Digital Retailing can make your sales personnel three to four times more efficient. This is hard to believe, but it is true. The magic is based on the principle that parallel is better than sequential. Simply put, it is better to work effectively with a large number of customers in parallel, rather than sequentially focusing on one after another. Unfortunately, the latter represents the current automotive retail sales paradigm. Dealerships spend tens of thousands of marketing dollars to generate leads. They then try to convert those leads to in-store appointments so their salespeople and finance managers can work through transactions in the showroom and finance office, one at a time. Imagine a busy airport—say O’Hare—on a Friday afternoon. You look at the sky and see dozens of planes, some circling, waiting for their turn to land. Now, imagine that only one of O’Hare’s seven runways is available. That’s your store on a busy Saturday afternoon. The current retail sales model is inherently inefficient and is becoming increasingly unprofitable.

Fortunately, unlike airports, dealerships have an alternative and, even more importantly, it's an alternative that today’s customers prefer. In a world where consumers seek transparency, self-service, control, and time-savings, omnichannel commerce has become ubiquitous. Across categories such as electronics, fashion, groceries, and quick serve franchises (i.e., Starbucks and Chipotle), online ordering with the option of in-store pickup or home delivery is here to stay. While buying a car is certainly more complex, there are many aspects of the transaction that can be put in the hands of the customer, whether they are at home or in your showroom. Omnichannel commerce is already happening in automotive (see Carvana, Tesla, Carmax, and others), but many dealerships have not yet embraced the potential opportunity or recognized the competitive consequences of failing to adapt to this new reality.

At Roadster, we have the good fortune of working with many of the industry’s most progressive dealerships and salespeople around the country. These dealerships’ results and the individual successes we have seen highlight the potential of omnichannel commerce. Case in point: Dustin Dutterer, an Automotive Advisor at Sun Automotive in small town Cicero, New York. Working in the old sales paradigm, Dustin found himself perpetually short on time, running around non-stop, and working long hours, ultimately selling 10 to 15 cars per month. It was a good living, but he felt like his success was ultimately constrained by the number of hours in a day and the business hours of his dealership. The introduction of omnichannel commerce unlocked his earning potential. Sun Automotive implemented Roadster’s Express Storefront® in late 2018 and transformed the store’s sales process from one focused on appointment setting to one focused on online ordering and customer empowerment.  The results have been staggering. For the five months from December through April, Dustin has averaged 36 sales per month. That level of performance is outstanding, but not unheard of in the industry. What is unheard of is what he also said: “Using Roadster I'm not really working much more than 40 hours per week.”  

Gabe Hale works in a much larger metro market at Rallye BMW in Westbury, NY, just 30 miles east of Manhattan. Rallye consistently ranks in the top 5 nationally for BMW new car sales. Managing that volume efficiently is critical for Rallye’s bottom line. Rallye implemented Roadster’s Express Storefront® two years ago to help make their sales process more efficient and to modernize their customer experience. Gabe had also been keenly observing his customers’ buying patterns evolve over the years and was looking for a way to meet and exceed their changing expectations by leaning into the principles of omnichannel commerce. And boy has he figured it out. In December of 2018, Gabe sold an astonishing 61 cars! He is also now on a 3-month streak of selling over 40 cars per month and is easily heading for a 400+ unit year. Gabe says he simply would not be able to handle the amount of transactions he is managing every month with the traditional sales process.

We all know that the work hours for a high volume salesperson in automotive retail are brutal. To reach over 35 sales in a month typically requires six or seven 14-hour workdays per week. That lifestyle is unappealing to most people, making hiring and retention a constant challenge for dealerships. Generally speaking, car selling doesn’t scale well. So how do Dustin and Gabe do it? They embrace the “parallel is better than sequential” principle. They leverage their dealerships’ Express Store to concurrently guide their customers through each step of their purchases online, from home or from their mobile devices, letting them decide when and where it is convenient. Instead of waiting at the dealership to get a trade-in appraised, their customers can use their phone to snap a series of photos of their vehicle and answer a few condition questions to get an online appraisal. Similarly, the credit application process is managed online, saving significant time compared to the traditional in-store finance process. When the purchase steps are not completed from home, they leverage their Express Store on the showroom floor, allowing them to handle multiple customers in the showroom at the same time, setting each up at kiosks with self-service tasks.

