Selling Cars Like the Best

At Webinarinc, we mystery shop over 25,000 dealerships every year in the United States. As a result, we’ve been able to gather information on what the best dealerships in America are doing to sell more cars and increase profitability. To no surprise, the success of these dealerships is the collective result of high-performing car sales professionals. These car sale pros have been well-trained to get buyers on their showroom floor.

Nowadays, customers go to an average of 1-2 dealerships before making a purchase. We know that modern consumers have access to an amazing amount information. In turn, they have made a solid commitment to purchasing a vehicle just by walking through your dealership’s doors. Yet, with access to the internet, it also has created educated buyers that can very freely shop around. In response, the best dealerships in America have adapted to utilize the techniques and strategies needed to get these hot deals. In this blog, learn what the best dealerships in the U.S. are doing to set more appointments, and ultimately sell a lot more cars!

Fast and Diversified Follow Up

In modern car sales, speed is the name of the game. A study by leadresponsemanagement.org found out just how important the speed of follow up is. Data from the study showed that car sale professionals are 100x more likely to get in touch with customers if they follow up within 5-minutes as opposed to 30 minutes of when a lead comes in. It just goes to show how valuable response time is in the modern digital marketplace. Therefore, if you want to beat competition to the punch, then following up within that first 5 minute window is crucial to selling more vehicles.

Similar to follow up speed, diversifying your follow up is vital in selling more vehicles. It would be great if car sales professionals could simply call a customer once and set the appointment, but that doesn’t happen as often as we would like. In reality, it can be hard to know what communication method will reach and engage the buyer. We need to consider that consumers might not want to pick up their phone to an unknown number, or that some simply prefer email or text. So, make sure to diversify your follow up by sending communication and photos/videos via text message and email as well. Diversified follow up is a key factor to become one of the highest selling dealerships in your marketplace.

The Best Dealerships Use Mystery Shop Data

If you can’t reach a buyer, then you cannot sell them a vehicle. These are words to live by in car sales. It’s important that dealerships train their sales, BDC, and internet team to be extremely quick at following up through a variety of communication methods. To prove the importance of this, here is mystery shop data we gathered in August 2021:

As show in the graphic, the disparity between the top and bottom performing dealerships in the United States in terms of follow up speed and diversity is incredible. As we can see, the top 10% for calls, emails, and SMS all follow up with leads in under 5 minutes. Additionally, these dealerships will attempt to contact buyers through these methods multiple times. As a result, they are able to get in contact with customers far more often than a majority of dealerships.

Therefore, it’s extremely important to pay attention to this data at your dealership and your competitors. If your competitors are calling faster and sending out more follow up, then odds are that they have a strong advantage over your dealership. This is a huge reason why two dealerships can sell the same product, in the same city, and yet one will greatly outperform the other.

The Best Dealerships Stay Accountable

Once your dealership is able to accelerate response times and diversify follow up, your team will be able to get in contact with customers a lot more often. However, it won’t have as strong of an effect if you cannot keep your team accountable in your dealership’s processes. To combat this, using mystery shop data or recorded follow up in your dealership’s CRM is a great way to keep your team on the right track.

Individual car sales professionals should already be looking back at their own performance to see where they can improve. By taking this one step further as a weekly team meeting, it can help sales professionals improve further. With mystery shop data, you will be able to look over calls, emails, texts, and voicemails to examine performance at your dealership and direct competitors. This way you can hold your team accountable and work together to find out what works at what doesn’t. Luckily, we offer a free 7-day trial of our Mystery Shopping, so dealerships can see how this will help them dominate their market. Simply click below and get ready to watch your dealership's performance skyrocket!