Internet Sales

Even though Internet Sales is the lifeline of the dealership, most dealerships don’t have the proper Internet sales infrastructure. Most dealerships are upside down and invest more HR on the showroom sales floor and neglect the Internet Sales team, even though that is where the business is. Other dealerships understand that Internet sales is an area they should focus on, but only place one person in the department and make it a one-man show. The problem is that if your dealership is getting 500 internet leads and you have a one man show, how can you really expect one person to handle all of those potential buyers? If there were 500 people walking into the showroom, would you only allocate 1 person? Other dealerships have their Internet leads round-robbined to the showroom sales floor, which is way better than a one-man show, however, what happens when those salespeople are doing product presentations, demo drives and deliveries? Or it is their day off? Who is handling those leads effectively? Do you have enough people to follow-up and engage with your customers the right way, based on your lead volume? Do you have the right mix of people? To succeed, you must customize your infrastructure based on your dealership situation and needs to sell more cars.

The automotive industry is plagued with a 70% attrition rate, and a large factor in that devastating statistic is a lack of training. If a training investment is made by the dealership, it is usually in the areas of showroom sales, F & I, service, etc., rather than Internet Sales. If a dealership has untrained, barely trained, and/or improperly trained people handling their Internet leads, they are most likely experiencing subpar internet sales results. It’s not good enough to hire a bunch of people and put them in a room and have them simply take care of the leads. There is a real science to handling Internet leads based on communication, engagement, and follow-up. Additionally, every dealership needs to have the Internet sales processes required for Internet operations in 2020, including digital retailing, the virtual sales process, inbound/outbound phone-text-email- social-video-chat communications, appointment processes, and more. In order to perpetuate those processes, it is essential to have CRM training designed around those particular operations. It is also extremely important to know what to say, when to say it, how to say it, and why to say it. This will:

• Overcome objections
• Identify, meet and exceed expectations
• Close appointments that actually show

90% of dealership CRMs are broken. They have either never been set-up correctly, have antiquated templates/scripts, an untrained staff utilizing the software that isn’t held accountable, or all of the above. Dealers are spending thousands of dollars on expensive CRM systems without comprehending the knowledge of all the capabilities the tool possesses. We estimate that dealers LOSE 1.4 MILLION dollars a year because people are not using the CRM correctly. Additionally, CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. Most dealerships use their CRMs to store data, yet maintain incorrect use for relationship management. Do you really believe that your employees including your sales, management, or BDC employees are actually developing and cultivating healthy/powerful relationships with your customers? Do you believe you are maximizing your be-backs? Do you believe that you are maximizing your prior customers? Do you believe that you are maximizing every service opportunity?

Another top challenge dealerships face when it comes to Internet Sales is a lack of an effective Internet lead generation strategy. Unfortunately, most dealers’ approach consists of turning on the lead source and then waiting to see what comes through. Dealerships have a hard time identifying which lead source providers to utilize and don’t necessarily understand how to make that determination. Inevitably, dealerships end up throwing things against the wall to see what sticks. With lead source providers, every dealership should have a strategy in place for sales operations and the overall goals for the business. When creating the right strategy you must identify, whether your dealership is a volume store, a gross profit store, or both? The answer will dictate what type of lead source provider is utilized, which online classifieds your dealership will be purchasing ads from, how much you should spend with those providers, and also how to set up the geo-targeted radii for the PMA or DMA of your specific digital footprint. In addition to that, you must determine if you want to sell more new cars, more used cars, or both. Also, do you want to focus on special finance and challenged credit customers? Volume, gross, new car, used car, special finance, or a hybrid of all these options are types of focus for your market and community.

Overspending on 3rd party leads is a common challenge today because most dealers know that they need to create opportunities to do business. These businesses are willing to pay for those opportunities. However, you can still purchase 3rd party leads and at a good price. What we have found during the course of our 20+ years of experience in automotive, is that the average number of dealerships are overpaying for leads especially when your OEM’s are making policy for their recommendations. The average cost of a 3rd party high priority lead is roughly between $18-$22 per lead. So if you are spending more than $18-$22 per lead, you are massively overpaying for those leads. Furthermore, another issue we find with dealers is a simple math equation: If you add up all of the money you are spending on your website, your SEO, your digital and traditional marketing to drive traffic to your website, banner ads, display ads, retargeting, conquest marketing, social paid advertising plus, and add up all your API’s, divide them by the number of total leads that you received that month, what would the bottom line number would be________? For example: $10,000 Spending Budget=75 Leads Generated= $133 AVERAGE COST PER LEAD.