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Eighteen-year-old Samantha Dorton is fresh out of high school. With a spirit of optimism, she initiated plans to leave the nest. Her first stop on the road to independence was a local dealership. Samantha’s mother, Khrystal Dorton, Insignia Group’s Customer Care Coordinator, asked her daughter to be self-sufficient before she flew on her own.

“That meant getting her vehicle fixed, or purchasing one that ran,” Khrystal said. “She decided to buy a good one and leave her 2001 Nissan Pathfinder behind.” Armed with her approval specs from the bank and a good idea of what she was looking for, Samantha was ready to face the car-buying process head-on.

As COVID-19 shut down America as we knew it, extroverts all across America found themselves taking refuge in their cars. What started with just taking a drive, turned into eating take-out in the driveway. Before we knew what was happening, kids’ birthday parties morphed into drive-by parades. Campgrounds closed and truck beds became the go-to spot for a night under the stars.

As dealers across the nation adjust to selling vehicles online, it’s imperative that we don’t skip vehicle personalization. The easiest way to ensure customers and salespeople have a fair shot at a perfectly adorned vehicle is to make your accessory link easy to find. Trip and fall over it easy. “There it is again” easy. “I didn’t find the link, the link found me” kind of easy. When you strategically place your personalization link, you make your salesperson’s life easier, and your customer more likely to buy. 

Margin compression matters now more than ever. As dealers adapt to selling cars digitally, or with skeleton crews, monthly sales volumes are on a slippery slope. Though our present industry reality is less than ideal, we aren’t without hope. We have the tools to make every car sale count, to the extent of tipping this month’s scale back into balance, precarious as it may be.

St. Patrick’s Day has got us all toting rabbit’s feet. Donning green from head to toe, decorating our cubicles with four leaf clovers, and holding out hope for uncommon luck--all while being largely unsure of what we’re observing on this obscure holiday.

Is there a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Is the rainbow literal, or figurative? Do leprechauns really eat marshmallow cereal? Don’t take this same level of confusion into your Vehicle Personalization program. Follow me into the magic of the metaphor, and sell more accessories this March 17th.

The product team is like Santa’s elves—tinkering behind the scenes all year long to bring you good tidings of profit and joy. That sleek digital interface that makes your client feel like a kid on Christmas morning has a whole crew backing it. It’s time we gave the product team the standing ovation they deserve for all that button pushing, configurator spinning, report generating, artistic goodness they serve us. Meet the team! 

It’s the most common New Year’s resolution year after year: lose the weight. Shed that which is unwanted and not serving you. Lean out, get stronger, increase longevity. This annual commitment resounds all over the world and it’s no surprise that the diet and fitness industry is well into the billions.

Your dealership might not be on Keto, but you can still make wait loss your goal this year. Vehicle Personalization, after all, rivals diet culture as a lean, mean, multi-billion dollar industry. You can be proactive about replacing the dreaded wait time with a successful shopping experience.

[Updated 11/12/2020]

The stampede is coming, and they’re ready to break the internet. The Black Friday crowd has gone virtual. If 2020 has already set records in e-commerce, imagine the impact of the biggest shopping day of the year. With all the online activity, the day after Thanksgiving is basically just the warm up for Cyber Monday.

Yes, the opportunists are charging their laptops on Black Friday eve, ready to kick this thing off with new car smells. Make this car-shopping season spark joy with mega-profit potential, stellar CSI scores, and repeat business. I hope you upgraded your internet package.

In all the activity, don’t let Vehicle Personalization get lost. You cut your legs out from under yourself when you bypass accessories. This high volume day is the ideal environment for accessory sales, and can even be used to temper the flow online and in store.

Here’s three things Vehicle Personalization can do in the hustle and bustle.

The task of selecting an accessory champion for your dealership can be harrowing. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach and without a compass, dealers may find their accessory program suffering. To begin, management should examine both process and store volume to determine who to lean on as the personalization expert. 

You know what’s terrifying? The amount of high fructose corn syrup America will eat today.

There’s something more horrifying. Dealerships that are still focusing all their efforts on adding profit and neglecting the customer experience.

This Halloween, lavish every customer that darkens your doors with sweet goodness--even the witchy ones.