A lot has changed in the last few months, we'll make sure you are ready. Certified Pre-Owned is going to be key for the next 120 days with 0% offers moving from new to used given tightening supply. We'll give you three great ways to support your program. Knowing what you need to stock and being creative in sourcing inventory will help your dealership outperform the pack and avoid the auction. Merchandising is more important than ever for digital visibility and fully supporting the value with your customers.

In this live training session, we had a great discussion with Mike Cavanaugh and Tim Scoutelas on what smart dealers are doing to thrive in today's shifting market.

Key Takeaways:
1. Suggested updates to your appraisal strategy.
2. How attention to merchandising can grow your total gross profit.
3. The dealership-level performance metrics that matter most right now.

In this year's DrivingSales Most Valuable Insight Competition, we showcased four of the best dealership insights to give automotive professionals a competitive advantage.

Watch this recording to see these invaluable insights:

• - There is No Average Buyer Journey | Amol Waishampayan, Stream Companies
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• - Give Car Buyers What They Really Want | Mike Burgiss, DealerPolicy
• - Discover How COVID Influences Buyer Behavior in your Market | Amy Hughes, Experian Automotive
• - Leverage Your Human Capital To Drive Better Results | Steve Roessler, DriveCentric
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Due to COVID-19, there is societal anxiety like we’ve never had before. Overlay that with the anxiety of buying a car. No digital retailing tool alone will solve that. We don’t know where the market is headed but we do know that Customer Experience will win out. Are the changes you've made to your online retailing experience shortsighted adjustments to comply with social distancing limitations or are you truly evolving to meet customer demand now and in the future? 

Your customers may be willing to tolerate a tepid experience because of COVID-19, but when the market rebounds those expectations will be raised. Your goal is to build a process that leads to permanent success.  

Don't miss this live discussion with Peter Cooper, President & CEO of Lexus of Lehigh Valley to discuss how you should approach online retailing and gain insight on delivering what is right for the consumer instead of what the government mandates. We’ll be chatting about how Lexus of Lehigh Valley is transforming to meet the evolving customer expectations today and post-COVID-19. Join us as Peter shares his thoughts on what the future holds.

We had another great Presidents Club working session, Optimizing Digital Retailing. We were joined by Matt Weinberg, Michael Cavanaugh and Michelle Denogean to discuss what dealerships should be doing today to leverage the power of digital retailing.

A common theme from the discussion was that automotive retail is in a period of disruption. The unique challenges we face today have forced dealers to embrace digital retailing solutions in order to serve their customers. 

This is the time to evaluate and re-invent our sales processes 

As challenging as this situation is, dealerships are in a good position to take a critical look at their structure and processes and decide what changes should be made to improve operations going forward. Now is the perfect time to evaluate the structure and processes of your dealership. Does it make sense for your store to move away from separate sales, BDC and F&I teams and work towards a one-person model? Ask yourself what goals you are trying to accomplish and what foundation should be in place to accomplish this. 

Mike Cavanaugh recommends dealerships focus on reviews. “Invest in getting good reviews right now. Do your comp plans reinforce this? This is great low cost marketing.” 

With that vision in mind, you can make the needed adjustments to your processes and evaluate your talent to make sure you have the people in place to deliver that experience.

Begin with your culture

Do you have the culture in place to accomplish this?

A common thread in all of the comments was the importance of a strong dealership culture.  You can’t just drop in a digital retailing tool and expect it to work.  Your online and offline processes need to be aligned,

Too many dealerships make the mistake of looking for a technology to solve their problems.  Optimizing digital retailing requires you to build a culture around digital retailing and then find a tool that supports your culture and strategy.

Make sure you have the right people in place

Dealerships today are relying on their people to wear more hats than ever. Having a wide skill set and being able to accomplish a variety of processes is becoming increasingly valuable as dealerships embrace these digital retailing solutions. 

You need to make sure that you have the personnel in place that you can trust to perform these processes. “Define your structure before you can move forward with training and personnel, said Michelle Denogean, “Empower salespeople to do more. Are your sales people flexible enough to do the various tasks required?” Empowering your people to have more responsibility and relying on tools and technology allows you to streamline your operations and improve your team’s efficiency.

“Find the balance of control between dealer and customer,” said Matt Weinberg.  “Focus on the 4 T’s. Trust,Transform, Time, Transparency”

It’s not too late to catch Presidents Club. We will be having more working sessions each day this week that are free to attend. Learn more here.

We spent some time with Jamie Oldershaw from Dealer Rater, to talk about the unsung hero of your dealerships marketing (dealership reviews).

“Gamify the experience within your dealership of earning reviews”

Getting more reviews for your dealership can be as simple as making it a priority to your salespeople. Jamie suggests tracking who brought the most reviews in your dealership by having a leaderboard with your salespeople on it. Since your salespeople are naturally competitive with each other, that can help get your dealership reviews.

“The health benefits to responding to all reviews are numerous”

Beyond just responding to negative reviews, there are a lot of benefits to responding to every review. It helps build the relationship between you and the customer. Responding to negative reviews can repair that relationship and responding to positive reviews can “turn happy customers into loyal customers” - Jamie Oldershaw.

We met with Steve Roessler, Vice President of Sales at DriveCentric, at NADA 2020 to discuss how dealerships can nail their customer experience. 

“At the end of the day, the data is out there that says customers will spend more money for a better buying experience.”

It’s a common belief that you have to be the lowest price to beat your competition but that isn’t true. You can beat out all of your competition by simply offering up the experience that your customers want. Sell your customers on a superior experience, then follow through with that when they walk on to your lot.

“We can’t just assume that every customer is going to go through 17 steps of buying a car.”

A large part of improving your customer experience is to tailor your process to each customer. We have to practice responsive selling in order to get them to come back for their next car. If your processes are built around being able to change in order to meet customer demand, getting repeat customers is going to easier than ever.

The younger is no different than the generation prior to it. Everybody wants to be seen, heard, and understood. But the time and the world that the younger generation has grown up in has changed. There is not a strategy or a quick hack to get the younger generation to work well. When you treat them as people, and not a generation, then they will respond and work hard for you, just like the generations before them. 

CRM’s have become so cumbersome to use that people avoid them. How do you fix this? By eliminating manual entry into the CRM. Then take it a step further by having the CRM actually do something for the end user like prioritizing tasks. Now it becomes a useful tool. Dealers that are really dialed in have great people, excellent processes, and tools that tie all of that together. The tools they choose will be just as important as the people and the processes.

Millennials have been labeled as many things but one of the things they look for most often in their careers might surprise you. Learn what is important to Millennials by watching the video.

We sat down with Len Short, Chairman/CEO of LotLinx, at DSES. We spoke about pricing your inventory. Dealers need to get back to managing their business instead of playing the pricing game with their competition. The race to the bottom does not increase additional demand, it just creates a log jam of your inventory. Dealers need to flex and manage demand on the specific units they need to sell. 60% of the time dealers are priced below market. The technology is finally starting to pay off. Go easy on the price button and learn how to aim with more accuracy.