Exotic-car dealers say some brands doing better this year

There are many ways to measure the economy.  One of them is when the affluent crowd starts buying high-end items like yachts and exotic automobiles again.  In 2001 sales of exotic cars represented 4.6% of U.S. auto sales; today this number has doubled to 9% as revealed in the following newspaper article out today.  We're hearing a similar surge in new business in the residential cleaning industry with sales in most companies up over the same period in 2009 -- some as much as 200% (as in increasing from $200,000/year to over $400,000/year).


Reproduced from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper
Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Lamborghini Diablo

Sales of some exotic luxury automobiles have revved up this year as affluent Americans indulge more freely in these pricey pleasures.


In the recession, mounting concern over stock portfolios and feelings of guilt about extravagant buys caused some wealthy consumers to rein in conspicuous sending.

It didn't feel right buying a $300,000 Rolls-Royce when people were being foreclosed out of their homes or were losing jobs, said Jesse Toprak, vice president of industry trends at TrueCar.com, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based new-car pricing website.

With the economy improving — albeit slowly — the well-heeled are splurging again.

Nationwide, combined new-car sales for the top six exotic luxury brands have grown 16 percent in the first seven months of 2010, compared with the same period last year, Toprak said.


That's 3,065 exotic autos sold by Bentley, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, Maybach and Rolls-Royce through July versus 2,650 in 2009.

"It's not a full recovery, but certainly things are improving," he said.

In South Florida, exotic-car dealers are seeing similar results.

"Sales are definitely stronger this year," said Garrett Hayim, president of Ferrari-Maserati of Fort Lauderdale on North Federal Highway.

Ferraris are produced in such limited quantities that sales of these "upper echelon" vehicles are less "swayed by the changes in the economy," Hayim said.

Still, the average selling price for some pre-owned Ferraris did take a dive in late 2008 — as much as 40 percent for some models — but has since rebounded. The price drop however lured new customers to the brand who seized the opportunity to snag a Ferrari at relatively "cheaper" prices, Hayim said.

There is a 5 year waiting list for the $300,000 Ferrari Italia 458

Hayim said most of his pre-owned exotic cars in stock sell within 30 days, but there's a waiting list for new Ferraris. It's about five years for the 458 Italia, Ferrari's "latest and greatest," Hayim said.

The two-seater hits a top speed of 202 miles per hour and has several new design, aerodynamics and engine elements.

South Florida dealers say it's mostly well-off locals who are buying their exotic vehicles and some still prefer to keep their prized purchases under wraps.

A Boca Raton man would not comment Thursday at Hayim's Ferrari dealership as he took delivery of a new 458 Italia, worth about $300,000.

"The exotic luxury car market has eased up quite a bit, starting from December," said Chris Murray, director of sales at Braman Motorcars of Palm Beach in West Palm Beach.

Braman has been in business for more than 30 years and sells several exotic and luxury brands including Porsche, Rolls-Royce, Bentley, BMW and Audi.

Exotic luxury cars generally cost more than mainstream premium brands because they aren't mass produced and have rare or signature design and engineering elements that assembly-line vehicles don't.

Nationwide, exotic-car models will represent about nine percent of all new-car models on sale in 2010, that's up from 4.6 percent in 2001, according to Edmunds.com.

Murray said Porsche sales are better this year and Rolls-Royce sales have climbed significantly as well, especially in the Southeastern U.S. region.

He attributes Rolls-Royce's success largely to sales of the Ghost, a smaller and less-expensive model from the iconic brand.


With base prices starting at $250,000, the "entry-level" Ghost has brought a lot more interest to the brand and is attracting a different type of Rolls-Royce buyer than usual, Murray said.

At Ferrari-Maserati of Palm Beach, Ferrari sales have also remained relatively unchanged in the downturn, General Sales Manager Tom Clinton said.

"The Ferrari world is still the Ferrari world and people who buy Ferraris will always buy them," he said.

Clinton said Maserati sales had been slower, but started picking up recently. The price tag for a new Maserati typically ranges on average from $110,000 to $150,000.


