The Leader Who Builds the Most Loyalty Wins. Here's How Tyler Slade Does It.

Tyler Slade didn't stumble into a leadership philosophy. He drew one up early, on purpose, because he saw that the auto industry rewarded a certain kind of selfishness and decided to go the other direction.

That bet paid off. Tyler is now the General Manager and Dealer Principal at Tim Dahle Auto Group in Utah, overseeing 13 locations. When he got his first shot at running a Nissan store as a general manager, he didn't have to post a job listing. He had a team of people who packed up and followed him without asking. That kind of loyalty doesn't happen by accident, and on this episode of Tactics, Tyler walked Jake through exactly how he built it.

Know Where You're Going Before You Start Building

Tyler's approach to team building starts with a mindset most early-career salespeople don't have: thinking about who you'll need around you long before you need them.

As he told Jake, day one of his career he already knew where he wanted to go. And because he knew that, he understood he was going to need people who trusted him. Every relationship he built along the way was shaped by that long-term frame.

The practical result: when it came time to take on bigger roles, the people he needed were already there, already loyal, already aligned on how he operated. He didn't need to convince them. He just needed to say where they were going.

Loyalty Is Built Through Value, Not Title

When Jake asked how Tyler actually built that loyal following, Tyler told a story. One of his closest team members came to him as a door-to-door vacuum salesman with a pregnant girlfriend and no clear path forward. Tyler hired him, trained him, and showed him how to make a real living. That person is now running his own store.

"The loyalty is with the person who builds their value," Tyler said. "I just wanted to help build their value."

His theory is straightforward: if you want people to be loyal to you, help them succeed first. Title and authority don't create loyalty. Results in someone's life do.

He also frames it in terms of what actually motivates him. Hitting a personal record himself is one thing. Watching an employee hit a personal income record? That, as Tyler put it, is what truly floats his boat.

The Time Formula for Developing People

Jake pressed Tyler on the practical side of this: with 13 locations and a full slate of responsibilities, how do you actually spend enough time with the people who need it?

Tyler's answer centers on the post-op conversation. After every deal, whether they closed it or not, he pulls the salesperson aside and walks the lot with them. What did you do well? What would you do differently? He lets them go first before he adds anything. These aren't scheduled sessions; they happen naturally, in the moments the work creates.

Early in his career, Tyler estimated he spent 95% of his time one-on-one with frontline reps. Now it's closer to 40 to 50 percent. His view is that nothing he does has a bigger financial impact on the company than that one-on-one time, even if the results take longer to show up.

As the team has grown, the model has shifted: Tyler now spends more of that time with his general managers, teaching them the same approach and asking a simple question: "Who's on your team?" The criteria for the answer are specific. Care, trust, and loyalty. If a manager can identify three people who fit all three, those are the people to invest in. Those are the future leaders.

The Foxhole Test

Tyler uses a recurring metaphor throughout the conversation that's worth pulling out on its own. When things get hard, when the quarter goes bad and financial pressure is mounting and the walls are closing in, who do you want in the foxhole with you?

His experience: the people he'd built genuine loyalty with didn't flinch. To a person, they got out of the foxhole and charged. The ones who didn't revealed themselves clearly, and quickly. One team member who held back when things got hard was gone within a year, not because Tyler pushed him out, but because the culture had already told him he didn't fit.

The foxhole isn't just a stress test for the team. It's a filter that tells you who you actually have.

The 5-to-1 Feedback Rule

On feedback, Tyler has a framework he's refined over 30 years and now describes as the 5-to-1 rule, though with newer team members he's shifted it closer to 10-to-1.

The idea: earn the right to deliver critical feedback by building up genuine, specific, honest positive feedback first. Five real compliments for every one hard conversation. Not flattery. Not filler. Things you actually noticed and mean.

Tyler walked Jake through a specific example. A salesperson let a customer leave the lot without looping in the manager, which in the car business is a hard rule violation. Because Tyler had already built up five genuine positives with this rep, he was able to drill into that mistake directly and have it land. The rep knew Tyler liked him, trusted him, and was only being hard because he cared. He never made that mistake again. He's now running his own store.

