From the April issue of UCD
By Maggie Pugesek, who will be a speaker at the NIADA Convention and Expo
I recently completed a round of mystery shops for a NIADA Dealer 20 Group, and it was one of the best groups I’ve had the pleasure of working with. We mystery shopped 20 dealers from around the country.
A mystery shop consists of submitting an internet lead using a real customer phone number and a working email address. Once the lead is submitted, we monitor dealership activity for three business days, tracking phone calls, emails and text messages throughout that period.
Mystery shops are incredibly helpful because they reveal what is really happening in the customer experience. They uncover gaps, missed opportunities and simple fixes that can have a major impact on sales performance. Let’s look at some of the most common issues we find and the quick fixes that can help.
1. Broken links
We click every link, and we often find that links lead to inactive social media profiles, broken web pages, or, in some cases, even a dealership’s CRM login page.
Most of the time, these issues happen because templates were set up once and never updated after changes were made to websites, social media pages or internal systems. It is a small detail, but from the customer’s perspective, it sends the wrong message immediately.
One of the easiest ways to make sure your dealership is presenting itself professionally is to have your store mystery shopped or submit a lead yourself and review every step of the process.
2. Long response times, or no response at all
Typically, more than 90 percent of mystery shops go longer than 60 minutes without receiving any communication, or they go unanswered altogether.
Contacting customers quickly and effectively is one of the easiest ways to improve lead conversion. Waiting more than an hour to respond can dramatically reduce your chances of making contact. In many cases, only 10 percent to 30 percent of those customers will ever respond.
Today’s customers are researching multiple vehicles and shopping multiple stores. If they submit several leads and only your competitors call them back, where do you think they are going to buy?
Most customers will not submit an inquiry and then take the extra step of calling you if you fail to respond. They move on. They forget about it. And they buy elsewhere.
Dealers should aim to make initial contact within 15 minutes, and they should also have a clear follow-up plan. One of the biggest problems we see is not just slow response time, but very little follow-up after the initial lead. When there is little or no follow-up, you make it easy for the competition to win the customer’s business.
In this round of shops, the dealers did very well, with 65 percent of them calling us within 15 minutes. In my 15-plus years of doing 20 Groups, I have never seen a response rate so high.
3. Texting is useful, but it cannot do all the heavy lifting
Texting. Texting. And more texting. Did I mention there’s too much texting?
We have seen a major shift in the way dealerships communicate with customers, and at the same time, many stores have seen a decline in sales effectiveness. Texting is a great communication tool, but it has limitations.
Does texting build rapport the same way a phone call does? Can you use voice inflection, personality, and confidence through a text message to win a customer over? Not really.
Selling cars is a people business. I say it all the time: People do not buy cars from places. They buy cars from people.
Think about the in-person sales process. By the time a customer is on the lot, half the work is already done. They can see the vehicle, touch the vehicle, drive the vehicle, and, just as importantly, they can see you. You have body language, eye contact, facial expressions, energy and personality working in your favor.
On the phone, you still have an important advantage: your voice. Customers can hear your tone, your warmth, your confidence and your willingness to help. That is how rapport begins.
Over text, those advantages disappear. That is why it is no surprise to me that we see lower sales effectiveness when texting becomes the primary communication method.
That said, I absolutely believe dealerships should communicate with customers in their preferred method. But if you want to connect with more people, earn more referrals, and sell more cars, you must get back to being in the people business.
4. Training is not optional
Would you ask your dentist to rebuild a transmission? Or your mail carrier to perform an alignment? Of course not. You would never allow someone in your service department to work on vehicles without the proper training.
Yet in many dealerships, we regularly put staff on the phones with little guidance, no defined process and minimal training. The sales call is often the customer’s first real interaction with your dealership, and it can shape both your reputation and your reviews. If the phone is one of the primary gateways to your business, it deserves the same level of training and structure as any other role in the store.
Success on the phone starts with being friendly. But not everyone naturally has a charismatic personality that comes through over the phone. If you want people to succeed, you must teach them what to say and how to say it and then hold them accountable.
Sales calls are not just about answering questions. They are about positioning your dealership as the solution to the customer’s problem. They are about being knowledgeable, personable, and confident while guiding the conversation in the right direction.
Most salespeople have a process for selling in person, and many try to apply that same process to phone calls. But it is not the same. The phone requires a different skill set, and if that opportunity is mishandled, the sale may never make it to the showroom.
One of the best things a dealership can do is record sales calls and review them as a team, the good, the bad and the ugly. Every call is a learning opportunity. It either shows your team what to do or what not to do. When you share those calls with the entire team, everyone improves.
Handling objections is one of the hardest parts of sales calls. Price, mileage, vehicle condition, appointment deflections, the list goes on. Helping your team create word tracks for the most common objections saves time, creates consistency, and gives staff a better chance of overcoming those objections successfully.
Final thought: Put yourself in the customer’s shoes
When it comes to internet leads, I encourage dealers to step back and evaluate the experience from the customer’s point of view.
Are we calling quickly enough?
Are we communicating effectively on the phone?
Are we following up consistently?
Do our links work?
What do our emails and text messages actually say?
Reviewing these areas and making a few necessary updates can have a meaningful impact. Sometimes the improvement is as simple as selling one additional car per week, per salesperson. Over time, that adds up in a big way.
Reviewing leads and listening to phone calls may not be the most exciting part of running a dealership, but it is quite literally the heartbeat of the business. If that foundation is weak, sales will suffer. Take it one step at a time, but evaluate everything.
And ask yourself one simple question: Would I buy a car from here?
Maggie Pugesek
C&M Coaching
maggie@candmcoaching.com
