One man’s success story

EDMONTON, ALTA. – Chad Tanasiychuk’s family roots date back to some of the earliest Ukrainian settlers to Alberta. As such, the family members have a definite trait of always working to better themselves.

Tanasiychuk currently works as the finance/sales manager at Londonderry Dodge Chrysler Jeep in Edmonton. He has been in the car industry for almost nine years, loves every minute of it, and is making an extremely good living. However, life was not always so good. A few years ago he was holding various manual labour jobs, living from paycheque to paycheque and deep in debt.  

He left school at 16 and worked as a laborour for years. He was working a summer job erecting Quonset tents when he was 24 when a freak accident nearly crushed him to death and changed his life.

“With my back blown out, my dreams and aspirations to own my own concrete finishing business were ended. My family suggested I try the car business. In December 2004, I got my first job at a domestic store in Edmonton, and have never looked back,” he said.

In 2006, as a struggling car salesperson, his dealership sent him to a training seminar put on by Joe Verde Sales and Management Training. 

One full day of the training was focused on goal setting. Tanasiychuk’s said that day changed his life forever.

“The information in class about goal setting completely woke me up. This is the point everything changed for me.”

We were told to write down our goals. With those goals, take the realistic ones and attach a one, a two to the somewhat realistic goals and a three to the unrealistic goals, he explained.

“I took all of my debt and wrote it down with a date to have everything paid in full. I wrote down that I would become a sales manager within a year, which I achieved. That I would be married by the time I was 30, which I was. That I would own a $500,000 house by the time I was 35 (he owned it by 33.)

“All the realistic goals were crossed off in a matter of one year. Even some of the most unrealistic goals came to fruition,” he said, noting it all started in class with simply writing it down and saying it out loud.”

Over the past seven years he has held several sales management positions. He also served for a couple of years as a finance manager, to learn about the finance side of the business.

He currently works with his wife, Krystle, who is also a finance manager. He is based at a satellite location of Londonderry Dodge Chrysler Jeep in Edmonton that operates as a Buy Here, Pay Here location for the dealership.

Six months ago they piloted a new approach as the dealership felt it was losing business by forcing customers to travel 10 minutes to the main dealership location for the finance office. Chad now serves as both the finance manager and sales manager. That move has proven to be “an extremely successful approach.”

His satellite location on average sells 15 vehicles per month at a very healthy average profit per vehicle. About 50 per cent of these sales are new and 50 per cent used inventory.

According to Tanasiychuk, one of his top best practice tips is to never stop learning. He constantly studies and reads training books.

Aside from goal setting, he has some other key points that he applies.

“I used to over think sales, but now I realize it’s not all about selling a vehicle. It’s about coming to work to work. As much as 80 per cent of customers are normal people and want to hear from someone who is just like them. Don’t use empty lines. They want to hear from a normal person. Just be like the customer and you’ll do a much better job.”

Looking to the future, Tanasiychuk is not losing site of one key goal he marked as being unrealistic almost seven years ago. He is determined to become a dealer principal by the age of 40.