Are Your Auto Accessory Sales a Wreck?

Whether you’re Papa’s Car Lot sitting on 1 acre or a corporate mega-store spanning multiple lots, you can boost your bottom line with accessory sales. It’s that simple. Accessories are a multi-billion dollar industry, largely unaffected by the pandemic. Selling them at the point of sale is a proven method of increasing PNVR. The caveat is this: dealerships who pitch accessories chaotically will stumble into success on occasion and overall miss the mark. A successful accessory program requires a process catered to your store. The good news—dealerships are quite accustomed to a process. While the exact flow will vary from store to store, many best practice fundamentals remain the same.

Some of the Best Auto Accessory Sales Processes

Distribute Responsibility

Accessorizing at the point of sale is merely the jumping-off point to get your store moving in the personalization game. Make sure the pressure to sell accessories is on both the sales and parts departments. Parts sales are not a silo! All departments have a role to play in generating accessory sales as a well-oiled machine. Give excellent, ongoing training to the sales and service staff on how to pitch personalization and upsell customers. Work with parts to ensure you’re leading in with the best product, keeping appropriate stock, and keeping prices unified in-store and online. 

Be Easily Available

Customized accessory recommendations and a clear, easy-to-understand explanation of each must be available to all. Whether you’re sitting in front of a customer at the store or catering to an online shopper, the information should be the same. Car buyers are very well researched these days. They will expect the ability to upgrade, and they’ll likely know exactly what they want. You can’t drop the ball by neglecting to present every possible upgrade in casual conversation, as well as pitching additional options during wait time for F&I. With live chat features, you can walk your online customer through the same process with ease. 

Motivate with Incentives

Roll out a new accessory process with confidence and structure. Hold your salespeople accountable for registering every customer and presenting before F&I. Make sure it’s clear that the new accessory process isn’t optional by bringing in upper-level management to establish it. Most importantly, motivate your staff with optimism and incentives. Run a competition to see who can sell the most accessories in a week or a month, and reward with cash in hand. Make it something extra on top of the commission percentage they’ll receive on each accessory sale. Reward publicly, and often, as you get the program started.

Have a Point Person

This person is responsible for monitoring how often accessories are offered to customers, answering internal and external questions about accessories, inventory, and how to overcome objections. Dedicated accessory managers work well in some stores, with sales turning customers over after the car sale. In other stores, salespeople present and sell accessories to each of their customers. Depending on your process, you may choose a high-performing, trustworthy, and/or seasoned sales representative as your accessory champion.

Training

Dealerships deal with high turnover rates, especially in sales. If you want a successful auto accessory sales system, you need to ensure that the dealership training is consistent across departments. And, all new hires should receive the same detailed training on your store’s accessory process. Everyone must understand the benefit of selling accessories for every department. As with any new program, continue training and revisiting the process until it becomes second nature. 

Insignia Group Is Your Accessory Sales Accountability Hub

Insignia Group is the leading provider of digital accessory selling systems in dealerships across the nation. Our unique reporting and tracking features make it easy for all departments to see what’s selling and when. Sales managers will reap the benefit of seeing the percentage of registrations from each salesperson, while keeping track of sales and commissions. Parts will receive real-time information about orders and be able to look back over reports when it comes time to stock. The Insignia Group system now partners with several digital retailers—CarNow, Roadster, AutoFi, Clicklane (to name a few)—so your digital retailing customers have the same buying experience as your showroom ones. Selling accessories online and in-person has never been easier.

Contact us today to get started on a training program customized to your store.