Chapter 39 — Exercises: Your 90-Day Plan

These exercises turn the chapter from something you read into something you run. The most valuable ones are in Parts C and M — the doing exercises that produce real pieces of your 30/60/90-day business plan. Work them with your portfolio open beside you.

Difficulty legend: ⭐ basic recall · ⭐⭐ applied analysis · ⭐⭐⭐ synthesis & judgment · ⭐⭐⭐⭐ advanced / extension

Most exercises here have no answer key (selected answers live in Appendix I). For the calculation items, a worked numeric answer is hidden in a <details> block so you can check yourself.

Part A — Conceptual Understanding ⭐

Short answer. One to three sentences each.

A1. What is the one job of your first thirty days, according to this chapter — and what is it explicitly not?

A2. Define a leading indicator and a lagging indicator in your own words, and give one example of each from a salesperson's day.

A3. Why does the chapter tell you to shadow Carmen and not Rick? What's the danger of learning from a skilled person who runs the wrong model?

A4. What is the rough unit-count goal for each of the three phases (months 1, 2, and 3)?

A5. Name the two protected blocks in the model day. Why are they the "heart of the day," and why are they the first things a new salesperson abandons?

A6. What is the difference between a recoverable and a non-recoverable draw, and which one can turn a slow ramp into a debt you spend the year repaying?

A7. List the five leading indicators the chapter says predict a new salesperson's success.

A8. In the slump protocol, what does "flood the funnel" mean, and why is it the opposite of what your fear tells you to do?

A9. What does it mean to "live below your best month," and what problem does it prevent?

A10. What four parts make up the assembled 30/60/90-day business plan (the chapter's Project Checkpoint)?

A11. Why does the chapter say to master your ~5 core models cold rather than trying to memorize all 350 units on the lot? What's the working-knowledge standard for everything else?

A12. What is the "30-second review" at the end of the model day, and how is it different from a rumination? (Recall it from Chapter 6 if you need to.)

A13. The chapter says the first ninety days are "rarely beaten by one fatal mistake." If not one big mistake, what actually washes most new salespeople out — and what does that imply about the value of a plan?

Part B — Applied Analysis ⭐⭐

Apply the chapter to specific situations. A short paragraph each.

B1. A new salesperson on day 22 says: "I've taken nine ups and only sold one car. I'm clearly bad at this — maybe I should quit." Diagnose what's actually happening, and rewrite their self-assessment the way Carmen would.

B2. Look at this month-three funnel for a salesperson:

  Ups taken         30
  Demos             12
  Write-ups          9
  Deliveries         7

Where is the leak? What is the one thing this person should work on next month, and why is "sell more cars" the wrong answer?

B3. A salesperson's manager says: "Your closing ratio is good, but you're not selling enough cars." Both of those are lagging indicators. Which leading indicator is most likely the real problem, and how would the salesperson confirm it from their own activity log?

B4. Two new hires both sell five cars in month two. One spent every downtime waiting for the next up; the other spent downtime building a sphere list and following up with every customer. Predict where each is in month seven, and name the specific asset the second one has that the first one doesn't.

B5. A salesperson gets a great $7,800 check in month four and immediately signs a lease on a nicer apartment and a new phone plan that together raise their fixed monthly costs by $1,500. Explain, using the money-stress idea from the chapter, why this is more dangerous than their slow month one was.

B6. A new salesperson treats their unsold "not now" customers as losses and deletes them from the CRM to "keep it clean." Explain what they're actually throwing away and what it will cost them by month six.

B7. It's a dead, rainy Tuesday and there are no ups on the lot. A new salesperson is scrolling their phone at the front glass "because there's nothing to do." List at least five productive, pipeline-building things they could be doing instead, drawn from the model day.

B8. A new salesperson is on a non-recoverable draw for the first 90 days, then switches to recoverable. They had a great month two (8 units) and a slow month three (4 units). Explain how the draw mechanics differ across those two months, and what the salesperson should do differently in their budgeting once the non-recoverable period ends. (You don't need exact dollars — explain the logic.)

B9. Two salespeople hit the same week-eight slump. One audits their CRM and discovers their daily follow-up calls dropped from 15 to 4 over two weeks; the other refuses to look and insists "I've just lost my touch at closing." Using the leading/lagging distinction, explain which one will recover faster and why — and what the second one's refusal to audit is really costing them.

Part C — Skills & Practice ⭐⭐–⭐⭐⭐

The doing exercises. These produce real artifacts for your portfolio.

C1. Build your phase map. On one page, write your personal 30/60/90 phase map: the three phases, the goal for each, and the specific portfolio components (by chapter) you'll activate in each. Use §39.1–§39.3 and the Project Checkpoint as your template.

