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Digital retailing isn’t going to replace you as a car salesperson.
Digital retailing is the best tool you’ve had lately—it can make you more efficient, add more money to your pocket, and create a better work-life balance.
Remember how you felt a few years ago when you realized you would have to sell cars online? There may be some unpleasant feelings of resistance there.
Hey, that’s a normal reaction when people are forced into something. Today you can breathe easy because you’re in the driver’s seat again. Customers are walking in your dealership's doors as inventory fills the lot up again, and you have the internet at your fingertips.
It’s the best of both worlds; what a great time to be a car salesperson. Here are four reasons why digital retailing makes you better at your job.
1. Get up to speed, fast
Lengthy onboarding and learning curves are frustrating for dealership management and new salespeople—digital retailing can turn the tide.
If you’re new to selling cars in 2023, you’re at an advantage. Digital retailing will get you up to speed, fast. Rudi Thun, COO of Roadster, says, “When you have a good digital sales process, and the software does a lot of the work for you, you can hire a salesperson and get them up to speed in two weeks, selling 15 cars a month in about two months; a process which would normally take six months.”
By going through the digital retailing process when you sell cars online, you’re getting exposure to the steps of the sale in a highly condensed format. You’ll have maximum opportunities for repeated exposure that you can’t replicate in person.
2. Shorten the sale
Among the top consumer complaints (about car buying) is the amount of time spent in the store. In the past, salespeople have had to dance a fine line to keep their customers engaged, happy, comfortable, hydrated, trusting, satisfied, and ready to swipe their cards over a four to six-hour period of time. Phew!
Digital retailing can condense the in-person interaction to 60-90 minutes while promoting a positive relationship between the customer and salesperson. When customers start online, they’re bound to have plenty of questions.
Rudi Thun says, “It’s very rare that we have a transaction that goes all the way through without any back and forth between customer and salesperson. Given the complexity of the process, I don’t see it being entirely machine-driven anytime soon. Even Carvana reports that ten or more interactions [between the customer and the company] take place to get it done.”
By the time your online shopper comes into the store, it’s likely that you’ve already spoken to them several times and helped them reach this point. Now, it’s a matter of an hour or so to finish the process and generate excellent CSI scores.
3. Sell Accessories Effortlessly
The right digital retailer will enable your store to sell accessories online with every car sale, with your own pricing and labor times.
Vehicle Personalization is a multi-billion dollar industry largely unaffected by the pandemic. The drive to personalize is part of our brain chemistry and holds unlimited profit potential for dealerships.
There’s just one thing that’s problematic: the willingness of salespeople and management to offer accessories. If you’re a salesperson and you’re afraid to present accessories, you’ll never sell them. If leadership isn’t on board, you miss out on the commission.
With digital retailing, Vehicle Personalization is presented early and often as the shopper moves through the car buying process. By the time they get to you, they’ve already been presented with recommended accessories one to two times, making your job as the closer effortless. The best way to sell accessories is just to ask.
4. Maximize Your Time
In a traditional process, you’re pretty limited on how many people you can work with in a day. Car buying takes time, and time is money. Also, you’re taking risk after risk as you inevitably leave your customer waiting multiple times throughout the process. If you can get several steps in the process done before someone ever comes in and cut their in-store time down to a fraction of the time, you’re freed up to sell more.
Using digital retailing can help you achieve this!
In years past, salespeople that regularly sell 40-60 cars per month have had to work crazy hours to hit those goals. If you wanted to be a top seller, work-life balance was a pipe dream. By leveraging digital retailing, you can talk to more people and move deals quickly, resulting in more cars sold, more money, and manageable hours. And that’s Grandma’s secret recipe for longevity in the car business; not burning yourself out to chase a dollar. Work smarter, not harder.
Insignia Group Can Help
Insignia Group has been the leading provider of digital accessory-selling platforms in the showroom for over twenty years. As the industry evolved, so did we. You need to sell cars online, and customers want to accessorize online. Today, Insignia Group is partnered with top digital retailers to enable dealerships to sell accessories online, with dealer-specific pricing and labor times. Vehicle Personalization profit potential online is explosive, and dealerships can’t afford to miss this critical step.
Don’t forego your opportunities or eat your labor costs. Contact your digital retailer to see if they’ve partnered with Insignia Group to make your store successful.
