closemore by STAT Analytics
The Sale is Yours to Lose
I’m a research and data junkie at heart. I’ve always maintained that one should only make decisions based on the best available information. Industry analysts, media and thought leaders have been telling us for years that change is required for the modern dealer to survive. I found a recent report by Ernst & Young that does a bang up job summarizing four important themes and critical success factors for dealers, now and in the years to come:
- 1. Emerging trends in automotive retail
2. Traditional dealerships continue to be important
3. Retailers need to embrace digitalization
4. Emergence of new roles
The main takeaway for me from a retail/sales lens is that the customer is more informed than ever before and when they show up on your lot they’re ready to buy. That’s why I believe The Sale is Yours to Lose if you don’t address the trends and realities cited in the report. The full report is available here: Ernst & Young report Automotive retail 2030: Evolution of dealerships and potential new roles in retail.
Here are some key highlights (quoted directly from the report):
2.1 – The average number of dealers a new car buyer visits
70% - New car buyers who intend to buy from the dealer they first visit
80% of customers buy from the first salesperson they come into contact with (in-person, online or on-call).
Meanwhile, reduction in the number of visits to dealerships has made the initial visit even more crucial while also increasing the prominence of sales personnel as most customers now visit the dealership only to close the vehicle purchase.
Sales representatives hold prominence for not only closing sales with willing customers but also persuading unwilling customers. As per our survey, lack of social skills in a salesperson is the biggest barrier to successful sales.
Dealership staff has a lasting impact on customers’ perception of the automotive OEM. Our survey suggests that the salesforce plays an important role not only in retaining the 70% of buyers who intend to buy at the first-visited dealership, but also in persuading the 30% of buyers who did not intend to buy in the first place. Therefore, it is imperative for the sales personnel to gain customers’ trust and manage their experience throughout the purchase journey.
New products and technologies require the upskilling of the existing salesforce and the introduction of new roles to augment the customer experience throughout the purchase journey.
Data analytics can reduce such inefficiencies by driving fact-based decision-making. Analytics can support interventions across the customer life cycle. It will not only define and identify the potential of different customer segments, but also support acquisition of new customers, and improve customer experience and loyalty quotient.
These emerging trends are causing automotive retailers to rethink their current business models and undergo significant transformation in order to remain relevant and viable over the next decade.
Consumer profiling for dealerships - www.closemore.io
closemore by STAT Analytics
Industry first partnership to deliver real-time, consumer profiling to auto dealerships.
Partnership will help transform how auto dealerships engage at the first point-of-contact
CINCINNATI (April 9, 2019) – With recent acquisitions over the last year, Claritas has built a transformative capability to put companies and brands in front of the right customers at the right time with the right message: online, offline, by location and by device. Developing a closed-loop approach that help clients more effectively engage with ideal audiences is at the core of who Claritas is.
This philosophy is evident in an innovation with partner STAT Analytics to improve the engagement between automotive sales professionals and the audiences visiting their websites and car lots. Prospective auto buyers have historically avoided automotive sales professionals primarily due to the perception that they were being “sold to” without accounting for a customer’s personal preferences. People buy from people they like and trust. STAT Analytics launched a new app called Closemore, designed for sales people that provides real time insights on income, lifestyles, brand preference and spending intent, to enable a deeper, more relevant conversation to occur at the initial meeting of the consumer at the dealership lot.
The auto buying process is dreaded by some, loathed by others and loved by yet another segment of the population. Closemore is designed to make the process more personal and engaging for all consumers based on their personality, values, lifestyle and interests. The statistics around auto window shopping are staggering when compared to actual auto sales. The dynamic between consumer and sales people has suffered from things like lack of trust and transparency. The Closemore app and cloud service are intended to bridge this gap.
“Claritas and STAT Analytics are on the leading edge of technology and data coming together to enhance consumer experiences in auto purchasing environments. This is a breakthrough and a first in the automotive industry” Said Claritas CEO Mike Nazzaro. “The transformation Claritas has gone through, enables us to enhance the way our clients engage with their best customers. Consumers want to work with brands who understand them and engage with them based on their preferences and interests. This partnership is powering the ability to do that in the automotive space along with other industry verticals.”
Using contact information from the dealer CRM or DMS, as well as other privacy compliant sources, this data is sent in real time via an application programming interface (API) to Claritas for audience identification using Claritas’ PRIZM™ Premier consumer segmentation, providing key demographic and psychographic insights specific to that individual consumer. This allows the sales professional to better understand the customer, and make the engagement more relevant and personal, ultimately delivering on the expectations of today’s high-value purchase consumers. Closemore is designed to help answer these questions, enabling the sales professional to engage more effectively:
• What is the consumer like?
• What do they watch read and listen to, what motivates them to purchase a vehicle?
• What is important to them in the purchase decision?
• When the consumer is ready to purchase, do you know who the consumer is?
• Where does the consumer shop for vehicle information when in market?
• How does the consumer view vehicle brands?
This is a perfect use of Claritas data in a high transaction environment where delivering an exceptional customer experience is critical. Leveraging real-time data, this partnership is another way marketing and technology are coming together to enhance the customer journey.
Dealers and dealer groups spend tens of thousands of dollars every month driving consumers to their websites and ultimately to their stores. Yet, they spend almost nothing to understand them when they get there. And when visits to dealerships have dropped from 5 to 2 in recent years, you may only have once chance to close.
“They’ve done their homework online and they’re ready to buy. Now what? If you don’t close today, your prospect is moving on to a competitor. And likely not coming back,” says Jim Kalogerakos, President of STAT Analytics.
“When a prospect shows up on your lot, you know virtually nothing about them” suggests Kalogerakos. The Claritas data and insights on income, lifestyle, interests and purchase intent that’s made accessible through the Closemore app, helps sales professionals not only qualify, but understand and connect with the prospect in more meaningful ways. “Closemore provides the talking points that drives genuine conversation, which develops trust, improves the customer experience and helps you close the sale.”
To learn how the closemore app helps drive sales, improves the customer experience and increases the life time value of the customer, visit www.closemore.io. Dealers and their sales personnel can download a no obligation free trial and start using the app immediately.
About STAT Analytics
STAT Analytics & Technology builds desktop, mobile and cloud-based applications that aggregate big data from multiple sources, distill it and deliver it to end-user businesses in a format that is usable and actionable immediately, all in real-time. For more information and a free trial, please visit www.closemore.io
About Claritas
Claritas: Transforming the Way Companies Engage their Best Customers
Claritas has nearly 50-years of experience in providing its clients with unparalleled insight into the American consumer. Claritas’ unique closed-loop marketing solution helps marketers find and win their best customers using trusted consumer data, an industry-leading identity graph – covering 95 million U.S. households and 400 million devices – and cutting-edge campaign delivery and ROI analysis tools. Together, Claritas’ leading-edge data and technology tools allow our clients to identify their best customers, engage and deliver those customers when and where they want to be engaged and optimize those engagements with remarkable transparency and precision in near-real-time. With powerful technology, trusted data and partnerships, and an expert analytics team, Claritas provides the why behind the buy that is the key to selling smarter and maximizing marketing ROI.
Claritas is a company focused on growth and has recently transformed its capabilities through acquisitions that turbo-charge our core strengths, including the purchases of Miami-based Geoscape, New York-based Barometric and Foster City, Calif.-based AcquireWeb. More information can be found by visiting www.claritas.com or www.mybestsegments.com.
Contact:
Cort Irish, 402-965 -580, cort.irish@claritas.com
Jim Kalogerakos, 1-833-256-7300, jimk@closemore.io
President, closemore - consumer profiling for dealerships
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