Internet car shoppers are not necessarily looking for a cheaper price. But they are most certainly looking for an alternative shopping experience. Here is how to provide it.
INTRODUCTION
This site is a free web version of the Kindle and paperback book “The Art & Science of Internet Car Sales,” which is available for free as a Kindle book (if you have Amazon Prime), $5 otherwise, or $10 as a paperback. I intentionally keep the price for this material cheap to free so that any new or used car salesperson anywhere can afford to try it out.
This book first began to take shape more than 10 years ago. So much has changed in that time. Viewed through today’s eyes some of the tools and communication styles we used and recommended back then were, at best, quaint, and, at worst, cringeworthy. Change is good. Yet one thing that has not changed in all this time is automobile dealerships' overall inability to deliver a consistently professional shopping experience to Internet customers. This book exists to help solve that problem.
Note that this is not a traditional car sales training book. If you want to learn how to overcome objections, how to prospect, how to do a perfect walkaround, how to memorize and deploy proven closes, etc. etc. there are already thousands of titles out there for that. Instead, this book teaches you how to connect with Internet prospects in ways that will generate more sales appointments. Because, until you have a customer in the store, you don’t have a sales opportunity. And without a sales opportunity you don’t have anyone to practice those closing skills on.
Therefore, this book is about how to get more of your Internet shoppers talking to you. Whether you are brand new to the biz or are a veteran Internet/BDC salesperson I think you will find valuable instructional content here.
In 2010, after 26 years of inside and outside sales (houses, multimedia services, software and cars) I became a retail automobile salesmanship and communications skills best practices consultant and trainer. Every day I am in car dealerships watching, listening, teaching, training, and helping them improve their Internet sales efforts. Therefore, you can be assured that the information herein is up-to-date real-world common-sense stuff that works.
SOME SAMPLE CHAPTERS APPEAR BELOW.
HOW HAS THE INTERNET CHANGED OUR BUSINESS?
Everyone agrees that the Internet changed the retail car business, but what does that mean? Yesterday we did not send emails or texts, and today we do? Yes and no; the changes the Internet brought to our industry go far above the addition of new electronic communications mediums.
For decades, the only way consumers could learn about, see, drive and purchase cars was to go to a retailer. Dealers controlled all the information and access, leaving consumers defenseless against some stores’ egregious profiteering and, at times, unethical behavior. As a result, car dealers and their salespeople acquired a nasty (and not always undeserved) reputation. People loved their new cars, but they hated the experience of buying them.
The Internet changed all that overnight. Suddenly car shoppers were empowered with accurate product data, including wholesale and market value pricing, thereby eliminating dealers’ long-standing chokehold on information. Consumers seized on this newfound arsenal of intelligence and, in the process, forever altered the balance of power in the consumer/dealer relationship.
What does this mean to you today as a retail automobile salesperson?
1). Nobody Makes A Purchase Without First Using the Internet To Become Informed. Any and all products at all price points are now viewed on a screen before they are seen in person at a store. This means today’s retail shopping experience includes an extra step that did not exist only 20 +/- years ago. This phenomenon, nicknamed Zero Moment Of Truth or ZMOT in 2011, is explained well and in great detail in Google’s free e-book “Winning The Zero Moment Of Truth.” If you are not already familiar with the concept, I recommend you take a moment to look over one or both of these essential papers.
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/research-studies/2011-winning-zmot-ebook.html
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/research-studies/zmot-auto-study.html
2). Everything You Do Is Now Public Knowledge. Before a shopper ever comes to your dealership, he/she is online learning not only about your products and prices, but also about your store, including the reviews from your satisfied and unsatisfied customers. “Word of mouth” has gone from being one-on-one to being one-on-thousands.
3). You Are Now Evaluated On Your Ability As A Communicator. Most customers’ first encounter with your store (and, therefore, the moment of impact that forms their all-important first impression of your business) now occurs online, and not in your showroom or outside your building. So how does your dealership come across on your website? In your outbound emails? On consumer review sites? What does your online presence say about you and your store? What is your narrative? Do you own your brand? What is your brand? Are you in control of your message, or is the message unintentionally controlling you?
4). Prospect Management Is No Longer Optional. Every name and email address in your contact management system today represents either a sales opportunity or a marketing opportunity. Effectively managing and utilizing your prospect and customer contact data is imperative if you are to maximize your message impact and harvest the sales hiding inside your database.
WHAT EXACTLY IS “INTERNET CAR SALES”?
