People Love Car Shopping! Sorry, not yet!
A 2016 study by Newswire found that a shocking 87% of Americans dislike something about the traditional car dealership. From the same study 61% feel like they are being taken advantage of, and 52% of Americans feel anxious or uncomfortable when visiting the dealership. Sigh, I am embarrassed by these stats, and you should be too. I am on a mission to change this and it will take all of us to make car buying a fun and enjoyable experience. I do believe that in the following pages if you can take just a few ideas and add them to your process or small modifications to you daily routine we can improve the car buying experience. I mean based on the statistics above we are not currently doing a very good job and really have nowhere to go, but up!
So, knowing that most people do not enjoy buying a car, I asked myself why this is, and how we can make it better. I have put together my thoughts on how the industry got where it is and how we can start to change the perception and align expectations of our customers.
It's the dealers/managers fault! Oftentimes car sales is a profession that people pursue because they were out of options, have little sales experience, or dealerships were desperate enough to just hire anyone off the street. So! As dealers this means that you have people employed that have not found purpose in truly helping people, and they are there for themselves only. So it's the dealers fault for making a bad employment decision.
Maybe the dealer/manager didn’t cut ties fast enough with a sales person, and in the meantime the representative did a massive amount of damage to customer relations.
Never forget an unhappy customer is going to tell as many people as they can about the negative experience, and very few about the positive experience. So a few bad apples as they say start to spoil the bunch.
Maybe the dealer/manager didn't provide training to sales representatives who showed a lot of promise, and they left the industry to a profession that had a better path to success. Good news is you are reading this book now, taking action, and growing as a sales person.
Maybe the dealer/manager allowed a bad manager to drive the good sales people away. There is a lot of talk about culture in companies. Culture is the people the company employs. If a dealer/manager allows negativity, poor performance, rudeness, lack of respect, guess what. The customers will sense it!
The negative perception that your customers may have on your business does not have to be this way. Changing the perception of your operation and the automotive industry is a tall order that will take time and a collective effort from the industry as a whole.
The change in any business always starts with ownership from the top down. But for those of you reading this who are not necessarily at “the top”, you can be at the top of your business and you can still influence those around you.
You can influence those around you by helping them practice sales, call out people who are underperforming, and by not partaking in negative conversations. I am glad you are reading this book because you are not waiting on a manager to tell you what to do. You are taking the initiative to control your income, your career, and taking the needed steps to become better at what you do. Your business is what you can control and that is where you start. As dealers, managers, and sales representatives we have to take ownership of the poor past and current performance in dealerships. To become better at sales we start with awareness, taking ownership of the problem, then taking action with training and discipline to Do The Work.