PARALLEL IS BETTER THAN SEQUENTIAL

With this approach, they not only maximize their efficiency, but their customers also rave about the ease and transparency of the process. Customers feel in control and appreciate that their time is respected. Time is the one thing no one has enough of. If a customer is at the store for more than 90 minutes, Dustin and Gabe fully appreciate the rising opportunity cost to themselves and their customers. Roadster’s technology enables them to provide an efficient customer experience and sell 35+ cars a month without burning the candle at both ends. To bring things back to the airport analogy, Dustin and Gabe can have multiple runways open at all times, even in the middle of the night, and planes can land in very short intervals. 

While Dustin and Gabe continue to set the standard, we are seeing more and more salespeople at other dealerships, big and small, leveraging omnichannel commerce solutions with impressive results. Logically, It makes sense. If you can double or triple the capacity of your sales team by putting components of the transaction into the hands of your customers, you can do more with less. In a world of continued margin compression, we need creative solutions like this to keep our dealerships in the black. Don’t you agree?

Have you ever ordered electronics online, only to find that the instructions are missing when you open the box? Simply put, you have the equipment, but you have no idea how to use it.

In not so many words, this is the reality of automotive digital retailing today. Dealerships are plugging the technology into their websites without contemplating what sales process changes are needed to deliver a seamless customer journey. Over the past 18 months, I’ve seen many posts and articles highlighting why culture and process changes are necessary to ensure digital retailing success. After more than 600 installations of the Roadster platform, we can confirm from experience that this is true. However, many dealers continue to believe that simply plugging digital retailing technology into existing infrastructure will quickly result in incremental sales. The reality is that technology is not a silver bullet. It can facilitate many things, but it is how you use it that matters most.

Recently, we began analyzing the positive effect of a strong process champion on usage and performance. Not surprisingly, dealerships with strong champions committed to--and incentivized on--the success of the digital retailing process see adoption and conversion rates four times higher than dealers without a similar role. Without this role, dealerships who developed their sales processes in the pre-digital era will face monumental challenges from the likes of Carvana, Carmax, and Tesla, and other likely entrants (Amazon, etc).

I was inspired to dig deeper on this topic after reading a post by Rico Glover, Co-Founder of the Automotive Digital Marketing Association. In his post, Rico teased the need for dealers to establish a new position focused primarily on digital retail marketing. Rico is an automotive retail visionary and has been a Roadster Express Storefront champion at multiple dealerships. He has been on the front lines of the transition to digital retailing and is leading the charge to help dealers modernize before it is too late.

With the help of Rico and my colleagues at Roadster, I decided to take a stab at writing a job description for the most important position nearly every dealership has yet to fill, the Digital Retailing Manager. Digital retailing, when implemented correctly, impacts nearly every process and employee on the variable operations side of a dealership. For this reason, Roadster actually prefers to use the term omnichannel commerce, rather than digital retailing, to emphasize the importance of consistency and connectedness across the retail floor, internet team, BDC, and all other customer touchpoints. 

Someone at the dealership needs to look holistically at the customer journey from beginning to end and understand how omnichannel commerce will require change for each role and each touchpoint. 

Given the broad responsibility and the high potential for resistance from other dealership employees, it is critical that the Digital Retail Manager has sufficient political capital and management support to overcome the inevitable inertia. I can say with certainty that there will be significant resistance. Change will not come fast or easy, so commitment and patience are critical to seeing the evolution through. The Digital Retail Manager will only be as successful as the strength of the commitment from leadership.

Without further ado, here is the Digital Retail Manager job description!  I’d love to get your thoughts. What’s worked for you? What’s missing?

