Internet Sales Process  (Part 1 of 2)

By Sean V. Bradley

Everyone has an opinion on how to handle Internet leads and there is no one right way to address leads.  I have my thoughts on how it should be done based on my personal experience, but first let’s review some industry stats

• 87 percent of America goes online before stepping foot into your dealership
• OEM leads close within a time frame of approximately at 90 days
• Third party leads and leads to your dealership website close between 45-55 days.
• The average prospect researches four to five other dealerships other than your dealership.
• Only seven percent of communication is conveyed from text or the words that we use.
• 38 percent of communication is from sound or inflection of your voice.
• 55 percent of communication is visual perception and body language.
• Over 80 percent of the people who submit purchase request wind up buying something different than what they originally submitted. 
• 96 percent of people on the Internet you quote a price to will shop it.

This all means that we have to operate in a certain fashion based on the information above and the shopping habits of consumers.

After all this time in the business I am still baffled at how dealers handle online leads. For example, some dealers will first shotgun a price quote on the VERY first email. Even if the prospect DID NOT ask for one.  That is like every time you take a fresh up off of the showroom floor, right after your greeting you give them a price, EVEN if they NEVER even asked you for one! It doesn’t make much sense does it?  Well, if you wouldn’t do it for your showroom prospects why would you do it for your “Internet” prospects? On the showroom floor you want to do some basic things:

• Greet your prospect properly
• Qualify them on the right vehicle
• Product presentation
• Demo drive the vehicle of interest

There are obviously more steps in a showroom sales process but those four are critical. Every dealership I ever worked at or trained at held steadfast to those four critical components. This process is how you build VALUE with your prospects, and that is how you differentiate yourself from your competition. When you review the bullets points in the beginning of this article, they clearly explain what is going on. First, almost everyone is going online. Next, the people that are going online are NOT just looking at your website or dealership. They are searching on average four to five other dealerships or websites other than your dealership.

On top of that if you look at the buying cycle, it is much longer than your traditional showroom customer. What is happening is that the Internet catches people at their “Point of Interest” versus catching people at their “Point of Sale”. This is very important for you to understand that ALMOST EVERY SINGLE Internet Sales prospect is looking at multiple forms of information and from multiple resources.

Here are the two items from the list to focus on:

First, is that you want a methodical follow up process with Internet prospects. We find that a lot of dealers have sporadic follow-up protocols. For example, they will follow up with a prospect via phone and the Internet for one to two weeks straight and then wait three days then resume for another week and then another “Internet follow-up break” for three days then resume some sort of modified schedule. This process needs to be consistent.

The second take-a-way point is there is a science to communication. As I indicated you lose something in the message when you only use email or phone calls; and that 55 percent is visual perception and body language.  

While email may be the first communication channel it should morph into the phone call and then the appointment to visit the dealership. Sell the value of them coming into the dealership. Now you will have escalated the experience from a 38 percent communication medium to a full 100 percent when the prospect is at your dealership.

If you agree with this strategy then you are going to need some resources to assist you in your efforts. First, you are going to need commit your self to this methodical follow-up approach of email / phone call every single day and if at all possible try to call your prospect list twice in a day if you can.

Next, you are going to create a library of email templates that have a strong call to action the “Phone Call”. Make sure no matter what the content of the email template, it always escalates the next action of the prospect to the phone call.

In Part Two of this article I will share with you more details about this process, how to stay on target and how to insure your process keeps you on track.

Sean V. Bradley