It may seem impossible to make a profit in car sales during uncertain economic times like these, but that’s not true. Despite money being tight for everyone, people still need cars to get to and from work and to get their kids to and from school. They’ll be buying those cars from someone, why not you? To set yourself apart from the competition, follow these tips for better customer service and sales at your car dealership.

Be Present

Pay attention to your team. Are your salespeople communicating with your service techs? How efficiently are you moving customers from talking with salespeople to sitting down with someone in your Finance and Insurance department?

If you observe your sales staff and their interactions with customers, you can give them informed suggestions and recommendations to help them close more sales. At the same time, if you’re observing and encouraging your staff to operate as a team, you’ll be present when and if relations are going south between a customer and a sales associate. If this happens and your whole team is onboard and ready to lend a hand, you can execute a quick and seamless turnover, moving the customer over to dealing with another sales associate.

If you pay attention to all of your dealership’s processes, you can make sure that things are running smoothly and efficiently. Even when there’s a problem, you can fix it and smooth things over, rather than losing a sale and potentially getting a bad customer review online.

Ask for Feedback

Put a comments and suggestions box out for your customers and employees to give you feedback. When you sell a car or someone comes in for service, encourage them to fill out a feedback form to tell you what you did right and what you can improve upon.

Encourage your employees to come to you with any suggestions that they may have. Schedule a weekly or monthly staff meeting for your entire crew. In addition to some words of encouragement and advice, open the floor up for comments and suggestions.

Really listen to the feedback you get. Just because you don’t want to hear something doesn’t mean that it’s not something you should hear. Finally, be sure to recognize and give credit when members of your team go above and beyond the call of duty. Giving them a sense of ownership like that will motivate them to work better for you.