Men and women communicate in different ways and have different expectations when buying a car. Therefore, it’s critical to incorporate different contact strategies into your communication methods with your women customers.

1. Know the difference between talking and communicating. There’s a big difference between talking to and communicating with women. Communication builds trust, and trust matters to women. In fact, trust ranks as the #1 reason women choose their dealer. Giving a standard sales pitch is not the least bit engaging to this audience. Communication involves listening and relating to your woman customer’s needs.

2. First impressions happen within 30 seconds – make them count. Human beings are wired to make snap judgments. So, while your sales advisor is making a judgment about a guest, that prospect is making judgments, too. First impressions go way beyond a polite greeting. Six in 10 women who don’t buy at your dealership on a given day won’t return to your store.

3. Body language matters – know what gestures and postures resonate well. Good posture, a genuine smile, eye contact, and a warm handshake all go a long way toward showing engagement. Body language matters in every customer encounter, not just the initial contact. Unless it’s to gather information about a vehicle, put away your phone.

4. Too little or too much – what’s the just-right amount of contact that creates satisfaction? Throughout the course of working with buyers, your team has several opportunities for communication. Over the ownership of the car, follow-up phone calls, emails, and repeat visits will be necessary. How often should you contact your customer? There’s no single formula for each prospect buyer. Ask a customer for their contact comfort level and read their non-verbal signs. Over-communicating is as unhelpful as under-communicating!

5. Choosing the right form of communication can make or break a deal. Today’s social media world has expanded the forms of communication. Customers have contact preferences. Ask women how they prefer to be contacted and honor their wishes. Some may prefer a phone call. Others might want email. Text messages are another option but should be used carefully to avoid overuse. Customers have several activities competing for their attention, so don’t be “that message” that causes annoyance.

6. Customer contact takes many forms – understand the brand message being relayed. Messaging comes in many forms: direct contact with a sales advisor, advertising, online reviews, friends, and competition. Providing a consistent message from your brand to your customers and guests as well as the addressable market is crucial to building trust. This means having an awareness of the total, overall message your customer is receiving. They may not pay detailed attention to all communication, but they will notice inconsistencies, which may create negative questions. Keep your messaging on point and consistent.

Women look for much more than price when shopping for a dealership. Those who recognize what’s important to women will receive the payoff in satisfied, repeat customers and an increased bottom line.

Pre- and post-purchase analytics are the key to cracking the code for selling to your #1 buyer: women. Women are buying 45% of all vehicles today, which translates to 819 total vehicles per year at an average new car dealership. Yet most business leaders still don’t celebrate this market, nor do they undertake mining data to advertise and sell directly to women.

Understanding why women buy or don’t buy from a particular dealership or sales advisor can be a game-changer for your dealership.

Now, executives can get direct feedback from their own women consumers and guests to understand their experience. Over 90% of women who write reviews on Women-Drivers.com opt into a proprietary 25-question survey in one of 3 areas: buying, shopping, and the service drive. These qualified insights take the guesswork out of marketing and allow dealers to improve and fine-tune sales techniques.

The WSI® Dealer Report allows astute general sales managers to channel the voice and collective feedback of their own women customers to help improve perception, process, and messaging. The chronicled findings fundamentally enable these leaders to become ambassadors for positive change and increase sales to this buying segment.

DOWNLOAD the report NOW.

Your Trust Dashboard Part 2

In our most recent blog, we reported that trust is the #1 factor for women in determining where they buy and service their cars. Yes, there’s a direct parallel between increasing trust to increase sales. But trust can be a nebulous concept.

9 Ways to Create Trust and Convert It into Sales

1. Track as much data as possible. If you aren’t already keeping statistics on these guests and customers, start now. This will provide feedback to see how programs are working and who falls off.
2. Know your women customers. Encourage them to write reviews. Read your reviews with a critical eye and always thank, acknowledge, and respond to each one.
3. Stay in contact with your guests and customers post-visit to answer their questions. Work with your sales advisors to build a trusted relationship so women are comfortable.
4. Treat women prospects and customers with respect and use active listening to ensure that their needs are met.
5. Ensure that your website speaks directly to women customers. Create a friendly, inviting digital presence. Remember, your website and social media are your 24/7 sales advisors.
6. Host educational seminars and publicize the seminars on social media or in service drive reminder cards. This is a great way to continue engagement with prospects and customers.
7. Talk to your sales advisors and employees. What ideas do they have to help increase trust? Are they comfortable with the programs you’ve created? Do they feel they can implement them with positive results?
8. Include relationship-building messaging in your advertising. Price cuts or having a female spokesperson isn’t enough. Think about what’s in it for her and convey value-added benefits. Women use dealer reviews 50% more than men, and reviews influence women 3 times more than price. Include statistics about your reputation and reviews and show Dealer of the Year awards.
9. Make your service center worth the visit. A waiting lounge with Wi-Fi, refreshments, and workspace is a minimum today. Loaner cars are the top concierge item requested by women. Other appealing amenities include free car washes, oil changes and state inspections, a no-hassle return policy, and non-commissioned sales advisors. Be sure to include these in your advertising. Remember, it’s not just the price that matters.

