Why Aren’t Customers Buying From You?

By Todd Dearborn, VP of Sales

In today’s world of the Internet, smart phones, and apps for everything, communication is supposed to be easier and more efficient than ever before. But when it comes to dealers communicating with potential customers, plenty of opportunities are still slipping through the cracks. That’s one of the major takeaways from our latest exclusive quarterly survey of customers who submitted leads on CarsDirect.com.

Take a look at the following survey excerpts from customers who did not end up purchasing a vehicle after submitting a lead:

Looking at the first chart a full 41% of consumers said they either weren’t contacted by a dealer or were not sure if they were contacted. In today’s world, there’s almost always a way to reach a potential customer, but almost half of leads are passing by unconverted due to something as simple as making initial contact with the customer.

To avoid missing these opportunities, focus on what customers see as making contact, and on your current process at your store. While your process might consist of sending an e-mail shortly after receiving a lead, it could be that the customer is expecting a more personal phone call. Experiment with different ways of making initial contact with customers to see which one garners the best response. As illustrated above, there are plenty of opportunities other stores are missing that you can seize on.

Moving onto the second chart, again we see that by far the top reason or not purchasing: no contact. If there’s no communication with customers, it’s impossible to make sales. That’s why it’s imperative to examine and refine your processes so your sales team knows they did everything they could to contact a customer and get them in the door.

The second most-cited reason customers gave for not purchasing was that they are still looking for a vehicle. These are the cases when contact is made with a customer but they drop off the radar. In these cases, it’s important to examine why your team hasn’t closed the customer. Are they still working the customer? There’s usually plenty of opportunity to win a customer back if they’re undecided.

Finally, the third most common reason that customers gave for not purchasing was price. Here, make sure that you’re giving customers a price online so that there is no surprise about price on first contact. Also, make sure you’re priced competitively in your area. It sounds simple, but your prices could be out of line with the rest of your local market if you’re not keeping tabs on pricing trends in the surrounding area.

If you’d like any additional information about this survey and/or how CarsDirect can enhance your current sales process, please e-mail
connect@carsdirect.comor call 866.852.3784.

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

Follow @cdcdealers

Consolidating Our Way To the Bottom

That was my first thought after seeing an article last week about the vAuto integration getting tighter with the Auto Trader side of the business.

I never purposely poke at our competition, but I think dealers should be asking themselves how much control they want a vendor to have in setting their market prices and margin. The Cox companies are working hard to complete the ownership of the entire vehicle lifecycle. They’ve got Manheim on the wholesale side owning auctions, condition reports, remarketing. Then you have vAuto setting the market values on what “you should pay” to make sure that you’re competitive on the retail side, depending on how much margin you want to make. (We know if you follow their buying guidelines 100% of the time you’d watch your entire used stock disappear.)

There’s also HomeNet, which controls inventory distribution to the online channels. We then cross the great divide to retail, with KBB driving retail values, Trader as the marketing channel, and now vAuto showing comparative retail market pricing to the consumer (so you can make sure you’re priced in the upper quartile for most competitive pricing).

Holy cow – talk about driving a race to the bottom! This has gone beyond visibility, data, and analytics and crossed into what seems to be an uncomfortable level of control over a dealer’s inventory, the price at which it’s acquired, and how much it’s sold for in the retail space. What’s happening with the level of control Cox now wields over a dealer’s supply and demand should make any business owner consider whether or not this is healthy for the industry, and for the market as a whole.

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

Follow @cdcdealers