Start selling vehicles the way your customers want to buy them and not the way you want to sell them.
Watch our video to discover “Why you Should Re-Think your Dealership’s Sales Process”. The transcript for the video is below for those of you who prefer reading over watching.
The Zooom Customer Purchase Experience is being used by top dealerships and dealer groups in Canada. Watch the video and learn why and how you can adopt this process for your dealership. Prior to the invention of the internet, customers intending to buy a car would visit 4 – 6 dealerships, gather the big glossy brochures and spend hours with a salesperson. Today, because of the unlimited amount of information available online, 48% of your customer are prepared to buy on their very first visit to a dealership. However, many of today’s customers are frustrated with outdated showroom sales processes that take far too long, have too many roadblocks and are out-of-touch with the knowledge and speed of today’s customers. Your dealership sales process needs to modernize to accommodate and align these hyper-informed and willing customers.
Consider the following:
- Toss out these elaborate 10 or 12 step “Road to the Sale” sales processes handed down from the 1980’s. Many of these take 3 to 4 hours to complete and are painful for both the customer and the salesperson. Your customers don’t want to be at your dealership this long.
- Streamline your sales process to 5 important and necessary steps. This creates a better experience for your customers and is much easier to teach new salespeople.
- The trade-in appraisal should be the first step of your sales process, not the last. Customers want to deal with this matter as soon as they enter your dealership. Many are in a negative equity position and simply want to establish whether or not they can buy a car. I am not suggesting that you simply appraise a vehicle and politely hand over a coupon with the trade-in value. What I am suggesting is that if the trade-in appraisal is is attended to at the beginning of your sales process, there is ample time to examine, road test and utilize technology to establish the right value. It also ensures that when your salesperson returns from a demonstration drive, you are ready to provide them (and your customer) with a trade-in value along with a payment-based proposal.
- Sales Managers should meet all customers within 10 minutes of entering your showroom. Forget this 1980’S stuff about meeting all customers before the leave the dealership. That’s too late. The customer has already mentally left the building and it almost always turns awkward – a salesperson dragging a poor customer into your office while you’re desperately trying to woof down a piece of pizza looking like a deer caught in the headlights. Treat customers like V.I.P.’s by meeting them early, thanking them for the opportunity to show them your vehicles and offering your personal assistance. It is also an ideal time to ask questions that salespeople will sometimes forget to ask.
- Avoid the “staring at white walls” syndrome. Throughout traditional sales processes, customers are often left in salesperson offices staring at white walls while the salesperson is visiting with a sales manager, looking for keys and a dealer plate, fetching a car for a demonstration drive, having a Sales Manager create a proposal, looking for documents, looking for a Financial Services Manager, on and on and on. Although some of these breaks with a customer are sometimes necessary, dealerships need to be consciously aware that customers are often spending far too much time waiting for things to move along, staring at white walls… and when they’re idle, they jump on their phone and go to competitors websites.
These thoughts are simply a little spoonful with respect to rethinking your sales process. Consider revamping your entire showroom (and e-lead) experience with our revolutionary Zooom Purchase Experience. Zooom is a streamlined automotive sales training, end-to-end sales process that has been implemented by both dealer groups and single point dealerships from coast to coast with amazing results. Improve your sales and profitability and deliver the kind of experience that your customers really want. Implementation is on-site, non-disruptive and motivating. I will personally meet you and your leadership team at your location anywhere in North America or fly you (on us) to our offices in Richmond, Virginia or Toronto, Ontario.
