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Old 28th February 2018, 09:43   #1
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Salesman from Michigan sells 1,582 cars in a year! Beats 44-year record

Car salesman Ali Reda from Dearborn, Michigan has claimed to surpass Joe Girard's record for the most cars sold in a year. Joe Girard's record of 1,425 cars sold in a year has stood ground since 1973 up until now. While General Motors is backing up Reda's claim, an independent investigation by the Guinness World Records is underway to confirm the 1,582 car sales from last year.

Ali Reda was earlier working for Bill Wink Chevrolet, until the franchise shut down in 2010 as part of GM's bankruptcy. He had worked in the same dealership for 10 years. Since 2010, he has been working as a sales person with Les Stanford Chevrolet and Les Stanford Cadillac in Dearborn.

Ali Reda, who's the author of the book 'How to Sell 100 Cars a Month', attributes his success to his two assistants. He follows Joe Girard's 'hand's on' approach to sales and prefers to spend time outside the dealership to mingle with his customers at social events and community centers. Ali Reda also mentioned that he prefers to get the right vehicle for a prospective customer than just sell any car just for the sake of numbers.

The total tally of 1,582 cars sold includes 1,298 new and 284 used cars, while Joe Girard's tally consisted only of new car sales.

Salesman from Michigan sells 1,582 cars in a year! Beats 44-year record-ar180229862.jpg

Source - Automotive News

Link to the Team-BHP News

Last edited by blackwasp : 28th February 2018 at 09:45.
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Old 28th February 2018, 19:12   #2
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Re: Salesman from Michigan sells 1,582 cars in a year! Beats 44-year record

I wonder if there is a record for highest number of sales by a bike salesman. Hero Motocorp sold 7.2 million bikes in 2017. And they have around 6,000 dealerships.
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Old 28th February 2018, 19:15   #3
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Re: Salesman from Michigan sells 1,582 cars in a year! Beats 44-year record

Quote:
Originally Posted by smartcat View Post
I wonder if there is a record for highest number of sales by a bike salesman. Hero Motocorp sold 7.2 million bikes in 2017. And they have around 6,000 dealerships.
Even Maruti Suzuki for that matter, when it comes to cars. Is 1582 cars a year that difficult to surpass? Take the sales / dealership ratio for NEXA as an example.

Someone who has worked with an Indian dealership should be able to comment.
Quote:
Originally Posted by blackwasp View Post
The total tally of 1,582 cars sold includes 1,298 new and 284 used cars, while Joe Girard's tally consisted only of new car sales.
Probably the best person to reply to my query - given your NEXA working experience.

Last edited by CrAzY dRiVeR : 28th February 2018 at 19:21.
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Old 28th February 2018, 19:34   #4
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Re: Salesman from Michigan sells 1,582 cars in a year! Beats 44-year record

Quote:
Originally Posted by CrAzY dRiVeR View Post
Even Maruti Suzuki for that matter, when it comes to cars. Is 1582 cars a year that difficult to surpass? Take the sales / dealership ratio for NEXA as an example. Someone who has worked with an Indian dealership should be able to comment.
Depends on number of salesmen per dealership. 1,582 cars were sold by one single salesman.
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Old 28th February 2018, 19:38   #5
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Re: Salesman from Michigan sells 1,582 cars in a year! Beats 44-year record

Quote:
Originally Posted by CrAzY dRiVeR View Post
Is 1582 cars a year that difficult to surpass? .
I had not even given this any thought, but the fact that the previous record stood for a very long time is probably some indication.

An average person in the USA works around 230-240 days / 1700-1800 hours per year. Which means close to 7 cars a day. That's a car almost every working hour!

I encourage everybody to click on the link in the first post and read the story. This guy is quite something else, irrepspective of it being a world record here is somebody who really pushes the envelop on personal performance! The guy from whom he took quite some pointers, Girard is also quite something else.

