One of the most common reasons for poor dealership Internet performance is that Internet salespeople have limited interaction and support from their own managers. More dealers need to understand that to be successful with online shoppers; they have to integrate the Internet sales process throughout the entire dealership management team with the shared objective being to exceed the online shopper’s expectations.
We can’t afford to keep trying to convert Internet salespeople into the kinds of prospects that we would like them to be – they demand a different shopping experience. We need to embrace a sales process that is still effective for us, but deliver it on terms that Internet prospects will accept.
And the involvement has to extend throughout the dealership, including fixed ops. For example, we know that service walkthroughs are a vital component of the sales process, and yet how many dealerships include an email from the service manager in their new prospect email responses? The days of looking at the Internet sales process as the anomaly to be tolerated as a necessary evil are long gone.
