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Before the pandemic, most dealers would define an appointment as a planned showroom visit customers made to view a specific product with a sales professional they had already met, either in the showroom, over the phone, or digitally.
Traditionally, sales teams have engaged their customers with a service promise, giving them just enough information to entice them into making an appointment at the showroom.
“What’s the One Thing that cannot be changed, but if it could be changed, would change every- thing?” Once you have answered that questioned, you should focus all of your energy on changing that One Thing.
The Value of Portfolio Thinking.
You can tell a true sales professional by the number of repeat and referral customers they sell each month. It’s one thing to sell a customer one car, but to follow up regularly and earn repeat purchases, that takes portfolio thinking.
Portfolio thinking looks beyond today’s potential commission, and instead looks at the potential of the customer and their referrals over multiple purchases.
The Value of Process – the systems and steps that we take each day to intentionally create appointment success.
In the past, success in the retail car business was often a result of the showroom skills and the personalities of the sales team. Today, that’s not enough to create success, as most customers want help before they visit the dealer’s showroom.
Showroom skills and personality are most effective when they are added to great appointment making skills and to effective selling processes.
Being prepared is more than how we prepare for our customer’s showroom visit.
It applies to how we maximize each day by reaching out to past customers when we make our daily portfolio calls.
In the past, automotive sales teams were able to create success by being re-active, rather than pro-active. Sales Professionals typically came to work to wait for customers. But today, customers no longer need to go to a dealership to get information on vehicles, or in some cases even to purchase a vehicle.
Now we must be pro-active to succeed. What does this mean? It starts by coming to work, to work, not to wait.
Jeff Williams joins Jason and Glenn on this episode of Strategy with Jason to explore the current status of the automotive industry and how dealers can get ahead of the curve as economies start to open up again.
Everything has changed. Prepare your leaders for the future: You have the opportunity to structure your retail operations around these three foundational principles.
Here are a few things that I learned from these dealers who chose to keep talking to their customers during the pandemic. Many of these dealers sold cars, in some cases quite a few. But that wasn’t their goal. They simply wanted to build goodwill with their customers.
