One of the biggest hesitations to selling accessories is the fear of messing up the hard-earned car sale. The truth is accessories are simply a continuation of the well-established process, and something as easy as word tracks can put accessory sales on autopilot. 

You’d never wing it or fumble through a car sale. Why treat the multi-billion dollar accessory industry any differently? When dealerships stand to make more money on accessories and F&I products than they do selling cars, it’s critical that dealers get add-ons right. 

Customer expectation has morphed several times over the last several years. Today, the person’s experience is more important than budget. The most successful dealerships are changing their usual way of doing things to adapt to the next wave of consumers. 

Buyers now start their car buying process online up to 99% of the time.  Some take steps toward buying their car before setting foot in the store, cutting their in-store time down to about ninety minutes. Even those who didn’t start the check-out process online have spent hours researching and know what they want when they arrive. 

Couple this well-informed buyer with a society that values a fast pace and high efficiency, and dealerships must make the most out of every minute they have with their buyer (or risk death by bad reviews). 

A steady uptick in the adoption of electric vehicles spurred almost all major brands to create an electric model. While some automakers are still dipping their toes in the pool, others have made a splash, pledging to go all-electric within the next decade. 

As popularity increases, so does affordability. EVs were once poised to cater to an elite market. Today, brands like Nissan, Ford, and GMC offer electric vehicles priced for the average car buyer. In the next two to three years, many more models are expected to be available, and dealers can look forward to having EVs as commonplace cars on the lot. 

Electric vehicles need less maintenance and require fewer parts. If there’s one thing that is certain to remain the same, it’s the consumer’s innate drive to personalize. EV buyers are self expressionist, potentially even more so than gas-powered buyers. That’s good news for fixed operations, which can significantly impact their bottom line with accessory sales.

“Focusing on the customer makes a company more resilient” — Jeff Bezos

There was a time when dealerships filled the floor with warm bodies, and prior sales experience wasn’t important. The belief that a salesperson was diabolically plotting to “get one over” on the customer was commonplace and accepted. Car buyers viewed car shopping as a necessary evil and begrudgingly handed over their money, whether they were treated well or not.

Those days are gone. 

In 2023, the customer experience can skyrocket your success or set you way back; and, in some cases, do irreparable damage. 

Millennials, the largest segment of car buyers today, require a positive experience, or you will pay—possibly with your life, in a long, slow death from bad reviews. 

The 72 million people that make up the millennial group are the largest segment of the world’s population, as well as the largest segment of car buyers today. 

Car buyers between the ages of 25 and 40 have been largely stereotyped, mostly negatively. As salespeople, we must drop the assumptions about this group so we can learn to meet the unique needs of the generation that stands in the middle of technology and in-person interactions. 

There are a few things that car dealers need to understand about millennials. 

• They’re the most likely to research heavily online before you connect with them.
• 82% still want to buy a car in the dealership.
• Visualization technology is essential.
• They want cars that express their personality, not status symbols.

If going to the gym is good for us, why don’t we all do it? 

Sure, it can be intimidating. It takes effort and pushing yourself to be better—which can also require some mental toughness. When you do start, however, you get stronger. You gain confidence and resilience and feel great! Next thing you know, you’re the envy of your friends and colleagues. Todd, are those biceps I see? Yes. Yes, they are.

Like hitting the gym, making a habit of presenting accessories to every customer is easy to put off. The payoff, however, is big, and it happens faster than you think. Here’s the little push you need to “lose that wait”. It’s not going to be seamless the first time, the second, maybe not even the third. Neither were your first few car sales. 

“Accessories are an expression of what the customer is and what they want.”

-Tom Dunford

Vehicle Personalization is a multi-billion dollar industry that has been historically unaffected by the ebb and flow of the automotive industry. Despite the pandemic, chip shortage, inflation, and a host of other headaches, the business of accessories keeps chugging along. 

People love to personalize, and when dealerships understand that, they thrive. Selling accessories have a domino effect in a dealership—not only do you keep the customer’s money in-house, but you also add helpful incentives for your salespeople, create revenue for the parts department, establish better relationships with service, create repeat business, and boost CSI scores. The simple act of offering accessories (or not offering them) can either add all those benefits to your store or detract from it. 

Don’t take it from us. We’re just another vendor trying to sell you something, right? Here’s a recap of our conversation with someone who has boots on the ground. 

We see you fixed operations manager. Over the past few years, you overcame continual obstacles. Nobody sent you a fruit basket or offered you a break. 

No, it was just phone call after phone call from disgruntled consumers and distributors, followed by management meetings asking you to squeeze out more profit, more ROI, and better CSI.

Then, an even more pressing need to increase revenue was looming amid inventory shortages and plenty of backorders. 

Parts and service managers face the biggest challenges of growing service profit, all while monitoring third-party resources' ROI. And. It’s. Stressful.

Today, the question is, can a dealership create a successful parts department and a thriving service lane—in a post-pandemic world—without working their managers into the ground? The answer is a resounding yes, and it’s found in digital retailing.