The secondary effect of the rule, which Jake noted in the conversation, is that it forces you to prioritize. When you're limited to one piece of critical feedback, you stop cataloging every small thing and start looking for the upstream cause. Most of the time, multiple problems trace back to a single root issue. Fix that and the rest follows.

Tyler's closing point on feedback is worth sitting with: when you win someone's heart, you get their shoulders, meaning they'll do anything for you. The feedback rule is, at its core, a method for winning hearts before asking for effort.

The Assumptive Close

When Jake asked for Tyler's favorite sales tactic, the answer was the assumptive close.

The premise: if you've done your job, presenting the car, handling financing, understanding what the customer wants, you don't need to ask for the sale. You assume it and move forward. You ask for the driver's license and insurance card to start the paperwork. You tell them your goal is to get them in and out fast because you're not interested in a transaction. You're interested in a lifetime relationship.

As Tyler framed it to Jake, a one-time transaction isn't exciting to him. What matters is that the customer has a good enough experience, with a car they love and people they trust, that they come back and bring their friends and family with them. The assumptive close isn't a manipulation tactic. It's a statement of what the salesperson actually values, delivered at the moment of decision.

Wrapping up

What runs through everything Tyler shared is a single throughline: long-term thinking applied consistently, in the small moments as much as the big ones.

Walking the lot after a deal. Asking a manager who's on their team. Giving five genuine compliments before delivering hard feedback. Assuming the close because you've already done the work that earns it.

None of these are complicated. All of them require patience and intention that most people in sales, especially early in a career, don't have. That gap is exactly where Tyler has built his edge for 30 years.

Transcript

Jake Cronin: Hey Everyone, I’m Jake Cronin - the founder & CEO of Siro - the AI platform for in-person sales teams. 

And this is Tactics, the show that dives deep with sales leaders across industries to uncover what top producing sales organizations do differently.

In today’s episode, we dig into some of the building blocks of success in sales leadership: building loyalty, trust, and accountability across your team.

Tyler Slade is the General Manager and Dealer Principle at the Tim Dahle Auto Group in Utah. And he joined me to talk about the importance of focusing on value creation over promotions, and the one feedback rule that’s helped him get the best out of his team.

We started on Tyler’s background and the early moves he made in his career that set him up for success down the line.

Alrighty. Tyler, welcome to the podcast.

Tyler Slade:

Hey, thanks, Jake. I'm excited to be here. This is going to be a fun conversation.

Jake Cronin:

I'm excited as well.

Tyler Slade:

Let's roll.

Jake Cronin:

Tyler, as someone who got such a crack start at sales and has always been long-term minded, how did you go about building your team when you first got into the manager role?

Tyler Slade:

So luckily I realized early in my career, day one, where I wanted to go. So I think it's critical to know where you want to go. Because I know where I wanted to go, I knew I was going to need a lot of people that trusted me, that liked me, that wanted to be on my team. When I had my first big opportunity to run this Nissan store as a general manager, I had literally a team of people that came with me and they were loyal to me because I had worked with them and built a relationship of trust with them through several years. And so when I said, "Hey boys, we're going to a new dealership," they all said, "Great." And they got in the truck and we left. And then they're like, "Okay, where are we going? " And I said, "Well, you'll know when we get there." And then when I pull in, they're like, "Oh, cool. This will be a good place." They didn't care.

Jake Cronin:

How'd you build that loyal following?

Tyler Slade:

Let me give it an anecdote. One of them came to me as a door-to-door vacuum salesman and has a girlfriend that is pregnant and he doesn't know what to do, but he knows he's got to take care of his soon to be child and wife. He comes and interviews with me and I'm like, "Listen, Jake, I'm going to help you here." His name's Jake too. And I'm like, "But I want you to do this. I want you to just listen. I'm going to train you. I'm going to teach you how to make a good living so you can provide for your family." And I brought him on board and that's exactly what he did. And I showed him the way on how to make enough money to support his family. So taking maybe someone who isn't necessarily one that you'd be like, "Hey, that's a sure fire winner." I grabbed somebody who really needed the help because I knew that he would be not only like he would listen to me because he needed to, but he would be loyal and now that person is running his own store.