Jeroen

Last edited by Jeroen : 28th February 2018 at 19:41.
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Old 28th February 2018, 20:18   #6
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Re: Salesman from Michigan sells 1,582 cars in a year! Beats 44-year record

Quote:
Originally Posted by CrAzY dRiVeR View Post
Is 1582 cars a year that difficult to surpass?
Someone who has worked with an Indian dealership should be able to comment.
.
Oh yes! Achieving such numbers is rare! I have been with the automobile dealership fraternity for almost 9 years now, and the best that I have seen anyone in India do was 21 units per month, on an average.
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Old 28th February 2018, 22:02   #7
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Re: Salesman from Michigan sells 1,582 cars in a year! Beats 44-year record

Quote:
Originally Posted by CrAzY dRiVeR View Post
Someone who has worked with an Indian dealership should be able to comment....
Probably the best person to reply to my query - given your NEXA working experience.
In the regular Maruti dealership, sales guys used to sell upto 30-35 cars in seasonal months - i.e ones with some festival along with December and March (year ending months). Thats around one per day. If you had corporate orders, you'd probably sell 60-70 cars a month. And I know people who did that in other dealerships.

My personal best was 12 Ciaz during one of the Diwali months. I could bill only Ciaz cars, and other guys could bill cars other than Ciaz. However, I could consistently achieve my targets thanks to a pointers from my VP as well as reading up Joe Girard's tips / books. The best Ciaz consultants (then) sold around 20-25 cars per month on an average from the region.

MSIL sold 1.53 lakh cars in July 2017 (dealers dispatches). Let us assume same were sold to customers. They have 1820* sales outlets i.e 85 cars a month avg. and considering 20 sales people per outlet, it comes down to 4 per month per executive.

Now, even considering the best sales person, he would need to spend at least 3-4 years developing contacts, as well as referrals to enjoy selling just from references and not attending any walk-in customers. If he/she manages to woo a couple of large corporates who place bulk orders, even better. Even then I would put the max. per month at around 100 cars, or 1200 yearly. Anything more is simply unrealistic for a single fellow to handle.

Now, dealerships also bill cars in other sales person's name if he can't achieve the target, so on paper it tells MSIL that all the salesmen are working equally. In reality however, you will have some who don't sell more than 1, while others sell 15+ and the dealership average stands at 5 cars a month.

On a average, the time spent per sale would be around 10-15 hrs.(on the minimum side), right from enquiry, test drive, to paperwork and the final delivery. So now you can see even with 10 cars, thats 100-150 hrs a month. Considering an 8hr day and 24 working days a month, a sales person gets only 208 hrs to do his stuff. Further, time will be spent in meetings, training, compliance etc. I'm not even counting the time we have spent bringing the car, going to RTO, washing cars (have done it at times), fitting accessories (even this), driving the car to customer's place as he can't drive, etc.
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Old 28th February 2018, 22:10   #8
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Re: Salesman from Michigan sells 1,582 cars in a year! Beats 44-year record

Quote:
Originally Posted by blackwasp View Post
considering 20 sales people per outlet,
Maruti dealership has an average of 20 salespeople? I expected it to be 4 to 6 salespeople for smaller outlets and double that for larger ones.
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Old 28th February 2018, 23:54   #9
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Re: Salesman from Michigan sells 1,582 cars in a year! Beats 44-year record

Quote:
Originally Posted by smartcat View Post
Maruti dealership has an average of 20 salespeople? I expected it to be 4 to 6 salespeople for smaller outlets and double that for larger ones.
Well, where I worked, we were almost 50, give or take 5. Smaller ones have 4-6 at max. Hence the avg. figure of 20. Even in Nexa, we had 5 team leaders each with 5 sales persons.
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Old 1st March 2018, 00:37   #10
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Re: Salesman from Michigan sells 1,582 cars in a year! Beats 44-year record

