Digital Dealer
Peter Brandow
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
If you've never heard that phrase, it simply means that sometimes we humans read too much into things, we let our expectations and imaginations run wild to the point where we wind up confused and disappointed. We over-analyze and over-complicate.
The Internet is not really all that complex, at least not yet. So far, besides some foolish Wall Street stuff, the Internet has simply provided another way for two distant folks to interact with pictures, words and sound. Applied to the retail car dealership, the Internet has become a tool for telemarketing and advertising. It is the meeting of catalogue sales with the new millennium.
The computer is just a digital catalogue on a TV screen. Backing it all up is a field staff in a call center answering questions and prompting the close of a sale. This is not rocket science, just folks talking to folks who are looking at a picture book. You field a "lead," engage the lead on the phone and together you configure, price, compare and seal the deal. The car is delivered to home or office and then you start over.
The challenge lies less in the complexity of the Internet sales process than in what all this means to the rest of the house. It all gets big and hairy with sharp teeth and a mean spirit when we try to solve the puzzle of whose customer it is and where's the money going. Enter the traditional sales staff warring with the cyber staff; the dealer fighting with the manufacturer; the manufacturer debating with the lawmen. The odd thing is that most of the discussions that tangle this ball of yarn are centered less on the customers than on who has the right to satisfy them.
Fortunately, while the debates rage, a few of us are selling cars like crazy. We are hoping that the debates will last a while so we can continue to reap the benefits of an expanded market reach to more and more satisfied customers. Which brings me to my latest discovery about the Internet customer. Today's Internet customer is no different from the customer who is shopping, but can't seem to find satisfaction enough to say "yes." The Internet is where undecided customers go when the traditional stores are all stuck in the same sales rut of qualifying the customer's wallet and threatening to take away the discount if the customer doesn't buy now.
Getting a "yes" out of this customer is about response time and intelligent conversations. Repeatedly calling the shopper to see whether the passing of time and a few dollars' deeper discount will change his or her mind is an awfully limited follow-up strategy.
"Hi Miss Slowstep, this is Johnny at Jolly Motors. Have you made your mind up yet? We're having a special secret one-day sale just today and I can get you another $100 off if you will come back in."
This does work some of the time, and deeper and deeper discounts can improve the odds of a sale, but your cost of fulfillment has increased while your revenue has been reduced. A bad equation.
The Internet customer wants exactly the same things that every undecided customer wants: new information or a new way to look at the benefits of your products. They want personalized information offered with candor. They want different information, they want it fast and they want it without strings attached.
Replacing "are you ready yet" with intelligent conversation takes new skills. Phone-savvy salespeople need to be good listeners and great note-takers to build a strategy that continues to add new and interesting facts with each contact. Through this process, a rapport is built with the customer, most of whom begin to feel a sense of obligation to the salesperson who is working so hard on their behalf. Before too long, the customer, if he or she is going to buy, finds that sense of personal satisfaction that makes a "yes" much easier. With this "business development" strategy, we build a relationship without playing the discount card unless prompted by other market conditions.
In the Brandow Business Development and Cyber Center, we employ non-price sales strategies before discounting. We build a relationship based on listening and remembering what makes the value equation work-a great list of product benefits hand-tailored to the customer's wants and needs. We accomplish this by bringing together the Internet call staff with the business development staff and filtering our traditional "bricks" salespeople through the center to insure that intelligent phone follow-up is incorporated into the sales strategy on every lead. Every up is followed up with smart calls that are designed to tailor the message to the individual concerns of the shopper. The goal is to bring the customer and the salesperson back together without compromising price. Accomplishing this is a matter of working with the customer to determine specific objections and then solve them. The result is a 15%-20% sales improvement.
So while everyone under the sun is struggling over where it's all going, why, by when, and by whom, my dealerships quietly sell more and more cars to happy customers simply by asking more intelligent questions and serving up the answers quickly and with sincerity. The best part is, you can do it, too.
Peter Brandow, nationally known for C.A.R.S. (Cyber Auto Retailer's Success) e-commerce seminars, is one of the top five Internet new car dealers in the country. He is the dealer of the Brandow dealerships, the national dealer technology chair of e-GM, a board member of NADA's IT committee, and an attorney in Pennsylvania. pbrandow@dealeronline.com
