Building the Perfect Internet Dealership, Step 9 - The Finishing Touches

Finance and Insurance

There is no reason to expect significantly less after-sale profits from Internet deliveries than showroom deliveries.  However, if you are going to maintain your after-sale profits on your Internet deliveries you need to implement a different sales process for these customers.  The first step is the requirement that you sell and deliver the customer.

Just as we discussed the need to answer trade-in questions, the same applies to financing questions.  Your Internet Salesperson needs to be able to provide their prospects with realistic and accurate financing options.  Giving an Internet shopper a “loaded” payment is the same as letting a showroom customer walk out with one.  You don’t want them shopping without you having your best foot forward.

The perfect Internet dealership will encourage their Internet Salespeople to provide payment information and will give them an easy process to compute the payments.  They will require their Salespeople or Finance Manager to contact and work with sold Internet customers by whatever means of communication required.  They will effectively present their valuable after-sale products to every sold customer.  They will have a professional email brochure to use with Internet initiated buyers.  They will not expect their Internet Salesperson to do off site deliveries with delivery documents containing figures in excess of the customer’s expectations, unless they have another set available that match.

Off Premises Delivery

One of the easiest ways to facilitate the development of a “buyer” relationship with an Internet “shopper” is to offer to show them, sell them, or deliver them at any location of their choosing.  This does several things:  First, it addresses the “fear” of dealerships that drives many vehicle shoppers to the Internet.  Second, it establishes your dealership’s desire and willingness to service its customers.  Third, it eliminates any inconvenience that may result for a customer who isn’t geographically proximate to your dealership.  If you offer to do this for every customer the number who will actually take you up on it will be very small, but you will have made a great impression on all of them.  If you have any fears relating to “at home sales” recession periods, talk to your Attorney.  Whether or not this concept applies to automobile dealerships is generally considered to be a murky question at best.

The perfect Internet dealership will be genuinely excited at the prospect of bringing a car to a customer for presentation or to test drive.  They will have a list of locations that they can meet the prospect at, in case the prospect is uncomfortable with meeting the Salesperson at their home or office (we like Starbucks or Einstein locations).  They will have a driver who is trained in basic vehicle presentation available who can assist the Internet Salespeople as needed.  They will be happy to perform a vehicle delivery off premises because they understand the difference between an “in-home sale” contract and a new or used vehicle delivery.

Follow-up Communication and Referrals

Internet customers are an excellent source of referrals when they are happy.  The perfect Internet dealership will make sure they stay in communication with their Internet customers.  They will take advantage of the resources available to send inexpensive, email, relationship building materials to their Internet customers and they will ask them for referrals

Building the Perfect Internet Dealership, Step 8 - Trade-Ins

Trade-Ins

One of the most common frustrations of Internet Salespeople is dealing with trade-ins.  Any Internet shopper who currently owns a car will want to know its value as a trade-in, and just like any other question asked by an Internet customer, it has to be answered.

Obviously it isn’t possible to give a shopper an accurate value without doing a thorough appraisal of the vehicle in question, even your customers understand this.  So how should your Internet Salespeople handle this question?  We teach them to tell the prospect:

“I would have to have your vehicle appraised before I could give you an absolute value, but if you go to Kelly Blue Book’s website at www.kbb.com and describe your vehicle honestly, you can get a very accurate idea of what your car should be worth.”

If your Used Vehicle Manager complains about this, fire him or her.  What could possibly be wrong with telling a customer what they might get for their vehicle?  Kelly Blue Book is a fairly accurate guide if the customer uses it correctly.  If they come back with a significantly higher figure than the vehicle is actually worth, recheck the vehicle with the customer.  More often than not, they will have made a mistake in their description of the vehicle.  If it is one of those unusual situations where the wholesale market has plummeted on the particular vehicle in question and the services haven’t caught up to it yet, than tell that to the customer.  At least you’re still talking to them.

The perfect Internet dealership will support their Internet Salesperson whenever they are working with a prospect that has a trade-in vehicle.  They will let the Salesperson appraise the vehicle off the dealership premises by using their cell phone to describe the vehicle to their Used Car Manager.  They may even have their Used Vehicle Manager or Wholesale Manager look at the vehicle off the dealership premises.  The perfect Internet dealership will banish the expression “back it up to the computer” from their premises under penalty of death.

