Huddled beneath the tent stand ten salespeople. Three others rest against a metal pole while another sits on parking curb. This is where visitors to the dealership are directed to park. Salespeople loiter in front of each parking space for FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) on a potential sale. It is daunting for a customer, surely. All eyes glare at you. Who is going to get to you first? This scene is why up management exists.
Standing on the point waiting for an up is almost a rite of passage as a car salesperson. If you aren’t on the phone, you should be trying to catch an up. If you aren’t out there, you simply won’t have a customer to talk to. Today’s shoppers rarely make it through the front doors without having been greeted (laid claim to) by a sales agent. The tribe of employees at the entrance and scattered around the lot exist because of FOMO. Fear of Missing Out.
FOMO on a walk-in.
FOMO on a sale.
FOMO on a lay down.
FOMO on a big commission check.
Yet, FOMO is hurting your store. While it is certainly great to be warmly welcomed to a place of business, when one feels as if they’re “captured” by a salesperson, it can be off-putting. It is an in-your-face sales tactic that causes customers to drive by dealerships on Sundays or at night when stores aren’t open so they can peruse in peace.
As more consumers champion the completion of research and sale steps online in advance of a dealership visit, the more dealers must acquiesce by putting a less antagonistic up management process in place. Up management refers to creating an order in which sales agents work with incoming shoppers. This maximizes a staff’s time. If there are three people ahead of them, waiting for a shopper to drive in, it allows them to complete the tasks assigned to them in the CRM. There is no Fear of Missing Out if you aren’t supposed to be on point. If you are not scheduled to take the new few ups, FOMO goes away and you can get other tasks accomplished.
With an up management process in place, the FOMO is gone. This increases productivity and, god forbid, may actually cause them to cultivate be-backs and appointments from opportunities they’ve already established. Up management can be installed as cheaply as having a disciplined management staff with a keen eye and dedicated process. Or it can be implemented as wisely with showroom management technology (The Next Up being a favorite).
The eyesore of countless salespeople littered around the front of your dealership is a disease in these modern times. The sales team’s FOMO is what lures them to the point, causes them to turn their back on CRM tasks, and wait… wait… wait… wait… wait… until a customer shows that they can grab. With a little up management, you can eliminate the feeling of FOMO your salespeople have, level the playing field across players, and tend to shoppers in a more professional way thereby improving the customer experience.