And so I have a lot of examples of people just like that, that I just helped train them. So the idea was if I want them to be loyal to me and I want that success then I need to help them get success and it all happened that way. And so now when it's like, "Hey, I need you to come with me to this store," they're gone. They're coming. The loyalty is with the person that builds their value. And I just wanted to help build their value.

Jake Cronin:

What do you think other folks or other leaders are missing to not build that loyalty? What do you think a lot of leaders could be doing?

Tyler Slade:

How do you spell love with your kids? T-I-M-E. I think it's the same thing. I believe in the power of love. If somebody truly feels like you love them, love them enough to spend extra time showing them, building them up, caring about their family, taking them out to dinner with their spouses, being that person and bringing them in and saying, "Hey, I've got a busy day today, but I'm going to spend 30 minutes with this employee in my office and we're just going to talk about some things that maybe they need help with, or we can just talk through this about how they can make more money, be more successful. Have you thought about it this way?" I think it's just spending time with them and helping them realize their potential. I get much more satisfaction out of seeing them make more money than myself. Okay, that was cool, but seeing this other employee hit a personal record of their yearly income, that's truly what floats my boat and they know it. I'm all interested in that.

Jake Cronin:

Have you always thought that way? Have your motivations always been set that way or has that evolved later on in your career?

Tyler Slade:

I think it started early. It started early when I realized I was an industry that I could excel in. I drew up a plan early on how I was going to excel in this plan and it was more based on being less selfish and more giving to others because the industry is not that. It's a selfish industry. And I figured if I could zig while everybody else is zagging, that it would pay off. So at early point in my career, I knew that I needed to build a team through love.

Jake Cronin:

The T-I-M-E, you only have so much time in the day. And you've got a big team, you got a lot of people interview. How do you manage your time knowing that people need so much time to be developed and to cultivate those relationships and that loyalty?

Tyler Slade:

One of the things that I love to do is when I'm in the sales office working at car deal, I'm paying attention to what's happening. Then after we either sell the car or we don't, then it's the post-op. And to me, that is a critical time where it's like, come here salesman and we'll walk out and we'll take a little walk around the lot. I'm like, "all right, let's talk about the things you did well. Let's talk about the things that you want to do better." And then let them have that opportunity to share what they thought that they did well and what they need to do better. And then those coaching sessions, postmortem, whether we sold the deal or not, are the critical function in this because when you continue to do that, this employee's like, "Okay, Tyler really cares about me." It's building a lot of confidence in them so that, hey, in a coaching standpoint, next time I know they're going to be a little bit better and then time after that, I know they're going to be a little bit better and that time it's guaranteed to help them make ... They're going to make more money through this process. I'm not calendaring it per se, but I know when I see it because I have an opportunity after a deal just to go dissect it.

Jake Cronin:

So you built the habits around it. What percent of your time do you think is spent one-on-one with the frontline?

Tyler Slade:

I would say for the first half of my career, it was 95% and now what I wish it could be is 95%. Now it's probably 40%, 50%.

Jake Cronin:

You got to spend time hiring, dealing with issues, talking to folks like us, taking all your time. Yeah.

Tyler Slade:

That's right. But what I think about what will make the most financial impact to my company is that one-on-one time. Although it takes time and it's slow, but why not think of the long run over the short run? I'm always a long-term thinker rather than in a short-term.

Jake Cronin:

And how many locations are you now?

Tyler Slade:

We have 13 locations.

Jake Cronin:

So how do you scale yourself across those locations? When you're not there in the building, which is most of the buildings, how does that culture still translate to the people in the front lines?

