How To Sell Cars Online or Offline (PART 19)

How To Sell Cars Online or Offline (PART 19)

TRANSCRIPT: “Okay, Steve. We sold a car. Now, what happens? We had this great experience online, right, but we sold the car and we know that it requires a wet signature.” This is where you can fail. This is where, when you talk about how we going to put this into place. We’re going to put it on our website. We’re going to assign maybe one or two product specialists that handle all these deliveries. They’ll get a mini, if they take them through the delivery and they’ll get a percent of any F & I products they upsell at this point, any add-ons that they add when the customer shows up, any after-market accessories. Anything you want to sell to these people, you can do it at the time of delivery.

The delivery’s critical. Whether they’ve arranged to pick up their vehicle or whether you’ve arranged to deliver their vehicle, you must and this is critical. You cannot fall down now. You must have all of the paperwork ready. I cannot stress that enough. They did this all online. They truly expect to walk in and sign a piece of paper and grab their keys and leave. All of the paperwork has to be accurate. To-the-penny calculations are critical. Again, that’s why it’s important to have a great partner who’s pulling all the right rates and residuals, who’ve already worked with all of the banks. And any documents you have requiring wet signatures should be called out.

“Steve, doesn’t that go without saying?” No, it doesn’t. I’ve seen these deliveries. I’ve seen deliveries of people who buy car on eBay for example from dealers. They show up at the dealership and they spend an hour and a half while somebody gathers up all the paperwork and finds the extra set of keys and the other fob that we’ve promised them and goes and builds a WE OWE. Stop. It’s got to be like the closing when you go buy your house. When you go to buy a house and you go to the closing, every place you have to sign has one of these little tabs, “Sign here.” It has to be that simple.

I cannot stress this enough. The delivery must be perfect whether it’s in person at their home or in your store because all of the good will you’ve created will evaporate with the slightest bit of friction. Anything more than a true sign and drive at this point is going to hurt your reputation in the dealership. This means the keys are ready, the car is ready, you are expecting them. You have an appointment for 1:45. You expect them at 1:45 and everything’s ready at 12:45. These folks showed up, they just bought a $40,000 car online from you. They saved you a ton of commission. You made good money on them. They should never have to wait even a minute to get this deal done at this point.

However, this does not mean you don’t do a proper delivery. If it’s at their home, we are going to present a couple F & I add ons. We’re going to give them a last chance. If it’s in our dealership, we’re going to do the service walk. We’re going to set the first service appointment. These are critical for in-store deliveries.