Increasing trust to increase sales is an interactive process that requires practice and dedication. Over time, smart dealers learn what works and can implement increasingly effective processes. Ultimately, the reward shows on your top and bottom lines.

Your Trust Dashboard Part 1

Do you know the #1 reason women choose a particular dealership to buy a car over another? It’s TRUST. Surprised? Many dealers think the lowest price is the top reason. Research shows women seek a trusted advisor first to help them navigate the myriad of choices when selecting a vehicle. This means your dealership’s perceived level of trust by guests and buyers has a direct impact on your bottom line.

How do you grow trust and convert this to more women customers?

You Can’t Grow if You Don’t Know

First, learn about your women customers, specifically:

1. What percentage of your leads are generated by women?

2. What percentage of your business is generated from women?

3. What percentage of your service drive business is generated by women?

Nationally, women purchase 45% of the cars. This is a great benchmark for determining how your individual dealership is performing when it comes to female market share.

Once you know your own numbers, create a benchmark “Dashboard” to show your starting point. Include the statistics from above and create goals and a timeline for increasing performance.

Gain Valuable Insights:

• What percentage of your women-prospect leads convert to buyers at your dealership?
• What is your average retention rate for women in the service drive?

Compare Results

Once you implement plans to increase sales by increasing trust, track your progress. Keep statistical information front and center for your front line team and employees. Engage them in the process to reiterate ideas and create new programs. Evaluate what is working and investigate areas that are not improving.

Their success is your success.

It’s critical to create ways to tailor your consumer brand experience to the female buyer. She is your number one referral source and the key decision maker of 85% of all purchases at your dealership.

We recently had the distinct privilege of interviewing Katie Mares, who inspires audiences around the world to think differently about their customer experience and service.

Katie shares, “Dealers that are not curating an experience for the female buyer are losing her lifetime value, which Carl Sewall has estimated at $517,000. That is serious money and margin.”

Here are 4 tips from Katie on tailoring the consumer brand experience toward women:

1. Create real relationships. Building trust with your female consumer base is extremely important when it comes to referrals and their desire to purchase a vehicle. One of the best ways to do this is to create real relationships. I use the word real intentionally, as women can sense when someone isn't sincere and will walk. Get to know your female consumers through actively listening, showing compassion and empathy, and taking an interest in what they need or want (even if it’s outside purchasing a car).

2. Make it personal. Capture information and use it in a meaningful way to tailor the experience and make it personalized. For example, if a customer has spoken about her son Johnny playing in a soccer tournament, make sure to ask about this the next time she visits. Remembering this detail not only makes her experience personalized, it also contributes to building a stronger relationship.

3. Create a female-friendly atmosphere. Ask yourself, “Is my dealership female friendly?” Here are some things to look for:

• Is the music appropriate?
• How vast is our magazine menu selection?
• An overnight car is the number one item requested by women in the service drive. Do you offer this concierge service?
• What is the temperature in our dealership? Is it too cold?

There are many ways to create a more open and friendly environment, but you must flip the lens and look through another POV.

4. Train for EQ. EQ—that’s the good stuff like having self-awareness, listening, and having empathy. It’s critical to building your sales to women. One of the main reasons women walk out is because they don’t like the way they were approached or treated. Advisors with high EQ can read people’s nonverbal cues and can adjust their approach based on the needs of each consumer.

Focus your training on soft skills (EQ) and layer in the IQ (product knowledge) as you go. When you blend EQ and IQ, you will receive optimum engagement from your female consumer.

Each of these tips will help to create an above-board customer experience that ultimately will increase your CSI results on all fronts plus outstanding reviews, loyalty, and retention.

For more information visit, www.katiemares.com and @katie_mares1 (Twitter).

Women report that a dealership’s website is the #1 digital resource they use when shopping for a car. Yet, 76% of women rate their dealer’s site at 3 stars out of 5. They’re looking for car dealer’s digital assets to deliver much more.

Currently, dealers’ websites are almost exclusively product focused. So what can you do to build trust, be welcoming, and make a better impression on your #1 market segment and increase conversions?

