How To Attract & Sell More Trade-In Leads (PART 7)

How To Attract & Sell More Trade-In Leads (PART 7)

TRANSCRIPT: Now, there are 5 keys to a good voicemail, and I’ll take you through all 5. The first one is be enthusiastic. This is a big deal for them. What do I mean by enthusiastic? I mean, when you pick up your red phone, and you all have a red phone, right? When you pick up your red phone and you’re leaving a voicemail, you’re going to say, “Hey, Mr. Jones. This is Steve Stauning calling from Steve’s Honda. We are absolutely excited to see your 1977 Gremlin.” Be enthusiastic about it, okay, even if it’s a wholesale unit. We can’t sell an empty seat. We’ve got to get them in the door.

You also need to be prepared, okay? You need to read the lead first. You need to understand what they have, and you need to talk specifically about their vehicle in the voicemail. You don’t want to talk about vehicles in general or your used car, okay? Be prepared. Know what they have. You need to give them a compelling reason to call you back, right? We want to give you a firm written offer. We want to set up a priority appraisal for you, so we can get you in an out quickly.

You want to have one single call to action in every voicemail, and the only call to action you want is, “Call me back at …” and you give them your phone number. That’s the only call to action you want. You need to highlight your persistence in every voicemail. What do I mean by that? I mean, we’re going to highlight our persistence by saying, “And don’t worry if you can’t get back to me right away. I’m going to try again later.”

See, if I leave somebody 2 voicemails throughout the day and each one I ended with, “And don’t worry if you can’t get back to me right away. I’m going to try again later,” and they had submitted a lead earlier today, when I call them that third time, guess what they’re going to do? Yeah, they’re going to take my call, okay? They’re going to take my call because they know I’m just going to keep calling and calling and calling.

Let’s do a quick voicemail here. This is an equity mining voicemail. This means I’ve been tasked with calling this customer in trying to buy their vehicle. This is a pretty typical voicemail that I’m going to leave if I’m calling customers from my database, and trying to get them in on a trade value. “Hi, Bob. This is Steve Stauning calling from Steve’s Ford. My general manager wanted me to call you today to see if you’d be interested in selling your F150 back to us. We’re on a pinch because we have a buyer and an immediate need, and we’re having trouble locating an F150 like yours. Anyway, Bob, please call me back, so we can get you a written offer or a written appraisal, rather, on the truck. My number is 555-1212. Once again, that’s 555-1212. Don’t worry, Bob, if you can’t get back to me right away. I’ll try you again later. Thanks and talk to you soon.”

That’s a very typical equity mining voicemail that we might leave. Now, I want to be clear on a few things. I’m not ever going to lie to a prospect. I just called this guy and I said, “My general manager wanted me to call you today.” Is that true? Ask your general manager. It’s absolutely true. You’re general manager wants you to call every day, okay? Then I said we’ve got a buyer and immediate need for his F150. Is that true? Absolutely. Our buyer is probably our used car manager, but that’s our buyer. We’ve got a buyer, and we have an immediate need because we’re in the car business. We always have an immediate need.

Let’s look at my 5 keys to a good voicemail. I was enthusiastic, right? I was prepared. I knew he had an F150, okay? I gave him a compelling reason to call me back, “Call me back, so we can get you a written appraisal on your truck,” right? “We’re on a pinch. We have a buyer and immediate need.” Those are the compelling reasons. I gave him that single call to action, “Anyway, Bob, please call me back, so we can get you a written appraisal,” right? “Call me back.” Number 5, I highlighted my persistence. I said, “Don’t worry, Bob, if you can’t get back to me right away. I’ll try again later. Thanks and talk to you soon.” That’s an equity mining voicemail. They’re very easy to do. Nothing you need to overthink.

I want to talk now about connecting with that Instant Cash Offer customer or other third-party trade-in customers. Some of my dealers have “too many leads” from Instant Cash Offer. I don’t want to turn these leads off. I want to keep them all, okay? I want to be clear on that. When you have what you think are too many leads from Instant Cash Offer or from a third-party, you need to understand that you should probably have 2 process paths.

Let’s look at this. Let’s say we’ve got a dealer in Midland, Texas, okay? They might be getting Instant Cash Offer leads from that entire radius that we have out there, okay? They may be getting from Lubbock, and Abilene, and San Angelo, and Fort Stockton, and Hobbs, New Mexico. If we’re this dealer in Midland, Texas, we’re going to be getting Instant Cash Offer leads from people who are 2 hours away, okay?

If that’s the case, then what we want to do is we want to set up a process where we look at close-in and desirable vehicles. You choose what close-in means, and you choose what desirable means. For example, close-in, it would be Odessa, Midland. That would definitely be a close-in. Desirable would be something that’s in my core, some piece of inventory that I need. If I’m a Honda dealer, and someone has a ’14 Civic that’s got 12,000 miles on it, that’s a desirable unit. Even if they’re in Lubbock, I’m going to make 6 calls to them until I get a hold of them.

You don’t want to make 6 calls to every prospect. We need to be realistic, right? It’s a 2-hour drive from Lubbock. If somebody has a ’77 Gremlin in Lubbock that they’ve completed the Instant Cash Offer form on, I’ll make a 1 call tops, okay? If I don’t get a hold of them, I’m leaving a voicemail. I’m telling them how they can get back to me, and that’s it. We want to have 2 separate processes, one for people who have desirable vehicles or they’re close-in. Those are the people that I’m going to make 6 calls to over the course of those 11 days.

Then I have another process for people that are far away or have vehicles that listen, my used car manager wants nothing to do with, okay? Those people are going to get maybe 1 phone call, maybe 2 tops because my 2 calls I’ve connected with 70% of the people who are willing to reconnect with me. 2 calls tops, and then after that, the e-mails take over.