Quote:
Originally Posted by NeedaUsername View Post
Oh yes! Achieving such numbers is rare! I have been with the automobile dealership fraternity for almost 9 years now, and the best that I have seen anyone in India do was 21 units per month, on an average.
Quote:
Originally Posted by blackwasp View Post
Let us assume same were sold to customers. They have 1820* sales outlets i.e 85 cars a month avg. and considering 20 sales people per outlet, it comes down to 4 per month per executive.
Thanks guys. Those are some pretty good insights and the numbers were way lower than what I had expected. I would have given a wild guess (without any sort of working knowledge) of 4 per day at a Maruti dealership, whereas 4 per month is totally something else.

Looking back at the record holders - the numbers do seem very significant now!
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Old 1st March 2018, 01:39   #11
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I am guessing he is also a team leader, something Blackwasp has pointed out.
Because he clearly mentions his two assistants. So it seems to be more of a team effort to me.
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Old 1st March 2018, 03:14   #12
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Re: Salesman from Michigan sells 1,582 cars in a year! Beats 44-year record

Definitely a big feat, but imagine the market volume. 17M cars were sold in US last year. India hasnt crossed 4M. Assume a large part of his sales must have been fleet sales which is big in the US.

Last edited by mail4ajo : 1st March 2018 at 03:16.
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Old 1st March 2018, 09:13   #13
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Re: Salesman from Michigan sells 1,582 cars in a year! Beats 44-year record

1582 cars/year is seriously terrific. During my car purchase in California, I drove through Stevens Creek Blvd, a 1 mile stretch that has showrooms of every possible manufacturer you can think of: from Honda to Maserati. And I never really saw any of them bustling with activity, just a few people any time of the day.

So, for a team lead to sell 5 cars/day (assuming a six day work week), not the car dealership but just one team, is quite a feat.

Quote:
Originally Posted by blackwasp View Post
I'm not even counting the time we have spent bringing the car, going to RTO, washing cars (have done it at times), fitting accessories (even this), driving the car to customer's place as he can't drive, etc.
Every post of yours on this topic throws up a unique perspective and changes the way I look at my SA. Sure, I'd like my car for the lowest price and all accessories for free, but knowing the SAs side of the story tells me that I need to draw the line somewhere.
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Old 1st March 2018, 09:24   #14
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Re: Salesman from Michigan sells 1,582 cars in a year! Beats 44-year record

If you read the main article, he explains how being part of the community helped a lot with people who knew the man to contact when it came to a car purchase. Also, Ali Reda had strict instructions to his peers on no mingling or socialising with him at work, and so on. So, the focus was always on just customer first. He even regularly treated his service guys once a month to ensure his customers cars got priority during service.

He obviously had a very focused approach to sales and holding on to his customer base.
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Old 1st March 2018, 09:34   #15
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Re: Salesman from Michigan sells 1,582 cars in a year! Beats 44-year record

An incredible achievement . Congrats to Ali Reda, and also to Joe Girard for holding the record for so many years. I read articles on Joe Girard initially being a bit sour about his record being broken, even roping his lawyer in to send a notice or something, but he eventually backtracked saying that he'll accept the new record as long as its audited.

The car scene in the USA is a bit different from India. There, customers will walk into a showroom and drive out with a new car (here, it's a greater number of visits, family, waiting for the exact variant & colour etc.). The average transaction time easily takes a minimum of 2 - 3 hours from start to end. So, to consistently sell 5 - 6 cars a day, I'm thinking Ali Reda has:

1. A large team taking care of the paperwork & formalities. He closes the deal and moves on to the next one.

2. A good number of fleet sales.

3. A phenomenal number of referrals, which any good salesman enjoys.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeroen View Post
An average person in the USA works around 230-240 days / 1700-1800 hours per year. Which means close to 7 cars a day.
I'd say for aggressive dealerships, its more like 6-day work weeks with 10 hours of work daily.

Last edited by GTO : 2nd March 2018 at 09:50.
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