Indulge me for a minute. I want you to think back to the last major purchase you made.
It could’ve been a car — for yourself or for a loved one. It could’ve been tuition. It could’ve been a house, or a house repair. Or a vehicle repair. Whatever it was, it comes to mind quickly because you haven’t forgotten it, have you? You haven’t forgotten something that took a lot of consideration, not to mention hard-earned dollars and straight-up guts, to make possible.
Now, while you’re thinking back, imagine walking back into that dealership (or realtor’s office, service lane, whatever it may be) and seeing the very person who asked you to write the check. They look you in the face and say, “Welcome back, John!”
But your name is Jeffrey.
Or, even worse, they say, “How’s the new transmission?” And you bought a new exhaust system.
How do you feel about this salesperson now? Feel like giving him more money? Feel like trusting his input? Feel like he cares the least bit about you, the purchase you made, the business you gave him? Does this feel like a good seller–buyer relationship? I’ll answer for you: No.
Look, I’m not the first to point out that this is the wrong way to do business. But I have to tell you, it still happens — all the time. Dealers have a lot of customers, with a lot of different needs, at very different stages in the buying cycle.
Today’s customers are armed with constantly changing technology, and they come at you from all sides when they’re ready to do business. If you don’t connect with them the right way, they’ll find someone who will — in the blink of an eye.
Last time we talked about how important it is to know your customer — the first pillar of my Catch and Keep customer strategy.
Know their similarities and differences … know what it takes to earn their repeat business … know all the personal details that make them feel understood. Today I want to build on that. I want to talk about effective communication with customers, something that requires getting three things right:
1) The message: the difference between a customer opening your email and closing the door on your relationship.
2)The timing, which is more important than ever today.
3) The channel, because it’s critical that we allow the customers to use the ones they prefer, and today there are more channels to manage than ever.
Step 1: Be true to your target
If you read my Pillar 1 story, if you’ve heard my Catch and Keep strategy session, if you’ve ever had one conversation with me, you’ve probably heard the infamous story about my wife’s Christmas present fiasco. Long story short (no, really!), she fell in love with a car we saw a holiday commercial for, and I pulled strings to get it for her by Christmas Day. By the time the car needed routine maintenance, the dealership had forgotten that she was the owner — not me.
They’d forgotten that she had kids and needed a hand getting in and out of the service lane. They’d forgotten that she didn’t need to be their customer. So what happened? She forgot to keep doing business with them. That’s right, she ditched them. And she tells anyone who will listen.
This is a big mistake we call mistargeting — and it will put you out of business. Here’s how:
- 54 percent of your customers or prospects will unsubscribe from you if they’re mistargeted.
- 29 percent of mistargeted customers will be less likely to buy a product from you.
So how do you avoid mistargeting? Well, if Pillar 1 was all about using your CRM to know your customer, Pillar 2 is all about segmenting it. Segment customers into specific categories: Their age and gender, which tells you a lot about the most optimal times and channels for communication; their unique position in the buying cycle, which can require drastically different messaging; and other attributes like digital footprints and social clues, which help paint a picture of consumers’ needs and desires.
Be diligent about it; don’t send blanket messages to the whole database. Send the right messages to the right segments.
Targeting versus mistargeting isn’t a matter of magic or guessing. You have to capture real-time measurements and feedback on your messaging. One thing I recommend in particular is a post-mortem meeting on marketing gone wrong; it’s not fun to look your mistakes in the face, but I promise it’s better than losing more customers and wasting marketing dollars.
Step 2: Time it right
Knowing your customer means knowing where they are in the buying cycle, and when it makes sense to pitch them a new product or service specific to their needs. If you get it wrong, they’ll think you’re checked out, and they’ll check out, too. “How can I need new brakes? I just bought my car two days ago.” “No, I don’t want to trade in my old car — you just sold me a new car!”
Ready for some more stats? Here’s what bad timing can do for your dealership:
- 45 percent of customers who receive a poorly timed (i.e., meaningless) communication from you will mark you as spam.
- 54 percent will unsubscribe, and nothing’s more expensive than that.
And how do you avoid bad timing? You make it your business to know the customer lifecycle — by managing it properly in your CRM. You make sure your offers respect your customers’ time frames: Call them up and talk about getting them into snow tires before the first snowfall, and call them again when it’s time for a spring cleaning.