Building the Perfect Internet Dealership, Step 7 - Pricing

Your Internet “Pricing Philosophy”

One of the most common mistakes made in dealerships is to philosophically categorize their Internet shoppers as “phone-ups.”  Although we think it’s a mistake to apply any traditional category to Internet shoppers the traditional “showroom up” is a better label to use when you’re considering the process required to sell them.  If a showroom customer wanted a price, you would give it to them.  You wouldn’t want a showroom customer to leave your dealership with anything other than your “best” price, or at least a guarantee that you will beat any price they obtain.  You’re making a mistake if you don’t treat your Internet shoppers the same way.  It’s impossible to “negotiate off sticker” via email.

If you have been given all the information you need to give an Internet prospect an accurate price (vehicle information, employee discount status, special rebate eligibility) then you had better give them one.  If you don’t, they’ll probably wait for the dealership that does to proceed any further.  You need to approach every Internet prospect as though you know they are working with several other dealerships, they probably are!

The perfect Internet dealership will respond to every customer request for price information as thoroughly and accurately as the information they have enables them to.  If they don’t have all the information needed to be accurate then they will give the customer an accurate “range” price, and tell the customer why they are giving them a range.  They will have a clear pricing policy for their Internet Salesperson to use, that allows the Internet Salesperson to confidently give a prospect a price that is fair for both the prospect and the dealership.  Their pricing policy will be structured so that they can compete for customers who may be geographically distant from the dealership.  They will have an “Internet Price Guarantee” that their Internet Salespeople can provide to every customer.  They will make sure that their sales Management team understands, and is fully supportive of the Internet pricing policy.

Building the Perfect Internet Dealership, Step 6 - Staffing

Your Staff

If you are going to be committed to developing your Internet presence you need to make sure your staff shares your commitment and accepts their responsibility.  All emails have to be responded to, all questions contained in them have to be answered, and every department Manager has to make sure that whatever area of the website they are responsible for is updated daily - or more frequently if needed.

The perfect Internet dealership understands that their improved Internet presence will result in additional customers who utilize the tools provided by the Internet, as well as customers who will come directly into, or call the dealership.  They will embrace these customers and make sure their expectations are being met.  They demand that their staff respond to any Internet generated contact the same way they would respond to a customer standing in front of them.  They demand that department Managers understand and accept the responsibility for maintaining their portion of the dealership’s online presence.

Your Internet Sales Specialist

The most important consideration you will make is your selection of the individual who will be responsible for working with your Internet prospects.  First, you need to remember that traditional theories of gauging Salesperson success do not necessarily apply to Internet Salespeople.  Traditional floor Salespeople had to master the delicate art of negotiating and closing and these skills are not as important when you are working with new Internet prospects.

The Internet prospect has to be “converted” from a shopper to a buyer before the negotiating and closing process can occur.  We train your Salespeople to initially approach this process as a “seduction.”  Imagine your Internet prospects flowing through a large funnel.  Your initial contacts are spinning around in the upper, widest portion of the funnel.  As your Internet Salesperson responds to these customers, meeting all of their unique leads, offering useful information and alternatives, they will begin to build credibility with the customer.  As this process goes forward, and the prospect gets closer to the end of their buying cycle, they will move closer and closer to the bottom of the funnel.  If you do this process well, your closing and negotiating will occur when your customer gets to the bottom of the funnel, about to fall into your dealership.

That isn’t to say that negotiating and closing skills aren’t useful for Internet Salespeople, they are extremely important in the final process of converting Internet shoppers into buyers.  However, in order to get to that point an Internet Salesperson needs to be able to establish credibility and authority by “over servicing” every customer contact that is provided to them.  The most important quality an Internet Salesperson needs to have is the willingness to “jump through” what ever hoops a customer asks them to.

We have found that newer Salespeople often have the best success with Internet customers.  They are usually more willing to work harder and build the needed relationships to convert these contacts, as opposed to just “cherry-picking” the easy leads that they believe will close quickly.

