A customer walks into your dealership and looks around. You slowly approach him or her, mentally preparing for your professional sales pitch. You know your products and how they compare to others on the market. You feel confident in representing your dealership's offerings. You understand the importance of satisfying the customer. But there's a wild card in this scenario-an element you have no control over. That wild card is the customer. So much depends on his or her mind-set, desires, communication preferences and style of doing business.
Wouldn't you like to take the guessing out of the personal interaction and provide your customers with the car buying experience they desire? Further, if you consider your employees as customers of management, then these same personality and communication principles apply to all of you employees as well. Therefore, to end up focusing on your buying customers, a good place to start is with your "employee customers."
Focus on Internal Team First
Understanding the importance of focusing on the employee-customer right from the get-go is the first step dealers take to improve their businesses. Often, this initiates a dramatic change for employees across the organization and results in a true business advantage through the buying customer.
PCS-Global a consulting firm, has developed a success template that adheres to a sequential V-Track* dealership-improvement model, which sets in place strategic and tactical process solutions for the future. Track I focuses on cultural evaluation and transformation. In today's changing automotive retailing environment, it is fundamental to future success that dealerships go through this transformation. Here's where dealers evaluate their company's culture, value systems and learning styles to help align the philosophies and work ethics of the company, while developing leadership and building teams.
According to a national survey of high-involvement organizations, managers reported that teams lead to higher customer satisfaction (see Exhibit 1). Your best customers will outspend the others by a factor of 16 to 1. In the transportation industry, we believe it is as high as 20 to 1. On the other hand, 69% of lost customers are due to dissatisfaction with their contact with the company employees. Your team is critical to developing lifelong customer relationships. The more accomplished the team's communication skills and ability to ascertain the customer's styles, the higher the likelihood of sales success.
By using simple communication skills, you will be able to:
- Assess a customer within the first few minutes of walking into you dealership and know what motivates that person.
- Determine what kind of approach would be most comfortable for the customer and best facilitate their decision-making.
- Understand how they view you based on your approach to them.
Understanding the need for a communication driven team oriented company can help to develop winning relationships with virtually and customer-and provide a more satisfying work experience for your employees.
We encourage you to begin thinking about vary your communication process with the next customer who walks into your showroom and/or employees who enters your office. Use this opportunity to focus on their personality and adjust your approach to them. You will quickly create a more appealing sales and/or employee environment that will result in increased loyalty and higher profit margins for your dealership.
*The V-Track Dealership Improvement Model: Track I-Cultural Evaluation and Transformation; Track II-Process Improvement; Track III-Skill Sets; Track IV-Technology; Track V-Continuous Improvement.
