Just buying a Digital Retail (DR) solution doesn’t mean that your staff will buy-in, or that your customers will use it. Without changing how you sell and think, you will lose money. When you recognize that a DR solution needs to be part of your normal selling process, you’ll be in position to turn your DR program into profits for your dealership. We believe that means a paradigm shift for you, your staff, and your customers.

Today’s article is part of our ongoing series looking at how the Road to the Sale is changing in the face of COVID and evolving buyer behaviors. It is the sister article to one we wrote over a week ago called The Road to the Sale: The Digital Retail Checklist (Part 1). Our goal with this article is simple: Outline ways in which you can ensure that your DR investment is optimized for selling vehicles and making you money.

Time to Think Differently

Let’s say you have obtained a DR solution and it is now installed. The Customer Success team has trained your team and you’re ready to get rolling. What do you do?

The first thing that you need to do is recognize that DR changes the rules on how you interact with customers in a variety of ways. Most customers are still comfortable with a visit to the showroom to buy a vehicle, but the trend is growing rapidly for buyers that want to shop and now buy remotely. Successful Digital Retail dealers are meeting them where they want to buy and making it easier for both customers and dealers. DR allows dealers to do all the things they used to do, only better, more efficiently and more conveniently… a nice win/win for dealership teams and customers. Let’s break down how you need to think differently.

It’s the Relationship Stupid!


With the “digital door” to your sales process starting much earlier online, DR driven sales are all about the relationship and the vehicle that the shopper wants to buy. Building a rapport quickly is essential. The focus should be on helping the customer make the best decision. As a result, the appointment comes more naturally and oftentimes after the commitment to buy. It is now your job to walk the customer through your online store to buy a particular vehicle using whatever communication medium works best for the consumer (including phone, FaceTime, or another video chat like Google Hangouts or Zoom) (See our first article about communication tools and the Road to the Sale here.)

Changes to Your Website


Do you need to re-jigger your site to accommodate your new DR application? Since you will want to drive traffic to your DR solution, how should you accommodate that change? New banners on the homepage?

A new look to the VDP pages? Will your pricing strategy change as a result of having the DR tool? Are your competitors using a DR tool and how will that affect your thinking about pricing? Be thoughtful and careful here. There’s some heavy lifting when thinking through this. Take your time. We’d be glad to offer our thoughts and plans in a future article. Just let us know.

Speed and Service is Everything


In 2000 Bill Gates wrote Business @ the Speed of Thought: Succeeding in the Digital Economy. This book argued that technology is not an overhead, but an asset that can power companies into the new century. Business was speeding up and you, as a manager, needed to adapt and change in order to survive.

Mr. Gates was right. Your new DR solution is an asset. But this asset changes the rules of interaction with prospective customers. With DR, you will need to make sure that your team always responds quickly to any inquiry (and that you have a solution in place for when your business is closed, or what we call “auto-selling”). Leave someone waiting, and you will lose the opportunity. Respond quickly, in a manner that builds trust and confidence, and you will escort your customer down the funnel to a sale. Tweaking your culture to accommodate this will require a flexible plan where you allow team members to work remotely, and not just in a volunteer capacity.

Transparency is Required, Not Desired


DR exposes the entire sales process to the buyer. A good DR solution allows the shopper to bounce back and forth in the process, rupturing what was previously a linear process through the Road to the Sale. This transparency is not a threat, but an opportunity to build trust and deepen your relationship with the customer. Don’t hold back. The easier you make it, the more you’ll be able to say, “Hey, we sold 3 vehicles between midnight and 6 am!”

Change the Rules


Individual decision-making = speed to sale. What do we mean by this formula? It’s simple. If we know that speed in responding to inquiries is critical to helping move an opportunity down the sales funnel, then we have to rethink how we manage our floor. As a Dealer Principal, GM, or Sales Manager, you’ll need to rethink what your team can do independently of you. If you want optimal performance for your DR Platform, you should step back and set guidelines for sales team members to make decisions (independent of you!) about pricing, payments, and a host of other things. These guidelines should be simple, easy to understand, and eliminate obstacles that would require your salespeople to seek you out for answers. You need to remove any delays in your salesperson’s ability to answer a customer’s question and secure a sale. Think of your veteran team members who you trust to do their own deals and this model should become the norm with appropriate guidelines.