DIGITAL RETAIL MANAGER

The Digital Retail Manager (DRM) will spearhead the dealership’s transition to, and administration of, digital retailing technology and related processes. The DRM is effectively the dealership’s “digital retailing champion,” establishing clear objectives in conjunction with the Dealer Principal and/or General Manager.  

They will ensure that each functional group within the dealership understands their respective role and that the digital retailing platform is properly deployed and effectively measured to achieve the desired objectives. 

Coordinating with dealership management and marketing leadership, the DRM develops and drives the go-to-market plan for promoting the benefits of digital retailing to customers, including platform integration within the dealer website, digital marketing campaigns, and point of purchase (POP) materials. The DRM needs to understand the full customer journey, with a focus on serving customers moving from online to in-store, and vice versa.

Success will hinge on developing scalable and repeatable processes for managing an omnichannel selling process and coordinating the efforts of, and transitions between, the different variable operations employees: Internet, BDC, Floor, Desk, and F&I. This individual will redefine each role and communicate to the affected staff how digital retailing can make their lives easier. 

Roles and Responsibilities

• -Establish short and long-term digital retailing objectives with Dealer Principal and GM
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  -Socialize digital retailing plans and objectives with each department within variable operations

-Evaluate digital retailing vendors/offerings, scheduling online demos and in-store presentations, with participation from a wide cross-section of departments

-Select digital retail vendor(s) based on capabilities that align with objectives, accounting for both short and long-term time horizons 

-Spearhead integration of digital retail offering within website, online advertising campaigns, and POP materials

-Prepare training materials to support rollout of digital retail within the store, including a clear presentation of all process flows, defining each department’s roles and responsibilities

-Create/manage processes for digital retail prospect handling, including impacts on CRM workflows, reporting, and remarketing efforts

-Proactively solicit feedback from team members to iteratively improve the dealership's approach and establish buy-in

-In conjunction with GM, Desk Manager, and Finance Director determine digital retail pricing strategy for new and pre-owned inventory, finance and lease rates (including markups), service and protection plans, and accessories

-Coordinate with Finance Director to determine which service and protection plans to present for different deal types and which accessories to present for each vehicle type

-Coordinate with GM/GSM to ensure employee pay plans align with digital retail strategy and desired behaviors 

-With digital retailing vendor, conduct in-person training, tailored to each department’s anticipated use of the platform

-Determine, measure, and regularly report on key performance indicators (KPIs) that ladder up to previously established objectives

-Work with internal teams and digital retailing vendor(s) to iteratively adjust platform settings, pricing, and product presentations as necessary to meet and exceed objectives

-Integrate digital retailing offering (via kiosks or touch screens) in service waiting area to educate owners about offering and generate new business 

-Coordinate regularly scheduled internal and vendor meetings to evaluate and re-evaluate objectives and associated performance

Qualifications and Skills

• -Must have 7+ years of retail, software, and digital advertising experience
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  -Thorough knowledge of automotive retail processes and products (including financing, leasing, accessories, and service and protection plan offerings)
   
• -Significant understanding of dealer tools, including CRMs, desking solutions, and DMS products
   
• -High level of comfort with digital technology solutions 
   
• -Ability to think quickly on your feet and handle ambiguity without getting stressed out
   
• -Strong oral and written communication skills
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  -Customer first mentality
  
  -Process driven but flexible enough to adapt processes as required by circumstances

Many stores will have someone already on staff who can fill this role--perhaps a variable sales operations or digital sales manager--however, from what I have seen, most do not. I invite you to take an honest audit of your staff based on your current set up and ask yourself if this role, whether titled as such or not, has been filled or even could be filled with someone currently on staff. You may find that you too have this very important role unfilled at your dealership. But don’t worry -- not only is it common, but it is easily rectifiable. Feel free to cut and paste the job description above to your website and job boards to get a head start. If you are going to spend money investing in digital retailing, then make sure you are investing in your success as well.

