How To Sell Cars Online or Offline (PART 5)

How To Sell Cars Online or Offline (PART 5)

TRANSCRIPT: Let’s look at the common denominators of a great experience. All great buying experiences at the car dealership are controlled. There are five things we’re going to look at. Control is number one. We’ve got to keep the experience controlled. That means we’re going to be in charge but we’re going to be in charge in a way that makes sense. That’s number two. All great buying experiences make sense. They make sense to the customer. All great buying experiences seem shorter than they really are. They’re efficient. Think about that. Think about watching five minutes of a sitcom on TV versus standing and watching a clock for five minutes. Obviously, the five minutes of a sitcom seems a whole lot shorter than watching a clock for five minute. We’re going to make our processes efficient. We’re going to keep the customer busy so that they’re going to seem shorter than they are.

All great buying experiences employ a buying process. That means the customer feels like they’re buying. Not an old school road to the sale. This buying process, actually the customer feels like our equal. That’s what creates a great experience. We’re in control. The process makes sense. We’re walking them through an iPad but they feel like they’re the one making all the decisions. We’re not pushing them towards anything. In fact, they’re going to make great decisions and get us great grosses on the front and on the back.

Finally, all great buying experiences assume the sale. We need to start assuming they’re here to buy the minute they arrive on the lot. Today’s UP needs you to be in control. They need you to take charge. They need you to be direct. They need you to provide guidance. They don’t know how any of this stuff works. We have to control the experience or we won’t sell a car.

The best road to the sale is actually a controlled buying process. We talk about controlling the experience. This requires process. For processes to succeed, they have to be standardized. This means you need to put them in writing. “I’m sorry Mr. Sales Manager, you have to put the process in writing and you have to start reinforcing it by the whole management team.” That’s called a standardized process. All processes need to be simple. Complicated processes don’t work. Simple processes are intuitive and they’re easy to train. It means I’m in charge of this process if I’m a sales manager. I put it in place. It’s in writing. I can reinforce it. It’s really simple to train. It really is ABC, 123.

In order for processes to work, they’re got to be repeatable. That means you cannot allow freelancing. Some of you are letting your superstar circumvent your processes. I guarantee you, once you start measuring, you’ll find that that superstar is blowing through UPs or doing other things that are costing you money. Process outsells the opposite. Process makes more gross than the opposite 100% of the time. I guarantee it.

Finally, for processes to succeed, they’ve got to be continually improved. We’ve got to take processes where they are today, we can create great processes but we have to understand they’re going to be changed in a year. They’re going to improve. Implementing processes is not hard. It’s really not. It is cheaper than the alternative. It’s also easier than the alternative. If you think, as a desk manager, you don’t have time for process. If you think, as an F & I manager, you don’t have time for process, I guarantee you, you don’t know the amount of time you’ll have if we can implement these things.

By the way, processes sell way more cars than the alternative. Your lack of repeatable processes is what Carvana and others are using against you. That’s all it is. Unless customers are telling you how great the experience was, you lack process. “What do you mean, Steve?” I mean, when they come out of F & I and you’ve just taken their head off in F & I and you made great front-end grosses as well, if they don’t come look for the first manager they can find and shake his or her hand and say, “You know what, this is the best car-buying experience I’ve ever had. I mean the best car-buying experience I’ve ever had,” if you’re not getting that on a daily basis, then you lack processes in your store.