Just think, that could be two extra business interactions with one customer per year. Above all, make it your business to communicate to customers (one way or another) regularly, without letting enough time pass that the relationship weakens.
Step 3: Change the channel
If you know your customers, you should also know how they like to communicate — and how they don’t. If you call the texters and email the walk-ins, they won’t care what you have to say. They’ll just assume you care about your own preferences instead of theirs.
This is what happens to your dealership when you choose the wrong channel or don’t know your customer:
- 68 percent will automatically delete communications that come through the wrong channel.
Why? Because they no longer see value in them. They don’t want you in their camp, which means you have to start from scratch.
To avoid channel mishaps, you simply must define and constantly refine a strategy that acknowledges customer preferences and accounts for their differences.
What you get when you get it right
Add up all the possible missteps I’ve mentioned (and I’ve only mentioned a few) and you can see how dreadfully easy it is to mistarget your way out of market share … and out of future market share. You’ll lose the potential for long-term profitability.
But when you get it right … the right message, right time, right channel … you get stronger relationships — repeat business from your committed, raving fans. I don’t need to tell you what that means to the long-term health and success of your whole business.
That’s why I built my Catch and Keep strategy on the basics: Know your customer and own your message. Next time, I’ll talk more about how you can leverage a deep understanding of the lifecycle to catch and keep more profitable customers, so stay tuned.
Percentages mentioned above sourced from Janrain/Blue Research.
Sean Stapleton is VP of sales and marketing for VinSolutions.
From adding service bays and express lanes to extending hours, many dealerships are investing heavily in fixed operations. However, the impact of that investment to the bottom line could be minimized if your fixed ops employees are unhappy.
Dissatisfied employees lead to higher turnover, higher costs, reduced service capacity and decreased customer satisfaction. If you’re thinking, “But I have an employee retention plan to take care of all that!” you may not be doing enough. Retention plans assume there will be dissatisfaction and attrition.
Instead, create an employee success plan to proactively keep problems from rearing up, and to help you attract the best talent. Get started with these five tactics:
1. Commit to a training plan
If you want your employees to feel good about themselves and the work they are doing, start by giving them the training they need to be successful. There’s nothing more frustrating than wanting to do your job well, but feeling hampered by lack of training. Today, cars are more high-tech than ever so well-trained employees give you an important edge over the independent shop down the street.
fter all, the technology systems you have in place are only useful if your employees are properly trained to utilize them. Also, don’t limit your resources to only automotive education and improvement; cross industry trainings can lead to improvement in many aspects including customer service. Learning about what your employees’ interests and goals are can help in identifying the perfect training for them.
2. Promote better communication between advisors and techs
You may not know it, but poor communication could be costing you money and employees. A 2013 survey by Carlisle & Co. of 9,000 techs from 15 major automakers found that 43 percent of repair orders required additional clarification from service advisors, costing each tech 30 minutes per day of follow-up time.
They went on to extrapolate that a typical dealership with 12 techs at $60/hour, each losing 30 minutes a day, would result in approximately $90,000 in lost revenue per dealership per year. It’s not hard to see that this lack of clarity and clear communication can lead to frustrated employees, and lost revenue. It’s important to invest time in developing processes to streamline both internal and external communications, and to also invest in the technology that helps supports it.
3. Implement career advancement opportunities
Many dealerships struggle with employee satisfaction because they have not established a career path for fixed ops employees. Sure, a technician may eventually become a lead tech, or a service advisor may rise to service manager, but in most departments those positions are filled by employees who will remain firmly rooted for 20 or 30 years. We all thrive on getting to the next level; stagnation leads to dissatisfaction. Smart dealers create different levels of responsibilities and compensation so employees know there is a viable career path moving forward.
4. Take a hard look at compensation & benefits
Too many dealerships cut corners by hiring cheaper and less skilled employees. This does not drive the success of the shop, and is simply bad business. Instead, invest in the best talent and focus on compensating them well. That in turn will help you attract more great talent when openings come up. Also, keep in mind that compensation doesn’t only refer to salary.
Great employees require an investment upfront to bring long term success to your dealership. Find new ways to offer more to employee in regards to benefits and perks. If you can offer more PTO, a 401(k), or a health plan, why would your employees leave for a shop that doesn’t offer these extras?