Tyler Slade:

That's a great question. I think that one of the things that has helped, again, beginning with the end in mind, knowing that at an early age in my career that I was going to need people. Most of the people now that are running these stores are those original people. So they already actually know what I'm going to say before I say it. I can call and one of them will say, "Listen, I already know what you're going to say. You don't need to say it. I'm on it." Okay. Thank you. Click.

Jake Cronin:

Could you just rung and hang up. Yeah. That's all you need.

Tyler Slade:

Easiest call in the world, because we're already looking at the same thing. We already know, we're reading each other's mind, and that's a benefit. Now, if you don't have that benefit, that's a different story. But for someone who's just getting into an industry or just starting, I would be thinking about this. I'm not just training them to be the best salesperson right now. I'm training them to be a future dealer or general manager or leader of people. And that way, when it all comes together in 10, 20 years, it's pretty easy to know who you're going to call to go run this business or whatever it is. And that's what's happened for me.

Jake Cronin:

How much time do you spend with that core versus the frontline? Which of course, in sales or in dealerships, by attrition like any other difficult entry level job.

Tyler Slade:

Right.

Jake Cronin:

How much time do you spend with the front line versus your core, the management layers?

Tyler Slade:

My theory is now is to spend the time with leadership to teach them exactly what I'm telling you. It's like, okay, who are your people when it's your turn? You've got to be developing the next round of people like I helped develop you. And so my question simply to them is like, "Okay, who's on your team now? Who's on your team?" And they know what that means. They're like, "Okay, so-and-so, so-and-so, so-and-so, they're on the team." The reason they're on the team is because we know that they have it. First of all, they really care, they're loyal and you can trust them. Now, those three things are what we're looking for. Show me that you care a lot because if you care a lot, then I know that I've got the right guy. I got to be able to trust you and then I got to be able to know that you're loyal. These are the people that I want you to go spend more time with and develop. Those are the people that are going to be the future leaders of this company. And so I'll spend time with the different general managers identifying those people and maybe asking them, "Okay, what have you done this week to help so-and-so?"

Jake Cronin:

Yeah. I like that. Who's on your team?

Tyler Slade:

And what's interesting about that is you'll get in positions where you're in a foxhole in a business where things are just crashing on you. It is not good. And it seems like everything you're doing is wrong. You got financial pressure, maybe you've got shareholder pressure, whatever the pressure is, it gets real and it's like, we just had a bad quarter. Well, who do you want in that foxhole with you? And I love gathering them in a room and saying, "Boys, gals, we're in a foxhole and we got to get out of here and it's not going to be pretty. And how are you going to respond?" And these are people, again, that I trust and they're loyal and they care. To a T, every single one of them charged the goal, like got out of the foxhole and charged the enemy. Whatever that enemy is figuratively. And to see the wins that have come from that over my career, how do you think that's helped with the trust, the loyalty, and the care between each other?

Jake Cronin:

Well, it's a virtuous cycle where the more you have those moments, those crucible moments, the sort of deeper you get together.

Tyler Slade:

And it's interesting because we had one that didn't get out of the foxhole and it shocked me. I'm like, there is-

Jake Cronin:

A person who didn't.

Tyler Slade:

A person that didn't get out of the foxhole. Figurative foxhole. And right then and there, I knew that it was only a matter of time that we were going to be separated. And sure enough, within a year, "Hey boss, this isn't working out for me." And he left. And I didn't spend any time trying to save this person because he didn't fit the criteria. And that was just an eye-opener to me because I remembered when he didn't get out of the foxhole. I'm like, "That's probably going to mean that we're going to come to an end."

Jake Cronin:

Which is kind of painful.

Tyler Slade:

It is painful. It is painful. And it wasn't anything deliberate I did to push this person out, but it was just, it didn't fit the culture of the team that we're ready to go charge that enemy wall and break through whatever we needed to break through.

Jake Cronin:

What are you excited about the way the industry is shifting right now? What are you seeing as changes and what's exciting?

