It’s a well-known fact that retaining customers is less expensive and can be more profitable than acquiring new ones. The reality is essentially, customer churn keeps your dealership stationary. Many dealers blast sales messages across every medium possible – traditional, mailers, and digital; hoping that someone, somewhere will see it and decide to buy a[…]
An excellent article on Customer Experience Insight shared an analogy that resonated with me as it can be applied to automotive salespeople. The article compares salespeople to trees and states that only 10 percent of salespeople are considered evergreen; are strong and productive no matter what business and/or the economy is like. They nurture their relationships with[…]
There is a constant stream of advice from industry experts concerning customer loyalty and retention. While most of the advice is on point, a large piece is typically missing in the bigger picture. In order to increase market share, businesses must be aware of what their competition is doing. Turning a blind eye to pricing[…]
Mimicking customer behavior is one of the oldest sales techniques in the business. So is finding common interests and building rapport. However, with three generations of car buyers in and out of dealerships daily – Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y – it’s harder than ever for salespeople to accomplish this convincingly, let alone understand[…]
Human beings do have a tendency to overcomplicate things. In our industry, there are so many things that we need to deal with on a daily basis – customers, co-workers, employees, bosses, technology – at times it gets overwhelming. I believe that most dealers understand the importance of customer loyalty and retention. There are plenty[…]
A dealer in Washington state has taken a highly unusual – and unheard of – path to customer retention and loyalty. According to Automotive News, Denver Morford, dealer principal at Barry Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram in Ephrata, Wash., doesn’t believe in dealer reserve. Not only does he not believe in it but he also educates his customers during the[…]
According to an article in Automotive News, one dealer in Illinois has come up with a pretty ingenious loyalty rewards program idea – to leverage taxpayer dollars to increase car sales, while also helping to support local businesses. Glenn Bockwinkel, President of Acura of Libertyville, approached the mayor of his local town and proposed an idea that[…]
I recently had the pleasure to work with a very innovative dealer who implemented the concept of “dealer currency” in his dealership with great success. Dealer currency allows you to eliminate cash discounts on sales (in both Variable & Fixed Ops) by instead issuing a form of “dealer dollars,” redeemable anywhere in the dealership for the[…]
We all want new customers. And it’s certainly mandatory to retain a customer to create a loyal one. But how we market our dealerships is increasingly important — as each form of marketing will deliver different results. The three terms: loyalty, retention and acquisition marketing, all have their own distinct meanings and should be used[…]
As we enter 2013, the business world remains in a state of uncertainty. Will the economy recover? Will new taxes be in place? Regardless of what happens, your key to success will lie in one thing: customer loyalty. Customer loyalty builds your business when times are good and keeps you in business when times are bad.[…]