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MAY 6, 2009 - 11:00 AM ET

SUCCEED REGARDLESS OF THE ECONOMY by Grant Cardone

There are great advantages to periods of economic contraction and once you
know the secrets of exploiting those you will expand and conquer while
others shrink and submit. Many of the economists, pundits, and media
talking-heads are predicting doom and gloom end of the world scenarios, with
their 24 hours a day round-the-clock ranting and raving that’s only focused
on the problem and who is to blame without offering much in the way of any
solution as to what you can do to survive and prosper.

You have probably already experienced a slowdown as business has slowed down
significantly in most parts of the world. Regrettably, I’m sure you are
feeling the effects of the recession and hopefully you don’t like it. I
hope you don’t like it and in fact would encourage you to hate it so much
that you are willing to do anything to fight back against it. This will be
a time when many people suffer and also a time when others using specific
strategies will expand and conquer their markets.

BIGGEST MISTAKES MADE DURING ECONOMIC CONTRACTIONS:

1) Complaining
2) Making excuses
3) Blaming
4) Contracting - (pulling in)
5) Cutting budgets as a solution
6) Not advertising and marketing
7) Being reasonable in your thinking and actions.

Now is the time to know what the mistakes are and do exactly the opposite.
If you contract with contraction you will get smaller. The solution during
contractions is to expand. One of the first ways to expand is to avoid
spending any time on the activities above and invest all your time and
energy in doing the exact opposite.

1) Stop wasting time or energy on anything that can not drive revenue
2) Increase time, energy and money spent on anything and everything that has
potential revenue and be unreasonable in those efforts.
3) Learn everything you can about selling, negotiating and communication for
the only way to survive and recession is to sell your way out!
4) Know the Action Formula

Economic contractions create tremendous opportunities to separate yourself
from others in the marketplace. Now is the time to expand your activities
and commit more energy to prospecting, follow up, mail, phone calls, and
personal visits.

Become an expert at your trade now and become unreasonable with the amount
of action you take. In my book and audio program, Sell to Survive there is
one chapter that gives you the exact formula for how much action is
necessary to get what you want in life. Most people don’t get what they want
in life because they fall short of taking the correct amount of action.
Since they don’t know how much is enough they then think that they will
never reach their goals.

The owner of a company in Boston read about the formula immediately started
using it and went from being concerned about closing his doors in December
to having more business than he could service by March.

He writes, “Mr. Cardone, I got your Sell to Survive Audio and book program
in December and we implemented your action formula. By March we are fast
approaching the good problem you mentioned where I have more work than I can
handle.” - David Supple, President, Hill Craftsmen

Now is the time to quit wasting any effort or energy or task that cannot pay
off. Spend more time, effort and money on activities that can pay off and
become unreasonable and expert at selling your products and services and
KNOW the action formula. Those that do these three steps will expand and
conquer market share. Knock off all the loser activity and replace that
behavior with expansion actions and effective solutions.

And remember, “For every economy that creates hardship the same economy
creates opportunities!”

Grant Cardone, Author of Sell to Survive
http://www.selltosurvive.com
Ph. (800) 368-5771
This is an email from Grant Cardone located at 6767 Neptune Place, La Jolla,
CA 92037. If you no longer wish to receive messages from us, please let us
know at grant@cardonedealers.com

Automotive Training Network.com

NEW YORK (Reuters) — Facing a June 1 deadline to restructure under U.S. government oversight, General Motors may drop its Pontiac and GMC brands as part of broader cost-cutting moves, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The two brands are being studied as part of talks with an Obama administration task force assessing whether GM can be restructured without bankruptcy, sources told Bloomberg on Wednesday.

GM’s Chevrolet, Cadillac and Buick brands are likely to be safe, the news agency reported.

GM had said earlier it would keep Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, GMC and Pontiac while selling or closing Hummer, Saab and Saturn.

An investor group including private equity firm Black Oak Partners has approached GM about buying its Saturn brand assets and dealership network, both sides said on Wednesday.

GM’s Hummer brand has received interest from three bidders, none of them automakers, sources told Reuters on April 8.

The current offers for Hummer range from $100-$200 million, the sources said. GM has taken $13.4 billion of U.S. government loans since the beginning of the year.

A decision is yet to be reached on what would happen to Pontiac or GMC should GM opt not to keep them, Bloomberg reported, citing unidentified sources.

The GMC brand has a better chance of surviving than Pontiac, one of the sources told the agency.

A GM spokesman did not immediately return a call seeking comment on the report.

Dave Guilford

Automotive Training Network

TORONTO (Reuters) — Chrysler LLC’s Canadian manufacturing operations will not survive in the long-term without significant concessions from the Canadian Auto Workers, the company said in a letter to employees today.

The letter, from Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli and President Tom LaSorda, said the company has to get its total labor costs at Chrysler Canada down from C$76 ($62.80) per hour to Toyota Motor Corp.’s Canada’s labor rate of about C$57 per hour and the CAW’s refusal to do so is jeopardizing the company’s future.

“Time is very short,” the letter said. “We have only two weeks before a final decision must be made. Let me be clear: Our negotiations are about saving Chrysler Canada. We are coming down to the wire in the fight for our company’s survival — and we need your support.”

This is GREAT NEWS!!!!!!

GMAC to resume car loans to subprime borrowers
Wed Apr 1, 2009 10:14am EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - GMAC Financial Services said it will lower vehicle financing costs and resume making loans to subprime borrowers, part of a series of moves that could stimulate sales at General Motors Corp.

