How To Sell Cars Online or Offline (PART 8)

How To Sell Cars Online or Offline (PART 8)

TRANSCRIPT: A sample buying process. Here’s one that I’ve had dealers put in place. It works. It works for them. It may not work for you. You may not be ready for this yet but it’s where step one gets everything out of the way that we need to do. It’s a meet, greet and license scan. “Hey, what vehicles did you come into see today? Great. Let me get your license so we can take you out on a test drive.” That’s it. It’s simple. It’s intuitive. It’s seamless. It’s transparent. They know exactly what I’m going to do. It can even be fun.

“Steve, if we ask people when they walk on our lot, ‘What vehicle did they come to see today,’ they’re going to lie to us.” No, they’re going to be caught off guard and they’re going to tell you. “Actually, I was here to see the new Tauruses,” or, “I was here to see this used Civic you’ve got on Autotrader.” They will tell you. When they don’t, you can say, “Great. Let me get your license scanned so that when you are ready to test drive, you can take any of the vehicles out you want.” We walk them over to the license scanner together. We keep them engaged.

“Steve, what if they have trade ins?” We’re going to do the appraisal process. That’s going to happen before every test drive. If we’re using a kiosk or an iPad, we’re going to show them MMR or wholesale Black Book. This means if we’ll do this before the test drive, the appraisal offer can be provided right after the test drive. That’s where you see under demo drive, the feature presentation. We’re going to do that during the demo drive. Our manager is going to do their trade evaluation and the write up so that when they come back, they’re ready to go.

If they have touch screen kiosks or tablets, you can make that trade-in process simple, seamless, transparent, they’re doing it themselves, and even fun and it keeps the buyer engaged throughout the process. Prior to the demo drive, we are going to point out any major items. We’re not going to do a full walk around. We’re not going to tell them that the polymer in the headlights is the same as used on the Space Shuttle. We’re not going to do those kind of things. We’re going to show them major items that are probably going to affect their drive and that’s it.

We’re going to defend the price if we need to and definitely any addendum that we have on the vehicle right now through seed planting. Something like, “As you know, the factory builds their vehicles for the entire world and what’s good in Alaska isn’t always great here in Texas. That’s why we equip every vehicle with the Lone Star Convenience Package and that package includes …” And just simply dropping that little hint, simply defending our addendum takes it off the table so that when they come back, they expect to pay our addendum.

During the demo drive, we’re going to make sure they understand the features. This is a miniature feature presentation. Remember, they’ve spent more than 19 hours online. They chose you, your vehicle, on your dealership lot to test drive because they already understand the features. While we’re on the test drive and doing the mini feature presentation, our managers are creating the write up with the trade evaluation. This is assuming you don’t self-desk. If you’re self-desking, when they come back, the trade is already built into the iPad and you can take them through there but this means that if we do this during the demo drive, the minute we return back to the dealership, we can present them with a fair pencil. You will be shocked at how many people take your first pencil when it’s a fair pencil.