Why do you love selling cars?
This is a question I love to ask dealers. Usually, if I’ve had a chance to get to know them, I can guess. It’s usually one of these four things:
- The thrill of the chase. The do-or-die, make-it-or-break-it lifestyle of a salesperson is an exciting way to live.
- You make more when you sell more. Of course, you make less when you sell less, too, but that’s all in the lifestyle of a salesperson.
- You love cars. Who better than you to help someone find the right vehicle for themselves or their family?
- You love people. This was my reason when I was a salesman. And if you were there for any of my Catch and Keep customer strategy presentations this year, you were probably nodding along with me. Either way, if this is your reason, we should talk; we’d get along well!
My Catch and Keep customer strategy is all about people because the automotive business is all about people. Yes, technology has changed. Shopping is different, navigation is different, communication is different.
But that really amounts to a big change in the people we sell cars to. And I wanted to speak directly to today’s dealers about today’s customers. I wanted to arm all of you with all the insight I can, so you can be successful in a today that’s very different from yesterday.
Long-term thinking in a short-term world
The first pillar of Catch and Keep is that you have to know your customer — this means every car shopper and car owner you interact with. You need to build a modern database that tracks the relevant details about modern customers, and segments them accurately so you can communicate more effectively. That’s what Pillar 2 is all about: right message, right time, right channel. Which brings us to today’s topic, Pillar 3. It’s time to commit.
Commitment is a tough term for anyone who knows what today’s customers are like. They buy a car from one person, have their service done somewhere else and switch it up again when it’s time to trade in. Many dealers think they’re lucky to get one sale out of anyone; the idea of repeat business feels a little too lofty. But it really shouldn’t be, if done right. Try to think about businesses that are successful long-term by only living off new customers. There probably aren’t many.
Let me tell you about a dealer I work with, Scott Rainville of Apple Automotive Group in York, Pa. Nearly a quarter of his customers, 22 percent, have been customers for a minimum of 18 months. In car terms, that’s a long time!
How does Scott do it? How do you keep customers coming back when they always have options, and they always go with the best one? You make sure your dealership is always the best option for every customer. When you know your customer (Pillar 1) well enough to get the right message to them every time, in the right way (Pillar 2), you can absolutely hang in there for the full lifecycle. That means you get the vehicle sale and the add-ons. You get a good customer review that leads to referrals.
You get their maintenance throughout ownership, you get the replacement parts business and then, sure enough, you get a good trade-in or at least another vehicle sale.
So, how do you make Pillar 3 possible at your dealership? It’s surprisingly simple:
You change your mindset
“The lifecycle mindset is something dealers have to mature into,” Scott told me. And he couldn’t be more right. As we all know too well, there’s a lot of pressure to sell every day, so today often feels like the most important day of your career. That feeling is even more intense for dealers who are young in their careers, who haven’t yet gained the perspective it takes to see the value of repeat business. But repeat business is the only way to grow your dealership successfully, so the mindset shift is critical.
Scott and his team knew they had a big hurdle to clear with their sales team, so they set up some advanced training on how to use their technology to nurture a more profitable customer and a longer customer lifecycle. Their CRM logs evolving communication preferences, service history … everything that illustrates the experience their customers are having with their vehicles and the likelihood of any upcoming need they might have.
And their employees are trained to know their customers well enough to identify additional opportunities beyond the offer that’s currently on the table. Some things they might do, for example, are meet and greet customers in service, understand their customers’ current mileage and vehicle wear and tear, stay up on any of their customers’ lifestyle changes, as well as alert customers to current OEM offers that might be to their advantage.
You tune in
To help build trust, which is crucial in any committed relationship, Apple’s dealers are encouraged to interact with their customers no matter where the customers are or how they prefer to communicate. That means the dealers are trained to create and maintain their own social media identities. On Facebook, Twitter and beyond, they can respond to customer questions and comments quickly, and learn a great deal about what happens with buyers between big purchases.