Veteran auto dealer Craig Zinn said activity has increased recently at his Spyker dealerships in Pembroke Pines and Miami on word of the new C8 Aileron.

The Dutch-minted sportscar is priced around $240,000, but won't be in-house until later this year, which is inhibiting his ability to meet current demand, Zinn said.

While pent up demand has brought some affluents back into the driver's seats of these swanky wheels, some analysts remain cautious about future sales.

"It's unlikely we'll see extremely robust exotic car sales until consumer confidence, the job market and stock indexes improve," TrueCar's Toprak said.

Not Knowing What You Don’t Know Can be VERY Expensive

We have all crossed paths with the proverbial “know-it-all” more often then we care to think about. You know: the expert on every topic from the secrets of the universe to the science of medicine and the idiosyncrasies of politics. It’s almost jaw-dropping when a peer group gathers at a business function and a discussion ensues on a topic on which a person in the group, who has no experience or expertise on the subject, takes the floor and asserts his or her opinion. It is instantly obvious to most other people at the meeting that this individual really has no idea what he or she doesn’t know.


I’m not sure what motivates this behavior in some people, and since I know what I don’t know on this topic, I did some research on the Internet and found the following: “Know-it-alls are set on 'transmit' most of the time. They are not up for receiving input from others. They want to be the ones giving out, transmitting their pearls of 'wisdom'. What they don't know isn't worth knowing and when they do learn something well… according to them, they knew it already. The know-it-all may be a highly intelligent person but their know-it-all attitude makes them narrow minded and less and less able to learn as the years roll by.”


Know-it-alls usually stand out quickly in a crowd because they tend to be bombastic and often arrogant. In fact, today with Internet forums and a variety of social media like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, people can easily voice their opinions unrestricted by the formality of face-to-face protocol and virtual anonymity. I have witnessed forum discussions specific to the cleaning industry where one or two individuals who dominated the conversations were your typical know-it-all folks. It was clear from their comments they were far from being the knowledgeable authorities they purported to be. We all know people in the cleaning business who certainly know how to clean a house but only think they know how to run a business. Just because a person has been cleaning homes on their own or operating a cleaning service for years, doesn’t necessarily quality them to espouse advice on operating a successful cleaning business. Yet, these are exactly the class of people who shrug off the concept of seeking out expert advice which could shave years off their learning curve, save thousands of dollars wasted on trial and error, help them manage their businesses more effectively and efficiently, attract great employees and build a wonderful staff and – and this is no small item, make a lot more profit in the process.


Take our House Cleaning Biz 101 course for example.


Some people might say, “I know a lot of the stuff you address in that program.” And, they might be right. In fact, let’s say they know 75% of the information we discuss. Let’s go so far as to say they know 90% even. It’s the 10% or 25% they DON’T know that could make the difference between failure, mediocrity or fantastic success! The problem is that these people simply don’t know what they don’t know.


I have been hiring, training and managing people in various industries since 1961. And I have done pretty well at it, too. However, after just four years in the residential cleaning business, I recognized the unique challenge of employee turnover in this industry. Yes, I was able to resolve some of the employee retention problems based on my decades of human resource management experience. But I knew what I didn’t know and I turned to some professional help. I hired a human resource expert and, at a cost of $25,000, we implemented a 5-step employee selection process, which is now part of the House Cleaning Biz 101 program. When properly implemented, it, along with other HR issues discussed in our program, has helped our clients find better employees and dramatically increase their workforce tenure.

If this was the only thing they were able to gain from the program, it would be worth thousands of dollars (and they didn’t invest $25,000 like I did to gain access to it). This is just one little gem that we share in the course; there are many, many more – any one of which can easily justify many times the small investment. This may sound like an excuse for a sales pitch for my program, but in fact most people who read this blog already own a copy of House Cleaning Biz 101. I use this example because it is a good one to illustrate my case in point.


I would be remiss in not adding one more thought to this topic: Not using what you DO know can also be very expensive.