Photo by David Clarke on Unsplash

The last time you were at the supermarket, did you think to yourself, “wow, that cash register really sold me on those cookies!” As silly as that sounds, we see financial statements in the car business every day with items similar to cash registers and shopping carts classified as marketing expenses. If sales decline 5% next year, are supermarkets going to set their shopping carts on fire and go all “Office Space” on their cash registers in the parking lot? No, these assets are part of a system that is necessary to provide an efficient selling and buying experience for cashiers and customers. They aren’t going to show up at your customer’s door and drive them to the store or drum up fantasies of mint chocolate chip ice cream and Cocoa Puffs.

So, why do dealerships classify digital retailing as a marketing expense? Perhaps, as an industry, this is our own doing. So many digital retailing solutions are out there guaranteeing they can increase car sales or multiply current lead counts.  Unfortunately, digital retailing, has become a catch-phrase for all kinds of different things related to digitizing aspects of the transaction. At Roadster, we find that the industry often misunderstands and misrepresents what ultimately is at the core of digital retailing — a platform for customers and dealerships to more efficiently and conveniently conduct retail transactions online, instore, or on the go.

Digital retailing is a platform for your employees to use in improving and streamlining your sales process; it is not going to rain sales on its own.

So, what does a Digital Retailing platform offer? Here is a detailed chart of DR platform capabilities:

When a dealer purchases a comprehensive digital retailing solution, they should expect it to provide most, if not all, of the elements above. While, connectivity to all vendors via APIs and/or web services is not yet possible, in due time we expect most vendors will adopt a more integration friendly position and invest accordingly.

Nowhere in the above does digital retailing claim to drive more traffic to your website or your showroom. Increased sales are a by-product of people using the platform in other budget areas—such as promoting an online buying experience or an expedited experience in their showroom. The customer experience that a full digital retailing platform can provide may lead to future customer loyalty and word of mouth, but so could those cookies you bought at the grocery store or the ability to check yourself out on a kiosk!

DIGITAL RETAILING IS
NOT A MARKETING LINE ITEM

Much like your CRM and DMS are budgeted as operating expenses, digital retailing should be considered in the same light.

Why does this matter? Unfortunately, treating it like a marketing expense leads to short term, market condition-based decision-making. As overall marketing budgets expand and contract, dealer’ s commitment to digital retailing does as well. Conversely, shoppers are increasingly committed to digital shopping in every aspect of their lives. So, while their shopping expectations are consistently growing, automotive retailers are struggling to keep up. In the not too distant future, we are likely to see close to 100% of transactions conducted entirely on digital retailing platforms, so the time to invest is now!

Has Roadster piqued your interest? Connect with us.

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Rudi Thun, COO, Roadster
He has been an executive leader in online automotive for more than 15 years. Prior to overseeing Roadster’s daily operations, Rudi was Head of Vehicles for eBay Motors. Before eBay, Rudi was COO of CarWoo!, a VC-funded new car marketplace. And prior to that, he was VP and General Manager of AOL’s automotive properties. Rudi’s very first job was with Ford Motor Company. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University and an MBA from University of California at Berkeley.

Car-buying behavior is changing, driven by customers’ desire for modern convenience. Much like the way they shop for most anything else, more and more customers are going online to complete at least some portion of the car buying experience.

As a result, the role of the dealer is changing, too. To stay competitive, progressive dealerships are turning to omnichannel commerce solutions like Roadster’s to deliver a seamless, streamlined and satisfying shopping experience, and to increase efficiencies.

Want to learn more about Roadster’s full line of Express products, including Storefront, Desking, Marketplace and Trade? Click here.

If you read my latest blog post, you will remember my Starbucks analogy. What if you ordered your coffee on the Starbucks app, just to find out that you still had to get in line when you got to the store? Wouldn’t that be frustrating?

If you commerce enable your website and do not prepare your team to provide a streamlined experience at every touch point (internet, BDC, showroom, F&I), you may unnecessarily lose many valuable customers.

Most car buyers want to do at least some part of the buying process online before coming into the store, so it is vital that you equip dealership personnel with the right information to pick up where the customer left off, as well as the tools to make it as efficient as possible to seal the deal -- whether the customer is an internet shopper, a phone-up, or a walk-in.