Actually, there are two common Internet sales models, both grouped under the single label of “Internet Car Sales”:
eCommerce
At-Home/In-Store
When customers purchase the car they want on a website, and then either have it shipped to them or come by to pick it up – that’s true Internet sales, AKA eCommerce. Using this definition, for example, Carvana is a true eCommerce dealership, because a customer can complete every step of the purchase on Carvana’s website, with or without the hands-on assistance of store personnel.
eCommerce still accounts for a very small percentage of national car sales, however. While all car shoppers today do use the Internet, most use it for preliminary research and self-education and follow that with a traditional in-store test drive and purchase experience. (The At-Home/In-Store combo.) An estimated 25%-35% of these shoppers will submit electronic inquiries (i.e. Internet “leads”) to one or more retailers while in their research and self-education phases. Therefore, all dealerships today need sales staff dedicated to or designated to respond to these leads with the goal of converting as many of them as possible into in-store appointments. If you are reading this book, chances are good that you are one of these salespeople.
Note that conventional car dealerships can now be eCommerce dealers too. Software products that equip traditional dealer websites with online shopping capabilities are available and were in the early adoption phase when the 2020 pandemic arrived. An explosion of dealer interest in these “digital retailing” (eCommerce) products quickly followed. At the time of this writing, digital retailing (often called “DR”) is still in its youthful growth stage. Whether consumers will gravitate to it in greater numbers in the years to come is yet to be seen.
WHAT MAKES INTERNET CAR SALES DIFFERENT FROM SHOWROOM SALES?
The showroom/floor salesperson begins each day asking, "What can I do to sell a car today?" The Internet car salesperson (especially the new car salesperson) instead asks "What can I do today that will help me sell a car today and another one the day after that? And the day after that? And the day after that?" Whereas showroom/floor selling is pretty much all tactical, Internet sales is both tactical and strategic.
Therefore, Internet car sales is really two jobs in one:
Marketer
Salesperson
A lead is a prospective customer who has reached out to you and given you permission to contact him/her in return. If the prospect is ready to buy, he/she might be giving you permission to engage in sales negotiations – now. But if the prospect is still in the research and education phase, he/she might instead be giving you permission to communicate to them only.
This does not always mean they want two-way communication. Not yet, anyway. The researcher might instead be saying, “I just want to stand downstream of your information output. Please include me in your content flow.” Either way, the prospect has given you permission to communicate to them, and the more you do that (and do it by giving value), the better your chances of becoming their seller when they are ready to buy. Outbound communicating with offerings of value to potential customers has a name: marketing.
Ideally, your store’s CRM has a 1st Response and Long-Term Follow-Up Process that automatically markets to non-responsive prospects for you and does it for up to 90 days or more. If not, you have to do it on your own. Continuously communicating to your database of unsold customers is an essential part of the Internet sales job.
The paradox to this is that car salespeople are only paid to sell, not to market. But market you must if you want to take full advantage of the opportunities hiding in your unsold prospects database.
Some people mistakenly assume that the selling part of Internet car sales is easy, that you just sit in your chair all day and stare at a screen while sales opportunities wash over you. But in fact, Internet sales is often harder than floor sales because the Internet/BDC salesperson does not have the advantage of face to face contact with the customer and does not have the physical product at hand. The Internet/BDC person must build initial trust and emotional connection with the customer solely through the use of images, the written word, and voice.
So never underestimate the importance of good salesmanship skills in Internet car sales. It is as necessary here as it is in any other form of selling. Maybe more.
WHY CAN’T WE JUST “GET ‘EM IN”?
We still hear this from sales managers who don’t understand the logic of Internet shoppers.
Today’s Internet car shoppers are self-educating themselves as much as they can, contacting retailers only when it becomes a necessary step toward reaching their purchase goal. If you tell these customers that you will not/cannot provide information of value until they come to your store they will never come to your store. It’s that simple.
The way the shoppers see it, if you (the dealer) are not helping them advance themselves closer to a purchase by providing information they need in order to feel competent and confident in buying a car, you are actually standing in the way of their purchase. You are an impediment to the sale! Why would they want to do business with a store like that?
THE 5 GOLDEN RULES FOR WORKING INTERNET LEADS
Here are five Golden Rules to live by:
1) Respond quickly
2) Respond often
3) Always give value
4) Always be upbeat
5) Always advance the sales momentum
These Golden Rules will carry you all the way. Memorize them. Print them and paste them over your monitor if necessary but make them part of your daily habits.
1) Respond quickly – FQR (first quality response) email + phone + text in < 1 hour every time
2) Respond often – Touch prospects often so that they feel they are being courted.
3) Always give value – In all your communications provide the prospect with opportunities to acquire knowledge and information that will lead him/her to an inevitable purchase.
4) Always be upbeat – Never sound needy, disappointed, or irritated. In all your communications convey the cheery, optimistic and unquestionable assumption that the prospect will be a customer – if not today, someday.
5) Always advance the sales momentum – never throw control of the sale back to the customer. Customers are asking you to show them the way to the answers they seek. Be in charge and stay in charge.
That last one (number 5) seems to be the most difficult for many Internet salespeople to grasp and employ. For that reason, and before we get into the greater mechanics of “how to” work Internet leads, we are going to stop and examine sales momentum in the next chapter.
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