C2. Write your model day. Adapt the §39.4 model day to your store's hours and your shift. Include the morning set, both protected blocks (prospecting and follow-up), your floor rhythm, and your close-out + reset (name the actual song/walk/ritual you'll use to "leave it at the curb"). Be specific enough that you could hand it to a stranger and they'd know exactly how to run your day.

C3. Build your leading-indicator scorecard. Starting from a real income goal, run the backward math (income ÷ 12 ÷ all-in-per-car = cars; ÷ close rate = opportunities; ÷ working days = daily target) to set a daily target for each of the five leading indicators. Make it a one-page form you can actually check off every day for a week.

C4. Calculate your income ramp. Using ~$500 all-in per car, project your realistic first-four-months income with a 1 / 5 / 10 / 14 unit ramp. Then figure out, given your actual monthly living expenses, how much non-recoverable draw or savings cushion you'd need to survive months one and two without panic. Write the number down — it's the real "can I afford to start this job" number.

C5. Write your slump-trigger card. On a half page (the one you'll tape inside your plan's cover), write your six-step slump protocol in your own words, plus: (a) your trigger ("when I've had ___ bad days in a row, I run this"); and (b) the name of the specific person who is your "second set of eyes." Make it runnable on a day when you can't think straight.

C6. Role-play the month-one shadow debrief. With a partner (or in writing), script the conversation where you, as a green pea, debrief a deal you just watched Carmen run. Write three "why did you…?" questions you'd ask her, and the kind of thirty-second answer each should produce. The goal is to practice shadowing with questions, not just watching.

C7. Diagnose your own funnel. Take a real (or realistic) month of your funnel — ups taken, demos, write-ups, deliveries — and compute the ratio between each stage. Identify your single weakest ratio (your "leak"), and write the one coachable behavior you'll work on next month to fix it, plus the specific tactic you'll use. Then write the sentence you'd want your manager to say to you in your one-on-one (model it on Big Mike's "write up more of the demos you already earn").

C8. Write your "still here on day 91" letter. Write a one-page letter to yourself, dated ninety days from your start, describing the salesperson you intend to be at that point: your unit count, the habits that are now automatic, the assets in your pipeline, and the one slump you survived and how. This is a commitment device — keep it where you'll see it. (Then, on day 91, actually re-read it and grade yourself honestly.)

C9. Build your month-one learning scorecard. Design the daily checklist you'll actually use in your first thirty days (model it on the §39.1 month-one activity box). Make every item controllable and checkable — a lot walk, vehicles studied, a deal shadowed, training time, a walk-around rehearsed. The test: could you "win" this card on a day you sell zero cars? If yes, you've built it right.

Part D — Synthesis & Critical Thinking ⭐⭐⭐

Judgment, ethics, and trade-offs. A paragraph or two each.

D1. The chapter argues the first ninety days are a "survival filter, not a talent filter." Do you agree? Make the strongest case against this claim (i.e., that talent really is the main thing), then rebut it using evidence from the chapter and from Chapter 6.

D2. It's the last Saturday of your month three. You're at nine units and you know that one more deal would feel like real momentum (and might cross a small bonus tier from your pay plan, Ch 5). A customer in front of you is wavering, and you could push hard — pressure them, rush them — and probably close it tonight. Walk through the decision using Theme #3 (ethics are profitable) and what you know about CSI, referrals, and your own burnout. What do you do, and why is the "patient" choice also the better business choice?

D3. The model day puts follow-up and prospecting in protected blocks — but a new salesperson's instinct is that "real" selling only happens with a live customer, so those blocks feel like a waste when the floor is busy. Argue for why the protected blocks must survive even on a busy day, and what specifically is lost over six months if they're the first thing cut.

D4. A friend who's also new at a different store tells you their manager threw them straight onto the floor on day one with no shadowing, no product training, "sink or swim." Using the onboarding logic from this chapter (and Ch 33), explain why this approach produces the brutal 90-day washout rate — and what your friend should do to build the missing structure themselves.

D5. Compare the manager's 90-day onboarding plan (Ch 33) with the salesperson's 90-day survival plan (this chapter). They're "the same plan from two chairs." Where do they line up exactly, and where would they differ — i.e., what does the salesperson have to provide for themselves that a good manager would otherwise provide?

D6. The chapter claims that "the clean choice is the better business choice" even at the high-pressure moment of month-end (when you're one car short of a milestone). A skeptic says: "That's a nice story for a textbook, but in the real world the salesperson who pressures hard on the last Saturday sells one more car than the patient one — and a car in the hand beats a referral that may never come." Make the skeptic's strongest case, then rebut it with everything you know about CSI, referrals, charge-backs, and the compounding nature of the warm pipeline.

D7. Devon (Case Study 2) made seven mistakes and washed out; Jordan made a version of one (overselling the Mercados) and thrived. Is the lesson "don't make mistakes" or something else? Argue for what the real protective factor is, and explain why a plan that assumes you'll make ordinary mistakes is more robust than one that depends on you not making any.