The finance company said on Wednesday the moves are expected to make at least $5 billion of credit available to customers over the next 60 days. GMAC also eased a variety of fees and payments imposed on dealers, giving them more breathing room to lower both costs and inventory of unsold vehicles.

The moves come as GM races to craft a restructuring plan acceptable to the Obama administration as a condition for obtaining more taxpayer funds. On Tuesday, GM Chief Executive Fritz Henderson said the automaker could go bankrupt by June 1 if it cannot devise such a plan.

GMAC said it will resume accepting finance applications from car and truck buyers who have credit scores below 620, a line dividing prime borrowers from less creditworthy subprime borrowers. The median U.S. credit score is 723, according to Fair Isaac Corp’s myFICO unit.

GMAC also said it will cut borrowing costs for some new and used vehicle purchases.

In a statement, GMAC President Bill Muir said the Detroit-based financing company wants to “increase the flow of credit to U.S. automotive customers. GMAC has funding available to stimulate auto sales.”

On Tuesday, GM and rival Ford Motor Co announced plans to cover some loan payments for customers who lose their jobs. These are intended to boost sales to customers who might delay buying new cars and trucks because they worry about job security.

GMAC in December got a $6 billion government bailout that required GM and private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP to slash their 49 percent and 51 percent stakes in the company.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel; editing by John Wallace)

“The deals aren’t as good” - Says who? Oh Please… I have never seen discounts as deep as they are right now. Cars have always been expensive and they have always cost more than the customer told you they wanted to pay… so now you are going to start believing the customer? When exactly do you think the customer will come into your dealership and offer to pay more than $250.00 @ month with no money down while being $4,000.00 upside down in their trade? I visit Disney World, I don’t live there. You shouldn’t either.

“We can’t lease anymore” - yes you can… there just aren’t giveaways that any no talent order-taker could give away, so maybe you should quit and we’ll get a salesperson who can do the job. This can be a very unforgiving business. If that scares you, full time consideration of another endeavor may be in order. If you are planning on coming in to wait for something to happen, go wait elsewhere, please.

News Flash for the new guys… We sold cars when interest rates were 18%… We sold cars when they would blow up… we sold cars that flipped over… we sold cars in recessions… we sold cars that were uglier than a monkey’s be-hind and broke down on delivery… we sold cars from empty showrooms… we sold cars that could not get out of their own way on the freeway…we sold Yugo’s, and Daewoo’s, and Pinto’s, and K-cars for god’s sake, and Detroit’s big V 8’s when gas was $4 a gallon.

How did we do it? We SOLD them. We inquired about our customers’ needs and wants, their budget, their family, their jobs, their travel habits. We made friends and sold the snot out of the right vehicle that met all of their needs. We generated enthusiasm, that’s where enthusiasm comes from. It’s also where gross comes from. Remember the customer who paid you the biggest commission ever? How happy were they? How did you do that? We didn’t sell the deal, we made the deal sell. We didn’t believe them when they told us the car was too much… because we selected a vehicle that wasn’t too much; and, when they chose a more expensive model… we told them it was more expensive and they would pay more. We sold them on the idea of putting money down so they wouldn’t be buried with debt so that cash down wasn’t a burden but a benefit - and they always found more money for the car we made them want… because we made them want it… we made them need it… and they loved us for it. That’s how we got so many referrals and repeat customers.

We didn’t lie or cheat, we didn’t play with the numbers, and trick them into paying more… we sold the sizzle… we got the customer excited, and we made money doing it and our customers loved us when we were done. And they told their friends how great we were to do business with.

When I was a salesperson I loved the snow. I loved it because other salespeople would hide in their office convinced that they were not going to sell anything because nobody was going to come out in the snow. So I stood on the lot under the overhang, dressed warmly and waited, ’cause I knew that if somebody did show up… they were there to buy something.

Why I don’t watch the news.
Today the media is pumping bad weather into everybody’s living room and it is pouring bad news. Today I want to be a salesperson again standing in the showroom waiting for the customer who is going to walk in, in spite of everything they have heard, because they are looking for someone to say, “it’s OK to buy,” and I would be there in my tie with a warm handshake and a smile ready to make it OK to part with a few thousand dollars… and I would make it fun too.

Yes, it is true that dealers will close. Banks will go under. The car business is changing. This is the time when we will undergo an economic housecleaning. We will see the weak salespeople who survived in this business out of sheer dumb luck find their true place in fast food, asking the customer “do you want fries with that?” We will see the sales managers who forgot (or never knew) how to sell, got lazy, can’t motivate and train professionals, move on to telemarketing gig’s or make that career change they have “talked” about for so long. I am sure Amway is taking applications.

Good riddance. This business is not for the weak or faint of heart. Here, only the strong survive. When all is said and done only the best will be left standing. We will be sipping our coffee, cashing our big checks, and helping people buy cars.

In the 2^nd week of February, 2009 I did 4 days of phone training at a Chevy dealership with 21 sales consultants; we generated 208 new appointments and 105 new referrals in four days work. We worked with Internet leads both current and aged, orphan owners, unsold showroom traffic and current owners. If it can be done in western Louisiana, it can be done in your town too…

What are you doing with your opportunities? How effective is your BDC? Do you have one? ON a scale of 1 to 10, how proficient or lacking is your organizations phone skills? How about follow up? You get the picture. I will be here, on time, ready to work and ready to help, with my tie on, a warm handshake and a smile. I say bring it on!

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