How to Create the Best Automotive Internet Sales Process Ever! – PART 8

How to Create the Best Automotive Internet Sales Process Ever! (PART 8)

The Traditional Automotive Internet Sales Process

TRANSCRIPT: We’re in Section Four, The Traditional Internet Sales Process. Now, I want to make sure that you understand about the traditional internet sales process. There is nothing traditional about today’s buyer. Today’s buyer has all the information. Today’s buyer has spent hours looking online. Today’s buyer chose you and your vehicle and because you’re probably already priced to market.

If all of those things are true, they chose your vehicle, they chose your dealership, and you’re priced to market, guess what? They’re at the bottom of the funnel. They’re a whole lot lower in the funnel than they were just a few years ago. They’re ready to buy today, so let’s build our processes, and our templates, and our scripts for the traditional internet lead and our traditional process with this in mind. Every lead is an order. They’re tying to buy. They want to buy today, and they want to buy from you, so let’s make that happen. Let’s write our processes, and our scripts, and our templates for that.

Now, the traditional process today is a whole lot shorter than yesterday because the customer is lower funnel. Calls stop after 9 voice mails or 15 days, whichever comes first, because as we learned earlier, there’s no ROI in making more than 9 calls. There’s also no ROI in calling after 15 days to a non-responsive prospect. Now, don’t tell me, “But Steve, this one time, yeah, we called this guy after 60 days. He took our call, and he was back in the market. It was great.” Yeah, okay, one guy. You probably wasted hundred of calls til you got that one guy, okay? Let’s focus on the living. Let’s focus on the ones who are ready to buy today. Now, again, 97% of the people who are willing to reconnect with us will have reconnected with us by the ninth call, so if you do three calls on day one, three calls on day two, and three calls on day three, guess what? You got no more calls to make to that prospect, 9 calls or 15 days, whichever comes first.

Now, let’s be honest. Most internet sales teams aren’t calling after day seven right now, are we? Okay? So let’s have a process that makes sense. We want to focus on creating some urgency so they don’t lose their new car fever. Now, we used to talk when I started in the internet business in automotive. We used to talk about follow up until they what? Til they buy or die, right? Why don’t we do that today? Why don’t we follow up until they buy or die? Because emails to a non-responsive prospect 10 days after the lead was submitted are rarely opened, okay? Those that are opened have to provide an extremely compelling reason to drive a reconnection in order to have any impact at all on the prospect.

Plus, make no mistake, sending emails after four weeks to a non-responsive prospect greatly increases your chances of being labeled a spammer without generating enough necessary reconnections to offset this risk. If you actually told me, “Steve, forget 45 days. I want to stop my process at day 28,” I would not disagree with you. I would not. In fact, probably the only reason my process doesn’t stop at day 28 is people wouldn’t believe me. They’d think it’s the silliest thing ever, all the people that want to follow up now and forever. You got to stop that.

Now, our process, the traditional process that you’re going to get for free, this process has 21 activities, and 13 of those activities take place in the first 7 days. The activities are this. There’s going to be 10 emails that we’re going to send over the 45 days. There are going to be 9 voice mails that we’re going to leave over the 15 days. We’re going to do two text attempts, one in day one, one in day three, both from our CRM tool. Now, with all processes and templates, don’t overthink these, okay? The goal is a reconnection. Every email, by the way, should look like you wrote it personally, but never do that, okay?