5. Think and act like Google
We’ve all heard about the free food, fitness facilities and massage rooms, but what is the top reason the cream of the crop go to work for Google? Their culture of innovation. They continually invest in new products, improve existing ones and encourage “blue-sky” thinking to keep the innovation culture thriving. Take a page from Google and start thinking about how your dealership can be a destination for fixed ops jobs.
Are there new tools and technology you can try? Are you tapping your employees for new ideas? Are you encouraging blue-sky thinking? This is the type of culture that will make other shops worried about losing employees to you.
When you stop thinking about retaining fixed ops employees, and instead focus on what practices and tools you can put in place to proactively help them thrive, your turnover rate will decrease and you’ll naturally attract top talent. Get started by researching different approaches to these five areas and discover how your dealership can become a leader. The first step is to commit to the ideals you have, and put them to paper. The key is to plan for success, not dissatisfaction.
Matt Hurst is director of product management — fixed operations at Dealertrack Technologies. This column first appeared on Dealertrack's Transforming Automotive Retail blog, which can be found at blog.dealertrack.com.
Women buyers now account for more than half of all car sales, and they influence more than 80 percent of car purchases. Yet one out of three women feel apprehensive or overwhelmed when they shop and buy a car. Less than 40 percent of women car buyers feel confident about the process. A full 75 percent of women feel misunderstood when shopping for a car, according to the 2015 U.S. Women’s Car Dealership Report from Women-Drivers.com.
Car buying is a challenging process for everyone, and women have different buying habits than men when shopping for a car. Women rank trust and respect at the top of their list when it comes to choosing a sales adviser.
Women are 50 percent more likely to read reviews about cars and prefer to read reviews written by women.
All of the above statistics show that women are seeking ways to be confident about their car buying purchase. Here are five tips to help boost women’s confidence and boost your dealership’s sales:
1. Learn additional ways to convey trust and respect to women shoppers.
Trust and respect are emotions, and they are formed in subtle ways. At the core of building trust and respect is the ability to listen and respond to what a woman is saying. Listen, don’t lead, and pursue a goal of truly understanding what a woman buyer wants in a car. After all, she is in your store and she is there for a reason, even if she isn’t purchasing today.
2. Understand the differences in the ways women shop and choose a car.
Women are less likely than men to choose a car based on status. Women choose a car that can get them from point A to point B. Safety and reliability are important to women car buyers. Sales advisers who understand and respect these needs can boost confidence by supporting a woman’s choice in a car.
3. Support a woman’s decision-making process.
When women decide to buy a car, only one in 10 women know which car they want. What this means is that a woman has a list of needs and desires in a car, and she wants to find the best fit for that list. This isn’t indecision, it is a smart and more open way to shop.
A savvy sales advisor will create a “decision tree” that helps reduce the list of cars to the best choice. Following a logical decision-making process will help a woman feel she bought the right car, reducing any buyer’s remorse that might happen if she came to a decision too quickly.
4. Create a supportive car-buying process that begins long before a woman enters the showroom door.
Be sure that satisfied customers are encouraged to write reviews of their buying experience; pay extra attention to encouraging women to write reviews.
Why? When satisfied with their purchase, their scores rate higher then men, and they acknowledge their dealership and sales person with rave posts. Use your reviews and reputation in your advertising so this buying segment puts you at the top of their list. Be sure that your dealership’s website targets women buyers by focusing on what matters to them. Create a special area of the website devoted to safety and reliability.
5. Actively recruit women sales advisers.
Sales advisers should have a similar profile to their buyers People prefer to buy from people that are similar to them, and it conveys respect and trust when women see other women in the dealership.
What’s in it for a dealership that incorporates these strategies into their sales programs?
In the United States, 500,000 women will be in the market for a car in the next three months. Taking the time to incorporate programs to actively boost confidence in prospective buyers means that your dealership becomes a trusted destination for women.
The benefits don’t just stop when a woman finalizes her car sale. A woman will own her car for another five to eight years, and will choose to service her car at a store she trusts.
A confident, satisfied buyer who has written a positive review of her experience can influence countless other women to follow her lead. And, when that confident, satisfied buyer decides to purchase a new car, the loyalty created during her engagement with your dealership will bring her back in the showroom door to start the process all over again.