Bypassing the opportunity to learn proven ideas and systems is one thing; failing to use information you do become privy to is an equally flawed outcome. However, human nature being what it is, this scenario plays out from grade school through college and throughout peoples' careers.


Not everyone who attends Harvard Law School becomes a top lawyer; some don’t even graduate. Not every student who graduates from Johns Hopkins University becomes a noted doctor. Yet all students get the same education from the same books and professors. Then, it also depends on whether and how the knowledge is subsequently applied which makes the difference between the drop-outs, the mediocre, the average and those who excel at their professions. Our industry is no different.

The truth of the matter is, we should be like sponges when it comes to learning things we don't know and to be ready to admit that we don't know what we don't know.  Then, when we know what we don't know and learn what we need to learn, we need to do our best to apply what we've learned.

.

PRESS RELEASE ISSUED TODAY BY HOME CLEANER MAGAZINE

August 18, 2010
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Gary Goranson and WorkEnders, Inc Endorses the Verified Home Cleaning Pro Program

Atlanta, GA - Home Cleaner Magazine is pleased to announce that Gary Goranson of WorkEnders has officially endorsed the Verified Home Cleaning Pro program and has signed on as a Program Partner. "Having an endorsement from Gary Goranson is clear indication we are on to something big for the industry. Gary is well known in the professional home cleaning industry as a trail blazer and pioneer. His program, House Cleaning Biz 101 course has help thousands build credible professional companies, we are very excited about this," said Home Cleaner Magazine Founder and Publisher Perry Phillips.

"Most consumers looking to hire someone to clean their homes ask one basic question of the potential provider, "How much do you charge?" While price is obviously a consideration, in the overall scheme of things it is not at the top of the list of criteria which should be considered. The fact is, most householders just don't know what other questions to ask the person or company to whom they're thinking about entrusting their personal property and, ultimately, the well-being of family and pets. While asking for references from some of the prospective provider's other customers can be helpful in determining how satisfied they are with the provider's cleaning, there are other factors which overshadow workmanship issues.

Recently, Home Cleaner Magazine launched a new independent screening program wherein professional house cleaning companies go through an extensive approval process which allows them to qualify as a participant of the Verified Home Cleaning Pro program. Over the course of approximately two weeks, the process includes verification that the provider is currently and properly licensed and insured, including legally required Workers' Compensation Insurance. There is a requirement for the participant to ensure a safe working environment for its workers and to teach and enforce an OSHA-compliant safety program. The process also includes a requirement to provide verifiable customer references. The participant must also commit to a Service Pledge which includes ethical business practices, fair pricing, prompt attention to resolving complaints and a commitment to excellence. The Verified Home Cleaning Pro seal will help identify professionals with whom the public will feel more comfortable hiring, thereby providing a benefit to both participating member companies and consumers alike. I fully endorse the Verified Home Cleaning Pro Program"- Gary Goranson, WorkEnders, Inc.


WorkEnders, Inc., a Boynton Beach, Florida based company which has provided extensive training programs for more than 2,700 cleaning business owners in 55 countries through it's House Cleaning Biz 101 course http://www.housecleaningbiz101.com/. Gary Goranson  is the founder of WorkEnders, Inc. and developer of this one-of-a-kind training program for the residential cleaning industry."


Home Cleaner Magazine is the only publication exclusively for the professional home cleaning industry. Subscribers have access to business building information, industry news, and events. Home Cleaner Magazine is also the only publication for the industry offered in print. For more information visit http://www.homecleanermagazine.com/

You Own a Cleaning Business, but Who are YOUR Clients?

As the owner of a residential cleaning business, the answer to this question appears to be obvious: Your clients are the families and individuals for whom your company performs house cleaning chores. However, if this is your answer you would only be partially right.


Actually, YOUR clients are the hard-working folks who clean for those customers. The folks they clean for are THEIR customers. Does this sound like some form of abstract double speak?



