Creative Ways to Sell More Cars

Purchasing a car is one of the most expensive and cautious decisions that individuals and families have to make. There’s a lot to consider including safety, functionality and design.

In any job that involves selling to people, you have to spend a lot of time building a reputation and trust with your clients. Selling a car is not easy. Especially in the fast-paced world of technology and consumerism, it can be challenging to close a deal with a customer. It takes a lot of time, patience, communication, and excellent customer service to get customers interested in your inventory and convince them that one of your cars is the right one for them to take home.

That’s why it’s important to get creative. Customers are attracted to the uniqueness of a business and great consumer experiences. As a car dealership or independent salesperson, you constantly have to think outside the box and find new ways of attracting customers to your business. By getting creative in the selling and customer interaction process, you’ll find that your car dealership has an easier time interacting with customers and closing the deal.

How to Be a Good Car Salesperson – Secret to Selling Cars at Your Dealership

Car dealerships and salespeople are using just about every trick in the marketing book to attract new customers to their business each day. In fact, most car dealerships use some combination of PPC ads, TV, social media, search engine marketing, and radio commercials to spread the word out about their business

More recently, digital marketing has become #1 in the sales and marketing playbook. The secret to selling more cars is no longer relying strictly on a charismatic personality and excellent communication skills. Car dealerships are placing heavy emphasis on incorporating digital channels and leveraging data to make smart sales and marketing choices.

Incorporating digital channels into your dealership’s sales and marketing process makes your business more visible to the public. Typically, the start of a customer’s car purchasing journey starts online with a quick search. Customers are comparing different dealerships in terms of inventory, prices, responsiveness, helpfulness, and services provided. It’s hard to change your inventory and prices, but you can gain a competitive advantage by being more responsive and helpful and providing a variety of end-to-end services.

Social media and blogging are both great ways to enhance your dealership’s online presence. There are millions of social media users in your service area from all demographics, many of whom are probably in the process of purchasing their next vehicle. Social media allows you to connect more creatively with your audience through images, videos, stories, comments, and interactive polls and questions. Blogging helps establish your dealership as an expert in the auto industry. Depending on your strategy, you can talk about pretty much anything!

Some examples of useful blogs could be tips on selling more cars, what people should know before buying a car, and how to compare different car options. Whether you’re trying to communicate with customers or other salespeople, blogging is a great way to make your business known, build a reputation, and provide useful insights.

Leveraging data gives you the background metrics needed to make smart digital marketing choices. It tells you how many leads you’re getting each month, how many cars you sold, customer retention, and overall team performance. This information helps your car dealership identify any challenges throughout the sales funnel and make improvements that streamline each customer’s journey. Not only can you save budget, but you get more confidence and better results in your team’s performance.

taq Automotive Intelligence helps car dealerships increase efficiency and engagement. You can map out the entire customer journey and incorporate our platform into the areas that best suit your dealership. For example, you can develop custom templates to communicate with your customers, organize any appointments to offer more availability, track history to nurture all leads, or provide mobile app and text messaging support. Once you have these capabilities, you can really up your sales.

How to Promote Your Car Dealership to Increase Sales

Promoting online is a great way to start. Highlight customer stories, team members who are ready to help, and how your dealership makes the customer journey extra special. It helps establish your business presence so you can attract more customers. Simply being active online and readily available to respond is a great way to build a reputation. Customers will remember the outstanding service and recommend your business to their friends and family.

Listing your business on various search engines and websites also helps. Whether it’s a Google listing or guest features on car-related pages, it helps potential customers find you more easily to make an appointment. Share customer testimonials on these listings and websites. You want potential leads to know that your dealership has a proven track record of providing great customer experiences, that your team is professional, and that you’re always ready to provide a responsive service that goes above and beyond expectations.

Videos are also a great way to promote your dealership. Create videos that show the features of your newest vehicles and how easy the buying process is. Highlight the points that make you stand out, whether it’s your diverse inventory, seamless purchasing process, or the many services you provide after the sale.

How to Overcome a Slump in Car Sales

You won’t always have high sales numbers. Some months will be slower than others. Sometimes, you’ll just have to be patient during these slower periods, but there are definitely things you can do to promote your business.

Besides experimenting with various digital marketing strategies and social media channels, you can try incorporating various PPC ads. You can segment these ads by user groups, location, demographics, and many other categories to ensure that messages are reaching the right audience. For example, you might set your target ad demographic to individuals ages 35 to 55 if you want to reach people looking to upgrade their current vehicle. You might want to separate your ad by geographical area if you have many car dealership locations.

Try adding special deals or promotions. This can be tricky because there are lots of budgeting and cost components with running deals and promotions. Discuss as a team what type of special offer you want to establish. It could be something as simple as a credit for car service. Everyone loves a great deal. Special offers and promotions attract new and existing customers to your car dealership – even if they aren’t planning on buying a new car. Once customers are in your store, your team of salespeople can start nurturing every lead, hoping to turn them into customers.

You should also review your sales process and business model periodically. You can think about the areas that are doing well, and which challenges are preventing your salespeople from selling. Are you able to customize parts of the customer experience and understand your customers before they even set foot into your dealership? Can you incorporate technology and data to ensure the sales process aligns with the current and future needs of your customers? If the answer yes, it’s time to implement these improvements.

taq Automotive Intelligence can help you improve with the variety of tools and metrics provided. Not only do you get important KPIs on team performance and leads, but you also build capabilities to request customer information and direct leads to the correct resource.

How to Manage Partial Sales Leads

Sometimes, you’ll get partial sales leads that don’t contain all the necessary information your business needs. For example, website visitors might miss certain fields in your contact form. It can be hard to nurture these leads, especially because you’re unsure of what their goals or intentions were. These could be people in the very early stages of their new car journey and aren’t ready to talk to a salesperson yet. Regardless, it never hurts to try to follow up with as many qualified leads as possible.

Think about the potential pain points customers might run into and why they didn’t complete the lead process. Is there something you could do better to communicate your sales message? At this stage, your job is to get a response from the visitor and get them interested in the car purchasing journey with your dealership. It’s important not to overwhelm your customers. The car journey is expensive and requires a lot of consideration. Don’t rush or force your customers into making any decision that aren’t comfortable with. Instead, familiarize them with the car purchasing journey and break down the distinct steps involved to make it seem more manageable. You might even show off some of the great cars in your inventory to get them excited about car shopping.

taq allows you to capitalize on all lead opportunities and track lead history. If someone didn’t go through the initial process, your sales team will have the necessary information to reach out. The goal is to respond quickly and boost engagement and interest as much as possible to make nurturing these partial leads easier. The longer you put these partial leads on the back burner, the harder it will be for your team to make a memorable and relevant connection.