By Sean Kelley, CEO, Car Motivators
Right or wrong, your employees will try to meet the expectations given to them by their managers. Wrong expectations hold our business back. There is a glaring example of a bogus set of expectations set by thousands of automotive sales managers across the country. These false expectations are set to hundreds of thousands of car salespeople daily, and its costs are immeasurable. Some of the costs are:
- Increased employee turnover
- Decreasing sales results
- Higher cost of customer acquisition
- Commoditization of your product
- Transactional one-time sales
- Decreasing customer loyalty
The unfortunate set of expectations costing you and other dealers is the traditional road to the sale. Before you stop reading, let me say this: the traditional road to the sale is not obsolete. It is still a part of what it takes to sell cars today. Though, it is only about 25% of what it takes to maximize a salespersons potential in 2019. Imagine if you were hired as a heart surgeon, and they only gave you 25% of the tools and the training necessary to do it right. Can you imagine the implications? Yet, we do this every day. When we teach our salespeople, the road to the sale starts with a meet-and-greet and ends with the delivery, we are giving them 25% of the training necessary to truly succeed today.
That is why one of my amazing dealers and I, decided to take a closer look at the way customers buy cars in 2019. We took 15 years of internet sales experience from myself and combined it with leading tech vendors, third party lead provider best practices, and consumer research and built “E-Selling 2019: The New Road to the Sale.”
Put Your Best Salesperson on the Point
The traditional road to the sale started with the meet-and-greet because where did salespeople find customers? On the lot! “Stand on the point!” Managers used to call out to their best salespeople. Unfortunately, the herds have moved on, and you can’t find enough customers on the lot to sustain the paychecks and livelihood of all your sales team. Let’s teach our salespeople to fish in the pond where almost ALL customers swim the internet. That is the NEW point! Thus, the first step in E-Selling 2019 is “Attract Buyers Online.” Salespeople need to identify their ideal customers, create personalized marketing messages that attract them, and leverage the tools at their disposal to attract customers.
Treat the Pixels Like People
Once you attract a customer, you can do the par for the course email template auto-responder spam followed by voicemail saying, “Let me know if you have any questions.” Of course, this isn’t relevant, and you are not treating the pixels like people, which is why the next step in the new road to the sale is “Translate and Customize Your Response.” You need to make bold moves, speak to your customer directly, and treat them online just as you would walking up to a customer. You are translating the information when you understand the lead source, the raw lead info, and what the customer is trying to accomplish. It is, after all, a virtual world.
It’s All in the Approach
Now that you have customized your response, the next step is the engagement itself. Communication between customers and salespeople has become more complex than ever. Weren’t things so much simpler when we just talked to customers face-to-face or on phone calls? Now, customers communicate through text, Facetime, Facebook message, LinkedIn, email, and of course, the phone. Meet customers where they are and treat them the way they want to be treated by leveraging the channels they leverage. Attempt to contact customers through these channels, and when you talk to more customers, you will find yourself selling more cars.
Pretend CSI Starts and Ends Before They Show Up
How does your pre-arrival experience differ from that of your competitors? What can your employees do to add value, obligate your customers to show up, and ultimately create lay-downs before they arrive at your dealership? We pondered this for quite some time and came to the conclusion that there were several ways. First, show the work you are putting into prepping for the appointment with personalized video. Second, set expectations and outline your process before the customer shows up. Finally, build your credibility ahead of time with a value proposition and digital evidence manual. These best practices have increased some of my dealers’ appointment show rates by almost 20%.
Enter the Road to The Sale, as We’ve Always Known It, NOT
You’re realizing now that there are several vital steps in the new road to the sale that will maximize sales performance. After all that, it’s time to enter into the traditional road to the sale, but with a few tweaks. Assess needs and suggest a better solution. If you sell like a kiosk, you can be replaced by a kiosk. Quit order taking because the customer picked it out online. Newsflash! They aren’t the expert, YOU ARE! Don’t negotiate, validate. Hold gross when you set expectations that prices are firm early and often. More importantly, use all the tech tools, both free and paid, such as Edmunds trade value or vAuto market comparison printout, to validate the pricing. Utilize these before your proposal and after they ask for a discount.
If a tree falls in the woods and no one’s around, does it make a sound?
Each day you have happy, satisfied customers. Some during their purchase and others are happy due to following up or customer service. Are you capital digitizing on these opportunities? Don’t let those happy customers not make a sound. Capitalize by digitizing these customer experiences and market them to potential buyers across as many social networks as possible.
The Delivery is Just the Beginning
Stop treating customers like they are a one-car buyer and start treating them like they are a 30-car buyer- but do it digitally! Use the FREE technology at your disposal to scale up your sales operations and stay in touch with your customers. The last step in the E-Selling process is NOT the delivery. It is “Digital Relationship Development.” Every person on your team should be developing digital relationships as part of their salesperson routine. In doing so, they are continually attracting new customers, customizing their engagements, scaling up their operation, and adding more people to their long-term sales funnel. Anyone who clicks, like or comments should be treated as a lead. Translate and customize a response to them, engage them, create a pre-arrival experience, and digital relationship long before they visit your dealership!
As such, E-Selling as a process does not look like a linear model with a start and end point. It’s a cycle that never ends; it is self-sustaining and is the ultimate solution to our greatest industry challenges: commoditization, transactional sales with low customer loyalty, and employee turnover. And it starts with leadership and clear expectations. Teach your team a modern-day selling process, hire people that are willing to engage in it, and hold the team accountable to mastering it. As such, you will achieve significantly better results today and in the future.
About the Author
Sean Kelley #thecarbizcoach has successfully managed dealers for a decade, drastically lowering employee turnover, increasing profit, customer retention, and client satisfaction. Now, as CEO of Car Motivators Sean helps dealers from coast to coast across the country. His mission is to ensure dealers achieve great results through their people and technology. He was Dealershipnews.com consultant of the year in 2018 and was in the top 10 sales coaches on Ambition. Sean creates winning cultures with his unique self-developed approach to coaching and people development, DRIVEC3 coaching.