Part M — Mixed / Interleaved Practice ⭐⭐–⭐⭐⭐

Each item deliberately combines this chapter with named earlier chapters.

M1. (Ch 39 + Ch 5 + Ch 6.) Take your activity-to-income model from Chapter 5 and your resilience plan from Chapter 6, and show exactly how they feed into the §39.5 leading-indicator scorecard and the §39.4 model day. Where does each prior component "plug in"? (This is the assembly logic of the whole chapter — do it concretely.)

M2. (Ch 39 + Ch 7 + Ch 14.) Jordan's first up (Ch 7) blew up in nine seconds; Jordan's Mercado close (Ch 14) was won and then talked back out of. Place each mistake on the 90-day timeline (which phase?), and explain how a structured plan would have turned each painful loss into a faster-learned lesson rather than a confidence-destroying event.

M3. (Ch 39 + Ch 16 + Ch 17.) Build the month-two version of your sphere-of-influence list (Ch 17) and your follow-up cadence (Ch 16), and explain why starting both in month two — rather than "once I'm established" — is the single highest-leverage choice in your first ninety days. Use the "Salesperson A vs. B at month seven" logic.

M4. (Ch 39 + Ch 33.) Take the funnel from Chapter 33 (Big Mike's view of Jordan: great demos, write-up leak) and write the one-on-one you would want your manager to have with you in month three. What single leak would you most want them to spotlight, and what one lever would you ask them to help you pull?

M5. (Ch 39 + Ch 6 + Ch 5.) A new salesperson hits a slump in week eight, panics about money, and is tempted to (a) pull back on activity and (b) raise the pressure on the few customers they do get. Diagnose both impulses using the slump protocol (Ch 6), the money-stress trap (Ch 6/5), and the activity-to-income math (Ch 5). What should they do instead, step by step?

M6. (Ch 39 + Ch 15 + Ch 16.) Trace one customer from your first delivery through their first year: the delivery itself (Ch 15), the 24-hour / 7-day / 30-day cadence (Ch 16), and the referral ask. Show where each touch falls in your model day's follow-up block, and estimate (using the long-game logic) what that one well-handled customer could be worth to you in referrals over a year.

M7. (Ch 39 + the whole portfolio.) This is the capstone interleave. Lay out all thirty-eight portfolio components on a table, and for each one, write which phase of your 90-day plan it activates (1–30, 31–60, or 61–90) and one sentence on how you'll actually use it that month. (E.g., "Greeting word track [Ch 7] — Days 1–30, rehearse it; Days 31+, run it on every up.") This is essentially the Project Checkpoint done in detail — it forces you to see that you didn't learn thirty-eight separate things, you built one integrated business. Don't skip components you find awkward; those are the ones most worth scheduling deliberately.

M8. (Ch 39 + Ch 3 + Ch 30.) In month two you'll take your first solo ups across all five customer types (Ch 3) and you'll face your first real ethical pressure (Ch 30) — a manager or a deal nudging you toward a shortcut. Write a short plan for how your daily process keeps you both effective and ethical under the money pressure of a thin early month: which habits protect your integrity, and how does your personal ethics code (the lines you won't cross) get operationalized into the model day rather than sitting unused in a binder?

Part E — Research & Extension ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Optional, for the motivated reader. These go beyond the chapter.

E1. Interview a salesperson who has survived more than five years in the business (any retail, not just cars). Ask them: what almost made you quit in your first ninety days, and what got you through it? Compare their answer to this chapter's claims about the survival filter, the slump, and the money ramp. Write up what matched and what surprised you.

E2. Find your state's (or a major manufacturer's) typical new-hire training/onboarding structure, or a reputable industry source (e.g., NADA workforce studies) on automotive sales turnover. Compare the real-world turnover and onboarding patterns to the chapter's "70%+ annual turnover, half gone in 90 days" framing. Note where the public data confirms, complicates, or can't confirm the claim — and cite your source honestly (remember the Tier system from the continuity rules: don't invent a precise statistic you can't support).

E3. Design a seven-day leading-indicator tracking sheet, use it for one real week (in any goal-driven activity — job search, sales, workouts, study), and write a short reflection: did tracking the inputs change your behavior, and did the outputs follow? Connect what you find to why the chapter insists on managing leading over lagging indicators.

A note on doing vs. reading

The single most valuable exercise in this entire set is not a question — it's the assembly. If you do only one thing from this chapter, complete the Project Checkpoint (the four-part 30/60/90-day business plan) using C1, C2, C3, and C5 above, and tie it together with M7. Everything else here is practice; that document is the deliverable. The salespeople who survive their first ninety days are almost never the ones who read the most about it. They're the ones who walked in on day one with a written plan in hand and ran it — especially on the days they didn't feel like it. Build the plan. Then go run it.