Editor's Note: Anne Fleming is president and car-buying advocate of Women-Drivers.com and a guest contributor to Auto Remarketing. She was also recognized as one of AR's 2013 Women in Remarketing.
Reviews have literally changed the way consumers find your business, whether you’re a car dealership or a dentist. According to a survey by Dimensional Research, a staggering 90 percent of respondents said that a positive review influenced their purchase decision.
More challenging for dealerships is the notion that the sheer number of reviews plays significantly in the decision to shop with your business. An eye-tracking study by Mediative suggested that a majority of clicks to a website from a review listings mobile app went to listings that had at least four reviews.
It’s your job to manage that review process to the best of your abilities, and get out in front of your customers with every opportunity to post a review. How do you get it done?
Ask for the review
It’s deceptively simple, but if you aren’t asking for that review, you’re missing opportunities to get those reviews posted. In the most manual sense, it’s simply requesting customers to post online reviews of their experience, but dealerships that are really out in front of reviews are more sophisticated.
Have a process for asking
That sophistication isn’t necessarily technical. It’s simply having a process that invites a review from everyone your staff comes in contact with. By utilizing outbound email processes, or phone calls to follow up with customers after service, forward-thinking dealerships are taking every moment to ask customers to review their experience.
Give a reason to review
Every single day, your dealership makes someone’s dream come true by delivering a brand new car. Don’t miss the opportunity to document that moment and share it with the person who just experienced it. DealerRater has a mobile tool called LotShot that allows sales representatives to take a photo of their customers at that amazingly exciting moment when they take delivery of their brand new car. The tool emails the new owner, offering a free download of the photo and an opportunity to leave a review. It also posts a photo along with the review. It brings a heavy dose of humanity by showing that happy new car owner along with their review.
Dealers at the forefront are changing the culture of their showrooms and service bays, making every single interaction an opportunity for a positive online review.
Ryan Leslie is the Director of Dealer Reputation Strategy at DealerRater. This column original appeared on DealerRater's DealerReader Blog, which can be found at http://blog.dealerrater.com.
Certified pre-owned sales have never been higher than they were in the first quarter of this year, according to Autodata Corp., which said Q1 represented the best quarter ever for CPO sales.
But that’s not to say there aren’t challenges.
As part of our annual “Best CPO Dealers in the United States” special edition this winter, we asked Planet Hyundai dealer principal David Tamburro what he saw as a top challenge for the CPO market, and what his dealership does to respond to that challenge.
“Our biggest challenge is securing good trades for the used-car department; we are constantly working with our customers in service to get their trades which have a history that we can talk about with future buyers,” Tamburro said in that CPO feature.
“We also work with customers that are at the end of their leases. Good clean used cars are critical to the CPO program,” he continued.
One challenge that may come up in your CPO operations is engagement, both in terms of getting the consumers interested and educated about certified and in getting your staff to buy in.
For the same “Best CPO Dealers” issue, we asked DeWayne Martin, managing partner at Mazda of Clear Lake, how his dealership gets its staff to buy in to CPO.
Martin said it’s all about the “four P’s.”
“Our team believes it come down to the four P’s: People — In our opinion, having the right people is the No. 1 key. Without a team of the right people understanding all the value and benefits of the Mazda CPO program then the processes in place, product on the lot, and CPO program itself becomes a moot point,” he said. “Processes – Our management team is constantly training over the benefits of the Mazda CPO program and how purchasing a Mazda CPO vehicle, in many aspects, has more value than buying a new vehicle with another manufacture. We believe, this gives the customer the ‘peace-of-mind’ they are looking for in their next vehicle purchase.
“Product — We also believe for any program to have complete success there has to be a full commitment on all fronts. This includes the dealer doing their part by fully investing in a variety of CPO vehicles for the consumer to choose from. We have all heard this before, ‘You can’t sell what you don’t have,’” Martin continued.
“Program — For sure, Mazda has done their part with Mazda CPO Vehicle Program. They have built a program that is packed full of value and benefits that is transparent for the customer from the time they start searching for a vehicle. By doing so, it has made it much easier to build a culture around the Mazda CPO program that everyone believes in,” he added.
Staff Writer Josh Hyatt contributed to this report.
It's just a fact of life in the automotive world: listening is essential! One of the key things we stress when training our Certified Female Friendly clients is developing great communication skills.
