CarsDirect Cross Shop Top 5: 2013 Chevy Corvette

There’s no doubt about it – the all-new 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray stole the Detroit Auto Show earlier this month. A bold evolution of the historic Corvette lineage, particularly in terms of styling, the 2014 Corvette is already drawing comparisons to exotic supercars costing many tens of thousands of dollars more.

A common assumption about Corvette buyers is that they know exactly what they want when they’re shopping for a car. To test that theory, we took at look at the current-gen 2013 Corvette and used exclusive CarsDirect cross-shopping data from the past three months to take a look at the top five vehicles cross-shopped against the 2013 Corvette.

(The percentages refer to the percentage of total Corvette shoppers who also cross-shopped the alternate models listed. For example, 12.2% of buyers who shopped a Corvette also shopped a Mustang.)

Ford Mustang: 12.2%

Ford Shelby GT500: 9.9%

Porsche 911: 7%

Porsche Boxster: 6.2%

Honda Accord: 5.6%

Interestingly, the 2012 Corvette was cross-shopped against the 2013 Corvette at a rate of 18.5%, besting all of the new models listed above. It’s unusual for a new car to be shopped against a used version of the same car at such a high rate. So perhaps the theory is correct: the only thing you can compare a Corvette to is…another Corvette.

Want custom cross-shopping data for your vehicles? Contact us at 866.852.3784 or connect@carsdirect.com.

Video: Social Car Buying Benefits Buyers and Dealers

We’re always working to create products that mutually benefit consumers who visit CarsDirect.com and our dealer partners. We’re especially proud of our latest new product: CarsDirect’s My Showroom. This industry-first feature lets consumers who visit CarsDirect bring their friends along as they shop for a car, creating a social car buying experience that leads to more solid leads for dealers.

CarsDirect’s My Showroom brings together several tools to provide a better, faster, and social car buying experience for consumers:

• Fast social log-in. Consumers can quickly sign into CarsDirect and configure their personal showroom using an existing social network account such as Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

• Save vehicles. As consumers browse vehicles, they can save an unlimited number of new and used vehicles that they’re considering to their personal showrooms with one click.

• Share vehicles. Consumers can share their list of saved vehicles with friends on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks. Their friends can then vote and comment on the vehicles under consideration to help make a purchase decision.

For years, CarsDirect customers have been telling us that that they value their friends’ opinions highly when it comes to which car they choose. We think that My Showroom will help lead to more confident purchase decisions by CarsDirect users, resulting in even more solid and more qualified leads for our dealer partners. In fact, our early data shows that consumers who use My Showroom are more than 10 times more likely to convert into a lead than consumers who don’t use the feature.

You can learn more about social car buying and CarsDirect’s My Showroom at https://www.carsdirect.com/social.

Car-Selling Lessons From Las Vegas

By Todd Dearborn, VP of Sales

I recently had the opportunity to lead a dealer training seminar at the Digital Dealer 13 conference in Las Vegas. I focused my session on using real CarsDirect customer survey data to figure out the reasons why customers didn’t buy from the store their lead was originally referred to in those cases when customers ended up not buying, or buying from another store.

Refining the sales process to minimize lost sales was a major theme at Digital Dealer this year. With the show fresh in my mind, I wanted to share some areas of focus regarding the sales process (I’ve listed the key points in order of frequency):

1. Customers aren’t being contacted.

• 32% of New Car leads and a whopping 46% of Used referrals aren’t being contacted, per our data.

• The customer’s perception of 1:1 contact differs from the Internet Sales Rep’s perception.

Fix it through meaningful, customized, personalized contact

2. “I’m still looking!”

• In these cases, the sales rep and ISM give up, whether due to cherry picking, working too many leads or just bad process. The customer says “I’m still looking – but call me.” They’re open to alternative solutions, and they still are ready to buy a car.

Fix it by implementing a better process for the 7+ to 14+ days aged lead. Make sure you have a trained sales person working on follow up, armed with solutions to meet the customer’s needs. Customers’ expectations change based on what their research and inquiries have told them, and you can take advantage of this.

3. Price

• The outdated but still widely used philosophy is to prioritize getting the customer into the store, and to hold price hostage until the customer does show up in person.

Fix it by knowing that data is too plentiful, and that there are dealers ready to talk price. Prepare yourself using tools like vAuto and doing research to know where other dealers in your market are priced. You can also go to CarsDirect, TrueCar, Edmunds, and other places to find new car pricing by market.

We have sold well over 100,000 vehicles (almost entirely in California) through our brokering business to customers we have never met and never laid eyes on. We designed our communication to fit into the customer’s buying process, not force them into our selling process. The best dealers executing the highest sales rates understand this dynamic. They’ll do dealer trades, search for used cars all over the country using things like the online wholesale auctions, and they have delivery solutions for their customers.

Treat the call center/phone sales job like the description says – look at dials, talk time, lead conversion cycle time. How many leads does your sales rep handle? Do they turn and burn, or are they a plodder holding on and not able to take on the right volume? If you manage to their strengths then there are big rewards. But most of all, you need to make sure you understand why customers do and don’t buy from you.

Todd Dearborn
VP Sales, CarsDirect
310.280.4282
todd.dearborn@carsdirect.com

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