Saturday, April 11, 2009
What’s next from Granny Gordon and Aunty Alistair?
If you’re reading this article, there is a damn good chance you have a vested interest in the success of the Motor Industry.
I hope you would all agree therefore that we have to admit to our failings as a sector, and, as well as the main structural failing, i.e. the fragmentation of the industry, I think it would be a fair comment that generally speaking we could probably organise a p*** up in a brewery, but that we would most likely wait until we got to the brewery before we made any firm arrangements.
OK so I could have said we are pretty pants at being proactive, or even better I could just have said ‘as an industry we are reactive’ but the first paragraph was much more fun to write, and I hope may even raise a smile in these brow beaten times.
So what if ‘Darling and Brown’ do give the industry a leg up, and come to the party armed with scrappage vouchers as per our German cousins? Have you given any thought as to how you will incorporate these into your sales process, what about F&I, add-ons, retail marketing & offers, and all that palaver?
What I am asking you to do may seem a little ‘out there’, to plan what you will do if something does happen, rather than “what are you going to do now it’s happened?” If this scheme is given the go-ahead, and I resolutely believe it will, then those businesses that have a clear plan of how to deal with it will maximise the opportunity with marketing, support, training and optimum customer reassurance.
It is they that will end up doing more deals, selling more metal, making more money and delivering energy and momentum into their dealerships for many months.
Those dealers that don’t plan for change such as this will answer customers reactively with umms and errs, and won’t deliver that reassurance that customers need to take the plunge and make a buying decision.
There will be a whole new raft of people coming into showrooms, people who have never really dealt at showroom level before, but have typically stayed on the fringes of private sales. We will start to see the Dennis & Doris’s of this world coming out of their Vauxhall Viva / Simca 1100 / Hillman Imp (delete where appropriate) and going into cars from the 21st century.
It is our responsibility to ensure that these people and their needs are catered for properly, that our front line sales execs are fully versed on how to deal these opportunities, and the rest of the dealership on how the process pans out. But most importantly, these people represent a golden opportunity for the professional sale of add-ons, maximising the opportunity to profit.
But bear in mind that they may have no understanding of the ancillaries available to them via a typical (and relatively sophisticated) auto business, and thus may need more than just a simple cuddle through the pipeline of your sales process.
You will need to train your people to take time, explain and educate even the most basic principles. An intro to the service department will be mandatory, as their understanding of service may have been a dry Sunday, a Haynes manual and a bag of spanners.
Everything from the initial walk in to the vehicle handover will need to be slower, and more thorough – and your people will need to know this, otherwise (and as I have said to many hundreds of delegates over the years ), it is far easier for a customer to say “No”, than for them to say “I don’t understand, please explain”.
‘No’ doesn’t make any of us any richer
DATED: 11.04.09
FEED: PTL
I hope you would all agree therefore that we have to admit to our failings as a sector, and, as well as the main structural failing, i.e. the fragmentation of the industry, I think it would be a fair comment that generally speaking we could probably organise a p*** up in a brewery, but that we would most likely wait until we got to the brewery before we made any firm arrangements.
OK so I could have said we are pretty pants at being proactive, or even better I could just have said ‘as an industry we are reactive’ but the first paragraph was much more fun to write, and I hope may even raise a smile in these brow beaten times.
So what if ‘Darling and Brown’ do give the industry a leg up, and come to the party armed with scrappage vouchers as per our German cousins? Have you given any thought as to how you will incorporate these into your sales process, what about F&I, add-ons, retail marketing & offers, and all that palaver?
What I am asking you to do may seem a little ‘out there’, to plan what you will do if something does happen, rather than “what are you going to do now it’s happened?” If this scheme is given the go-ahead, and I resolutely believe it will, then those businesses that have a clear plan of how to deal with it will maximise the opportunity with marketing, support, training and optimum customer reassurance.
It is they that will end up doing more deals, selling more metal, making more money and delivering energy and momentum into their dealerships for many months.
Those dealers that don’t plan for change such as this will answer customers reactively with umms and errs, and won’t deliver that reassurance that customers need to take the plunge and make a buying decision.
There will be a whole new raft of people coming into showrooms, people who have never really dealt at showroom level before, but have typically stayed on the fringes of private sales. We will start to see the Dennis & Doris’s of this world coming out of their Vauxhall Viva / Simca 1100 / Hillman Imp (delete where appropriate) and going into cars from the 21st century.
It is our responsibility to ensure that these people and their needs are catered for properly, that our front line sales execs are fully versed on how to deal these opportunities, and the rest of the dealership on how the process pans out. But most importantly, these people represent a golden opportunity for the professional sale of add-ons, maximising the opportunity to profit.
But bear in mind that they may have no understanding of the ancillaries available to them via a typical (and relatively sophisticated) auto business, and thus may need more than just a simple cuddle through the pipeline of your sales process.
You will need to train your people to take time, explain and educate even the most basic principles. An intro to the service department will be mandatory, as their understanding of service may have been a dry Sunday, a Haynes manual and a bag of spanners.
Everything from the initial walk in to the vehicle handover will need to be slower, and more thorough – and your people will need to know this, otherwise (and as I have said to many hundreds of delegates over the years ), it is far easier for a customer to say “No”, than for them to say “I don’t understand, please explain”.
‘No’ doesn’t make any of us any richer
DATED: 11.04.09
FEED: PTL
