Digital Dealer
Success On The Net: A Dealer Who Can Do It
By Mike Bowers
Mr. Waikem, who is 46, owns the Waikem Auto Group and had been selling cars on the Internet for four years, but he wasn't entirely happy with the results he was getting. Nor was he satisfied with the quality of information and training available from the traditional sources. Mr. Waikem believed there must be a surefire method for Internet success and he wanted to be the one who defined the process. He didn't want half-baked theories and bits and pieces of this and that for sales techniques. He wanted results, higher closing ratios, more sales, and most importantly, more profit, period.
Enter Dan Alkassmi
Mr. Waikem commissioned Dan Alkassmi, a sales consultant from San Diego with a tremendous track record in developing methods for improving showroom sales, to develop an Internet sales technique by visiting the top 50 Internet car sellers in the nation and gleaning their best practices.
Since Mr. Waikem's stores are aligned with Autobytel.com, he directed Mr. Alkassmi to take about six weeks to visit Autobytel's most successful dealer affiliates. In the course of his investigation, Mr. Alkassmi noticed some common threads among the best operators.
"What we found was that the things that made us successful in the showrooms, made us unsuccessful on the Internet," Mr. Waikem said. The other thing they found was that much of the advice they were getting from outside sources turned out to be wrong. It didn't work in practice.
Put simply, Mr. Alkassmi told Mr. Waikem that the sales process had to change for the Internet.
A different approach
Some of the things the Waikem dealerships began offering in the Internet department were competitive pricing, low rate financing, and telephone trade-in appraisals. He gave customers 72 hours to beat the low prices he offered. He shopped interest rates for financing, trying to find the best deals. And, he and his managers developed a method for trading cars without seeing them first. Here are some of Mr. Waikem's other practical suggestions:
Instead of hiring some computer-savvy, non-salesperson to handle the Internet department, take a good sales person with strong phone skills off the showroom floor and put them in charge of online sales.
Teach the Internet rep to do a "walk around" trade-in appraisal over the phone. "Customers love it," says Mr. Waikem.
Use e-mail as a tool to support telephone sales contact, not as a substitute for the phone.
Set up the Internet group as a separate profit center with its own financial statement.
And, most importantly, at least 25 percent of any incentive pay should be tied to beating certain closing ratios.
Other little niceties Waikem Motors began offering included completing all the consumer paperwork over the phone and delivering cars to customers' homes so they could take test drives. There is even a tractor-trailer emblazoned with Waikem Motors advertising to draw some extra attention when it drives through a neighborhood to drop off a new car in a customer's driveway.
The Internet sales techniques that Mr. Waikem and Mr. Alkassmi came up with were further cemented when they met with some focus groups to fine tune their ideas. The focus groups pointed to three keys to selling cars on the Internet.
Those keys, Mr. Waikem said, were:
- Hassle-free and haggle-free transactions
- Talking to someone who is empowered to make all the decisions
- Taking the deal from A-to-Z without interruption
- And, last but certainly not least, price.
Spreading the word
When Waikem Motors began instituting these new sales techniques for Internet sales they saw immediate results. "Our closing ratios went up from 15 percent to 23 percent in just one month," said Mr. Waikem. He was so confident with the Internet sales techniques Mr. Alkassmi helped develop that it spawned a separate business entity: training other dealers in the Internet sales process.
Mr. Waikem, Mr. Alkassmi and Tom Van, of Hillsdale Chrysler Plymouth partnered to form i-Net Training Technologies. Autobytel provides support for the new training venture but the service is available to all franchised dealerships. i-Net Training Technologies offers a variety of training packages that car dealers can buy either to help launch an Internet sales division or to strengthen an existing one.
Road to the sale
A little peek into Mr. Alkassmi's Internet selling tips includes his four phases of progress to the Internet sale.
- First is understanding the customer.
- Second is getting an agreement.
- Third is finishing or consummating the sale and fourth is generating or starting the next sale.
"After that you don't stop either," Mr. Alkassmi said. "For every five sales we generate on the Internet we get one extra referral." Mr. Alkassmi adds that the keys to successful Internet sales are dealer commitment and truly looking at the transaction from the customer's point of view.
After spending ten minutes with Doug Waikem, it is obvious that his passion for automotive e-tailing is genuine and contagious. He exudes a self-confidence bordering on braggadocio. But that confidence is born from experience and the knowledge that, unlike some industry commentators, he is actually doing the job.
Mike Bowers is Managing Editor for WD&S Publishing, a provider of information products for car dealers. WD&S produces the Auto Retailing On The Web conferences and the industry newsletters DealerŐs Edge, Auto Retailing on the Web, The Parts Manager, Warranty Dollars & Sense, and Fixed Coverage. mbowers@dealeronline.com
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