Change is underfoot and thanks to omnichannel commerce solutions like Roadster, there are examples of this happening all over the country. The two mistakes people make on their path to digitizing the transaction are A) not thinking through how their stores need to evolve and B) not getting everyone on the team bought into the vision.

Buy-in requires you to answer this simple question for each member of your team: How does this impact me and my ability to be successful?

Explaining how roles will change for the better and then training on the skills they will need, are the most important steps to ensure success.

But don’t worry. It isn’t as onerous as you may think. We are talking about evolution, not a complete transformation. There are small tweaks to your process that you can begin testing right away.

To give you a jump start, here are 5 examples from our incredible dealer partners to get your juices flowing.

1. The Business Development Center (BDC)
Appointment Setting --> Deal Concierge

The traditional BDC’s job is to make appointments for customers to come into the store. But in a world where the customer is completing several steps of the purchase process online, should the #1 priority be to get them in the store or helping them complete as much as possible themselves first?

The appointment will come as the Deal Concierge walks the consumer through the buy flow and then self-selects their appointment time. This team can improve close rates by helping customers become more committed to the car and the dealership before walking in the door. It not only saves everyone involved time, but it puts the customer at ease, leading to improved Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) scores across the entire sales process.

At Lexus of Lehigh Valley -- one of the fastest growing Lexus stores in the country and the first to be Lexus Plus certified -- 8 out of 10 people who call the dealership reference a VIN specific stock number. Since stock numbers for new cars can only be found on their search results and vehicle detail pages, the BDC knows that these customers are looking at deal terms. Instead of jumping immediately to the appointment, they explain what can be done online and answer any questions the customer has about payment options, trade-ins, and service plans before inviting them into the store.

“It’s the experience overall that makes it powerful. Customers say, I was on so-and-so Lexus store website and then went on yours. I like your website so much better so I thought I would come see you guys and buy a car from you.” - Mike Price, Lexus of Lehigh Valley

2. The Internet Team
Static Price Quotes → Interactive Deal Sheets

The Internet Team is masterful at following up with price quote requests from around the web. Sending estimates to customers is not a new phenomenon, but how many times do internet teams go back and forth with a customer who wants to see dealer specific options with lower rates, more money down, etc. Today, dealerships like Longo Toyota are using interactive deal sheets to respond to all of their internet leads, allowing customers to adjust deal terms based on what they can afford. Not only does this stop the back and forth, saving everyone time, but it empowers customers to structure their deals on their own time, often after hours.

"Our Internet Sales Team can more quickly respond to a guest’s questions, and provide a meaningful product/price quote that enables the guest to continue to research on their own time and pace, so our team can handle more leads per person. We have seen our closing ratio almost double." - Brendan Harrington, Longo Toyota

3. The Showroom:
First Point of Contact → Only Point of Contact

Empowering your front-line sales team with the information they need to finalize the sale, means keeping them in front of the customer, which builds trust & saves everyone time. When the first pencil (and 2nd or 3rd) can be done without the salesperson leaving the customer’s side, everyone wins.

At Audi Rocklin, every sales person runs their first pencil from their Roadster desktop app while sitting side-by-side with the customer. For the sales team, it is an empowerment tool, and the customers are thrilled to see the transparency of the information. Both their gross profit and CSI scores have gone up after deploying commerce tools in-store.