The Definition of a Customer or Client


According to Wikipedia, “the word derives from "custom," meaning "habit"; a customer was someone who frequented a particular shop, who made it a habit to purchase goods of the sort the shop sold there rather than elsewhere, and with whom the shopkeeper had to maintain a relationship to keep his or her "custom," meaning expected purchases in the future . . . . However, some managers in this environment, in which the emphasis is on being helpful to the people one is dealing with rather than on commercial sales, comfortably use the word "customer" to both internal and external customers.”




Let’s think about this for a moment.


Good client relations are a key to encouraging purchasers of your service to continue to patronize your company on a long term basis; hopefully for many years. You have read books and articles on the subject and have likely attended seminars on the topic as well. However, and this point is key to my argument, neither you nor your management or office support staff have direct oversight of how well your employees are serving their clients. You are forced to rely on the people to whom you assign cleaning schedules to provide high standards of service and customer care. Without this result, people will certainly cease to patronize your company’s service.


Now, if you view your employees as YOUR customers and regard the relationship similarly to the way you should want to nurse a paying customer (as referenced in the underlined portion of the quote from Wikipedia above), think of how this management behavior can create a positive impact on your company’s end customers.


You see, if you want to get a paying customer to trust your company, do business with you on a long-term basis – in other words, becomes totally loyal and committed to your company, this won’t happen unless you earn their loyalty and respect. The same holds true with the people who work for your company.


How do you behave to attract a new client to your business? You advertise and market and tout your service’s best features. You make a case for why the public should do business with your company rather than the competition. Then when your courtship works, you go all out to earn their continuing patronage. Doesn’t it make sense that we adopt the same behavior when it comes to our employees?


You go out of your way to keep your paying customers happy because you know you’re not the only game in town. There are other cleaning services actively looking for an opportunity to usurp your clients at the first opportunity. Well, think about it; the same holds true when it comes to good employees. Good workers are in big demand in this industry but, on top of that, they’re in demand by other types of businesses as well. To attract and retain the best employees, think of using the same kind of behaviors and tactics you use to find and keep loyal and profitable clients.



You May be the Boss, but . . .


Many, many (too many then I care to think about) years ago when I was opening up sub-distributorships in the vacuum cleaner business, I encountered a bad situation with one of my offices. The sub distributor decided to move on in another direction, and left town without notice leaving a staff of angry, unpaid commission sales people for me to face.


I called a meeting with his abandoned sales staff, found out how much money they were owned, and wrote each of them a check right on the spot. Needless to say I garnered some fans right on the spot, too. Since I had intended to place the abandoned operation under my wing, I felt it was better and less expensive to pay a week’s worth of owed commissions than to lose the people in place and start all over again. I also felt it was the moral thing to do, regardless of whether the staff stayed on with me or moved on like their recent boss had done.


Near the end of the meeting, when I sensed I had won the attendees over, I made the following statement: “I don’t care if you like me or not, I just want you to do a good job selling. However, one thing I do demand is your respect.” At that point, a cocky young man in the group responded to my comment with, “Gary, you cannot DEMAND my respect; you have to earn it.” After I took a minute or so to react, and after thinking about his comment for a few seconds I said, “Do you know what – you’re right, and I will do my best to do just that.”


I must have earned his respect, as well as all the other sales people, because he and the rest of the crew went on to produce record new sales numbers for that office.



That early lesson paid off throughout my career


The Golden Rule tells us to “do unto others as we would have done unto you.” I like to give a little twist to that code: “Do unto others as they want done unto them.” In other words, treat them as THEY want to be treated, not strictly as you think they should be treated. This might sound like a play on words, but if you really think about it there is a difference.


Many years following the incident I described with the brash young salesman I described above, we had opened up a 4,500 automotive appearance center in Toronto for my TIDY CAR business. The people we hired to polish cars, detail interiors, install sunroofs, etc. were of a similar mold to that of the good folks we hire in the residential cleaning industry. But we treated them like the V.I.P.s all good employees really are and handed out Employee of the Month Awards and hung their Employee of the Month Photos in the customer waiting area.