The perfect Internet dealership has Internet Sales Specialists who service between 60 and 80 leads a month.  They are completely dependent on their success in working with their Internet customers and that is all they focus on.  Their pay plan is unique, and is structured around volume bonuses as opposed to gross.  They can compute lease payments and delivered figures.  They have tools and resources that they can take advantage of to show and deliver cars off the dealership premises.  They approach every generated contact as a sacred thing to be treasured and cherished.  They work every lead they receive from start to finish, responding to every customer request for information quickly and accurately.  They keep working their leads no matter how long the customer takes to make their purchase decision.

The perfect Internet dealership’s Salespeople have email pagers and dealership owned laptop computers that they take home and use on evenings on weekends so they can respond to every customer contact within 1 hour, and they write specific responses to the inquiry, not template auto-responses.

Building the Perfect Internet Dealership, Step 5 - Promoting and Using Lead Generators

Promoting Your “Presence”

Once you’ve started establishing an Internet presence, you need to promote it consistently.  The perfect Internet dealership has their website address in all of their advertising and encourages people to use it by telling them why.  Every business card has the dealership website address, and an email address.  “Hurl the URL!”

Your “Affiliations” and Outside Lead Generators

If you changed your phone number, would you make sure that the new number was listed in the phone book?  The same thing applies to Internet listings that your dealership has.  There are many, many sources of free or low cost directory listings that can refer customers to your dealerships website, or provide email links to contact your dealership.  When we install a new client we find that the information contained in these listings is inaccurate over half of the time.  Just because it’s free or cheap is no reason to ignore it.  At AIT our rule is simple:  “Every customer contact opportunity is sacred and must be serviced at any cost.”  It’s just too hard to get your name in front of a customer to let it slip through your finger tips.

AIT will maintain your listings, but it is imperative that you notify us of any changes in your personnel, dealership information or email addresses, and that you talk to us about any new listings that you are considering.

The perfect Internet dealership makes a constant effort to drive customers to their professional website by using Internet directories, constantly promoting your unique URL in all of your advertising, and constant promotion by all of your staff.  They will maintain the accuracy of all of their listings including their personnel links.  They will rely on their continuously updated manufacturer’s lead generation and linking opportunities.  They will utilize outside, independent “pay per lead” lead generators to supplement their Internet opportunities as necessary to maintain an acceptable level of leads per Salesperson.

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Building the Perfect Internet Dealership, Step 4 - Your Website

Your Website

Far too many dealership operators are willing to spend millions of dollars on their facility, thousands of dollars on their logo design, and hundreds of hours enforcing policies, in order to insure that their image is beyond reproach.  Then they have their dealership’s website designed by a high school student.

Your dealership’s website is first and foremost a graphic representation of your “image” to every customer who visits you in the online world.  If it looks amateurish and unprofessional, so does your dealership.

The perfect Internet dealer has a professional and friendly online image.  Their website contains features that make their customer’s interaction with the dealership productive and convenient.  It contains unique, relevant information that both current and potential customers find useful.  It has independent corroboration of the dealerships commitment to customer satisfaction.  In short, it keeps current customers coming back to the dealership and shows potential customers why they would want to come to the dealership.

The perfect dealership website also makes it very, very easy to buy a car or any product or service that your dealership offers.  It gives customers an easily accessible way to find you, call you, or email you.  It insures that no matter what a customer is looking for, they find it at your dealership.  It makes the evolution of the shopping process into a buying process fluid, and non-threatening.  It takes full advantage of the Internet’s ability to make things more convenient for a customer (online service appointments, vehicle status updates, accessory availability and purchase, etc.)  And it does this while consistently maintaining a visually appealing, professional, easy to use format that reflects the dealership’s desired image.

Building the Perfect Internet Dealership, Step 3 - Email Addresses

Email Addresses

Perfect Internet dealerships have their own email host using an extension that is uniquely associated with their dealership.  Don’t allow your staff to use “free” or personal email accounts to communicate with your customers.  First - these accounts often have advertising links at the bottom that could impugn your professional appearance - would you want one of your customers to receive an email from one of your employees with an ad for “Buy Viagra” at the bottom?  Second – active Internet users will consider such an email from a business as being so unprofessional that their first impression of you will be negative.  Third – Active Internet users save the email addresses for everyone they ever communicate with (my own email address book has over 1,000 entries).  In the event you are forced to make a personnel change, wouldn’t you rather be able to forward the emails sent to the prior salesperson to another person at your dealership?  As opposed to having them go to your former employee, wherever they may be currently selling?