There’s something to be said for a dealer who can talk directly to his customer base while they’re already online, where they make most of their biggest purchase decisions. If you’re available at critical moments, you become memorable, and that’s what you want. You make yourself easy to find and easy to talk to, and you’ll be the easy choice when they’re ready to do business.
You widen your territory
Here’s an aspect of modern technology that dealers should use to their advantage and often don’t: The Internet makes geography irrelevant.
Say you have a solid digital presence — a user-friendly website with strong SEO and complete listings that include great photos. It’s very possible you’ll attract customers from cities and towns you’ve considered outside of your region. You might even sell a car to someone who flew to get to you — someone who did his homework and found the right car for the right price on your lot instead of any of the lots closer to home.
Now, with a one-and-done mentality you might think, “This is great! I made a sale today. I’m pretty encouraged that this guy came so far just to buy from me. But I’ll probably never see him again. Moving on!”
Not so fast. Long-distance customers still have long-term potential. When you’re selling with a customer lifecycle mentality, Mr. or Mrs. Out-of-Town Buyer gets classified in your database as an out-of-towner. That means you don’t bother him or her with things like oil change coupons. But you do reach out to him or her with news and updates about the vehicle and anything else that shows you remember and appreciate them and their business.
Here’s how this leads to repeat business: Give out-of-towners a good experience, and they’ll tell their social networks. They’ll give you a good review that people can read, again, in any region. They’ll consider buying add-ons from you because they already trust you. And, when it’s time for the next vehicle purchase, they’ll be back. You’ve just landed yourself loyal customers in another state. Plus, you never know who they know or who they’re related to that might just live in your community or around your dealership.
You take the plunge
Pillar 3 might be my favorite, because frankly it’s where you can really experience a difference in your work and your results — no matter who you are or why you do what you do. The thrill-seekers will have that many more opportunities to chase. The money-minded among us will obviously like how much more money they make in a lifecycle compared to a single sale. If you love cars, or just love selling good things to good people, you’ll have more of that. And it will be more rewarding.
If you made it this far without the fear of commitment overcoming you, I have one task for you: Find out what your number is. Figure out how many of your customers have been with you — doing actual business with your dealership in any capacity — for longer than 18 months. Think about what kind of training you need to do with your team to move people into a lifecycle mindset. And then get ready to talk about how to tie it all together and transform your dealership when I’m back right here with Pillar 4!
Sean Stapleton is the vice president of sales and marketing for VinSolutions, a Cox Automotive company.
Customer satisfaction with light vehicles fell to the lowest it’s been in over a decade in light of the increasing nature of both recalls of various nature as well as the increase in vehicle prices.
That’s according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, or ACSI, and the results of its ACSI Automobiles Report 2015 released on Tuesday.
The report, which is based on 4,294 customer surveys collected in the second quarter of this year, found that the overall customer satisfaction with automobiles fell by 3.7 percent this year compared to 2014, ranking a 70 on ACSI’s 100-point scale, and tallying the third straight year of satisfaction decreases.
“While it is true that all cars are now much better than they were 10 to 20 years ago, it is alarming that so many of them have quality problems,” said Claes Fornell, ACSI’s chairman and founder. “The number of recalls is at an all-time high. This should not happen with modern manufacturing technology and has negative consequences for driver safety, costs and customer satisfaction.”
Of the 27 brands ranked by ACSI, 15 saw a drop in customer satisfaction while only 2 (Acura and BMW) saw an increase.
Lexus became the new frontrunner of the bunch, with an average satisfaction ranking of 84 out of 100 (unchanged from 2014), dethroning last year’s top make, Mercedes-Benz, by 1 point (which fell from 86 to 83). Acura and Lincoln both scored an 83 out of 100 for 2015.
The bottom three makes in customer satisfaction were all Fiat Chrysler brands: Fiat (73), Chrysler (74) and Jeep (75), while FCA accounted for 4 of the bottom 5 (Dodge and MINI both scored a 76 out of 100 on the ACSI scale).
