E-tail to Retail, Selling on the Internet

Okay, you are the lead genius and you figured out how to get the Internet lead in so now how do you sell them? Do you just meet them, bring them into your office, write them up and attempt to make a profit? How many times have you heard that you can’t make money off an Internet customer? You can, but it’s going to be hard if you shortcut the selling process.

Shortcuts are pay cuts. If shortcuts were the way to sell cars, then everyone would take them. Remember when an Internet customer comes in, they most likely have not driven the car, smelled the car, touched the car. Pictures are exciting and so are sounds, but you can’t touch anything but the mouse, keyboard and screen.

So when an Internet customer comes in, get them involved with the car as soon as possible. Get their senses involved so that they get emotionally involved with the sale or else they will grind you about the price and that’s going to cost you gross and net profit.

Do we need to have a timeline to the sale or through the sale? Yes, you need to have a timeline to the sale or else you will be selling price and we know where that road leads. No gross, no profit, soon out of business.

The art of the sale is to have a buying and selling process. The steps to the sale are easy to follow if you have the selling skills and use them. The first step is your first impression where you look, act and sound like a professional. For some dumb reason the relaxed look is too relaxed. I think Tommy Bahama has a relaxed look, and that looks good at the beach. Why is it that sales people look too relaxed? The CMV of their clothes look like they’re $2500 back of book. Have you seen this worn out tired salesperson lately? They normally complain that the coffee is old and weak, and yet it might be the salesperson that is old and weak. Dress up people.

Follow that step with a positive greeting instead of, “Can I help you?” It should be, “Welcome to our dealership, my name is George and you are…” from there you build rapport and talk “people” instead of talking metal, glass and rubber.

Since you really can’t talk through your computer or text machine, get your customer to talk to you about themselves. It almost seems like personal communication is archaic. The next step in sale is the investigation, and this is so important to handling the internet customer. Determine their needs, wants and buyer’s motivation and you can now build your sale. What do they need? What do you want? What has changed in their driving needs that has them looking for a vehicle? Ask questions like, “How many Web sites did you visit? “How did you find our Web site? “What did you like about our Web site? “Why did you consider us then the other dealerships. You do have to talk about the Internet since 94 percent of people Google everyday. Don’t play hide and seek, you will get tagged.

Most likely people don’t drive to car dealerships to waste time. If so, turn that customer to the new guy and tell them to build character with that Up. LOL!

Okay, let’s get serious here. Now that you have found the motivation and needs and wants, settle them on a car, open it up, and get their senses involved quickly. Of course they are going to bring up price at some point, and if you talk price on your feet, then when you sit on your seat, their isn’t going to be much gross left. If you give gross away outside, then don’t expect it inside. If you email me at george@georgedans.com I will send you five scripts to staying off price on the lot. If you or your salespeople can’t stay off price, then it will be hard to get through the selling process.

Most likely there won’t be a presentation or demonstration. Believe it or not, most of the time spent selling a vehicle is out on the lot, not in the office. The value has to be established outside, and then you work the numbers inside. If you find it the other way around, you have a skill problem, which can be improved with sales training or you have a process problem that can be cured with a selling process backed with a written procedure that management enforces if there are any sales managers left!

In the next month’s article I will break down the selling process. The above selling steps that we covered in this article were the first impression – greeting – building rapport – investigation. This is called the buying process. The next series of steps are the selling process. That is where the presentation is performed along with the demonstration. In real world this is what’s going on, the customer sends a request in, the dealership responds and hopefully doesn’t vomit the best price out, you do your best to get the customer in, from there, they come in, the customer goes right from the curb to car, then to office, the salesperson goes to desk, beats up manager on price and hopes to make a deal! How can you hold gross if you don’t have a selling process?

Curb to car then to desk is not the way to sell cars today. Since when does the customer tell you how to sell your cars? How come we don’t tell the doctor how to do his job? How come we don’t go to the dentist and say, oh No. 13 is bothering me, and can you pull it for me? We rarely go to any business and tell them how we want to be sold, yet in the car business, we allow the customer to control us. Dealers, managers, and salespeople, it’s time to quit letting people come on your lot and push you around. Customers buy cars every 2-3 years or so, you sell cars everyday, which should be better? Here is how you fix it. Train – Educate- Act – Motivate. It spells TEAM. Train your team on the basics and you will have the selling advantage again.

If you fail to train, then you train to fail…