The Rebirth of Automotive Sales: 3 Steps to a Brighter Future

Over the past months I’ve been doc­u­ment­ing my car-buy­ing jour­ney in an effort to gain first-hand expe­ri­ence of the process and how it can be improved using dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing tech­niques and the­o­ries. Most recent­ly I’ve been sur­prised at the gap that exists between the dis­cov­ery phase and the in-store phase of the process. The dis­cov­ery phase is con­trolled by the OEMs, and con­sists of the cus­tomer con­fig­ur­ing the car and being exposed to the brand­ing and sales adver­tis­ing that make a car so appeal­ing. The in-store phase is han­dled by the deal­er­ship and is a dis­con­nect­ed expe­ri­ence that could ben­e­fit from some of the lessons learned in the dig­i­tal world.

1. Trans­fer the OEM Expe­ri­ence to the Dealership

In my expe­ri­ence, I found that there was lit­tle to no com­mu­ni­ca­tion between the OEM and the deal­er. Dur­ing the dis­cov­ery phase I entered a lot of use­ful infor­ma­tion about myself that could eas­i­ly be cap­tured and passed onto a deal­er­ship with my pro­file. Infor­ma­tion like the type of car I was look­ing for, dif­fer­ent con­fig­u­ra­tions I looked at, my price range, and ques­tions I asked can help a deal­er build a more com­plete under­stand­ing of who I am as a cus­tomer, giv­ing them more data to use when sell­ing me a vehi­cle. The cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is great­ly enhanced when cus­tomers feel as if the busi­ness knows them and knows why they are inter­est­ed in a spe­cif­ic product.

2. Improve the Sales Floor Experience

Most sales floor expe­ri­ences con­sist of either an over-eager sales­per­son or some­one who doesn’t seem to want to give you the time of day. In either case, the cus­tomer ends up feel­ing under­val­ued by the expe­ri­ence, espe­cial­ly after expe­ri­enc­ing all of the feel-good mes­sag­ing and excite­ment of the dis­cov­ery phase. Sales floor employ­ees should focus on coach­ing cus­tomers along in their jour­ney instead of sim­ply sell­ing them a vehicle.

These indi­vid­u­als need to be giv­en access to the right data to bet­ter under­stand poten­tial cus­tomers walk­ing in for a test dri­ve. Data cap­tured dur­ing dis­cov­ery should be avail­able so that the sales staff already under­stands where cus­tomers are in their car-buy­ing jour­ney. More­over, sales staff should have the knowl­edge to answer ques­tions and offer infor­ma­tion to cus­tomers, based on their pro­files, that will help them along in the car-buy­ing process.

3. Feed Infor­ma­tion Back to the OEM

One of the most impor­tant pur­pos­es that the deal­er can serve is as a test envi­ron­ment, or feed­back cen­ter, for the OEMs. In the same way that data cap­tured dur­ing dis­cov­ery can be hand­ed down to the deal­ers, the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence dur­ing the test dri­ve can also be fed back into the OEM’s data stores. This cre­ates a more com­plete pro­file of the con­sumer in much the same way that dig­i­tal adver­tis­ers are con­nect­ing cross-device expe­ri­ences to a sin­gle user.

An envi­ron­ment where data flows back and forth between OEMs and deal­ers cre­ates a fun­nel of cus­tomers for the deal­er­ship as opposed to a cold lead. It also enables the sales­per­son to act more like a coach, using infor­ma­tion about the cus­tomers and their needs to guide them through their car-buy­ing jour­neys. Final­ly, it pro­vides a feed­back mech­a­nism, allow­ing the OEM to gain insights into people’s pur­chas­ing deci­sions, both on an indi­vid­ual lev­el and as an over­all trend.

The Rebirth of Auto Sales

Auto indus­try OEMs need to think about how they can cre­ate a pos­i­tive end-to-end expe­ri­ence for con­sumers. They need to imple­ment two-way data man­age­ment plat­forms that share infor­ma­tion with, and gath­er feed­back from, the deal­er­ships. They need to empow­er sales­peo­ple with infor­ma­tion from the point of first con­tact through fol­low-up and feedback.

Con­sumers are becom­ing accus­tomed to a more per­son­alised buy­ing expe­ri­ence as dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing expands, and this will even­tu­al­ly ring true for the auto indus­try. Brands that can adapt to this new type of busi­ness mod­el will thrive as cus­tomer expe­ri­ence alone becomes a dif­fer­en­tia­tor. The same goes for the deal­er­ships. Those that choose to stay in the tra­di­tion­al role will undoubt­ed­ly fal­ter at the hands of deal­er­ships where peo­ple feel under­stood and val­ued by the sales staff.

What are your thoughts?