According to David VanAmburg, ACSI’s director, it’s not just recent recall news affecting customer satisfaction.
“Higher prices are clearly hurting car buyer satisfaction, but low prices also have artificially inflated satisfaction in the years prior,” VanAmburg said. “The government’s Cash for Clunkers program helped push driver satisfaction to its highest level ever in 2009 — and heavy discounting as the economy recovered kept satisfaction up for a while. The customer satisfaction levels the auto industry is seeing now are more consistent with historical ACSI data.”
Import and luxury brands made up the top eight manufacturers in customer satisfaction in ACSI’s results. Looking purely at the domestic brands, with the help of Lincoln, Ford maintained the highest average customer satisfaction (81), followed by General Motors (79) and FCA (75).
To check out the full rankings from ACSI, download the free report here.
While men might be more interested in electric- and diesel-powered vehicles, women may be more open to the integration of technology in vehicles for the purpose of navigation and safety concerns.
These are the results of two completely separate studies on how men and women feel about varying levels of technological advancement and fuel types in automobiles.
First, according to the annual Jabian Automotive Industry Survey, a blind survey of 1,045 drivers in North America showed that 38 percent of women believe that driverless cars are the way of the future, compared to just 21 percent of men. Fifty-four percent of those women said they would pay for an application that allows their vehicle to communicate service needs prior to service, while only 38 percent of men felt the same.
“It’s interesting to see how open females are to more technology in and around the use of automobiles and automotive service,” said Jenni Crenshaw, Jabian Consulting’s executive director. “When diving into the numbers, we see that women want to utilize technology for convenience and empowerment, while men tend to favor its use for efficiency and entertainment.”
The latter bit, about men favoring efficiency, may have a role to play in the next study.
According to recent findings from a Harris Poll of 2,225 adults in the United States surveyed online toward the end of May, 25 percent of men, compared to 17 percent of women, said they would consider purchasing an electric vehicle. The same was true for diesel-powered vehicles, with 28 percent of men saying they would consider one, compared to 11 percent of women.
Millennials were the most acceptant of the idea of owning a hybrid, with 57 percent saying they would consider owning one. The overall interest in hybrids across America, however, has remained relatively unchanged since 2013, with 48 percent of all surveyed saying they would consider a traditional hybrid the next time they’re in the market for a vehicle.
Amongst those surveyed in the Harris Poll, the primary concerns for buying a pure electric vehicle related to price (67 percent), driving range (64 percent), maintenance costs (58 percent), reliability (53 percent), performance/power (50 percent) and the fact that it is still a fledgling technology (42 percent).
To view the full Harris Poll, click here.
It’s possible that dealerships are losing as much as 84 percent or more of their inbound sales calls that are not converted to a deal.
That’s according to a recent analysis by IHS Automotive, commissioned by CallSource, which studied the performance of over 540 of the latter’s dealer customers over a year-long period (from April 2014 to March 2015).
On top of the high number of missed opportunities, the analysis also revealed that CallSource’s top-performing dealers were able, with proper management, to improve the incoming call-to-sale ratio by over 33 percent.
According to ADP Digital Marketing, dealer calls are still outpacing email leads by as much as 4-1, showing that improving in the area of phone handling could possibly work wonders for sales.
“Many dealers think they have a call-handling process in place, yet without phone skills training and missed opportunity alerts, they lose countless sales opportunities every month,” said David Greene, the vice president of CallSource’s auto division. “If call handlers could set just four more appointments each day and convert one of those to a sale, they would add and average of $2,200 in profit to the bottom line each day, or $66,000 per month.”
CallSource listed what it found to be the areas that call handlers fail in most often:
- Rude/unprofessional exchange
- Call handler’s lack of inventory knowledge
- No ‘needs analysis,’ so no alternative vehicle offered
- Call handler fails to ask for appointment
- Call handler asks the prospect to call back
- Salesperson unavailable
More information about CallSource can be found here.