Tyler Slade:

We use the buzzword AI and it's like a catchphrase, right? It's almost overused now and people are like, "Stop it. Tell me what you really mean." And I've recently seen some things with AI where it's actually very actionable data that's helping generate revenue or it's actionable things that I didn't know. One of the things I love is when an employee comes in and says, "Hey boss, did you know? " I like to create a culture of, "Hey, did you know? " And the reason I like that is because I don't typically know at all. Maybe I do know. That's not the point. When someone says, "Hey boss, do you have a minute? Did you know ..." And whatever they tell me, if I did tell them, or if I did know, it's like, "Yeah, I did know that." But maybe it's only one out of 10 where they say something I didn't know. That's my blind spot. I need to know that. So I want to foster a culture of, "Hey, boss, did you know? " Well, AI is now allowing us to do a little bit of that without the human having to come knock on my door where I'm like, "Oh, okay. I did not know that. I didn't think about it that way and now I can get ahead of this."

And again, my industry is slow to move when it comes to tech. It's an old school business. It's an old model, but if you marry the old school model that still works with some of these new AI companies and ways to get better information, that to me is the sweet spot right now. Let me give you an example. SIRO's been that, "Hey, did you know for me from an AI standpoint, which I get more excited about is because my finance managers who are now trained to ask every customer when they come into the office, SIRO's listening and it's the finance managers are trained to say, all right, Mr. And Mrs. Customer, tell me what brought you in today. Why did you choose Tim Dalhe Nissan?" Let them give their spiel and then usually it's too superficial like, "I was on Google and I was looking for a car and your name popped up." And I'm like, "Okay, now finance people, I need you to ask follow up." Okay, so-

Jake Cronin:

Peel the onion.

Tyler Slade:

Yeah. Peel that onion. And so I'm trying to train the finance guys on peeling the onion back and I'm like, "I don't need you to remember anything they said because that's what SIRO's going to do." And then as they peel the onion back and then they move into selling the car, then SIRO is now taking all that data, literally hundreds of thousands of transactions. And then I go to SIRO and said, "Hey, tell me what source was my best source last month? What brought in the most customers?" Guess what? It's binary data. It's a computer that has no bias, who has no skin in the game, whether it should be some advertising company telling me, "Hey, look how much we brought you." Well, they have bias because they want us to continue with this radio ad or whatever it is. Well, SIRO doesn't have that bias. It's just giving me the flat data.

"Hey, Tyler, did you know?" I'm like, "No, I didn't. Please tell me." Well, you actually had 45% of your business came from your Google Home listing. And the reason they went to Google Home was actually because they saw a video pre-roll ad on YouTube that drove them to your Google U. And I'm like, " Okay, see, I didn't know that.

Jake Cronin:

"That's incredible. Yeah.

Tyler Slade:

So it wasn't really Google, it was YouTube, same company, but-

Jake Cronin:

Different content. Different effort on your side.

Tyler Slade:

And where I spend the money is different. So now I'm saying, "Hey, YouTube pre-roll, I need to do more there. I can see it's clearly working." Meanwhile, the traditional radio guy's coming in and saying, "No, no, that was us." I'm like, "You know what? If they would've said, I heard you on the radio, SIRO would've picked that up."

Jake Cronin:

How surprised have you been by those insights? I've

Tyler Slade:

Been doing this for 30 years now. It's fired me back up because I'm a tech guy anyways. I love technology and now I have technology to help me be a better dealer. Think about this. It's reengaged me in the business after 30 years. I'm like, "Okay, this is something that is new and it's exciting and it can help me generate more revenue. It can help me do everything I've said about in the past about developing people, helping them achieve their goals with their family. That's what floats my boat. And finally, I have something that's giving me that excitement again that I had earlier in my career and then it gets mundane and now here I am like, okay, I know that my fellow competition, they're typically not thinking this way and now I've got something that I can actually get ahead of them.

Jake Cronin:

A new edge.

Tyler Slade:

A new edge.

Jake Cronin:

I want to talk about feedback because it's such a critical thing in particularly sales roles and just for any direct report. How do you do feedback effectively as someone who's built an incredibly loyal base of supporters?