1. Convey Persona and Lifestyle
Your landing page is key to inviting and retaining customers. Use it to show more than the mix of vehicles—show images of real people to convey happy emotions as well as a trusted relationship. Providing a mix of guests, including single women, women with families, young and old with a good demographic mix, shows a potential buyer that you care about people and have a wide range of customers.

2. Dealer Reviews
Women use car dealer reviews 50% more than men, and those reviews are 3 times more influential than advertising when a woman purchases a car. Why? Women want to learn from others’ experiences at dealerships to help verify if they want to do business there.

Place reviews on the home page or give them their own navigation section. In 2018, customer testimonials are too important to hide under About Us.

3. Informative Content
Current, engaging, and informative content is a great way to build trust and ensure that your guests get value from your brand. Show your customers that you care about them before, during, and after their shopping and buying experiences. This demonstrates that you have a more seamless on-to-off-line buying journey.

Your website will be the first point of engagement for potential customers. Be sure that it represents your business and brand well and provides value. Customer engagement is primary; selling is secondary. Spend time making sure that your dealer’s website has a direct impact on increasing sales to women.

As we gear up for 2018, we’re providing you with a powerful white paper. While everyone knows the power of women buyers, are you aware of how women are impacting your business?

• What percentage of your business is generated by women?
• What percentage of your leads are generated by women?
• What percentage of your service drive business is generated by women?

Clearly, you can’t grow what you don’t know!

The average new car dealer sells 819 vehicles annually to women. But if you don’t have a benchmark for tracking this, how can you improve sales to this growing segment that now buys 4.5 of every 10 cars, especially in a more challenging retail climate?

The white paper Behavior Economics: Increase Sales to Women by $2 Million provides a clear road map to crack this code in two key areas:

1. Five easy steps to train your sales advisors to adapt, coach, and motivate them to adopt new attitudes and behaviors to engage this buying segment.
2. New tracking metrics to gauge and propel your store to cultivate sales to women and families and be a destination dealer.

DOWNLOAD YOUR WHITE PAPER NOW

Want to differentiate your store from others and grow your top and bottom line numbers? Women are now buying 45% of all cars at new car dealerships, which translates into an average of 620 new and used vehicles combined annually.

What processes can be implemented for ups, guests, and women shoppers to optimize their experience at your dealership, especially the ones who walk in and say they’re just looking? Do your front-line people think these guests aren’t serious and ignore them or does your store have a process to engage these shoppers after a few minutes?

A simple action like taking the time to upsell the dealership by offering a 3-minute tour of the facility, explaining that your service hours are the best in the area, can make a big difference. Give guests a coupon for a free car wash and explain that overnight cars are provided in your service area. All of this demonstrates that you care, that you’re selling more than cars, you’re selling futures.

Download the Dealership 2020 white paper and get the insights and real-case scenarios about how your dealership can begin tapping into more sales to women.

DOWNLOAD THE WHITE PAPER NOW

Never miss a chance to sell your dealership—get 8 steps to have your business be The Destination Difference™ in your area or region. Start implementing shifts now and get ahead of the trend.

LEARN MORE

One Size Fits All No Longer Applies
According to the NADA, new vehicle revenue in 2016 was $995 billion, and sales to women accounted for $445 billion of that revenue at new car dealerships. With women buying 4.5 of every 10 cars, how can you increase your sales to women by 7% to 10%?

Ten years ago, the ad spend was all in traditional venues like newspaper, radio, and TV. Today, that bucket seems small in comparison to the amount allocated to digital/online. Just like dealerships no longer spend in the “one-size-fits-all” traditional category, there remain opportunities for new marketing segmentation strategies.

What’s the bottom line? Women are making extraordinary differences in terms of gross margin dollars and sales achieved at new car dealers. The advertising expenses per dealership average $587,787, according to the NADA. With half of your buyers being women, step back and ask yourself who your advertising speaks to.

Technology and Lifestyle Trends Change
Women research on their home computers, tablets, or mobile devices for 75 days before buying a car. So the opportunity to advertise couldn’t be riper. Allocate some of your dealer advertising where the trends are. Not venturing where the market is can leave you in the shadow of other dealership that are savvy for competitive exposure.

What’s Your Aha to Connect with Buyers?
What’s your dealer’s DNA message and aha that women will remember? Is it really through ads and campaigns like:

• Get the Best Price Here at Our Dealership
• We Match Any Competitor’s Price
• Drive Here for the Best Results

For the most part, these gender-neutral, bland catch-all statements don’t share what your compelling aha is.