Too often, when a woman visits a car dealer, tire dealer, service center or other automotive retail location, she is interrupted, talked over, or simply not being heard.
Well, I'm here to tell everyone in the auto world the same thing I tell every one of our Certified Female Friendly locations: women speak; learn to listen!
1. Verbal Skills
When it comes to speaking to your female customers, the three C's are clear, concise and correct. Don't try to wow her with jargon, and don't deny her an explanation because you don't think she'll understand.
Women really appreciate it when you take the time to explain the whole process. Make sure your answers are correct, of course (we don't want to be giving inaccurate explanations after all), and you want to explain yourself as clearly as possible while still remaining concise. If you can master the art of the three C's, you're well on your way to winning with women already.
2. Non-Verbal Skills Improve Body Language
When talking to women customers, what you don't say can be just as important as what you say. Women are storytellers. If you're helping a woman customer, listen to her as she tells you what she needs.
She'll likely tell you about her entire car history, family, her kids, how many trips to school and tae-kwon-do and soccer practice she makes every week, how many snacks have spilled, and how many hours she spends in her car.
These are important clues for you! This is a customer who cares about safety, reliability and easy cleaning. While listening, signify your interest by nodding, smiling and expressing (without speaking) that you're following along. Repeat back the key points to her before you offer the solution she needs. This signals that you heard every word, and that goes a long way with women!
3. Marketing and Advertising that Resonates with Her
Just painting something pink doesn't make it female-friendly. Similarly, covering your marketing and advertising with flowers and hearts isn't going to go very far either.
Women don't care about the colors you use in your advertising; they care about honesty and reliability. Use the same three C's in your advertising that you use when speaking, and you'll earn the trust of women — and men, too.
4. Look and Feel of Your Store
When a woman customer arrives, curb appeal is important. Your location should look clean and professional from the outside, or she'll be nervous about coming in. Similarly, make sure the inside is comfortable and clean, from the waiting areas to the restrooms. Giving her a nice place with a pleasant smell and casual atmosphere to sit and wait, with extras like complimentary coffee, Wi-Fi internet, and perhaps a safe play area for the kids will speak volumes about your commitment to women.
5. Dress for Success with Women … What You Wear Reflects Who You Are
Finally, as long as you're dressing your shop or dealership up, dress up your staff as well! You don't have to wear uniforms (but if you do, that's fine), but make sure all staff are well-groomed and dressed well. All of these key points will paint a picture for your women customers that you're a business who takes everyone seriously — and as long as you follow through and provide great work on top of all these excellent tips, you will earn her trust very quickly!
Jody DeVere is the CEO of AskPatty.com. She was also a 2011 Women in Remarketing honoree. Check out the latest digital edition of Auto Remarketing to see whom is being recognized for 2015.
Despite advancements by women in many businesses, the automotive industry continues to be mired in gender imbalance. Certainly, advancements have been made in the last 10 years, but there is still plenty of room for further change. Automobile dealers can and should continue to step up and be leaders of change to create a more equitable way to serve their marketplace, which is 50 percent female.
Certainly, there have been visionaries and mentors who hired women long ago. Mary Barra started at GM at age 18 in 1980. She held various engineering and administrative positions and executive roles. In 2014, Barra took the helm at General Motors (U.S) and became the first woman CEO of a major auto manufacturer.
The Dealerships: Where are the Women?
According to CNW Research, women own a mere 2.8 percent of all dealerships. Women hold a quarter of the jobs in the automotive industry, with nearly 57 percent of those jobs being clerical and office positions.
At dealerships, just an estimated one in ten sales positions are held by women If you include front line management, sales and service advisers, that figure drops to only 7 percent women.
What are the possible causes for this imbalance? Gender imbalance exists in other sectors.
In our industry, there isn’t a track record for recruiting women. In a study by Deloitte in 2010, over half the respondents indicated their dealership did not have active programs for employing more women.
Added to this is a lack of “family-friendly” cultures and retention programs.
One thing is certain; the imbalance is not because women cannot sell big ticket items. A study by Commercial Real Estate Women’s Network found that women represent 43 percent of the real estate industry. And it isn’t because women don’t want to buy from women.
In fact, 47.3 percent of women surveyed by CNW Research in 2010 said they would prefer to buy a car from a women.