Vendor Transparency Solutions (VTS), a leading compliance management system for the auto finance and recovery industries, now offers a comprehensive continuing education portal to its clients. The company insisted that it created the portal stemming from regulators requiring financial institutions and their service providers to conduct ongoing training for their employees to ensure knowledge of and compliance with important rules and regulations.
VTS highlighted the portal offers training materials, educational videos and a testing module that is aimed to help ensure employees are up to date on privacy and Red Flag rules as well as other important areas including social media and confidentiality.
The module reports test results back to account administrators, which can allow for ongoing monitoring to ensure that test-takers understand the relevant materials and can provides remedial training for incorrectly answered questions.
“Continuing education is becoming an absolute requirement for companies in this industry,” VTS president Max Pineiro said. “Regulators want to see that financial institutions and the service providers that work with them are training and educating employees and making sure they have the necessary knowledge and information to do their jobs in the most compliant manner possible.”
All VTS subscribers have access to the portal. Administrators can manage and assign tests to all employees or they can pick and choose the most relevant tests.
Subscribed finance companies also have the ability to assign select modules to their service providers and monitor their progress, along with the ability to train and test on the modules themselves.
For further information on Vendor Transparency Solutions, contact Max Pineiro at (520) 468-3990 ext. 102 or max@vtscheck.com, or Jeff Koistinen, director of operations, at (520) 468-3990 ext. 100 or jeff@vtscheck.com.
CDK Global hosted more than 200 of the best programmers, coders and graphic designers in Portland, Ore., during its recent Summer Hack-a-thon.
Being CDK’s fourth Hack-a-thon event, CDK aimed to bring together associates and summer interns to invent new ways the company can leverage technology to benefit the company’s dealer clients.
Over the course of five days, more than 30 teams collaborated to create new ideas to put into further development.
Rajiv Amar, CDK’s division vice president of development, commented on the event, which is representative of the company’s focus on innovative culture and collaboration.
“The level of associate engagement, innovation and creativity completely exceeded our expectations in every way,” Amar said. “This was our best hack-a-thon ever — with the focus of bringing better technology to our dealer clients.”
Each team was given five minutes to present their innovations during the event’s demonstration day on Friday.
Here are a list of the winning ideas, according to the company:
- Project: Caller ID interface that delivers real-time, on-demand consumer (caller) intelligence.
- Project: A deal dashboard that summarizes the status and financial health of a deal, along with flagging missing data.
- Project: Join CDK ServiceEdge with Common Services for one-click provisioning and real-time appointment capacity management.
- Project: Monitor and certify network configurations related to QoS, Netflow and SNMP data.
- Project: Run a Dealer Management System (DMS) in VirtualBox on your workstation. Imagine having a smaller library of virtual machines that are managed by your team and Global Hosting. The number of total images could be significantly decreased, thus reducing overall costs.
Greg Meyer, the company’s chief technology officer, said the ideas generated during the event demonstrated movement in the right direction.
“We are focused on the right things and on improving the CDK experience,” Meyer said. “We weren't just playing around this week — we were solving real business problems and doing work that we can put into production today. The cross-functional alignment has never been stronger in Portland. I'm moved by all the passionate work that went into this week. We are in a perfect position to take on the future."
Two OEMS — FCA Canada and Mazda — both announced enhancements to their service departments on Monday.
First up, the new Mopar Service Capacity Analyzer is being adopted by FCA US dealerships to assist in planning and handling current and future customer service demands.
Mopar describes the new online tool that helps dealers to assess, plan and implement changes to the number of technicians, technician hours, stalls and more, as a “crystal ball” for the service department.
