1) Video Walkarounds
As soon as you get a lead submitted on a specific vehicle, why not give the customer a personalized walk around of the car they inquired about? This will give you a few key opportunities to move the deal forward. First, creating a short video highlighting the exact vehicle a customer inquired about is engaging for the customer - it cements the vehicle as real. When they submitted a lead, the car was pixels on a screen. With a video walk around, they hear keys jingle and the engine purr, and start imagining themselves in that exact car. The video walk around is also a chance to put a human face on the sales professional working the deal. Use your sales skills in the video; introduce yourself, use the customer’s name, if they had questions in the email about features you can now demonstrate them for the customer. Done correctly, a video walk around is a short, engaging way to generate excitement. With the right call to action, a video-walk around quickly turns into an appointment.
2) Response Time
If you think you’re the only one a customer is talking to about their vehicle purchase you are kidding yourself. Most customer’s will submit online inquiries to at least 2 to 3 competing dealerships. Response time is a metric your internet department needs to be paying extreme attention to. Your sales staff needs to be giving the customer the first and highest quality response to their inquiry. The more rapid, and more engaging your response is, the more likely you are to gain control of the conversation and remain at the top of your potential customer’s mind. They key to effective customer engagement is rapid, and high quality response to leads.
3) Relevant Information
Being first out the gate with a response to an internet lead is useless if your email game isn’t buttoned up and locked down. Internet sales staff need to be trained and retrained to pay attention to the signals a customer sends in an internet lead. Do your VDP’s and SRP’s feature a “Get ePrice” button? Are your staff always including the ePrice when they respond to a lead through that form? You’d be surprised how many dealers get this wrong, they treat any website lead the same regardless of its source. Remember what the customer was expecting when they submitted that lead and make sure you deliver relevant information as quickly as possible. Don’t just pay attention to lead source, if a customer has asked specific questions in a lead submission, you have to be sure you are doing your best to answer all of those questions to the best of your ability in your first response. Rapid and complete responses are key to engaging your potential customers and getting them into the dealership.
4) Signatures
Adding a personal touch to your email signatures let’s your sales professionals break through the noise and become an individual to a customer. Let your sales staff have some fun with this, it’ll break up their day and make them feel like they are owning their presence and persona. Personal quotes, photos, etc. all make great personalizations that set you apart from the pack. Just remember that less is more, too much information can hurt you as much as too little. We’ve seen emails that give the salesperson’s heartwarming personal story of overcoming adversity. That’s too much information, the customer doesn’t care and it comes off as cheesy and manipulative. Keep it light and keep it fun, the point is to stop being a faceless salesperson and to become the individual person that helps the customer have a great experience and who is worthy of referrals to friends and family for years to come.
