Dealer Puke!

The number one issue I hear when I am in a dealership consulting with Internet personnel is "I can't get anyone to call me back or respond to my emails!" Sound familiar? Do you hear this from your staff?

When was the last time you actually read the emails you are sending to your customers? How about the last time you listened to the voice-mail you salesperson left for that potential customer? If you have not done either lately, it is a good place to start to discover why your customers aren't calling back or responding to emails.

Are you giving them a reason to respond?

When I hear this complaint, the first place I go is to the CRM and review the emails that are being sent out. In every situation I find the same thing; Dealer Puke! That's right, Dealer Puke! We are sending emails that tell the customer how great we are, how much better our people are, how many xyz models we have in stock, how easy our Internet process is and a whole host of other self appointed accolades. In a lot of these cases, the specific questions that the customer asked is not even answered. If you asked me a question and I ignored you and started telling you how great I was, how long would I have your attention? Please do not misunderstand me, having "Why Buys" IS important; but more important is connecting with the customer. 

When I listen to the voice mails it is more of the same? "Hi this is Tom at XYZ Motors. I just received your lead on the 2013 Gizmotron and wanted to see if you had any questions. Please call me back at your earliest convenience. My number is 123-555-PUKE".  Why should the customer call you back?

What reason does the customer have to email or call back (besides to ask their question again because it was ignored the first time)?

If a customer was to visit the store or call us, we ask questions to:
1) Gain Control
2) Build a dialog
3) Find out the customer's wants and needs

It is said that the best salespeople ask the best questions. Why then are we not trying to engage our customers with questions and/or curiosity statements? Now I know what you are thinking; we ask questions in our emails. Where are those questions located in the email? Are they relevant to the request? Are they personal? Normally the questions are near the bottom of the email, you know, the part that the customer does not read; and they are generally canned questions that do not build any value.

Do you want to get quality replies to your email? 

Start asking Personal, Relevant, Dialog Building questions! Start by placing these questions near the top of the email; bullet point the questions so the eye is drawn to them.

Look at the lead and try to find out who the customer is. We can discover a lot just from the email address; where they work, hobbies and age are just a few. How many times have you looked at the email address, saw that the customer worked for ABC Company, and asked the customer about their position or what they do? We do that when the customer is in front of us, why not in an email. Working at ABC my qualify the customer for a supplier discount on a new car and this customer has no clue they qualify. A lot of email contain the year of someone's birth; I am not going to ask them about their age, but I at least know how to better approach this customer.

Did the lead arrive from a payment calculator from your site or the OEM site? Why would we not ask the customer about their payment expectations? We know that payment is important if they submitted a lead from a payment calculator; aren't most customers payment focused?

Look at the address line; where does the customer live? Do you know this area or live nearby? Maybe the address is at the local college; is this a student? Does this customer live in your primary market area and your store is the logical choice to by from? Does this customer live in another town or even state; why are they sending you a lead?

Did the customer list a trade on the request? Are we asking questions about the trade? What did they like most about their current vehicle? Why are you wanting to trade? What is the condition of the trade?

What options/color did the customer request? Are we asking why those options are important to them? How are they going to be using the vehicle? Are we asking what colors the customer would not take? Is this vehicle for business or pleasure?

I recommend 3 or 4 Personal, Relevant and Dialog building questions. Don't make it an inquisition, but a personal conversation that flows naturally. Once the customer realizes that we are genuinely interested in them and we are asking questions that are relevant to their request, they will respond. The dialog will start to flow and the you won't have to just focus on price. The customer who submits a lead is no different than the customer that walks in; they want to know that you care and are interested in helping them. They are not looking for someone to puke all over them with things that are not important to them.

Start asking Personal, Relevant, Dialog building questions and your Internet staff will start getting responses. Start building a dialog with the customer and our Why Buys won't look like Dealer Puke and the customer may actually stop and read your email in the future.

My next post we will tackle the voice mail and giving customer a reason to call back.

Like two peas in a pod!

Process and Accountability

It still amazes me that there is a lack of understanding that you can not hold people accountable without a defined process; and you can not have a defined process without some level of accountability. The two go together like peanut butter and jelly; two peas in a pod.

proc·ess - a systematic series of actions directed to some end

ac·count·a·ble - subject to the obligation to report, explain, or justify something; responsible; answerable.

In my new role as a trainer in car dealerships, I see it everyday and when I reflect on my time as a leader in my store, I was missing it as well. Most of the problems we face in the dealership, and in any business, can be traced back to no clearly defined process. A process starts when we decide what our expectations are and then write them down. Once we write down our expectations we can then start to create a process around them. The clearly defined and written down expectations then become a draft for the job descriptions for your staff. This becomes the first step to accountability; making sure your employees know what is expected of them. 

In a lot of car dealerships the only expectation is to sell cars; this is why some stores must use monetary means to get results for something that should be a condition of employment. Great customer satisfaction scores should be a condition of employment, but how many stores must spiff a salesman to get the desired result. If we are not getting good customer satisfaction scores it is because we have failed to set the expectation, create a process to ensure the desired results and we have not held those responsible for poor performance accountable. 

The same can be said for the Internet sales process. How many leads are we failing to answer because our only real expectations are to sell cars? Sure we must pay attention to response times and response rate; but only because the manufacturer holds the store accountable for these measurements. In most stores, a good salesperson is given the task of Internet Sales with the goal to sell cars. There has been no thought given to how to follow up, how long to follow up, what our communications with the customer is going to look like, how we are going to price our cars and I could go on and on.  

You cannot have accountability without some type of process. Likewise, you cannot have a solid process without accountability. If you feel like there is no accountability in your store, start by looking at your processes. Do you have a clear process that is understood by all? Write down the expectations and build a process that leads to the expected results; write down the key performance metrics, you cannot build a process without having some type of measurement.