“Your sales professionals must be as diverse as your customer base,” says Craig Lockerd, president of Automax Recruiting and Training. “Customers want to buy from someone who looks like ‘me.’ We live in a more customized world. It is really smart business today. ”
The Advertising
Despite the fact that women make up half of the buyers, the industry continues to sell cars as if they were power tools. Men in trucks, cars as status symbols and other stereotypes about cars and their buyers, still fill magazines and television.
Automobile advertising historically has treated women as weak and incapable. Today’s women are savvy consumers who research their choices, but are at times are treated insignificantly. Old habits can be hard to break, but the changing demographic of car buyers is propelling a shift in attitudes.
“(The industry is) seeing women aren’t just getting in the side doors of these trucks.” said Marc Bland, a vice president for IHS Automotive, an industry research group. “But change, as always, takes time.”
The Buyers: The New Opportunity
A study by University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute found that, beginning in 2010, women drivers outnumbered men (105.7 million to 104.3 million, respectively).
Women make up half of car buyers and influence as much as 80 percent of auto sales. In the United States, 500,000 women will be in the market for a car within the next three months.
According to the 2015 U.S. Women’s Car Dealership Report one third of women report being nervous, overwhelmed or apprehensive when buying a car.
Furthermore, a full three-quarters of women report that they are misunderstood by car marketers. So, despite the huge contribution by women to annual sales figures, much of this important market segment remains underserved and underappreciated.
The early adopter dealerships will reap the rewards of adding new programs to better serve their female customers.
The Visionaries
The statistics regarding women buyers show there is plenty of room for improvement. Fortunately, there are visionaries who seek to make positive changes in the automotive industry.
Nissan’s global marketing chief Andy Palmer, says that the “empowered female” is at the forefront of their consumer marketing efforts.
In the dealership, creative compensation strategies will help match your sales advisers with current customer profiles. “Giving better opportunities for women to work their way up and stay at the dealership is a very attractive benefit,” continued Lockerd. “The culture, structure and story at dealerships (with more women staff and management) is better, is going to draw different customers and (will) have a wider scope of buyers.”
“I’m overwhelmed at the sheer number of women in great roles and positioned to make a change (in the automotive industry),” says Subi Ghosh, executive vice president at Dealer Authority. “As women are working their way up and having more of a voice in this industry, we're seeing incredible creativity, innovative methods and unique management techniques of women in dealerships that are shaping the industry's history.
“In five years, we'll look back on this conversation and revel as to how far we've come in such a short time,” she added.
In 2009, Jennifer Moran opened Carter Motors Group in Ballard Washington. Despite the recession, she became the number one dealer for new-car sales in the state within a few years. She attributed her success to adopting “Why Buy Messaging,” a concept that assumes people don’t buy what you do, but why you do it. The dealership created a Carbon Neutral program, planting trees to offset the carbon footprint of new-car sales. Moran’s success outlines the fresh thinking that can happen when women step in and offer alternative thinking.
Stepping Up
Over the years, several networking groups have formed to allow women in the auto industry to share and promote ideas, best practices, friendships and do business. One such group, Women in Automotive, is having their first conference in June 2015.
Subi Ghosh, one of the founders, says, “Six years ago, I felt like I was quite alone being a woman attending dealership conferences or industry seminars. Now, the numbers of women attending events, interacting on forums, and participating as active members has grown significantly. I've even attended an event where the female population was 50 percent! We are excited to put on a conference to give women a place to learn, share, collaborate and network and the Women in Automotive conference will be just that!”
The Next 10 Years
The future of the automotive industry is full of promise. Industries that embrace change and diversity take on new energy. This energy powers new ideas that energize and attract a new way of doing business. Men and women in leadership, working to bring more women and minorities to the dealership as executives and managers, sales advisers and shoppers will have a positive impact today and shape a bright future for tomorrow.
Editor's Note: Anne Fleming is president and car-buying advocate of Women-Drivers.com and a guest contributor to Auto Remarketing. She was also recognized as one of AR's 2013 Women in Remarketing.
Manheim is currently hosting a national promotion, titled “Pump Up Your Volume,” that is aimed at aiding dealers in their inventory building efforts to prepare for the impending selling season.
The national promotion, expected to drive traffic at all of Manheim’s 79 wholesale auctions, will include offers from DealShield and Ready Auto Transport via a national email campaign. The promotion will also include daily prizes, including a grand prize — a guitar signed by Aerosmith.
