Understanding and Maximizing Opportunities

One thing is clear to most dealers - any contact from a customer or prospect should always be handled with great care.  The question then comes up what is great care?  To answer this dealers spend thousands of dollars on developing scripts, email marketing campaigns, training, phone skill sessions, website real-estate, etc…  all focused around vehicle sales with some money spent on used cars and in most cases next to nothing on fixed operations.  The occasional dealership may have some phone training on fixed operations (service, parts, and collision) but very few devote enough resources.  And when it comes to planning on a coaching strategy, marketing campaign, or internet project, few include the key players from Variable Operations and Fixed Operations.

The walls must come down when dealing with customers and prospects –

First, this notion that planning is done in a vacuum costs dealerships thousands of dollars in profit and lost opportunities.  Your staffs need to be treated as professionals if you expect them to be professional.

Second, each contact made by your staff to either a prospect or customer must be looked at from the perspective of a life cycle.

·         That means if a prospect or customer is not ready to buy a new or used vehicle, they still have their current vehicle that may need attention.  Plus what other vehicles do they own and why not offer to assist them in a maintenance evaluation.

·         That also means that if a fixed operations professional determines a repair does not make good financial sense for the prospect or customer, they might be interested in a new or used vehicle.  Plus do they own additional vehicles in the family that are possible replacement opportunities.

Third, “bring down those walls”, have regular meetings with your staff to determine ways you can open up your team to new ideas across the various departments.

Finally, talk with your website and ecommerce providers to understand the most effective way to increase exposures to additional opportunities. Investigate micro sites for both variable operations and fixed operations, pay per click campaigns to drive additional traffic to both variable and fixed operations, how to use social media to brand both variable and fixed operations, etc.

By now you should understand the message, work as a professional team and develop processes that allow a seamless transfer of prospect or customer needs to both variable and fixed operations.