One 23-year-old young man was Carlos Frietas, an immigrant to Canada from Venezuela. When we presented him with an Employee of the Month Award, he broke into a huge smile and then went out into the shop area and set a new time record for cutting a whole in a car’s roof and installing a sunroof in a total of nine minutes! When I went out into the shop to admire the quality of his work and the new installation record, he said, “Mr. Goranson, this is the first place I’ve ever worked that has treated me like a real person. I love my job and I love working here.”


As it turned out, Carlos went on to become one of two travelling Operations Managers for TIDY CAR, travelling from town to town throughout the USA training franchise owners and their employees on the art of auto appearance and enhancement services. Today he resides in South Florida and has done very well for himself in other business environments.


I believe that the way we treat the employees we are lucky enough to supervise and share space on this planet with can make all the difference in the world for both us and them. A HUGE DIFFERENCE. Start today to look for ways you, too, can improve the relationship between you and your employees so that they will in turn do what they can to satisfy THEIR clients and YOUR bottom line.

Good Salesmanship is Not a Contest

Some fifty years ago after graduating from high school I answered a help wanted ad promising huge rewards for selling “education.” It turned out to be a job selling encyclopedias door-to-door on straight commission. After spending a week learning the sales pitch, I hit the street to seek my fortune. I actually made a sale on my second call. It was also the last sale I made for that company and I quit two weeks later. I didn’t realize it then, but in retrospect the reason I failed to make another sale was because I just didn’t believe in the product. After making that first sale, I think that I subconsciously felt guilty about taking all that money from that family for over-priced books using high pressure tactics I had been taught. Lesson number one: You must believe in the product or service you’re selling.

The Tri-Star Vacuum Cleaner

Up until about 25 to 30 years ago, professional sales trainers advocated sales tactics which in fact made the selling process a contest of wits between salesman and customer. While my career in encyclopedia sales ended abruptly after only a few weeks, I did spend the rest of the 1960s in direct sales, most of those years in the vacuum cleaner business. I believed in my product so much that I managed to build a sales organization of some 300 men and women across western Canada that sold over 37,000 machines in a four-year span (machines which, today, retails for $1,900 U.S. – about ten times what we used to sell it for back then. http://www.oregoncityvacuum.com/aihoclsy1.html). Still, we used to train our sales force to view the selling process as a game of manipulation, like mental arm-wrestling with the prospective customer. Frankly, these practices were the norm for the day in the direct sales field and remain the status quo with many sales people to this day.


The major reason for my company’s success and ethical reputation was due to two important policies I implemented: (1) never to hire experienced direct sales people and (2) to let customers who woke up the next morning with buyer’s remorse cancel their contracts.


With respect to the first item, experienced direct sales people tend to float like gypsies from company to company and product to product. Oh, yes, they could sell – but, the problems they could cause in the process were an unwelcome side effect. Manipulation of the customer is one thing; deceit and misrepresentation is something else altogether. I managed to avoid this problem by hiring inexperienced people from virtually all other walks of life – other than direct sales, and training them my way.


As for the second policy, back in those days there was no cooling off period wherein the customer could cancel the contract after making a purchase. Once they signed on the dotted line and the sales person walked out the door, the purchase was legally binding and non-cancellable. Believe me, when you have a successful sales closure rate of 55% on cold call sales presentations (that is, when the customer did not contact you or even know what you were selling when you knocked on their door), you’re going to have your share of buyer’s remorse. While it was common practice in the industry to hold people to the contract at all costs, I figured it didn’t take a genius to understand that it is better to have 90% of your sales be satisfied customers than to have 10% of your customers angry and complaining to friends and the Better Business Bureau.

By the way, these are two more of the lessons I have learned and practices I have followed throughout the balance of my 50 years in business: (1) wherever possible, bring in raw recruits and train them YOUR way; they're less likely to bring any baggage with them from previous jobs and they tend to be more loyal to you; and, (2) don’t be afraid to give people their money back if they’re unhappy with their dealings with you; how can your company incur negative publicity if all you have on record are clients who were happy with their business dealings with you?

So, What IS the Art of Selling?



