonna dominate it and crush everyone, okay? He has priority or she has priority. At 8.30, they come in and they do an inventory walk. Why? Because the guy that knows the inventory the best makes the most money. That's just how simple it is, right? At 9 a.m., they do their follow up calls and they confirm their appointments. They get the day set up, right? They know what they have in their hands so they can plan out the rest of their day. At 9.30, they post three cars on Craigslist. If your store will allow you to do it, Craigslist is hot, okay? They select specifically neat cars, they post three of them. Look, that's a 30 minute bracket there. By 10 a.m., watch this. They've already posted cars on Facebook during all their follow up, done an inventory walk. Kindness money, okay? This person has a strategic plan and they're on a time. 60 minutes in an hour, how you work 60 minutes in that hour is what matters. At 10 a.m., they post five cars on Facebook in that 30 minute period. At 10.30, they work a list and send out videos. Maybe they got a list of 50 people and they've made a video and they're popping them out to boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I've got guys selling people off lists constantly because of the videos that they've sent out, okay? At 11 o'clock, I said they eat lunch and they actually bring their lunch because they're so busy and they wanna make money. They're afraid to leave the dealership because they want to make money and stay there because when they leave their house to come to work, they do it for the purpose of making a lot of money. So they don't leave to lunch, they bring their lunch, okay? And I'm not saying you can't leave to lunch, but watch this, they're so consumed with staying there and making sure the day is successful that they bring their own lunch. As a matter of fact, most of them are eating their lunch while they're working, okay? And then from 11.30 to 6.30 at night, let's say that that is their schedule. They work the lot and then they take us. And also, all this work that they've done here would be bringing appointments into the day here that they would continue to set those appointments through the day. That is a strategic schedule, okay? And now notice here, right? You notice how there's times on all of these to do this? That's called time blocking. They're blocking out a certain amount of time to actually do that task so that gets handled. They're not just saying I'm gonna do this when I go in, then I'm gonna do that. No, you'll look up, it'll be three o'clock and you still hadn't got it all done. They actually block out each time. All right, over here, this guy has no priority, okay? This guy does not think strategically. He completely has not watched this video, okay? You have no schedule, okay? Now you're scheduled in to work, but other than that, you get to work, you drink coffee, you wait for enough, you drink more coffee, right? Okay, you complain with the buddy how slow it is. You go to lunch, which means you leave, you probably go to lunch with the same buddy you were complaining about and you guys talk maybe to another buddy across town. You know what I'm saying about maybe switching dealerships, right? And then over here, you drink some more coffee when you come back from lunch, right? Why not? And then you take it up, you sell it if you're lucky or you complain that they couldn't buy and that the guy was an idiot to the rest of the guys. That's how it goes. And listen, do me a favor. Send me a text, 918-2100254. I'm gonna send you a little list. I want you to look at this. And when you see this list of the daily stuff that you could be doing that is not productive, there's busyness and there's productiveness. Productiveness will get you rich. Busyness will keep you broke. I want you to look at every single one of these and what I want you to do when you send me that text is go down that piece of paper and literally be like, ah, man, those three I gotta get rid of them. Boom, boom, boom. Scratch them off and now you're gonna kill it. Guys, in 2020, I want you to think strategically and I want you to remember, be careful who you're getting your advice from. Because look, if you're getting your advice from somebody that sold cars in the 2010s and not in the 20s, guess what? They could be giving you advice from here that doesn't work here anymore. So if you have a manager that's been selling cars or that hasn't been selling cars for 15 years, unless he's really strategic and he's up to date, remember the last time he sold a car was what? Was off the lot. They were fresh up managers, okay? Which I was in that era too. So I'm saying as time goes, we have to ship, we have to move and we have to adapt, okay? So guys, have a blessed day. I hope you liked this video. Remember, give me a thumbs up. Have a great day and I'll talk to you soon.