AIMExpo 2024 was a great learning opportunity. The Digital Success Workshop, a Main Stage event hosted by Transax and other key leaders in the industry, was dedicated to help dealers navigate typical pitfalls and excel digitally. If you missed it, or need a refresher on what was shared, here are the top three takeaways that industry experts emphasized are crucial to your dealership’s success.
In order to have the most effective dealership, you need to have a good online presence. This means you must have fresh, organic, quality content on your website. Your goal is to offer unique, engaging content that not only improves your SEO, but can quickly show customers who you are and set you apart above your competitors. How do you know if you offer it? Ask yourself the following questions:
If you want to know if your content is fresh, according to the standards of Google, you must think in terms of whether it is up to date. Is your current representation a true picture of your dealership today? Whether it’s inventory, unit images, etc. in order to have fresh content, everything must be accurate and up to date.
Second, when determining whether your content is organic, ask yourself whether it builds positive brand awareness and aids you in generating leads. If your content fails to do so, consider the barriers. Are you presenting your information: brand identity, location, partners, and offerings in a manner that is consistent, clear, easy to catch off a glance, and free of irrelevant content? Consider whether this is true, or if perhaps it applies to some materials and not others.
Finally, evaluation of quality has to do with how easy you make it for your customers to understand what they’re looking at and make the decision to act upon it. From structure, speed, and capabilities, your goal is to make the buying process as fast, simple, and flexible for the customer as possible. Some good questions to ask yourself in order to identify how you rank in quality would be:
If you want to win at Google rankings and improve your SEO, these questions must be addressed. Give your customers a clear, easy way to commit. Cut the unnecessary time wasted in finance apps with auto-population and submission directly on your website. Communicate through their preferred channel. Allow customers to commit to a unit directly from your website (whether deposit, in full, or deposit with financing app). Your customers must quickly know why they should be buying from you and not a competitor.
When determining whether your operations and customer engagement strategies are what they should be, it is important to consider consistency. In order to offer the best service, it's crucial to have defined standards. When your team responds to leads, do they always respond in a defined timeframe and approach? Does this change between contact methods?
Lead responses must be timely and consistent, and this uniformity should extend beyond just customer interactions into your marketing and merchant connections as well. In order to maximize reach, make sure your major units are being pushed to Google Shopping and stay up to speed with your ad agency. It is important that they are not just sending reports, but actively engaged with you on a monthly basis working to meet your dealership’s needs and goals.
If you want to get the most out of a deal, evaluating the financial aspect is key. In order to promote profit, finance industry experts shared a few things that must be considered. Let’s dive into what we learned about reviewing current processes, maximizing the deal, and enhancing system functions.
First, you must assess the current processes you have in place. For instance, how do you handle out of state and over the phone deals? While these deals can be difficult, when you do them right, you offer an enhanced experience, with unmatched flexibility that customers love.
Another thing to consider is whether you review your customers' credit, making an effort to send it to the correct banks. Do you take the time to look and find the best fit for the buyer? Not only will this help their credit, it will boost customer morale and experience.
On the other end, do you rehash deals to get them overturned? It is important to rehash every deal. Ask why–build a relationship with the banks and put in the work to see what you can do. During every deal, make it a practice to see whether it can be overturned or even tier bumped. Talk to your finance manager and see what practices you have in place.
Last, take a good look at how you handle your sub-prime deals. Instead of taking one look and pushing them off, try providing immediate service. You may just be surprised, in fact experts share these often turn into the best customers. Unlike others, you took the time to get them approved, and this usually pays off.
Second you must look at whether you are maximizing each deal. Consider whether you offer back-end products and determine your AGPD (avg. gross profit per deal). From T&W, service contracts, or maintenance plans, many dealers fail to offer these additions, or don't charge enough for them. Go back to the basics, understand their value and build that value into the products when promoting them to your customers.
Look at your back-end profit per finance deal and your VSC and T&W percent sold per deal. Are you offering all of your products to every customer? It is key to dissect your profit for each lineup and consider that bundles often bring more penetration to smaller products. If you don’t currently offer your whole menu or your VSC is at less than 50%, you may not be pushing your product enough or in an efficient manner.
Another key thing to remember is your finance control. How many finance deals vs. cash deals do you have in your dealership? According to industry experts, although the easy way may be cash, customers are often more open to backend products, additional parts and accessories, when the deal is financed.
Finally, you must identify if your current system functions allow you to offer customers an exceptional experience. This comes down to whether your current system is laying out, to both you and your customer, the full deal in an easy, flexible, transparent manner. If your customer is ready to push a deal forward, can they e-sign from the comfort of their own home? Are you using a finance menu that offers every single product 100% of the time? Not only will this raise percent sold, it will allow you to break down the deal, and see where you may need to raise prices or shift your focus.
To recap, the AIMExpo Digital Success Workshop, a Main Stage event hosted by Transax and other key leaders in the industry, was dedicated to help dealers navigate typical pitfalls and excel digitally. During the event, industry experts emphasized three key areas for optimizing success in your dealership: your website and digital marketing, operations and customer engagement, and finance optimization. To identify how well you are doing within each of these categories, it's important to determine whether you: present fresh, organic, quality content, have set defined standards for operations and engagement, or need to shift your current protocols and system functions in order to maximize each deal.
If you’re looking to improve these areas easily, you might be interested in a platform like Transax–a BRP certified CRM and Digital Retail Platform that makes customer engagement and digital retailing simple and affordable for anyone. If you want to learn more, schedule a 20-minute demo and talk with one of our digital retail specialists HERE.
