The goal of marketing is to push a compelling message to the right person at the right time and then pull a signal of their interest back.  It is all about the push/pull.  When your customers are pushing their interests to you, with less effort on your team having to pull it out of them, you have stellar marketing efficiency!

Given the state of inventory, it’s more important than ever to market correctly for vehicle acquisition and allow the right customers to push information to you for a more positive, engaging experience.

Ah, push it…

Anytime you have a customer pushing information to you, you’re saving your team valuable time to close deals faster. Think about it, when a shopper tells you exactly what they want, you have a crystal ball into how to sell them. No need to ask a bunch of redundant questions because you already know the answers.

Pulling information from a shopper on the other hand is, well, like pulling teeth. It’s painful, it’s a slower process, and it tends to demotivate salespeople and your customers.

Push it good…

Ways you’re making it harder and less efficient for your team by using the “pull” method:

• Trade-In Lead Forms & Widgets on your website: The ultimate pull method. You’re literally waiting for someone to give you their information and assuming they are going to visit your website to do it.
•  Mailers: They have to call or walk-in waving the mailer in the air for you to know if it was effective. How often does that happen?
• Sending a salesperson to service drive to find trades: Yeah, they may get lucky occasionally but trying to get someone engaged while their waiting on their car is awkward. Most don’t want to talk to a salesperson while on a short timeline to drop-off a car, so good luck pulling a golden egg out of that goose.

P-Push it real good…

Speed-up the process for acquiring more inventory and helping your team close those deals faster using a two-way push method.

1. Push info to them. Start the process by automatically pushing every eligible service drive customer a text offer to buy their vehicle and show them how much potential equity they have. Yes, EVERY eligible service customer! Especially the customers you did not sell in the past. And yes, do it via text messaging! We all know text messages get read faster than emails so use that to your advantage. My email inbox shows over 1,000 unread emails, but my phone has ZERO unread text messages. As for the customer experience, what a pleasant surprise for your service customers! You’re providing them information they didn’t know they wanted and piqued their curiosity to learn what their car is worth.
2. Now push even more info to them. The name of the game here is engagement. Show them every car they can buy with real-time payments using their potential equity factored into the payments. Let them play around with your inventory and talk themselves into a payment that makes sense for them. Maybe they will want to sell you their car because they didn’t realize how much it was worth, and never would have known until you pushed information to them.
3. Let them start pushing info to you. Here’s where the real magic happens, and why the push-push method works so well. You gave them info and now they are going to do the same for you. In this age of technology, you should have a tool that tracks every click the shopper makes, analyzes that data, then wraps it up in a simplified summary that goes directly into your CRM to give you an unfair advantage. Your team should always know exactly what it will take to buy their vehicle for your inventory and potentially help them trade-up without having to annoy them with a million questions.

Ooooh, baby, baby…

It’s time to take control of your inventory situation instead of bellyaching about it. Too many dealers complain they don’t have any new cars for people to trade their vehicle for.

B.S. ?

Not everyone wants a brand-new car.  Some people are perfectly happy trading up to a newer used vehicle. I’m living proof of someone who has always purchased newer used vehicles over a new car and this author is not alone.

Let your shoppers decide what they want to do and don’t make assumptions. You’re hurting yourself and your team by making it harder than it really is.

Sorry, not sorry, for getting that song stuck in your head for the rest of the day. If you’re feeling nostalgic, P-Push this link.