Doing more with less

Profound change is often triggered by adversity.

As we continue to deal with a pandemic that has reduced both staffing and inventory levels, there’s still an opportunity to make a profound change in the industry.

The need to do the most with the resources you have has always been there but, now is the time to look at how you take those resources and conduct business with customers in the way that they want rather than how you want to deal with them.  

But before you can adapt our approach to what the customers want, you need to know how they want to buy.

Customers don’t purchase from you for a few reasons. One is inventory, and the other is that you haven’t developed enough trust with them. 

The first question that you should ask a sales customer is “Is this something that you will be doing remotely, or will you want to come into the store?”

The industry has conditioned customers to be suspicious, so it may take some time to regain their trust. Without knowing how people want to buy, you’re guessing at best and making assumptions at worst.

With this knowledge, a dealership would be in the best position to focus their limited resources on satisfying the true needs of their customers rather than making them conform to the way that the automotive business wants to deal with them.

Improving the relationship with your customers should be the first step to maximizing the margin in every deal and would be the best use of limited resources. 

Once you have the information on how the customer wants to purchase a vehicle, you need to stand behind that process. Consider how people purchase things on the internet. It’s one-stop shopping for everything — even groceries. You need to think about what the customer wants and how you can give it to them with the fewest touches. 

You need to be effective with how you approach the customer’s preferred way of doing business. 

You also need to make sure that you have a written process and adhere to the process. Otherwise, it’s just an idea of a process. 

The next thing you need to think about is how you can do this without having the customer speak to several different people. How can you do this with fewer resources and still be impactful?

Customers are moving to a more empowered digital process, so you need to make sure that your processes and systems make it easy for them to do business with you. Is it easy to get a virtual trade appraisal? Is it easy to arrange financing and budget information? 

Walk through your digital process yourself. Was it easy? Were you able to get all the information to purchase? Were you responded to in a fast and efficient manner? Can you have this delivered to you? Is your modern retailing the “Amazon” of auto dealerships? 

Improving your modern retailing is the first step to doing more with fewer resources.  When you spend more time focusing on this process, you’ll have less need to combine the resources needed to complete the car buying transaction. 

Learn how CDK Consulting can benefit your dealership by visiting cdkglobal.com/consulting. 

Did you enjoy this article from Cheri Longcore? Please share your thoughts, comments, or questions regarding this topic by submitting a letter to the editor here, or connect with us at newsroom@cbtnews.com.