How To Attract & Sell The Millennial Car Buyer – PART 1

How To Attract & Sell The Millennial Car Buyer (PART 1)

TRANSCRIPT: Hi, this is Steve Stauning with another Steve Stauning Short and Sweet video training lesson. Today’s lesson: How to attract and sell the millennial buyer. Now, this 22-part series was originally recorded live in two separate Undeniable Advantage live video webcasts. Be sure to never miss a live video webcast. Go to UndeniableAdvantage.com right now to register for our next live session.

All right, let’s talk about what we’re going to cover today. We’re going to talk about millennial basics and today’s consumers. We’re also going to talk about communicating with today’s connected customers. We’ll talk about millennials and how they impact your service department and how millennials impact your sales department.

We’re gonna do this in eight distinct sections. Now we’re going to cover the first five sections today and the other three sections we’re going to cover in part two. The five sections we’re going to cover today is we’ll talk about millennials. We’ll talk about background on millennials and some research.

In section two, we’re going to talk about how today everybody is a millennial. It’s really is not about millennials, it’s about the connected customer and we’ll get to that.

In section three, we’re going to talk about why adjusting to millennials and the connected customer is so important for you and your business.

In section four, we’re going to talk about communicating with today’s customer.

Finally, today, in section five we’re going to talk about your sales department and your service department, all of the things that you’re going to do on the marketing side of the business and pre-visit in order to attract and sell today’s connected customer.

Now in part two, which is not today, it’s going to be in two weeks, we’re going to talk about hiring millennials. We’ll talk about service in your dealership, and we’ll talk about sales in your dealership and how you can win with the connected customer.

All right. Let’s dive in. Let’s talk in section one, let’s talk about millennials. First let’s level set. What is a millennial? There’s been lots of definitions out there. I happen to like the Goldman Sachs definition which you’re seeing here and that is, that’s someone who was born between 1980 and 2000. Now, this is 2017, so that makes millennials this year between the ages of 17 and 37. That means they’re all drivers. They’re all car buyers. They’re all in the market. Millennials are part of the largest US generation ever at 92 million people.

Now, they are generally disloyal to retailer. It’s important to know that 57% of millennials have admitted to show-rooming. That means when they are on your lot, when they are in your dealership, they’re using their mobile device to verify pricing. They do it when they’re in Walmart and they’ll do it in your dealership, and that’s the ones that will admit to it.

The great thing about millennial business is they’re beginning to be a big part of your car loans. They made up more than 35% of the car loans last year alone. According to Pew Research, in general, millennials have detached themselves from time honored institutions like political parties and religion while becoming more educated, more diverse and more equal among gender lines. They are much less likely to be military veterans, less likely to be married, and as you probably know, they’re less likely to be working.

According to Monitoring the Future’s annual study, millennials want money, but they’re really not willing to work hard for it. Now we’re going to talk about how millennials aren’t that different than today’s customer. I want you to understand that when we talk about millennials working for us, they’re really not willing to work that hard, as hard as prior generations. They also don’t expect work to be a central part of their lives. They’re not as willing to work overtime as prior generations.

Plus according to Goldman Sachs, millennials and connected customers want speed. They want things quickly. They expect things quickly. They’ve gotten things quickly their entire life. They won’t accept speed at the expense of quality. That means you still have to deliver a quality product. They won’t accept speed if speed is delivered with an attitude.

Let’s leverage the knowledge that we have right now, okay? What do we know so far? We know that if we can deliver something quickly with quality and without attitude, we’re going to make money. That’s the millennial math. What we need is we need a sense of urgency. We need a sense of immediacy. We also need to have a sense of excellence in what we provide on the sales and service side of our business. We need a sense of eagerness in both sales and service, meaning we have to be eager to help the millennial.






Honestly ask yourself this. When you look at your business, when you look in your service drive, when you look at your salespeople, when you look at your Internet department or your BDC and you see that group working in there, are we always eager to provide perfection in the most efficient manner possible? See, that’s what the connected customer wants today. That’s what millennials want. Guess what? It’s not just millennials who want this.

Let’s jump into section 2. Today everybody’s a millennial. It’s important to understand this. I was at an OEMs training in 2015, and they had a millennial teaching a bunch of dealer principals about the millennial buyer. The dealer principals were furiously writing stuff down because this millennial was an expert on millennials because he was a millennial. He was wearing sandals, in fact, as I recall.

In the middle of his speech, he was telling the dealer principals that the millennial car buyer, her, she wants all the information so that she can make an informed decision before she buys a car from you. The dealer principals were furiously writing this down. “Oh my goodness, I thought. “Wow, what a revelation.” You mean the millennials want all the information so they can make an informed decision before they buy a car? That’s what she wants. Somehow he doesn’t want this? Are you crazy?

Millennial studies are stupid. I want you to understand that. The answer on all millennial studies is because they can. Of course she wants all the information so that she can make an informed decision before she buys a car at your dealership, because she can get that.

Had you asked my grandmother in 1942, “Hey Louise, do you want all the information so you can make an informed decision before you buy a car?” She would’ve said, “Sure.” Right? There was no information back then. The information is plentiful today. That’s why they want it. Let’s understand. It’s not about the generation. It’s about the technology, and it’s about the availability of information.

DrivingSales as a great study out there that tells us that 99% of buyers expect a hassle when they start shopping for a car. 99% of buyers, that’s pretty much everyone. That’s millennials, that’s Baby Boomers, that’s Gen-Xers. They’re the same. See, it’s not the millennial buyer anymore, it’s the connected buyer. We’ve got to stop talking about the millennial buyer, okay?

Car buyers today all want and all expect the same things. They’ve already completed their meet-and-greet. They’ve already completed their needs analysis. They’ve already completed their vehicle selection and their feature presentation. They’ve done all of these things before they ever step foot on your lot. Now they need someone to sell them a car. They already know what they want.

Let’s look at some quick stats to prove this out. According to AutoTrader, in 2015, 71% of used car buyers purchased the vehicle they intended, and 77% of new car buyers purchased the vehicle they intended. I sold my first car in 1985. 30 years later, these are the stats. In 1985, nobody bought the car they intended. We flipped everybody, right?

This is because Google tells us that these people before they came to your lot, they’ve already looked at 24 or more different sources of information. They spent over 19 hours doing online research before they ever stepped on your lot. You need to treat every buyer like a connected buyer, and we’ll talk about that both in the pre-visit stuff we’re going to talk about today and in the part 2 piece, the buyers in your dealership.