Selling is a process by which both you and another party have an equal opportunity to achieve a benefit from the transaction. It is not an adversarial contest of wits but rather a form of communicating a potential gain for the prospective client. I gained more insight into this theory beginning over three decades ago from the world-renowned sales trainer and motivational speaker, Jim Cathcart.

A must-have book for any
 sales professional's library

Jim’s concept of Relationship Selling has brought the art of salesmanship into the 21st century. It is the model every professional sales person needs to adopt to truly succeed at salesmanship. He does not merely preach the philosophy of relationship selling, he lives and breathes it himself. Since hiring Jim as a speaker back in 1979 (and he discusses that experience on one of his video previews), I wound up hiring him for several other major events over the years prior to selling TIDY CAR a decade later. Our relationship has transcended that of business and we remain friends to this day.

Unfortunately, many people are uncomfortable with the sales process due in no small part to the scenario I described above. They dislike the thought of entering a mental jousting contest with a prospective client. And having been through the old school of salesmanship myself, I can understand why. However, when you understand the process of relationship selling, I can tell you from experience that you will embrace the concept with your heart and soul. You’ll actually look forward to every opportunity you have to develop a mutually rewarding relationship.

In the old School of Thought, the sale was completed when the sales person "closed" the sale.  In reality, the sale only begins when the client says, "yes."  There is no business-to-client relationship where this holds truer than in our industry.  Every week on every visit you're reinforcing the fact that your client made the right decision in hiring your company.  And instead of over-selling your service, the strategy should be to undersell it and deliver more than you promise. 

People do expect a clean home when you visit.  What they don't expect is the fresh carnation your team leaves behind when they come -- or the Andes mint glued to a card that says, "We enjoy keeping your home in mint condition."  The ongoing relationship your team reinforces by leaving a personal note on every cleaning day is another little "extra" they didn't expect when they hired you -- "We love the new living room suite," or "We see Mitzi visited the dog groomer this week ...so cute," or "We included the baseboards in our rotational schedule this week." 

I strongly encourage you to get a copy of Jim's book on Relationship Selling.  In the meantime, on your next sales call think of the meeting with your prospective client as the beginning of a long and mutually rewarding relationship and not a mere dollars and cents transaction.  When you, too, adopt this philosophy you're going to find the process far more relaxed and the prospect much more comfortable.

Controlling Employee Turnover in the Residential Cleaning Business

The topic of employee turnover is probably the longest-standing challenge in our industry. There are many factors contributing to turnover in our industry, but it all starts with the employee selection process itself. Unfortunately, few small business owners have any traininig in human resource issues and this lack of knowledge leads to owner frustration and dissapointment.



Cleaning homes is certainly not brain surgery, but what many owners don't understand is that most applicants aren't good candidates for tenure on the job.  In most cases, employment candidates are selected based on gut feeling rather than by an objective series of events that helps to remove the guesswork from the process. Our http://www.housecleaningbiz101.com/ program spends a great deal of time teaching owners professional human resource methods - with a huge emphasis on the employee selection process.

If you're concerned about employee turnover, you should be. Typically in this industry, the turnover rate is between 300% and 400%. Since it generally takes about 90 days to get a new hire up to speed, with a 400% turnover rate this means that you just get the average employee trained and then they're gone. On the other hand, there are owners who have employees who have been with then for five and ten years --- some even longer. This requires the knowledge and skills to retain them, not just to select the ones most likely to succeed.


If you do well in selecting the best candidates, the next step in retention is to ensure they're properly trained. They need to be well compensated. Theny need to be well managed and motivated to succeed on the job. You need to provide a comfortable and pleasant work environment. You need to be a leader, not a "boss." These are all skills which can be and need to be learned in order to build a successful work force which will generate the kind of revenues you need and deserve in this industry.

To see a situation where the owner has an employee-retention record that would be envied by companies in industries supposedly far more stable than the cleaning business, check out the video at http://www.bucketsnbows.com/meet_our_staff.htm .  Debbie Sardone is a shining example of leadership in our industry.