Using the popular equity-mining tool AutoAlert and its mobile app on a smartphone, a select team at Norm Reeves Honda Superstore consistently sells 80 or more units a month to customers — in the service drive.
“Only when our service customers have completed their conversation with their service advisor do we introduce them to our Vehicle Improvement Program and ask if Norm Reeves Honda can purchase their vehicle,” said Vince Zannelli, Used Car Buyer and VIP Team Lead for the Cerritos, Calif. dealership.
This VIP team of eight, including Zannelli, consistently sells between 80 and 90 units a month in the drive using the mobile AutoAlert tool.
The AutoAlert mobile app, Zannelli said, puts on the team’s smartphones every detail the VIP team requires to know a customer’s vehicle equity position and other factors that make the customer highly likely to want to pursue this purchase invitation.
“We look at 100 service customer appointments a day and 95 of them will talk with us,” said Zannelli. He started selling cars in 1969 and who along the way has been a general sales manager and GM. He joined the Norm Reeves organization nine years ago.
“I don’t think selling in the drive would work without this mobile AutoAlert tool,” Zannelli said, “because it enables me within two minutes to compile a detailed and accurate, VIN-specific, appraisal and buy presentation. Customers simply won’t wait around for all that to get done the old way.”
With the AutoAlert mobile tool on a smartphone, a sales associate simply scans the customer’s vehicle VIN and the AutoAlert app then populates the phone with not only vehicle data but also data about that customer’s present situation, including vehicle equity, lease or finance payments remaining, vehicle mileage, warranty status and more.
Because AutoAlert is a customer database analysis and sales opportunity-identification tool, it instantly compiles daily lists of sales opportunities for the day. It identifies these existing customer opportunities by vehicle equity, lease or contract term, and vehicle make, model and year.
At Norm Reeves Honda, the VIP team starts early. Before 7 a.m., some of the team is reviewing that day’s opportunity list, referenced against the day’s service appointments. The team calls these appointments to confirm them – a gesture service appreciates – and while speaking to the customer asks if while their vehicle is in service might Norm Reeves Honda speak to them about buying their vehicle and putting them into a new Honda for about the same payment.
Zannelli said selling in the drive is a different ball game from selling showroom ups. “First off,” he said, “the car-sales lingo and attitude must go. The key phrase instead is, ‘we’d like to buy your car.’ It’s a zero pressure, all smiles, and a let-us-help-you attitude.”
More than 2,000 automobile dealerships and more than 25,000 individual users have benefited from added sales, profits, commissions and individualized support and training that come with each AutoAlert installation. Founded in 2002, AutoAlert, Inc. is the first and only company of its kind to offer dealership and enterprise wide business intelligence software, support and training.
For more information, contact Nathan Warner, Director of Marketing, 949-398-7008 or email Nathan@autoalert.com or visit www.autoalert.com
