Digital Dealer - March 2019 - 39

of them. It will make sense
when a disruptor emerges.
Think what you will about
the car dealership, but I
believe if auto dealerships
die, we will usher in a scary
economic time America is
not ready for. Dealerships
provide good jobs in every
town in the country, service
their communities, and
more importantly, have employed multiple generations
of people who have significantly less career mobility
than other sectors. If auto
dealerships go away, the
pain will be felt across every
community in the country.
BUT IT'S NOT TOO
LATE.

I don't believe it's too
late for the dealership, but
I believe they must act
quickly and efficiently. The
consumer is correct to want
a better car buying experience, but the dealership is
incorrect in assuming that
negates the need for good
old-fashioned relationship
building. The middlemen in
automotive will prove nimble and adaptable if dealers
lean in and do everything
possible to empower a positive, productive relationship
between the buyer and
their dealership. It's ok to
be more like Amazon but
they should also be rushing
to be more like their local
hardware stores. Be more
local, more rooted in the
community, keep building
relationships.
I have a lot to say on
what dealerships can be
doing differently, but I will
provide you a shortened list
of guidelines:
1. LEAN INTO BUILD-

ING TRADITIONAL SALES
SKILLS.

Almost every time I
speak, I ask dealers to
raise their hand if they have
someone in their lot who
outsells almost everyone
and can't log a lead in the
CRM to save their life. Every hand in the room goes
up. The essence of this
person is they know how
to sell, or more specifically,
how to relationship build.
Train your people on this
skill. Traditional sales skills
are currently undervalued in
our marketplace but behind
every great dealer is great
salespeople.
2. TAKE BACK THE
HUMAN TO HUMAN
RELATIONSHIP.

Every potential customer
touchpoint is a chance for
you to differentiate yourself.
I'm going to pick on chat as
an example but there are
many other examples in the
modern dealership. I think
services such as Gubagoo
and CarNow play a vital role
in taking on a task that dealers haven't been staffed up
or equipped to do well. Fix
that. Train your people to be
chat wizards. The close rate
on chats is still below that
of sales calls and forms and
it does not have to be that
way. Chats (where people
provide real contact info)
should close equal to or
greater than forms.
Both Gubagoo and
CarNow offer you the ability
to run the chat yourselves.
Do it. Find employees that
can be funny, engaging
and real (with a little bit of
that old-fashioned sales
training). People who chat

with your dealership should
be excited to come in and
meet you.
3. LEVERAGE YOUR
ONLINE SHOWROOM
(YOUR WEBSITE) TO
INFORM YOUR SALESPEOPLE ACTIVITIES.

This has been the core of
our Foureyes product development: Make sure that
salespeople are following
up with the people who are
hitting your website. Take it
a step further and communicate directly to the consumer and warm up leads more
efficiently than your sales
staff with inventory-specific,
user-specific emails. Leverage this efficiency to direct
your sales teams to the high
value, higher closing sales
leads.
4. EVALUATE YOUR
RELATIONSHIP TO AI
& MACHINE LEARNING.

We love AI and use it ourselves in parceling out the
real sales prospects from all
the phone calls, forms and
chats a dealer receives and
in building individual vehicle
of interests for a consumer;
however, AI needs to be
used for targeted work.
* Right places: Making
people smarter. Managing
repetitive tasks.
* Wrong places: Situations requiring empathy.
Scenarios where new problems emerge.
Remember that the value
in the middleman comes
from smoothing out the
process for buyers.
5. SALES PROCESS,
INVENTORY, THEN
MARKETING.

Automotive sales is a
three-legged stool: marketD I G I TA L D E A L E R . C O M

ing, sales process, and inventory. Dealers focus a lot
on marketing and inventory
but more often than not,
sales process goes by the
wayside. Sales process is
messy. It's hard to measure.
It requires constant training
and problem solving. It's
worth it. Sales process
improvements reduce buyer
frustration and improve
dealership profitability.
6. DISRUPT YOUR
OWN EXPERIENCE.

Understand that you can
be and need to be better.
Disrupt your own organization before someone else
does it for you. If you need
a lesson in how to manage this process, I learned
this incredible exercise a
few years ago for ways to
find quick, creative, and
disruptive wins to build a
better customer experience.
I'm happy to share it with
you too, if you email dave@
foureyes.io with "Disruption
Exercise" as the subject
line. ■
 Don't miss David Steinberg's session at the Digital
Dealer 26 Conference &
Expo where he will share
more adjustments and
nuanced changes that can
be made within your sales
process to move your dealership to the next level.
DAVID STEINBERG is the
co-founder and CEO of
Adpearance and the inventor of
Foureyes, a sales intelligence
tool. Previous to Adpearance,
David was a child actor and the
founder of a lumber company
that became a world leader in
the distribution of reclaimed
lumber products.

MARCH 2019

39
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Digital Dealer - March 2019

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