One simple tactic you can use is to review your first 5 sales and look at where your team gets stuck. When they hit a point where they must come to you, work an answer or set of answers they can follow for future transactions. Apply these changes and then do the same for the next 5 sales. Pretty soon you will have a set of simple rules that will free up both you and your team to sell.

The Showroom and DR are One!


This one is simple. If you have a customer come to your showroom who is already in your DR funnel, make sure that your sales staff keep working them within the funnel. Make sure that your salespeople know that the showroom is just another part of the DR sales process. This keeps things simple, especially if they leave before the sale is closed. With them still locked into the process, your salespeople can easily follow up to guide the shopper and close the deal. Finally, your salespeople should be trained to ask if a customer had shopped on your website. Then, the agents may be able to “pick up” where they left off within the DR funnel.

Great Chat and Texting Skills are Key


Engagement on your DR Platform is likely to require a lot more chat and texting from your staff than in the past. Consequently, you should make sure that your staff know that they must respond quickly to any inquiry and use chat or text to engage and encourage the shopper to move through the funnel. Consider using conversational scripts. Set some standards for how your staff should communicate and check up on them occasionally to make sure that they are representing you well. While most people communicate reasonably well verbally, some can be a disaster in writing. As you know, avoiding a disaster before it happens is always better than the latter option. Remember, you manage what you monitor.

Make a Plan… or Plan to Waste Money


Too much money, hard work, and sweat equity are involved in a change like this to not create a plan to guide your actions.

Keep the plan simple and build around the following questions that are rooted to the core question of how DR changes how you do business:

1. How does DR change my sales process? This is your first and most important question because it will affect many of your internal processes. The sales process changes with DR. Building a rapport is immediate. Once someone is in your funnel, they are effectively “in the store”, just digitally. You’ll need to get your sales people to think differently and always engage with a goal to make the shopper’s experience positive, worthy of their trust, and quick.


2. What standards do I need to set for my team? You will need to set standards for how your team will use your new DR platform. As usual, keep it simple. Avoid hard to follow rules that will only frustrate your staff. Set up simple rules around communication standards, speed at different stages in the process, etc. Check regularly that your standards are being followed in order to make sure they stick. Of course, as a manager and/or owner, you already know this. 😉


3. What goals do I need set to get my team running well? Your immediate goals should address both your team’s adoption of DR into their sales process, as well as goals around sales volume and performance. Timebox your goals so you can easily see if you are making progress. Some example goals to consider might include: 1. Selecting and setting up your team; 2. Setting standards; 3. Establishing a management process to monitor progress over time (managers make or break your success); and 4. Setting sales goals. The list can go on, but you get our point.


4. How best can I manage my team’s adoption of DR? In the early stages, you will need a project manager’s mindset to check off tasks, add new ones, and adapt quickly when problems arise. One suggestion is to create short 15 minute meetings at the start of every day to surface and correct issues quickly. If an issue is raised in a meeting, address it on the spot. If your 15 minute limit is at risk because the issue is complicated, finish the meeting and then solve the issue immediately thereafter. This way you won’t waste time in meetings, but you WILL solve problems quickly.


5. Where and how should I start? Make the plan, carve it into executable steps, name your Management Champion (such as a lead salesperson), communicate what you’re doing to staff and customers, and then get rolling. The Champion and communication are critical. The Champion will be the person (or persons) around which you will build your process while communication is important because it will help control expectations for both customers and staff.


6. What hidden issues might I need to consider? Probably the biggest “hidden issue” is your company culture (which, it can be argued, is the focus of this whole article). Running a DR platform requires fast response times, greater independence for staff to make sales related decisions, and the use of a tool that can be applied to your whole sales process. If your company culture doesn’t support some of these things, you will need to change it. A quick reference you can use for corporate culture change is change expert Dr. John Kotter’s 8-step process for leading culture change. Don’t worry, it is a quick read.


