The showroom experience has changed…
The entire Automotive Industry has changed since the pandemic, and with that, the pandemic has changed the WORLD! Now in this new era, it has deeply affected the way people communicate, research, shop, and buy. The showroom was once considered the starting point of the car buying cycle; however, it has now actually become the last step for the majority of customers because of the boom in online-transaction selling/buying.
Prospects now conduct most of their research online and, based on that research, visit an average of only 1.2 dealerships before making a purchase. That means, there is little margin for error and a ‘less than perfect’ showroom experience could be costing your dealership hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit! Dealerships are struggling to recalibrate their operations for this change, and it doesn’t stop there. Within the industry, there has been a massive shift in the lack of Vehicle Inventory. That paired with supply and demand, means vehicle prices are at an all-time high. Dealerships are hitting record-breaking sales and never-seen-before deal grosses!
Slowly, the Automotive Industry is collectively realizing “the Internet and Phones are the new Showroom.” Dealers are now open to new strategies and technology, such as Digital Retailing – which is bigger than ever because of this tremendous online-purchasing transition within the industry! Today’s customers connect through Zoom Meetings, Social Media Direct Messaging, Apple FaceTime, Video Text Messaging, and other online avenues! However, dealerships are not equipped to handle these massive changes, whether it’s due to: being understaffed, having undertrained sales representatives, underutilizing technology, or a combination of these.
If the world is: communicating, researching, shopping, and buying differently; and dealers fail to modernize their sales process and strategies, they will fall short in communicating and connecting with today’s modern-day prospects. Below you will find the most common Showroom Sales Challenges that exist in the Automotive Sales Industry today. If applicable to you and your dealership, contact us to see how we can assist in solving these challenges:
What We Offer
My Showroom
The Top 6 Challenges Plaguing Dealerships' Showrooms & Auto Sales Training:
Click Below or Scroll Down to Explore the Challenges & Solutions:
1. Attrition / High Turnover.
With an average sales staff turnover rate of over 70%, attrition is the bane of a dealership’s existence. That means if you hire 10 salespeople in January and fast forward to December, only 3 of the 10 will remain. The automotive industry shares the title for highest turnover rate and many factors contribute to this sad truth: inadequate training and development, hiring the wrong people at the start, work-life balance, and ineffective management are just a few. Attrition is very expensive – it’s vital to be proactive in regard to employee retention and take a strong look at culture and operations.
If attrition is a challenge for you, Dealer Synergy can help:
- Train your showroom floor on the traditional, "modern" and virtual road to the sale
- Train your showroom on the 8 ways to sell, including the "lost art of prospecting"
- Teach your showroom the necessary phone skills to close more appointments
- Teach your showroom how to leverage the community to generate sales and referrals
- Teach management effective HR strategies to hire the right people, the first time around
- Teach your showroom time maximization strategies to ensure work/life balance
2. Unprepared Automotive Showroom Consultants.
The average dealership in the US spends $64,000 a month, in advertising, to drive traffic to the store. Poor results are oftentimes blamed on the advertisement source, but in reality, the opportunity isn’t converted, or the sale is lost because of an untrained or under trained sales staff. Additionally, we’ve all heard car sales is like owning your own business. Yet, the average showroom sales staff is given the road to the sale, some product knowledge and a pat on the back. If you truly want to teach your people to be able to run a business within a business, you must arm them with a business plan/model, branding and marketing skills, communication skills, time management and organizational skills, planning and preparation skills, CRM skills and much more.
If unprepared automotive showroom consultants is a challenge for you, Dealer Synergy can help:
- Teach your sales staff how to create a business plan/model
- Teach your sales staff how to build their own brand within your brand
- Teach your sales staff how to market and grow their social media presence
- Teach your sales staff how to drive their own traffic and not rely on yours
- Teach your sales staff effective communication skills and qualifying tactics
- Arm your sales staff with the best verbal tools-scripts, rebuttals & closing phrases
Help Me Reduce My Showroom Attrition and Car Salesman Training
3. Unproductive, Underperforming, Low Grossing Sales Staff.
The productivity of a sales department directly impacts a dealerships bottom line and performance, and being effective has become more difficult than ever. The first issue being that customers aren’t flooding the lot the way they once used to. Gone are the days of waiting for the Magic UP Bus. That means, salespeople cannot get fed well off of the efforts of the dealership alone. Having a proactive mindset and strategy is key to thriving in today’s business. The second reason for low productivity is the salesperson’s ability to navigate through all of the noise. Do I email, do I text, do I send a video, do I social media dm, do I apple facetime, do I snapchat, do I TikTok? For good reason, salespeople are confused where to spend their time and fall victims to distractions disguised as opportunities, preventing them from achieving their true potential. Thirdly, most salespeople have no plan of what to do, where to get their units from and no plan of execution. They simply throw out a goal at the beginning of the month and work via the plan of hope. Unfortunately, hope is not a strategy.