"Providing a great customer experience is at the core of what we do," said Pietro Gorlier, president and chief executive officer of Mopar Brand Service, Parts and Customer Care, FCA. "That is why this year alone we have supported the addition of more than 1,300 technicians, 700 service advisers and 500 service bays in our dealer network, which overall is well ahead of our targets. Now, the new Mopar Service Capacity Analyzer offers dealerships a 'road map' to more efficiently utilize these resources by forecasting customer needs out to 2018 based on dealer-specific parameters.
"The customer journey is about Mopar partnering with our dealers to ensure that we have the tools, the people and the plan to continue to serve those who drive us," he added.
Mopar Service Capacity Analyzer is an algorithm-based tool that works to allow dealers to adjust physical capacity metrics such as number of technicians/service advisers, technician available hours and stall numbers, to match projected service lane traffic.
The company explained the dealer can then create scenarios and evaluate the changes needed to reach the optimum level of service.
Users also have access to a summary page, which allows for quick comparison of plans versus current capacity stats.
Mopar also announced it is launching a new Service Capacity Guidebook as part of the Service Capacity Analyzer to assist dealers in seizing existing opportunities “while avoiding the pitfalls of a crowded service lane.”
Mazda partners with WyoTech to train auto techs
Also announced on Monday, Mazda North American Operations announced a three-year partnership with technical training institute WyoTech.
The partnership will allow WyoTech — which is part of the Zenith Education Group — students to graduates as certified Mazda technicians.
Mazda will also be using the institute’s training facilities in Blairsville, Pa., and Laramie, Wyo., to train its top dealership personnel on advanced courses throughout the year, the automaker shared.
The free classes began last month.
“Well-trained technicians are a key component to our customer’s satisfaction, so it is an honor to partner with WyoTech,” said Jim O’Sullivan, president and chief executive officer of MNAO. “Mazda is focused on improving the dealership experience and fixing customers’ cars right, the first time. We look forward to this WyoTech program supporting these initiatives and helping make top-tier technicians available to Mazda customers.”
The Mazda certification course includes a curriculum of web-based modules, which are supplemented by instructor-led classes.
In support of the new program, the automaker has donated more than 20 vehicles, specialized tooling and equipment, in addition to several current model-year vehicles rotated out annually for current year technology.
“It is a privilege to partner with Mazda in offering our students a valuable opportunity to earn in-demand skills and graduate as certified Mazda technicians,” said Karen Turner, senior vice president of student success for Zenith. “Our top priority is ensuring that our students have a clear path to in-demand careers with definitive labor market value and the opportunity for advancement.
“We recognize that our graduates’ career prospects are considerably enhanced by working directly with the employers who hire them. By working with Mazda and its dealerships, we are able to accurately assess local workforce needs and help match our certified graduates with those job opportunities.”
New students in the program will have access to Mazda’s U.S. network of more than 640 dealerships as they seek employment, and the OEM has estimated that dealers with hire about 100 certified graduates from each campus location annually as entry-level technicians.
Mazda explained the new initiative will save them money as for each pre-certified graduate a Mazda dealership hires, it saves roughly $6,000 that it would otherwise spend sending a new employee through required courses and training.
The students will also have continuing education opportunities after they complete their certification.
WyoTech alumni employed by Mazda dealerships will have the opportunity pursue Master Technician certification through the dealership and existing Mazda Training Centers.
Mazda trainers will work at the Laramie and Blairsville campuses approximately 12 times per year to conduct advanced training courses using WyoTech’s facilities, the companies shared.
These courses are open to existing dealership personnel first, and any remaining sports will be made available to qualified WyoTech students in the Mazda program.
It’s one thing to appear to have a huge social media following. But if you’re not actively engaged with your customers, it may all be for naught.
That’s the message from Naked Lime Marketing’s vice president of sales Chris Walsh, who spoke at the Automotive Social Media Summit 2015 in June.
“Using social media for business is not about making one sale; it’s about making repeat sales, based on long-term relationships,” Walsh said. “Those dealers who are leveraging social media today are putting themselves in the best position to nurture stronger prospect and customer relationships now and in the future.”