Tyler Slade:

I've coined it myself, maybe someone else has said it this way, but I've said, I like to employ the five to one rule. And in my early career is five to one. It's interesting how now it's gone to 10 to one, but let me explain. I learned early that if I wanted to, again, I've got people that are loyal, I got people that I trust and people that care. And what I do to make sure that those three things continue in constant force is I want to give them five really good, "Hey, attaboys." You know what, Jake, you did this and it was awesome and I noticed and you are extremely talented. These are absolute, genuine, you did this good moments. Compliments. They can't be fake. People read through that. They got to be real things. And if you do that five times, if I did that to the Jake I spoke about five times, that earned me one critical feedback.

And when I did it that way, because they've already been built up as someone that they know that I care about them. And I gave them that one critical piece of feedback. For example, Jake lets somebody leave the lot, a

Customer left the lot without contacting the manager. So in the car business, you should never allow that. A salesperson before a customer leaves needs to go touch the desk and say, "Hey, so and-so needs to leave. Here's what's happening." Then we have an opportunity to have manager intervention because we don't know what we don't know. Well, Jake let somebody go. And because I've already done the five compliments and now he's done something that is against the rules. So Jake, come on, let's go talk. We go walk on the lot and I really drilled him. I mean, I drilled him about the importance and it was hard. It was hard for him to hear, but he needed to hear it. And he knew that I liked him. He knew that I trusted him. He knew that I was only doing this to help him. The problem is if you only do critical analysis, if you only do critical feedback, then they're just going to tune you out.

So do you think Jake ever did that again? I would hope not. He did not. He did not do that ever again. And like I said, now he's running a store and doing incredible things and teaching the next generation the same thing, but now it's moved to 10 to one. We've learned that it's a little bit harder with the newer generation coming into the car business. I don't know if it's in all industries, but we've got to be a little bit more patient of building them up before we come really hard.

Jake Cronin:

Earn the rights to earn the trust to ...

Tyler Slade:

Earn the rights and earn the trust.

Jake Cronin:

What about when you have someone who's like, "Man, I've got 20 critical things for you in the last 10 minutes." When there's so many things, is it not a disservice to withhold that feedback?

Tyler Slade:

I would say prioritize. A lot of the things are going to be tied into a similar bucket. Maybe it really is the, they don't care enough bucket and all those fall in. If they did care enough, then most of these would be solved. So I would look for that pattern.

Jake Cronin:

Like what's upstream? You're doing all these things because you don't care. Well, let's talk about why you don't care and you can dig in there.

Tyler Slade:

I would really look further upstream, exactly. You said it better than me to see if there's a commonality there where we can just attack that issue.

Jake Cronin:

If you have to withhold yourself to only one piece of critical feedback per five or 10 attaboys, that really does force you to try to find the theme, prioritize, find the upstream. It's like a pretty cool forcing function.

Tyler Slade:

How many people, Jake, do you personally do you have stewardship over and how many of those people would love to hear a good positive feedback from you today?

Jake Cronin:

As you're talking to me, you're making me feel like, " Man, I am not that good of a manager."

Tyler Slade:

"It's hard. Yeah. But if it's on your mind and you're thinking about it every day, even if it's an elevator moment and you're like, " You got an elevator pitch to talk to so-and-so about how well he or she is doing in this area, "you need to have it on the top of your mind. Because you'll be surprised how many opportunities you'll get to be able to do that and you are going to win their hearts and when you win their hearts, you get their shoulders, which means they'll do anything for you. So think about how you're going to win their

Jake Cronin:

Heart. When you're in that ... When you're getting in the foxhole, you're in one of those moments, things are getting darker, the hallway's getting narrower, how do you get time or do you still spend so much time thinking about the people elements, putting yourself in the shoes of your people, what's in it for them when there's also your business is going to die, this is life or death for your business and that thing needs your attention. How does the amount of attention you give to your people ebb and flow depending on the state of the business?