“We live in an information era and can get access to anything from our phones. This can be dangerous as not all information is accurate. Keeping the sales person at the desk with the customer reduces the likelihood of a customer getting on their phone to start questioning the deal. We keep them engaged with the sales person without separation.” 
- Luke Smith, Audi Rocklin

4. The Sales Manager
Desking → Sales Coach

At Grappone Automotive, they call their sales managers “Team Leaders”, and rightfully so. By empowering the sales team as mentioned above, they have freed up the sales managers to focus on coaching best practices for how to treat customers and make them a guest for life. An example of this can be seen in their new trade-in process. Sales managers used to take the car for inspection and then disappear to put the valuation together. Now, the salesperson can stay with the customer and take pictures together of the car using an iPad, logging damages that get the customer over the “my car is perfect” thought process. This also allows the salesperson to introduce any F&I products that may be useful for the new car purchase. All of this is collected and sent to a centralized trade team that values the vehicle within minutes and pushes the estimate directly to the salesperson via text message. All the while, Team Leaders are available to do higher value tasks, such as helping a salesperson close a customer, hold training sessions or evaluate and update process and procedures.

5. The F&I Manager
The Closer → Product Educator

Perhaps one of the most controversial changes in the industry is the move to more transparency and online education as it relates to F&I products. Most people fear that transparency and online selection will reduce product penetration and profit levels due to the lack of control. We see quite the opposite. Customers who have their options available to review online are more prepared for the decisions they need to make when finalizing the deal. We see dealerships every day not only maintaining F&I profits with this level of transparency, but some are seeing significant increases when they embrace their role as an educator. These new models are about more than empowering the customer, it is about educating the salespeople to have conversations about F&I products as early as the needs assessment stage.

Take Cavalier Mazda as an example. Their F&I Director saw online commerce tools as a way to expand his reach by educating customers and product specialists on their available products. Not only does this empower the sales team to have conversations early in the process, but it dramatically helps the conversation once the customer gets to F&I as they are already primed with the products that could help them maintain their new car.

Cavalier Mazda didn’t see this as an opportunity to eliminate F&I. They saw it as a way to expand the number of people selling F&I.

“It’s all about Reputation, transparency, communication and relationship. Putting a tablet in front of a customer and having them interact with it through you is a much better experience. Not only does it empower our product specialists to move the conversation forward when I’m not available, but it acts as the initial touch point. Customers want control, but still want to be sold to in a respectful manner. Technology allows us to collect information on their interests up front and puts the customer at ease and more open to hearing us out once they get into the store.” - Rob Voigt, Cavalier Mazda

Reimagining roles are what motivates and excites everyone involved. People get to learn new skill sets that they didn’t have before, working some new muscles that will help them grow in their career.

So, whether you are exploring “digital retailing” solutions or omnichannel commerce solutions like ours, I encourage you to think about the entire customer journey and evaluate your sales process in that context in order to handle today’s buyer. These changes are not radical in nature. Each modification to your sales process can be tested and fine-tuned one at a time to meet your needs. The important thing to keep in mind is that buy-in is an absolute requirement. Painting a picture of how someone’s role may change for the better is the first step in evolving together as a team.

T.E.A.M =Together Everyone Achieves More

Happy selling!

Last week my daughter needed a yellow shirt for a school dance performance. Instead of heading to the store that evening, I turned to Amazon and had it ordered in less than 5 minutes flat. And when I picked up my coffee at Starbucks the next morning, I ordered it on their mobile app so I could skip the line altogether and have my coffee hot and waiting for me when I walked in the door. Sound familiar?

In today’s day and age, time is the new currency, and it applies to every buying experience in our lives.

Buying a car is no different. It is a more complicated purchase for sure, and people still want to go to the store to test drive, ask questions and go over the ins and outs before they buy.

In fact, according to a recent study by Bain & Company — people are going back and forth between online and in-store 4x on average during the car buying experience.

But today’s discerning buyer wants to do as much as they can to complete the transaction before heading into the store to take delivery. We have all seen the stats in one form or another— The vast majority of car buyers wants to do some or all of the transaction completely online. So, in marches a flurry of ecommerce platforms to enable this.

The truth: < 10% of car buyers today will actually buy their car 100% online.

As an industry, we need to unpack this. Time is the new currency and most customers are still coming into the dealership to complete the transaction. So, as we implement new capabilities that allow our customers to start the buying process online, we also need to think about how we bridge that efficient online capability with the in-store experience. If, as an industry, we implement express purchase options online but can’t expedite the process in-store we lose the customer for life.