Building the Perfect Internet Dealership, Step 1 - Your Commitment

Your Commitment

There is no “magic pill” that will instantly create a successful Internet presence for your dealership.  If you aspire to Internet greatness, if you want to go to the left side on your twenty-group reports, if you want your dealership on top of the “Ward’s E-Dealer” list next year, you need to be totally committed to the challenge.  It can be done; it’s being done by dealers all across the United States, and the world.

So you’ve never sold any cars to Internet shoppers before.  You make the decision to go after this business and commit to doing all the things you need to do to work with these customers.  You sell a few your first month, a few more the next month, and a few more the month after that.  You even get a couple of comments from customers about your new “online” service appointment process.  Then your Internet Salesperson quits, or you have one bad month, or you read something in Automotive News about “tough times ahead” (when aren’t the times tough in this business?) and you give up.  Huge mistake, made way too often.

The perfect Internet dealership understands that building an industry leading Internet presence is an ongoing process.  They move forward consistently over a period of months, not weeks.  They understand that one of the most significant differences found in Internet shoppers is their long term shopping cycle.  They stay the course and reap all the benefits of sticking with these customers, as they deliver them, and their friends and families, and their friends and families, and their friends and families.

Building the Perfect Internet Dealership, Step 2 - Domain Names

Domain Names (aka: URL’s or “uniform resource locators”)

Your domain names are your addresses in the online universe.  Just as we’ve always made it a point to identify our dealership’s physical location in our traditional advertising, you need to make sure that customers are able to find your dealership when they look in the Internet world.

You should register every conceivable name that a customer (who may be unfamiliar with your dealership) might use to find you online.  These include the full name of your dealership (johndoepontiacbuickford.com); your name by each of the individual makes you carry (johndoepontiac.com), and common misspellings of your name (johndohpontiacbuickford.com, johndohpontiac.com).  If you have a slogan that you can turn into a domain name, it will give you a web address you can use in your advertising that’s easy for customers to remember (yourfriendlyforddealer.com).  It can also be used as an interesting, unique email extension (jdoe@yourfriendlyforddealer.com).

Popular wisdom has it that it is usually best to go with “shortest” whenever possible, but unique, memorable domain names can be highly effective.  One of our personal favorites is the Cadillac dealership that had the good sense to grab the domain name drivecadillac.com as their URL.

The perfect Internet dealership owns all the domains that may be applicable to them and if they don’t have a slogan that is available as domain name, they change the slogan to something that is.

Building the “Perfect” Internet Dealership - An Overview

Building the perfect Internet dealership can be a long and tedious process requiring a substantial investment of time, energy, and most importantly – commitment.  The good news is that it doesn’t require an excessive investment of capital.  Most dealerships already have at least the basic technological requirements - that is an accessible computer with Internet access and a reasonably current operating system.  From this point forward, even the most aggressive dealership will find that any additional technology costs are modest.

The most significant of the investments required is commitment.  Building your dealership’s Internet presence, and learning to effectively sell and service the customers you will be attracting, is a brand new concept requiring a unique process that most dealerships are unfamiliar with.  Many of the dealerships that we talk to are so daunted by a lack of Internet technological acumen that they can’t see the logical concepts and needed processes that exist beyond the wall they create at the edge of the “online world.”

Building Your Internet “Presence”

You’ve made the important first step, by partnering with Automotive Internet Technologies.  You’ve made the decision to “re-invent” your online operation, and we’re here to give you the help you need to build and maintain a successful and profitable Internet process.  As you begin this transition, it’s important to remember that building the perfect Internet dealership isn’t just about selling cars online.  It’s also about making your dealership an Internet friendly destination, and meeting the expectations of Internet users who are either currently your customers, or considering becoming your customer.  It’s about interaction along a unique set of standards that you’re probably not familiar with.  And finally, it’s about using the Internet as a tool to improve your dealership operations.  This whole process of embracing the challenges and opportunities presented by the Internet and its users is what we are talking about when we refer to your Internet presence.

There are several components that make up a perfect Internet dealership.  You can find them in other entries in this blog.