Tyler Slade:

I would argue that your best chance to save your business are those people on your team. Your best chance to knock down that enemy coming out of the foxhole. You cannot do it yourself. They're going to come up with ideas you never even thought about and ideas that you don't even have to present, but they're doing it because they care. They trust you and you trust them and you have that loyalty and they just want to survive with you. They don't want to see you fail either. They don't want to fail. They're going to come up with ideas that you never would have proposed.

Jake Cronin:

That reminds me of a similarly related, a great strategy, poorly executed, gets destroyed by a bad strategy, well executed.

Tyler Slade:

That's right.

Jake Cronin:

I want to get into the lightning round. First, what's your favorite sales book?

Tyler Slade:

Good to Great.

Jake Cronin:

Good to great.

Tyler Slade:

Absolutely.

Jake Cronin:

Why?

Tyler Slade:

Good to Grey opened my mind that there is no limit to greatness. There's always more to developing people. What's

Jake Cronin:

Your favorite TV show?

Tyler Slade:

Favorite TV show? Pluribus actually right now.

Jake Cronin:

Okay.

Tyler Slade:

Because of unification of the minds. It's a real freaky sci-fi thing, but it's again, if all the people combined their minds, how cool would that be to get the right data out?

Jake Cronin:

How powerful that can be. Yeah. What are three favorite software tools?

Tyler Slade:

I would say my CRM, which would be VIN Solutions, because that tracks all my customers. CRO right now is my top because it's using AI to get me data of, "Hey, did you know at the most efficient scale possible?"

Jake Cronin:

Very happy to hear that one.

Tyler Slade:

And then number three would be probably my Meta glasses.

Jake Cronin:

I love it.

Tyler Slade:

Just because it's using AI in a hardware fashion that's actually practical in many ways.

Jake Cronin:

One plug for Meta. What's your favorite thing about the Meta glasses?

Tyler Slade:

That's a hard one. I like the real time being able to record or take a picture in the moment. It can capture things that you wouldn't capture with any other device because it's already there. I'm riding my mountain bike. I can ask it to record and I keep my hands on the handlebars to stay safe in the mountains of Utah and I capture something that I've never been able to capture before.

Jake Cronin:

Final question. What's your favorite sales tactic?

Tyler Slade:

The assumptive close. I think that we, as salespeople, ask too many times for the sale. If you do a good job, if you present the features, advantages and benefits, don't ask for the sale. Move forward with the sale. Assume the sale. Like you already know they like the car. You already know that they want to get rid of their trade-in. You already know that the deal is good. You already know the interest rate and financing is handled. Okay. I need your driver's license and I need your insurance card so that we can get the paperwork going because my goal is to get you in and out really fast because keep in mind, Mr. Customer, I'm not interested in this transaction. I'm interested in a lifetime relationship so that not only you, but your friends and family will want to buy from me because you have such an incredible experience with the car you love and people you trust. So license and insurance card, Jake, and we'll get this deal wrapped up.

Jake Cronin:

I love it. What's so cool about that line too is it's so real with the economics of dealerships. That's true. You say it from the heart. The loyalty is what is important.

Tyler Slade:

If it means this car deal and this is the only time we're going to see each other and it's a transaction, then it's a transaction. I'm not interested in that. If you really want the car, I'll do it, but that's not exciting to me. Like what's more important to me that you have such a good experience, that you love the car, that you love the experience, that you love the deal so much, that you'll only come back and buy cars from me and you'll tell all your friends and family to come buy from me. That is the whole point of me doing this business.

Jake Cronin:

Well, thank you so much for coming here today. It's been amazing hosting with The Office and I think this was a really valuable conversation for people who are listening.

Tyler Slade:

It's fun to sit back and just kind of think about some of these things in a podcast form and articulate them after 30 years of doing this. So thank you for the opportunity.

Jake Cronin:

Of course.

Tyler Slade:

My pleasure.

Jake Cronin:

And thanks for watching. We're here to help you level up as a sales leader, so please tell us what you would like to hear on the next episode. And if you do have an in person sales team, be sure to check out Siro.ai. I'm Jay Cronin. Until next time.