Building a Personal Brand For Automotive Sales Pros Part 1 – A Great Start
Building a Personal Brand in sales is more important than ever.
Let’s take automotive sales for example. Just ten years ago most customers visited the showroom to research, test-drive and get pricing for their next vehicle purchase. Today most of this is done online and they only visit the dealership to take delivery and even that is changing.
Todays consumers have a wealth of information available to them online. They can shop different models, value their trade, watch test-drive videos and in most cases get accurate pricing as well. When they’re comfortable they have the vehicle they want picked out and the price that fits their budget, a number of dealerships will even deliver the car to their home or office. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated this entire digital retailing model.
Very few automotive salespeople have created a strong personal brand. Sure, some have done a good job on social media and some stand out on reputation sites like dealerrater.com but very few have built a strong personal brand. Most people don’t know where to start and that’s where we come in.
Car sales professionals are the ultimate entrepreneurs with an advantage.
They are their own small business inside the dealership with a huge head-start over most entrepreneurs. Automotive sales pros have the ability to make unlimited earnings with little to no risk or expense. The dealership pays for advertising, rent, inventory and general overhead. All you have to do is sell. This is where it’s starting to get tricky in todays environment. If we know that most purchasers only visit the dealership 1.4 times in the purchase cycle, you need to reach them before they walk into a dealership.
Whether you’ve been selling cars for years or you just got into the industry, building a personal brand is the future. Dealerships will spend tens of thousands of dollars every month advertising their brand, their inventory, even the service and parts department, but they will not market YOU. Some savvy dealerships are waking up to this idea but for the most part, you will need to market you.
We built this website, a YouTube channel and other social media sites to help you navigate your own personal brand development plan. It’s a lot of hard work and it’ll take some dedication but the payoff can be awesome. Imagine consumers reaching out to you directly from the internet with low funnel purchase intent. In-market shoppers who are ready to buy or lease and they know your name. Not another salesperson on the floor, and definitely not the salesperson across town. No, they want to buy from you. More importantly, your brand.
Building a Personal Brand Step 1:
Lets start building your personal brand by thinking about your market. If you sell cars, or if you’re a real estate agent this step is a little easier. For these two professions your market is mostly local and your product is very clear. Let’s stay with auto sales for this step and start by talking about your brand name. For most this could be a number of variations but try to include your name, what you do and maybe the brand of car. Don’t spend too much time on this. It’s more important that you get started ASAP. Here’s a few examples:
1. Sarah Smith Sells Cars
2. Car Sales by Dave Jones
3. Dina has lease deals
4. Buy Cars Direct (if you’re in an area that has a lot of broker business)
Ok, these are not very creative but you get the point. It’s not rocket science, at least not yet. You may start to question that as we get into some of the more involved steps later though 🙂
Building a Personal Brand Step 2
Building a personal brand can be done on a budget but it’s gonna take some work. Now that you have some name ideas, go to Google and see if the email address is available. Go to google and create a new account with <insert your brand name here>@gmail.com as the email address. This is free and a great place to store creative ideas and content in the google drive.
Follow along and look for part 2 on building a personal brand and more on personal brand development on our website HERE 🙂 Thanks for visiting!
Want to see the free blog I made in part 2? Building a Personal Brand Blog using WordPress for free.
