Dealers are coming off the luckiest time in dealership history. Those years of low new car supply are behind us and it is tough remembering what it was like prior to that time. The good years were long enough to create new habits and establish new comfort levels. However, in today’s market, there are a lot of bad habits and unrealistic expectations at play in dealerships.

I’m sorry to say that, but my style is to shoot between the eyes without sugar coating.

What do we do about it?

Remember that people want new cars. Once someone makes 18 payments on their current vehicle they’re beginning to toy with the idea of what’s next. It doesn’t mean they’re in the market, but they’re ripe for you to place seeds in their head.

Also note the average service repair order is over $500! Let every service customer know you’ll pay their service bill when they trade their car on something new. And if your service manager doesn’t like that message, let him/her know you’re going to have to spend that money in the service drive reconditioning that car anyway.

Put some of your mindset on pipeline building. It isn’t just about who is going to buy a car this month. Make sure the hot customers are the top priority, but encourage your sales team to appreciate potential customers. It only takes a little consistent effort to check-in with past sold customers (via email or text) to say “how is your [model] holding up? Did you see the new stuff from [Make] yet?” That’s a relevant question to ask because you’re in sales, they’re expecting you to try to sell them stuff, and it helps reinforce that you’re there when they are ready. Birthday messages are not the way to go. You’re an annoyance on their birthday because we all know you really don’t care about a birthday, you care about a sale. So be a proud salesman! Always talk about cars, and move them to a sale.

Welcome back to 2019. That was your refresher. How can FRIKINtech help?

Automation

• ensure the right customers get the right offers every time
• automated texting, email, and mail get the message through – more channels means more impressions because it takes 3 impressions to land an idea
• let tech make the first pass, so your people spend time talking to the customers who are engaged

Service Appointment Dashboard

• 7 to 14 days of visibility into the service appointments
• know who scheduled the service and who sold them their car
• get in front of the service vehicles you want as trades before they do service while allowing the automation to catch any that fell through the cracks

Non-Generic AI

• engaged customers are touched with AI messaging that works off of how they engaged
• because we have a specific lead source the messaging is tuned and the goal is to get an appointment for a trade appraisal
• make your team far more efficient by letting the technology make the first pass (that mundane chore) so your people can play with the fun stuff they enjoy

The average store sells ~150 cars a month, services ~1,000, and has a little over 20,000 customers in the sold database. If your store is only relying on inbound leads, phone/floor ups, and a mailer or email to hit past sold, you’re missing some massive opportunity for better fishing.

Get a quick demo of TRADEiQ and judge for yourself how easy we can make fishing for you.