It would be like ordering your coffee on the Starbucks app and then being forced to stand in line with everyone else to pick up your coffee when you get there.

Connecting the online and in-store experience together is what is referred to as Omnichannel Retail. Omnichannel means allowing a customer to enter from any channel and pick up where they left off -- consistent and continuous.

When done right, Omnichannel Retail benefits more than just the customer, it is also great for business. By enabling the customer to do some or all of the process online, you are saving the valuable time of your sales staff, who as a result can attend to more customers. Some of our dealer partners claim to be saving 3-6 hours per transaction. And this goes beyond just what the customer can do themselves. Imagine a world where your employees have access to all of the information necessary to walk a customer from A to Z of the sale. You can redeploy resources to make your entire staff more efficient and effective.

“I don’t want to pay a sales manager to quote out the door figures, I want them coaching and training the sales team. From an ownership standpoint, I want to take them away from a low value task to a higher value task.”  —Marker Anderson, Anderson Honda

Omnichannel experiences skyrocket customer satisfaction by 172% over the traditional experience, per Cox Automotive’s Driving the Digital Deal Study. Not to mention, that efficient technology-driven experiences in-store are a great recruitment tool for the younger, Millennial Generation.

If all of this sounds great, then why aren’t more dealerships jumping on board?

Change is unknown. Change is scary. Change is hard.

So, what makes Omnichannel Retail successful? You do! Success needs a champion. If you are inspired and ready to champion the Omnichannel evolution in your store, here are 5 quick rules of the road to keep in mind:

1: Believe

Ask yourself, “Do I fundamentally believe we will transact digitally in the future?“ Leaders who start with this conviction will be able to ride the wave of initial setbacks that may occur and ensure the team understands that this is the way of the future, if not the present. There is no turning back, but don’t expect 80 years of inertia to be overcome in a few short weeks. Lead with a strong vision and adjust course as needed.

2: Have a Game Plan

Change is hard, and while Omnichannel is the goal, you don’t need to rip the Band-aid off all at once. Smart partners identify the department in their store that will be most successful at using the technology platform effectively. They pick a department as a beachhead, prove success and then expand the program from there. This could mean starting with the Internet/BDC teams who can move from static price quote responses to interactive deal sheets, or the sales floor team who can leverage the technology to do a needs assessment and deal presentation side by side with the customer.

HINT: Don’t boil the ocean; rather start somewhere you feel has the best chance for success.

3: Price Fairly & Consistently

If you are still insistent on pricing your new car inventory at MSRP, then Omnichannel Retail is going to be a struggle for you. Fair and consistent pricing breeds trust with customers. Nothing stops a customer faster in their tracks than if they feel like the price they are seeing is much higher than pricing they have seen elsewhere, or worse, is different than pricing they have already seen from you. Think about adjusting your pricing to maximize efficiency and customer experience as opposed to the current model of subsidizing your grinder deals with the occasional laydown deal. Put another way, don’t make all your customers suffer through a long sales process because you are looking for that occasional home run. There is a fair market price that can work well for both parties.

4: Encourage Ownership

Communicating early and often with your dealership personnel is imperative to getting the buy-in needed for success. Let staff have input into decisions, including the vendor selection process. They will feel more ownership. If they own it, you will be far less likely to start the initiative and flame out quickly. Weekly meetings with key stakeholders to help tweak processes and to maintain feelings of empowerment are key. The worst thing you can do is introduce your staff to the concept at the time of implementation and training. The communication must start well upstream of that.

5: Recast Roles

With any change, the first question that comes to everyone’s mind immediately is “how does this impact me?” If there is an inkling of doubt about the longevity of someone’s role, they can and likely will sabotage the change. So, before you make significant changes to your process, share your vision for how this change is going to make their position at the dealership even more valuable.

As business people, we all need to be thinking about the evolution of our customers and the changes required of our business to remain relevant. As an industry, we are in a unique position as we transition to time as the new currency. Time is something that both sides can benefit from in the long run.

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