The campaign started Monday and runs to May 3.
“We want to promote the message to dealers that Manheim is where you’ll find the right inventory to win at your lot,” said Stephen Smith, senior director of customer marketing at Manheim. “We are the go-to source for both the volume and the variety of vehicles that dealers need to drive traffic to their lots and ultimately sell more vehicles.”
More information can be found on the Pump Up Your Volume website.
Upcoming Wholesale Webinars
- The National Auto Auction Association will host its webinar on the 2015 Arbitration Policy Updates on two different dates: Friday (at 2 p.m. EST) and Monday (also at 2 p.m. EST). Each webinar will last approximately 45 minutes, featuring Matt Arias, the auction standards committee co-chair at NAAA, who will review the updates to the NAAA Arbitration Policy that take effect on May 4. Registration links are above; to review the updated arbitration policy, click here.
- AIADA and ADESA will host a free webinar, “Buy and Sell Wholesale … Without Leaving Your Desk!” on Tuesday, April 21 at 10 a.m. EST and again at 4 p.m. EST. The webinar is designed to provide an in-depth overview of “real life” wholesale inventory management solutions. To register, click the corresponding time you are interested in above.
In the landscape of the digital auto world, Greg McGivney of Cars.com points out, there have been a number of advancements in price transparency on both the used- and new-car side that have helped consumers make confident decisions in their vehicle and dealership selections.
So why not make a similar move on the service side, considering how important that slice of the business is for dealerships?
Such was the thinking behind Cars.com revealing at the NADA Convention & Expo its first-ever program aimed at helping dealership service departments stand out, before eventually launching this program known as RepairPal Certified nationwide on March 2.
Cars.com partnered with RepairPal to develop RepairPal Certified, a certification badge program that “assures consumers that a dealership’s service department has strong customer satisfaction scores and offers guaranteed fair prices, warranties for its work and qualified technicians.”
McGivney — the general manager and vice president of strategy and business development at Cars.com — talked to Auto Remarketing at NADA about this new program before its official launch in March.
“As we looked at the landscape, the area of service and repair is very important from a financial standpoint for a dealer, from a profitability, as well from as a frequency standpoint,” McGivney said. “So you have a lot more ROs (repair orders) come through the service bays than you do selling new cars or used cars on a unit basis.
“As Cars.com looked at ways that we can continue to help dealers work better with consumers and deliver better value, we felt that moving into digital in the fixed operations area was just a natural migration for the success that we’ve had in our core business on new and used-car shopping,” he continued.
Trust, transparency, confidence. As Cars.com and others allude to, establishing these foundations is becoming more important in the car business itself — and while that extends to the service shop, dealers are perhaps getting an unfair bad rap.
“I think today, consumers have some trepidation on patronizing dealers from the service standpoint, and we recognize that. And I think that halo that they make those assumptions under is a bit misguided. And part of it is, because there hasn’t been this transparency of why I should go to a dealerships versus, say, a national chain. And when we looked at that, the research showed that dealers do not exorbitantly overprice; they are competitively priced with some of the alternative solutions out there to provide the service and repair to the consumer.”
Alex Vetter, Cars.com chief executive officer, shared in the initial product announcement: “With RepairPal Certified, Cars.com is offering dealers a way to promote quality work and fair prices, giving consumers the trust they need and flipping preconceived notions about dealership service.”
Earning and keeping RepairPal certification requires a dealership service department to complete an assessment every 90 days. That includes four areas:
— Technical Assessment: the dealership must have OEM-certified technicians
— Minimum Warranty: at least a 12-month/12,000-mile plan
— Customer Satisfaction: a minimum number of Cars.com Service Reviews with an overall 4-star rating in sales or service.
— Price Guarantee: The pricing must fall within the RepairPal Estimator
“Those four key ingredients provide the comfort area of trust, which then gives the consumer that confidence to choose that dealer over an uncertified dealer or through an alternative solution, maybe going to a chain. Because they know they’ll be taken care of,” McGivney said.
Delivering a Positive Experience
The biggest challenge dealerships and automakers are faced with these days is owner loyalty, says Jim Roche of Xtime, who shared this statistic to help illustrate just how important it is to generate repeat business.
Each percentage point increase in owner loyalty brings the average dealer an additional $150,000 annually in revenue.