7. What type of messaging is important? You have two groups of people to communicate with to help you maximize the success of your DR platform: Your staff and your customers. For your staff, you will need to explain what DR means to them, your dealership, and how it will change how they, and you, do business. For your customers, you will need to give them information on how to engage via your DR platform. Keep it short and sweet using either a web page or video. Here’s one example that combines both video and text from Capitol City Honda in Washington State. It is simple, easy to understand, and thus well done. (And, to add something extra, Capitol City Honda has smartly integrated their DR platform into their BDC process so it is now a part of their daily workflow.)


8. Does it make sense to connect my digital marketing to my DR? Yes. Definitely. Do it. A digital marketing ad can take a lead to a VDP, and then straight into the DR funnel without ever having the customer spend much time on your website. It’s no more complicated than that!


9. How does the shopper get their new vehicle? Is it delivered? Do they pick-up? Do they have a grace period after they buy? You will need to answer all these questions before you make your first sale (along with ways you will communicate how your customer’s new vehicle will be COVID free). But know this: trends indicate that a portion of car buyers like the convenience of home delivery so expect to see it rise further in the future.


10. Paperwork. Don’t forget to talk to a consultant and lawyer about how this process may affect your paperwork. You may need additional documents for the customer to sign, depending on the state in which you do business and they reside. You want to be sure that there are not any conflicting provisions in your current paperwork that can cause issues down the line for your dealership.

11. How do you collect trade-ins? Does the shopper drop off? Do you pick up? How do you handle situations where the trade-in doesn’t reflect what the shopper said during the DR buying process? You’ll need answers for these if you want to keep your headaches to a minimum.


12. Do I need to think differently about how I hire salespeople? We say “Yes!”. If you’re using DR, you need people that can communicate well using any device or medium. And, echoing from above, you need people who can build rapport quickly to build trust and get a sale. Waiting for someone to walk in the dealership is no longer the standard. A good salesperson will create possibilities and respond rapidly to any inquiry.


Why Should I Care? Isn’t COVID Slowing Down Anyhow?


With the country now “opening up” from the COVID lock-down, the scramble to get DR in dealerships seems to be slowing down. Does this mean that you should rethink adopting DR too? We don’t think so. People’s buying patterns are changing and have changed. If you look at Carvana, they continued to make money right through the COVID crisis (with only a small blip or two in growth).

Our expectation is that car buying patterns are going to diversify well past COVID. Think about how you used to advertise your dealership 30 years ago. You could only advertise on print, TV and radio. Now, you can still do those traditional outlets if you want, but the better lead sources are online, digital, and in quantity. Something similar is happening to vehicle sales. Carvana and others like them have proven the DR model. WebBuy, Darwin, Roadster, Motoinsight, AutoFi and others now give dealers the ability to sell online too. So your expectation should be that you will still get people in your showroom, but your online sales will grow too.

Finally, here is something to think about regarding COVID. If you track COVID cases and deaths in the US, you will see that they are still on the rise in many states with six states in particular reporting heavy increases. What this tells us is that we’re not yet out of the woods and in the clear. Making matters more complicated, if the theory is true that there will be a second wave, then being prepared is the best strategy you can use. A good DR platform is not just a way to make more money for your dealership, but potential insurance should things go very wrong with COVID.

Final Thoughts


How you execute on your plan and build your DR Culture is up to you, but our best advice is that you:

1. Keep it simple;

2. Build as you go;

3. Constantly evaluate your progress so you can adapt quickly; and

4. Make sure that your team thinks the right way when it comes to DR sales

 

As always, we’re strongest when we work together so please share ideas and examples of success with us if you have them.

All the best in selling!

With thanks to my talented colleagues Adam Dennis (SurgeMetrix) and David Kain (Kain Automotive) who co-wrote this article.  

Tom Kline is the Lead Consultant and Founder of Virginia-based consulting firm of Better Vantage Point.  He may be reached at 757-434-7656.