The Sales Manager:

• Is a key person in the dealership.
• Is a car buff, with interest in and enthusiasm about automobiles.
• Must establish the dealership’s image in marketing and must ensure that sales team members consistently live up to that image with distinctive, proactive customer responsiveness.
• Must be detail-oriented, charting individual sales, establishing individual sales goals and dealership bonus plans, and constantly monitoring dealership sales against the business plan.
• Must be capable of working independently, effectively managing his or her time and work flow.
• Entails considerable walking, along with working with and motivating sales team members and greeting customers.
• Involves paperwork - establishing sales goals and working with sales team members to establish their personal sales goals.
• Includes analyzing current sales figures as compared with plan, identifying the customer market through market studies documentation, team members' sale performance, writing letters to customers who have made recent purchases in the dealership, writing advertising for special sales in the dealership, and posting notices to fill vacancies on the sales team.
• Involves deciding how Sales Consultants can team and determining product promotions and pricing.
• Requires knowledge of vehicles in order to accurately appraise/evaluate them for their retail potential.
• Requires decisiveness in setting prices for used vehicles and determining which will be wholesaled.

• Much customer contact
• Much contact with people in all dealership departments
• Much paperwork
• Requirement to perform more than one task at once
• Much analytical work
• Work with high-dollar amounts
• Long hours

The work of the Sales Manager:

• Creates and maintains the image of the dealership through advertising and is a prominent presence within the dealership, interacting continually with sales team members and customers.
• Is responsible for accurately planning and forecasting sales, developing annual sales goals for the dealership as part of an annual business plan, and constantly monitoring the dealership’s sales in relation to the plan, revising the plan when appropriate.
• Is responsible for hiring and developing sales team members in the dealership and ensuring customer enthusiasm.
• Helps to complete sales, balancing the needs of customers, Sales Consultants, and the dealership.
• Is responsible for training, developing, and motivating sales team members and serves as a role model.
• Must know all of the variables that will affect the business plan, including supply, demand, profit, competition, promotion, pricing, manufacturing issues, insurance rates, and finance rates.
• Must be able to take measures to compensate for the unexpected.
• Controls the inventory of used vehicles in the dealership, working closely with the Office Manager/Controller.
• Is responsible for appraising and evaluating the retail potential of vehicles, which requires being attuned to the resale market both in the area and nationally.
• Must determine which traded vehicles will be reconditioned and sold and which will be wholesaled.
• Must ensure that traded vehicles are serviced, cleaned, and returned to stock and that the lot is not only neat and presentable but also appropriately displays the inventory.

• Analysis and Problem Solving
• Customer Enthusiasm
• Decisiveness
• Delegating and Empowering
• Initiative
• Judgement
• Motivating and Coaching
• Organizing and Planning
• Strategic Leadership
• Team Building
• Versatility
• Communication

• Dealer or
• General Manager