The Method
Most training companies won't publish their process. Here is ours, in enough detail that you can hold your store against it this afternoon. What we sell is not the information on this page — it is getting it installed, inspected, and still running in ninety days.
01 · The frame
Every store has a version of the road to the sale. Almost none of them can tell you what happened on the last twelve guests. That gap — between the process a store believes it runs and the process it actually ran yesterday — is where gross, volume, and reputation quietly leave the building.
Sales Team 6 closes that gap with two systems under one banner. A Field Guide gives the frontline a standard specific enough to be checked. Command gives managers the cadence to check it and the obligation to coach what they find.
When a store has a people problem, it usually has a sales-manager problem. Pressure is not coaching, and a scoreboard is not a system.
Both systems assume the same thing about your market: price is published, inventory is normalized, and your marketing can be copied by the store across the street inside a week. What cannot be copied is a team that executes the same standard on every guest, every day, whether or not the general manager is on the floor.
02 · A Field Guide
Condensed from the full road to the sale into seven points a desk manager can inspect by name. Each one is written as a behavior, not an intention — either it happened on the last guest or it did not.
The guest is received by a person, not a process. The standard is a controlled opening that establishes who you are, why you are worth talking to, and what happens next — before any inventory conversation starts.
A written guest information sheet is completed before vehicle selection. This is the single most-skipped step in car retail and the one that makes every later step possible. It is also where the 4x4 gets established: will the guest finance with the store, is there a trade, do they use service or have they historically, and do they live in the store's primary market area. Four answers that tell you what the deal is actually worth to the business.
Once the right vehicle is identified, the salesperson touches the desk. Touch the Desk confirms availability and introduces management to the guest — without starting a numbers conversation. The manager now knows the deal exists before it arrives fully formed, which is what makes inspection possible at all.
A structured, value-building walkaround performed on the vehicle the guest is actually going to buy. Features are tied to what that specific guest told you in step two. This is where the price conversation gets easier or harder, and it is the step that most reliably separates a professional store from an order-taking one.
A full demonstration drive, every time, before numbers. Not a lap of the lot. The demonstration is not a courtesy — it is the step that converts interest into ownership, and it is a precondition of the Three-Yes gate below.
The guest is asked to own the vehicle before anyone discusses money. The trial close tells you whether you have a buyer or a shopper, and it surfaces the real objection while you still have room to work with it.
Before the appraisal, the salesperson asks the guest to sell them their car, then walks the trade with them transparently. The $500 reconditioning question surfaces condition in the guest's own words rather than in the appraiser's. Trade expectations get set on the lot, with the customer, instead of being renegotiated at the desk twenty minutes later.
The gate
Numbers are disclosed only when all three are true and logged:
A store that holds this one gate changes its gross profile without changing anything else. It is also the most common place a store discovers it has no standard at all.
03 · Command
Command reframes the sales manager's job. It is not to close the hard ones. It is to grow salespeople through a cadence somebody else can inspect.
Desk
The salesperson presents the first and only pencil. From there the sales manager negotiates — every time. Sales builds value and discloses numbers; management holds gross at the table. Two pencils and a hero salesperson is how gross migrates out of a deal one concession at a time.
Desk
Turnovers are scheduled events in the process, not a rescue call when a deal is already dying. Four required moments on the way through, and an exit T.O. on every deal that leaves without buying. No guest walks unseen by management.
Daily
Three customer-facing interactions, two appointments set for this week or next, one deal-making interaction with leadership. Per person, per day, logged and visible by name. It is a floor, not a ceiling, and it makes activity coachable instead of anecdotal.
Messaging
Three channels, two value propositions, one call to action. The discipline is that every outbound touch carries a reason for the customer to respond — not a check mark for the CRM.
Follow-up
Buy-or-die belongs on the salesperson, not on the customer. The cadence is a personal text at Hour 4, written before the guest leaves the store while the detail is still real; a manager — not the salesperson — calling at Hour 24; and a salesperson video from the lot at Hour 72 with a specific reason to engage.
The test on every touch: was this for me, or was this for them?
Pipeline
Dead deals are worked as a standing management function with an owner and a next date, not as a monthly panic when the board looks thin.
Structure
New, used, and F&I share one scoreboard. F&I capture is a full-store outcome: the floor builds value, the desk holds structure, and finance receives a set-up customer instead of a repair job in the last ninety seconds.
04 · Inspection
Any trainer can teach the steps above. The reason stores drift back is that no one changed what a manager does between 8:00 and 8:20 every morning.
A
A single card per manager, per day, for the floor, the desk, and the drive. It names what gets looked at and leaves no room for "everything looked fine." Managers keep the card; ownership can read it without a meeting.
B
Four columns that end the guessing: what was inspected, who was coached, what happens next, and who owns it. Written, dated, and inspectable upward. If a GM cannot answer those four questions about yesterday, the store does not have a standard — it has a preference.
C
One recurring session off one shared variable-ops scoreboard. Not a status meeting. Managers arrive with their inspection records and leave with named next actions on named people.
D
Follow-up after delegation is coaching, not control. Delegate the outcome, stay in the conversation, and use the work to build the person. A store that only inspects becomes a store people leave.
On the service drive, the same logic runs through the Basic Four-Step plus the Friday Declined habit, with advisors coached against a conversational scorecard: effective labor rate, hours per repair order, lines per repair order, and average repair order. Same standard, same inspection, different department.
05 · The 90 days
An install is not a day on site. The day on site is the start of a governed quarter with a decision at the end of it.
Stage 1
Full-immersion on site. The standard is taught, demonstrated, and written down in language your store will actually use. Ownership is in the room, because a standard the dealer has not personally endorsed does not survive its first busy Saturday.
Stage 2
The team practices before it performs. Word tracks, walkarounds, trade conversations, and desk handoffs are rehearsed against the standard until execution is boring.
Stage 3
Live guests, daily inspection, daily coaching. Managers run the field cards and the record. We are in the cadence with them — this is the stage where installs succeed or quietly die.
Stage 4
The scoreboard is public, the cadence runs without us, and every manager is certified on the standard in writing so it survives the next promotion or departure. Then a clear decision: hold it yourself, or keep the governance layer running with Command.
You've read the standard
Twelve questions on the last thirty days, scored across the four pillars on this page: the standard on the floor, desk and gross control, follow-up cadence, and manager inspection.