This is part one of a two part series conducted about the internet buyer and how they are changing the selling scenery for automotive salespeople.
When you take anyone out of their natural element, the adjustment is always difficult and sometimes impossible to overcome. This system holds true in the automotive industry. Internet customers are a misunderstood species to the car salesperson and its dealership.
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There are typically two types of customers who shop for automobiles on the internet. You have the buyer that wishes to make the most informed decision possible. They want to see every statistic, every opinion, and any other piece of data they can get their hands on before they begin to coming a dealership. Then, once they accumulate all the information, they then begin the process of emailing dealerships to accumulate availability, options, and price.
The second type of internet buyer is one that truly has a fear. They are very uncomfortable with the whole shopping and buying process and plainly want to get in over with. The biggest problem that dealer have with this buyer is that they absolutely don't want to recap with the dealership about a car.
There are two major roadblocks the dealerships have with each type of customer. They don't know which is which and so they assume that the buyer is the very informed of the two. That is good from a buyer delight perspective. You never want to assume the buyer does not know what they are buying. It is also bad from the dealership perspective and this is why.
Because the assumption is made that the internet buyer is all knowing, the dealership commonly quotes drop dead pricing to the internet buyer with their first response back to the internet lead. This is a knee jerk reaction that is very high-priced to the dealership. Even if the buyer asks exact questions in there email that have nothing to do with price, the many majority of time the salesperson still quotes a drop dead price. Capitalism never had it so bad.
The second type of customer, the scared buyer hiding behind their computer screen, presents the other daunting challenge for the salesperson and his dealership. They are typically so timid that they either supply incorrect touch facts or plainly do not retort to emails or phone calls. It makes the deal wonder why they initiated an internet lead in the first place.
Car salespeople function best with a home field advantage, having the buyer in the showroom. If they can't get the buyer in the showroom, the next best thing is to be able to recap over the phone. When this doesn't occur, for most salespeople, it's all over. If the buyer does not retort to the first response email from the salesperson, most will give up and a wasted occasion reveals itself. Salespeople are conditioned to call a buyer numbers of times before they give up, but sending more than one or sometimes two emails without a response is a rare occurrence.
Why Most Car Dealerships Struggle To Sell Cars To Internet Clients - Part 1