How To Attract & Sell More Trade-In Leads (PART 5)

 

How To Attract & Sell More Trade-In Leads (PART 5)

TRANSCRIPT: This is the trade connection process. The reason that we have a separate part just to try to connect with trade customers is for those of you who ever had trade leads, you know what I’m talking about. Connecting with a trade lead can be the most frustrating part of any lead handling process. It’s the most frustrating part of any lead handling process, not just trade leads, but especially the trade leads.

Now, why is it that trade leads are less likely to reconnect with you than other website leads? I mean, these are website leads after all. Here’s why. They got what they needed. See, when we gave them that value, they got what they needed, and now they don’t need us. When you’re trying to connect with a trade lead, you’re trying to get them on the phone, you need to understand this. You need to remember this. This means we have to have a robust reconnection process that we’re going to look at that’s heavy on calls, and uses specific templates and scripts directed at trade. We have to make them need us again. That’s what you need to understand.

It’s not enough just to call them up and say, and leave them a voicemail saying, “Hey, I see you got your trade information. Please call me back if you have any questions.” There aren’t going to be questions. They owe 8,000 on their car. You just sent them something via e-mail that says, “We’re going to give you 6.” They’re done with their questions as if they were on your lot. The difference is on the lot, we can roll in the negative equity, and we can sell them a car. We have to look at our mindset. We have to change our mindset, right?

Every trade lead is an offer to buy the prospect’s car. That’s all it is. They’re not looking for more information. They weren’t just seeing what their car was worth of our website, right? These are not leads. These are offers to buy. Then second thing that we need to focus on trade leads is that vehicle of interest. We get the trade lead, right? They’ve got a ’13 Camry, and then we get the vehicle of interest, the 2017 Avalon. We need to disregard the vehicle of interest. I’m going to say that again. Disregard the vehicle of interest.

When you’re trying to connect with someone, don’t even talk about the vehicle of interest. Act as if you don’t even know it. It doesn’t exist. See, trade forms ask for a vehicle of interest as an afterthought. They really do. The reason that a lot of the trade companies ask for vehicle of interest is because as dealers, you’ve said, “Wait! How do I contact this guy? What kind of car does he want?” Remember, the vehicle of interest is an afterthought. Disregard it. If they’re really interested in that ’17 Avalon, they’re going to tell you. They’re going to tell you as you try to reconnect with them on buying their Camry.

If they’re not and you focus on it, if you focus your communication to them on the ’17 Avalon, they’re never going to reconnect. You have one goal when you get a trade lead. What is it? It’s to reconnect. That’s your only goal.

Okay. Let’s reconnect, all right? Let’s talk about our one goal strategy. Our one goal strategy is to reconnect, not to sell. Now, you want to be fast and you want to be first. A company called CraftJack found that dealers who connect first with a prospect are 238% more likely to sell them a car than the one who connected second. Is that gigantic? You need to be first. You have to be fast with your response to them if you want to reconnect.

Number 2 is your response should be call heavy. Let’s take a look at this chart from Velocify. Velocify did a study, and they found that it takes 6 calls to pretty much reach everybody you’re going to reach. What this chart shows us is that if you only make one call, you’re only going to reach 48% of the people who are willing to reconnect with us. By the 6th call, you’re going to reconnect with 93% of those who are willing to reconnect.

What they’re telling us here, 6 calls is enough. Yeah, you heard it from me first. Don’t make more than 6 calls. Listen, if I can get every dealer that I work with for their team to actually make 6 calls, I’d be a hero. They’d be selling so many cars. It would be crazy. You also want when you’re reconnecting, you want to have short, text-only e-mails. When you’re sending text messages to the customer, to the prospect, when you’re sending them text messages, you want to have request to text, and you want to do it through the CRM. You do not want to text the customer directly from your own phone.

Now, if you’re a salesperson on this seminar today, you’re saying to yourself, “No, Steve. I love just using my phone and texting them right away.” Let’s talk about texting outside the CRM. Now, I’m not a lawyer, as you know, but I want you to look at the pitfalls of the free texting. I need you, if you have any control in your dealership, to purchase the texting module from your CRM company because it’s not too expensive. I’ve seen what they cost, and they’re all worth it, and I don’t know in motorcycles, but I do know in autos that texting tool is worth it, and here’s why.