“General Motors recently published a figure that said for every 1 percent increase in owner loyalty that they get, it’s worth $700 million. So, we’re talking big money,” Roche said.
“Critical to owner loyalty is service retention, because of the number of touch points that come through the service department versus the front end of the store,” he continued. “And service retention is so critical that if you’re not retaining your customers through your service department, you’ll see your owner loyalty drop by an average of 50 percent.”
Roche, Xtime’s senior vice president of sales, marketing and managed services, was talking with Auto Remarketing at the NADA Convention in January. Xtime is a provider of retention solutions for the retail auto business and is owned by Cox Automotive.
Xtime aims to help dealerships provide an ownership experience similar to those found in places like Amazon that offer a “premier digital experience.”
The keys are a delivering “value, convenience and trust” in the experience.
Roche added: “If you think about value in any transaction, but automotive specifically, you want to know three things: what do I need? When can I get it? And how much does it cost?
“Convenience means when you answer those three questions, do it in a way that is most convenient for me versus being convenient for you,” he continued. “And trust means – and this is really a key one in the dealer world – the answer to those questions needs to be consistent.
“In other words, I don’t want to go to your website and get one bit of information and then come to the dealership and get another bit of information, be told something different when I go to the cashier (and) be told it’s a different price.”
Auto Remarketing has launched a new series this year called “Consignor Connection,” in which we catch up with a leading remarketing executive at a different consignor each month.
In a Q&A format, we talk about best practices, auction industry trends and more. The latest in this series features Dan Kennedy, manager of GM Remarketing:
Auto Remarketing: On an industry-wide level, how has the increase in volume, particularly off-lease units, impacted the auction industry in 2015?
Dan Kennedy: The increased inventory levels create opportunities on several levels. For dealers it means an easing of some of the inventory concerns that had arisen in recent years. It also allows OEMs and consignors to offer even better values for their dealers.
Finally, there’s a tremendous opportunity for the CPO industry to continue its strong growth path, due to better access to the “certifiable” inventory they demand. We’ve seen this for our industry-leading programs at GM, and we fully expect that the trend will only be enhanced by the access to increased inventory.
AR: How does General Motors strike a balance when it comes to choosing how your cars are sold, be it auction sales, online sales, open/closed sales, etc.?
DK: The team is constantly reviewing the various channels, online upstream or the physical sale lanes to determine which channel is the most efficient at the current time. It is a constant effort to find the right level of volume for each of the channels that meets our dealer’s needs and minimizes expenses and transit time.
AR: What are some of the biggest challenges (and opportunities) in the auction market for consignors like GM in 2015? Are there any CFPB- or regulatory-related challenges that would extend to the remarketing world?
DK: Since we are only selling the returning rental and company vehicles, the CFPB is not an issue for our sales. One of the challenges will be making sure we meet our dealers’ needs and expectations when it comes to volumes, vehicle quality, convenience and level of services they are seeking.
As the volumes increase at the physical auctions, can the auctions physically handle the increased volumes? Many auction sites reduced their space and staffing when the volumes declined. Can the auctions sites perform all the services required of them, storing, repairing, reconditioning and offering the vehicles in the time frame that we as sellers are requiring?
They also need the marketing staff to contact the dealers to make them aware of the products that are being offered. We, the auctions and the sellers must be creative in attracting the dealers into the sale lanes, either online or in the lane.
Another challenge is finding the right balance between the various sale channels available to our dealers: upstream online, physical auctions — closed and open — and posting of vehicles at the various auctions’ websites. Still another opportunity is the issue we face trying to transport vehicles from return locations to auction sites for sale. The various carriers are allocating more of their resources to moving the increasing volume of new vehicles making it more difficult to find timely, cost-efficient transportation of the used vehicles.
AR: What are some ways that OEMs, consignors, dealers and auctions can work together to keep residuals strong?
DK: As sellers we share many buyers. One way we have been successful is teaming up with some of the other OEMs and offering both of our closed sales on the same day, making it easier for our dealers to satisfy their business needs while tying them up for a single day, versus a couple of days.
Looking at co-loading of rail cars to help move vehicles faster in another area we have utilized. These days, we as sellers must be creative to think out of the box to find solutions that not only positively impact resale values, but improve efficiencies and reduce the cost of selling for all parties involved.
