Why Your Salespeople Stay Stuck (It's Not the Advice)

You've told them what to do three times. They can recite it back to you. And in the moment, they do the same thing they've always done. They're not lazy — they're protected. This episode walks through the free worksheet that finds out what's actually holding them in place.

In this episode of Dealer Leadership, Jason Rigby walks through Why You Stay Stuck, a free worksheet for salespeople who know what to do and keep not doing it. Run it in a one-on-one: the salesperson names the moment they keep mishandling, figures out what their usual response is protecting them from, picks one small replacement, rehearses it, and tracks three real tries.

What's on the sheet:

1. Start with what's working — what they already do well with customers
2. Pick the moment — one recent customer moment they keep handling the same way
3. What the old way does for them — the no they avoid, the pride they protect, the hope they keep down
4. Which one is it, really? — they avoided it, the words weren't there, they never learned how, or they tried and it went badly
5. The different response — one sentence, one question, one call, small enough to survive
6. Practice it before they need it — out loud, with a partner, the awkward part twice
7. Three tries — track what happened and what they learned
8. The support that would actually help — and a review date with their coach

In this episode:

• Why repeating the same advice louder is not coaching
• The four things a stuck habit protects a salesperson from — including the one nobody talks about: hope
• Four kinds of stuck, four different fixes — and why treating all of them as attitude loses three out of four
• Why a veteran resists practicing a basic question, and how to make the step small enough that their pride survives it
• The question to ask before you give the same advice again: "What makes your usual response easier in that moment — and what would help you try something different?"

DOWNLOAD THE FREE WORKSHEET (3-page PDF): https://dealerleadership.com/worksheets/why-you-stay-stuck.pdf

Print pages 1–2 for the salesperson. Page 3 is the coaching page — directions for the manager running it. Keep that one. Nothing on the sheet gets scored or filed.

More free worksheets for dealership leaders: https://dealerleadership.com/resources/worksheets

THE BOOK BEHIND THIS EPISODE: The thinking under this worksheet comes from How We Change by Ross Ellenhorn — why people stay the same even when staying the same is hurting them. Not a car book. It'll change how you coach anyway. Get it here: https://amzn.to/47myrcv (As an Amazon Associate, Dealer Leadership earns from qualifying purchases — no extra cost to you.)

Bring one stuck person, process, or number to a free 30-minute Leak Finder Session: https://dealerleadership.com

Jason Rigby — Dealer Leadership jason@dealerleadership.com