The TCPA, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which covers texting, will apply $1500 fine per offending text. Let’s say you have 15 salespeople who work for you, and they send 15 texts today to prospects from their mobile devices without permission. In 5 days, believe it or not, that’s 1125 offending text messages. At $1500 a pop, that’s $1,687,500 fine for you by violating the TCPA. That’s after 5 days. CRM module doesn’t seem too expensive now, does it?

All right. Let’s talk about why the reconnection process with this prospect is difficult because once we focus on why, once we understand why the reconnection process is difficult, we’ll be able to reconnect with a greater percentage of people who’ve submitted a trade lead. The main reason that the reconnection process is difficult is they got that low value or low range, at least low in their mind.

See, they owe 8,000 for their car. We just told them we’re going to give them 6,000, okay? If they were in store, we would, as I said earlier, we’d roll in the negative equity, right? We wouldn’t hand in their keys back and say, “Come back after you paid off 2,000 more on your car.” No. In fact, if somebody came in today and was only $2,000 upside down on their current car, a lot of us would just cry, wouldn’t we? We’re like, “Yeah. You’re the most qualified person we’ve got all month.” We would sell them a car.

When they’re sitting at home, and they just found out you’re only going to give them 6,000 for an $8,000 car, 8,000 in their mind, they’re not going to reconnect. We need to address that lower value in our templates. We need to talk about it only being a computer value, okay? We need to do that in our templates, in our voicemail scripts.

The second reason why we’re not connecting with trade leads is we’re focused on selling the vehicle of interest, instead of getting them on the phone. We are the interested buyers. That’s the way we need to look at these leads. We’re the interested buyers. Change your focus. You’re focusing on the wrong thing right now. Number 3, we’re making one or fewer calls. We have a weak process, right? We’ve got a bad process in place. We’re making one call, they don’t call us back. We cherry-pick everything. See, if it was easy, anybody could do this. You’ve got to make those 6 calls. You’ve got to make those 6 calls, and you’ve got to use the right voice messages.

Let me show you my basic internet processes over the years because I want to be very clear about the way that we connect with people today. On the far left, you’re looking at my 2006 internet sales connection process. It was 150 days long, and that’s the blue and the green together, and the green represents the phone calls when we stop making phone calls. In 2006, my internet sales process that I was teaching required phone calls through day 60. 5 years later, we dropped it to 120-day process with calls required through day 30. In 2016, this year, we’ve dropped our process again.

Now we’re saying the internet sales process shouldn’t go longer than 90 days. This is trying to reconnecting with someone, by the way. The internet sales process shouldn’t go longer than 90 days, and we’re going to require calls only through day 23. In 2017, and right now it’s what I teach, but for you, for next year, for right now, your trade-in lead process shouldn’t be longer than 30 days, and you shouldn’t be making calls beyond day 11. The reason is is there’s no ROI in those calls, right?

You saw the Velocify data. After 6 calls, we’ve already connected with 93% with the people who are willing to connect with us. If you’re making 20 calls to internet sales prospects, you’re wasting your time. Get more leads and make 6 calls to each one of them, rather than have few leads that you’re making 20-25 calls to each person.

Now, all of my processes include this. Day 1, we always send an auto-response. I’m not going to argue with you about it. We send an auto-response. We’re going to look at one in just a second. Oh, and by the way, if you want my 2017 trade process, if you want every template, every e-mail, every voicemail script, if you want that entire 30-day process, stay tuned until the end of the session. I’m going to tell you exactly where to find it on our site. We’ve hidden it. No. It’s on our site, and I’ll show you where to find it.

All right. These are all of my processes on day 1. They’re all the same, auto-response. I send an auto-response, and we’re going to look at that in just a second. Then we’re going to make phone calls. We’re going to make up to 3 phone calls the first day, depending on what time the lead arrived. Now, this doesn’t matter if it’s trade lead or sales lead. People are hottest on their first day. I can’t wait for them to get buyer’s remorse before they’ve ever bought, right? I’m going to try up to 3 times if the lead came in early enough. I’m only going to send one personal e-mail to all non-connected prospects.

If I haven’t connected with someone, I’m sending the first personal e-mail on day 1, and after that, all e-mails are automated.