According to Walsh, dealers should use social media as a relationship-building tool. And what are relationships built on? Trust and authenticity.
“The consumer walking into a dealership today is much different than the one walking in five years ago,” Walsh said. “Today’s car buyers are more informed, and they place a higher value on authenticity and transparency. Social media helps dealers engage with consumers online to help share information and build the kinds of relationships that translate into better business results in the long run.”
Here are four ways social media can help dealers reach out to customers and build relationships, as listed by Naked Lime:
- Brand visibility: Search engines judge what online content is trusted and authoritative and serve that content up to consumers. Walsh said dealers can use social media as part of their search engine optimization (SEO) strategy, increasing the likelihood of their dealership being found by consumers in organic search results, social media search results, and local search.
- Data-driven marketing: Using data collected on consumers' behaviors, dealerships can tailor their offline and online marketing and advertising to better reach the right consumers at the right time with the right message. Walsh cited the Facebook Insights tool and Custom Audiences as examples of how dealers are using social data to tailor their advertising strategy.
- Multi-screen viewers: With three in four TV watchers using another device simultaneously, dealers can use social media to actively engage consumers on their smartphones, laptops, or tablets. Walsh challenged dealers to think creatively about how they can encourage consumers to take social actions after they see a dealer's TV ad so dealers can build additional relationship capital.
- Reputation management: Walsh noted that, in times of uncertainty, people often look to the crowd for what to do. When it comes to dealerships, online reviews are a form of "social proof" consumers use to determine which dealership to visit for vehicle sales and service. Walsh stressed that dealers should pay attention to their online reputation and have a response plan for negative social media comments and reviews.
To read more insight from Naked Lime, check out its whitepapers here.
Identifix announced on Wednesday the enhancements it has made to Direct-Hit, the company’s online automotive service tool.
These changes include improvements to the tool’s information database as well as visual improvements, including fully interactive color wiring diagrams.
Aiming at being a one-stop tool for vehicle repair professionals, the Direct-Hit tool is now integrated with vintage service and repair data from Chilton, dated back to 1960, allowing access to service manual information and technical service bulletins from Direct-Hit’s diagnostic Hotline Archives or its Vehicle Home Page.
According to the company, with Chilton’s coverage of domestic and import models, the tool provides information on 98 percent of all vehicles on the road in the United States today.
Direct-Hit is also linked to the International Automotive Technicians Network (iATN), granting access to the latter’s TechHelp community, where technicians post questions on vehicle issues and exchange suggestions and solutions.
The tool also now features fully interactive color wiring diagrams, which cover the majority of vehicles manufactured from 1985 to 2015, assisting with the repair of vehicle systems that utilize more and more complex technologies every year.
“These new enhancements are much more than simply adding data to our existing online tool,” said Jeanette Dorazio, Identifix’s vice president of product management. “They’re part of our greater mission to provide automotive repair professionals with the tools they need to keep up with the complexity of the vehicles they service, without compromising the efficiency and accuracy that their customers demand.
“This isn’t the first time we’ve expanded our offerings beyond our signature real-world diagnostics, and we’re going to continue evolving our products with the singular objective of delivering high value and return-on-investment to our customers.”
More information about Identifix and its Direct-Hit tool can be found on the company’s website.
The American International Automobile Dealers Association, along with affinity partner Bass Sox Mercer, will host a free AutoTalk webinar on Aug. 18 to discuss how manufacturers measure dealership sales performance.
According to AIADA, the webinar will discuss the “hidden factors” contained within a manufacturer’s sales performance formula that have the largest impact on its measurements.
The webinar, titled “Understanding Your Manufacturer’s Sales Performance Measurement – Important Factors of Which You May Not Be Aware,” will also discuss sales performance compliance requirements.
The first iteration of the webinar will be hosted on Aug. 18 at 10 a.m. EST. To register, click here. To register for the second webinar at 4 p.m. EST on the same day, click here.
