Bright Ideas

Your showroom equals your brand. What story are you telling? Consistency is key; whether you’re baking a cake, perfecting your golf swing, or promoting the branding of your dealership. If you don’t think consistency is important, I’d like to sway you.

Consumers today are looking to streamline everything they do. Making a large purchase, such as a vehicle, is included in that streamlined-hopeful process. Quicker is better. What many consumers may not realize is that the car buying process can be streamlined, with appointment setting. Whether early on in the search process or the day of the purchase, setting appointments ensures that customers wants and needs will be acknowledged and met.

At any given moment, there are hundreds of things going on at your dealership. Paperwork, sales, test drives, phone calls, meetings, the list goes on. It’s easy to look around and see all these things happening around you. But, what about all the things that are happening that you can’t see? Namely, the customers contacting you through your website — those ever-present internet leads.

Smooooooth like butter is how you’d like your dealership to run —  no hurdles, no setbacks, nothing. BUT we all know that’s not how it works out. The best thing you can do is to ensure everything in your power is working like a well-oiled machine. One of the parts of your machine is your vendors. Depending on many factors of your dealership: size, location, specialties, market, etc., your number of vendors many vary. No matter how many vendors your dealership works with, accountability is key.

The pros will tell you, it’s all about the follow-through — baseball, golf, selling vehicles; whatever it may be. Your game is only as good as your follow-through. And in order to have a solid follow-through, there must be procedures in place to measure and find areas of improvement before and during the follow through. The evaluation aspect is simple: assess the outcome, e.g., did a vehicle get sold. But to assess the outcome is where it gets complicated, you must dig through the different metrics and ratios to determine where your dealership can grow.

Imagine customers are in your competitor’s showroom looking at a vehicle and hop on their smartphone to check a few more price points. They get on their phone and see a deal from your dealership with a similar vehicle at a lower price point. Next thing you know, those same customers have walked through the door of your showroom wanting that great deal.

A geofence creates that exact opportunity for your dealership. Let’s take a look at what geofencing is and how to use it.

Selling vehicles is a tough job, you hear one yes after multiple no’s. Or a couple you thought was interested in a car was only window shopping. Each day takes thick skin and the desire to strive for that yes; you know this, your salespeople know this. However, occasionally your team just can’t seem to bounce back from that no. It’s been a tough week on sales and it’s affecting most of your sales team. You’ve hit a slump at the dealership — they are underperforming and you need to turn that around ASAP. Whether it’s low morale, high turnover, or they’re in need of a refocus on motivation, something needs to change.

If your sales department is experiencing some issues, here are four tips to fix those problems.

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it,” Peter Drucker. These are words to live by when dealing with an automotive media budget and marketing plan because evaluation is one of the most important aspects of advertising.

Your media budget includes, among other things, the funds allocated to print, broadcasting, digital, and other forms of advertising for a dealership — known as the marketing plan. Without the marketing plan, many dealerships would be out of business. A dealership with a large chunk of media budget to work with and no marketing plan could see the same fate as dealerships without a marketing plan all together — no business.

The process is simple: determine a marketing plan, evaluate that marketing plan, and make changes where needed, repeat constantly.

Most people don’t include going to a car dealership in their idea of a perfect Saturday afternoon. It may be because the local dealerships are making mistakes in critical areas of the sale. Every dealership has their own way of doing things, but the foundation of skills are the same across the board. Your dealership might be making some of these mistakes when it comes to sales; below are five of the most common mistakes. Check them out then be sure your dealership sales department isn’t making these mistakes, too!

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it,” Peter Drucker. These are words to live by when dealing with an automotive media budget and marketing plan because evaluation is one of the most important aspects of advertising.

Your media budget includes, among other things, the funds allocated to print, broadcasting, digital, and other forms of advertising for a dealership — known as the marketing plan. Without the marketing plan, many dealerships would be out of business. A dealership with a large chunk of media budget to work with and no marketing plan could see the same fate as dealerships without a marketing plan all together — no business.