Creating an appointment-based culture!

I don’t like it any more than the next person when some word or phrase gets overused in our language (i.e., “literally” and “the new normal”), but disruption has become the new buzzword in all businesses, not just the car business. And I know that I have been guilty of using it too, so please forgive me. However, there have been so many changes in our industry over the past few years that I am hard pressed to come up with a more apt term.

As it has been said, if you don’t find the weaknesses in your business model and change them yourself (hence the use of disruption), someone else will and you’ll soon be out of business altogether.

In my opinion, one of the best (and easiest) ways for us to do this is to change the culture of how we sell cars to consumers. For years and years it’s been the norm to build a giant mausoleum (per factory specifications), stock the lot and sell, sell, sell (remember “Stack ’em deep and sell ’em cheap”). We didn’t know who was going to show up or when, but when they did by golly we’d be ready to show them an experience!

Notice I didn’t say good experience, just experience. The customer would arrive and either be overwhelmed by salespeople before they could find a place to park (or actually find a place to park) and then be promptly ignored for the first 20 or 30 minutes of their visit, free to wander the lot and wonder if anyone was actually working at the store that day.

Then, if they did happen to have a particular car in mind, the salesperson would have to go find the keys (and quite possibly the car), wasting another good 10 to 15 minutes at least. If that wasn’t a burden enough, everyone had to cross their fingers hoping the battery wasn’t dead and the thing would actually start up so they could drive it.

Oh, and don’t forget collecting the customer’s drivers license and insurance information, making copies in a dark room somewhere and then trying to jam it all into the CRM system as quickly as possible (and it probably skated another salesperson and/or created a duplicate entry for the same person because they’ve actually been to the store before).

All told, the customer could wait almost an hour to actually experience what the car was like to drive on the road. Whew. I know I’m tired just writing that. And forget about it if they got back and actually wanted to buy it because there goes the rest of their day.

It’s no wonder that this genius of a business model was ripe for disruption. Frankly I’m amazed that it took this long for third parties like Carmax, Carvana and Vroom to come along. But what we’ve been doing has worked for so long, why bother to change it? You still have a Motorola pager so you friends can “hit you on your hip,” right? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

So you might ask, what’s a better way of doing it, smarty-pants? Well, how about creating an appointment-based culture? What in the world would you do to even start?

1. Come up with a pithy name for your new process. Something zippy like “ExpressBuy” or “Billy Joe Bob’s Buy Better Thing” (note: don’t use that one).
2. Figure out the ideal experience. Write out the whole thing from beginning to end of what that would look like. Every step has to be efficient for the customer and dealership alike.
3. Get everyone involved in developing the process. Management, salespeople, finance, lot attendants, detail, etc. You know, everyone.
4. Train everyone on what their roles will be in the new system.
5. Execute. On every customer interaction, the new process must be explained (feel free to develop printed sales materials to give to customers) and explained and explained. This is not going to take root overnight. It needs time to become a part of the culture.

Now, how about some more detail? I understand that we’re never going to get zero customers who show up unannounced, but if we push this following scenario, how long would it take to remake your business?

1. Customer calls the store inquiring about a particular vehicle. Salesperson (or BDC agent) answers all of their questions and gives them all the information they can while on the call.
2. Salesperson asks for appointment to either bring the vehicle to the customer or have them come see it, going into detail on how the vehicle will be cleaned, full of fuel and properly sanitized before they get in it. Salesperson offers several days/times to best accommodate customer and dealership’s traffic for that day.
3. Customer agrees to day and time. Salesperson sends secure link to gather customer’s drivers license and insurance info to electronically have vehicle use form filled out.
4. On day of appointment, vehicle is presented to customer as promised and they get to test it out on their timeframe. At conclusion, salesperson asks customer if this is the vehicle they would like to purchase and then proceed accordingly.

How simple is that? Fairly intuitive, in my (humble) opinion. Why would it be successful? Because it doesn’t waste the customers’ valuable time!

How much more smoothly would each day go if the majority of appointments and traffic were handled this way? After all, it’s how our service departments do business. Optimally they schedule about 85% of their business on a given day and leave the rest open for emergency drive ins (flat tires, dead battery, etc.) and upsells. Wouldn’t it be nice to know 85% of your potential sales could be structured like that?

Once again, if we’re not willing to take a good look in the mirror at our current processes and how they’re affecting the customers, we won’t have much of a business to manage in the future. I’m optimistic that the future is very bright for the dealers willing to do so now.

How about you? How are you changing the way you interact with potential customers? I’d love to hear your stories.

Make it a great day! Dan