You’re a great salesperson. Certified in your OEM’s product training, you know the vehicles like the back of your hand. You follow your store’s process, communicate clearly, come in with 2 appointments personally set each day, make eye contact, build rapport, review features and benefits with your guests, and close most deals. You may even give a quality vehicle delivery with them, showing them every aspect of their newly purchased vehicle. Guess what? As much as you think they knew about the vehicle coming in, they’ve already forgotten most of what you told them in-store. How do I know? You just read this a second ago, and you can’t remember the order of quality salesperson traits I listed above, less alone all the aspects of what makes a great salesperson I mentioned.
Back in the day when I was starting DealerKnows, I was talking to a couple others who were thinking about starting their own business too. One guy was Sam. He knew every single differentiating factor of every single make, model, and trim sold. A genuine car guru. A wizard on everything with wheels. He understood feature and benefit, comparisons to other competitive models, and the how-to of how everything functioned on each vehicle. Now this is going to age me here, but back then I was urging him to start his own Video Vehicle Delivery service. He needed just two offerings.
1) A video (on DVD, sadly, due to how long ago this way) for each and every make/model/trim they sold (that dealers could buy to either train or educate their team).
2) An in-store training, coupled with a dealer-branded video vehicle delivery of each model/trim they offer.
I explained I could get Sam the access to the vehicles/dealerships. I would even help resell his video vehicle deliveries, as this is a wildly overlooked aspect of automotive sales training. I’d even hire another friend to film and edit. All Sam needed to do was show up and do what he does best. Deliver vehicles by flexing his insane product knowledge muscles. Alas, he never did. Even if it was what he did best, he either never saw the need, didn’t think he could sell it, or simply didn’t want to dedicate the likely 1-2 full day(s) of filming a vehicle delivery for each brand’s line-up.
While CSI Indexes have changed for a lot of manufacturers recently, most still include questions about how well the sales professional explained the features of the vehicle, assisting with connectivity and such, before driving home with their new vehicle. A good vehicle delivery takes 30 minutes. How long do your salespeople spend on it?
If you are lying to yourself, then they do give each customer a complete, tailored, 30-minute vehicle delivery. If it is under 5 minutes, then maybe you should incentivize them to do more. To spend a little after-the-sale time with their new customers. One way I always believed a salesperson could both deliver a great after-sale experience, as well as benefit their newest customers, is to give them a pre-recorded video of a vehicle delivery (or each make/model/trim. Or, they could simply film themselves going over specific features and options of different vehicles. Put a library or catalogue of videos together to send to customers after the sale, so new vehicles owners can always go back and refer to that collateral (read: marketing) material.
Does it take time? Yes. Energy? A little? Know-how? Some. Do they have those three things? Well, if they don’t you may have the wrong salespeople in store. At the very least, hire a Sam-type person (he won’t do it, as he is a used car manager now) and get them to build your library. If I were a salesperson, I’d prefer to have my own personally-branded vehicle delivery videos, or my own library of feature and benefit how-to’s.
Your team needs to see the value in it, but it doesn’t cost money, and it can help out both their CSI, client retention, and referral business. We overlook the benefit of a vehicle delivery. Salespeople are far too eager to get that freshly-sold unit over the curb and busting bugs before something jinxes them. But they’re jinxing themselves. They’re wasting such a uniquely beautiful time in a new vehicle owner’s life – while that ether is still floating around them and the new car smell is kicking around the customer’s olfactory receptors. Take advantage of this – make a difference, make the customer know their new vehicle even more. Give a proper vehicle delivery. And maybe, have a channel of curated content they can dip into whenever they have questions about their ride. It’s just good business.