How Can Your Message Connect to Your OEMs?
From website sidebar or banner ads to mobile apps, there are new opportunities to utilize a similar theme or thread. From Facebook to Pandora, you can now zero in on the exact female audience and age group. Dedicate dollars to advance your market space by running monthly campaigns to reach a captive audience with sponsoring ads on mobile apps to women and family-oriented interests.

Dedicate New Messages: Time to Progress
Understanding that women buyers are looking for a connection will help you and your creative team.

1. In addition to your current ads and promotions, include statistics about your reputation and reviews. Women use dealer reviews 50% more than men, and reviews influence women three times more than price, according to ReviewTracker.
2. Include images of women and car shopping at your dealership throughout your print and online marketing campaigns and website.
3. Market and host educational auto-related events and seminars.
4. Develop relationships with female buyers before they walk through the door through social media and informative articles to highlight your dealership’s aha and value.
5. Communicate long-term service and maintenance care with a WiFi-enabled waiting lounge equipped with refreshments and desk stations for computer work. If your dealership provides loaner cars, be sure to include this concierge service in your advertising.

Paying attention to consumer and demographic trends is valuable for growing your dealership.

Reshaping The Industry’s Economy
The millennial. Individuals born between 1980 and 2000 comprise ‘one of the largest generations in history’. In a recent article “Millennials Coming of Age”, by Goldman Sachs, millennials are not only poised to reshape the economy, but are about to move into prime spending years. Millennials overtook Baby Boomers, ages 51 to 69, as the largest generation according to the U.S. Census Bureau.economy, but are about to move into prime spending years. Millennials overtook Baby Boomers, ages 51 to 69, as the largest generation according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Women of all age groups are buying 4.5 out of every 10 vehicles. However, of those millennial buyers, 53% are women. Honing in on what factors contribute to car purchases made by millennial women can help dealerships step into a larger market share.

How Millennials Stand Out From The Crowd
What makes millennial women stand out from non-millennial women? According to Women-Drivers.com, millennials ranked price, style, brand, color and warranty as top factors for car purchasing. Trustworthiness and respect ranked as the top two reasons to buy from a sales advisor. Additionally, millennials who are adept at using reviews in many product categories, use car dealer reviews readily to help them locate what dealerships to do business with.color and warranty as top factors for car purchasing. Trustworthiness and respect ranked as the top two reasons to buy from a sales advisor. Additionally, millennials who are adept at using reviews in many product categories, use car dealer reviews readily to help them locate what dealerships to do business with.

Millennials Are Digitally Engaged with Dealers
Since millennial buyers have grown up with the internet and smartphones, they are highly connected with social media. Goldman Sachs states that 44% of millennials text message, 16% blog, 38% instant message, and 38% are engaged in social media. For example, Women-Drivers.com reports that social interaction is critical:

• 44% of millennial respondents viewed a dealership’s Facebook page, an average of 10% higher than non-millennials.
• 67.5% of millennials furthered to “Like” a dealership’s Facebook page, an average of 10% higher than non-millennials.

One takeaway would be that millennial women are more evaluative that non-millennial women. Additionally, millennial women are open to using dealer’s social communities.

Social Selling Sales Advisors
Connecting with this group means engaging a generation that places effort to find answers within an electronic style of communication. A style that’s silent but not soft-spoken, educational but not elusive, and often promotes multitasking. Their energies are to be reigned in with true and genuine interest.

Millennials interact with Instagram, Twitter and Facebook as social media mainstays. What are sales advisors doing to grab ahold of a portion of engagement? Smart sales advisors build leads off their successful sales relationships. They ask for the referrals and reviews, and the satisfied customer happily provides. Behind the scenes lay electronic connections ready and waiting. “Friend” or “Follow”, those requests and actions taken upon referred names create a plethora of potential customers. Social profiles built by sales advisors with the intent of building leads is becoming a new system of lead generation.

Be Personable and Prosper
Our data reports that millennial women travelled further to visit showrooms and are less likely to shop the nearest dealership. Goldman Sachs points out in its article that millennials have less money to spend, while industry reports show that younger buyers have little interest in negotiating the purchase price. Sales advisors could capitalize on their discussions with millennial women and secure a more decisive market.

Does your advertising speak to this segment specifically, and not just have a women spokesperson on a sports TV or weekend ad? Listen to the millennial woman and bring the showroom tour into a vision of comfort, longevity, service center and multitasking lounge that serves as a hub for the busy woman scheduling around work, school and personal time. Become the dealership that cares about the millennial women buyers and prepare to excel in your sales across the board by applying the principles of being personable, relatable, and interactive.