If unproductive, underperforming, low-grossing sales dealership staffing is a challenge for you, Dealer Synergy can help:
- Teach sales staff how to "begin with the end in mind" and create an execution plan
- Teach sales staff how to navigate through the noise based on priority levels
- Provide effective processes to increase productivity, sales, and grosses
- Teach sales staff how to use their time more effectively by focusing on the important
- Teach sales staff how to leverage technology to exponentially increase efforts
- Provide process training, follow-up and engagement training, CRM training, and more!
4. Ineffective"Sell More Cars" Mindsets
How we think and what we think about is everything! Anything that was ever invented first came from the mind. What we think about is where our energy flows and essentially what we become. Our thoughts determine our emotions and our emotions determine our actions and our action or behaviors become our results. Our results are a direct reflection of our thoughts. Unfortunately, an ineffective mindset is a big challenge in the automotive industry. Many sales professionals act out of a dependent mindset blaming everyone and everything for their lack of results. They focus on all of the things they cannot control and negatively impact the culture of the organization, spilling into the customer experience, adversely affecting CSI scores and reputation. They often have against them attitude and do not work well with others.
If ineffective "Sell More Cars" mindsets are a challenge for you, Dealer Synergy can help:
- Teach your sales staff the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
- Teach your sales staff the value and importance of an interdependent mindset
- Teach your sales staff how to focus on their circle of influence
- Teach your sales staff how to see challenges and situations through a different lens
- Teach your sales staff the see-do-get cycle
- Teach your sales staff how to have a world-class mindset
Help My Showroom Sell More Cars and Think Proactively
5. Waste of Automotive CRM Training Tools and Resources.
A dealership’s tools are meant to enhance the operations of the organization, make people more productive, effective and lighten the load for certain tasks. However, it doesn’t matter how good a dealership’s tools are if no one uses them. So many times, when performing a product/tools performance analysis, we see that dealers are traditionally spending thousands of Dollars on 10+ different systems every month and no one is using them. We hear some have this tool and we have that tool, but I’m not exactly sure what it does, what we get or who is using it. For example, dealers invest in extra features with the 3rd party providers and have NEVER even logged into their back end to measure the performance. Worse than that, they haven’t even looked at a report to cross reference their CRM to see if the money they are investing is selling them more cars. We’ve even witnessed the Dealer Principal pay for desking within their CRM, but the sales desks refuse to even use it to work deals, not because of desire, but rather because of knowledge.
If wasting dealership automotive CRM training tools and resources is a challenge for you, Dealer Synergy can help:
- Advise and consult on your current tools
- Set up your tools properly
- Help create accountability measures to ensure your tools are being utilized
- Conduct a vendor performance/ROI analysis
- Help you cut out the "extra fat"
- Liaison with your current tool vendors to ensure maximum return on investment
6. Lack of an Effective Onboarding Process.
Just like you only have one shot to make a good first impression, you only have one shot to onboard and train your people the right way. Recall challenge #1 is attrition and high turnover, which costs a dealership the rate of approximately 6-9 months worth of salary. Also recall challenge #2 untrained and under trained showroom sales staff. Proper training and onboarding can help your dealership retain good people and create a happy, healthy environment for the organization and the customer. Unfortunately, some dealerships feel that new hire paperwork and a handbook sums up the employee onboarding process. Even if some training is provided, in most cases, it is short lived and becomes obsolete over time. As the times and technology change, your onboarding process should too.
If a lack of an effective onboarding process is a challenge for your showroom, Dealer Synergy can help:
- Review and advise on your current onboarding strategy
- Create a custom onboarding strategy to meet your specific needs
- Create an onboarding checklist and training curriculum
- Provide tips and tactics for finding the best people
- Create an organizational chart
- Create a company mission, vision, value, and action statement
Help Me with Onboarding and Maximizing Our ROI on Our Tools
"Dealer Synergy helped us turn our showroom into an Internet Dealership & we went from 230 total units per month to 370 total units per month!"
Rob Ruth, Dealer Principal | Bob Ruth Ford