Communication: WhatsApp, Zoom or Facetime are not the solutions!

Digital communication options are exploding

Many dealers and car companies have announced on LinkedIn that, in addition to historically traditional means of communication, they can also be reached via WhatsApp video calling, Facetime, Google Meets, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams. This flexible accessibility has been launched at a fast pace. We are in a period where the customer wants to operate and do business from an offsite location, both from convenience and safety.

It is easy to demonstrate a car through Facetime, view the trade-in car closely, and even make a proposal. A test drive at home is also possible, but that is something that dealers could always make happen if they chose to. 

How do you sell your communication arsenal to your customer?

Do you market the fact that you offer a wide variety of communication tools for your customers’ convenience? After all, if you do have the options available but the customer does not know, then all those great tools are for naught. However, if the customer calls on the phone looking for a used car that might be in stock, why doesn’t the sales team use the most effective channels to enhance the conversation? Why don’t we aim for a Facetime conversation? Or why don’t we offer another platform that makes it possible to give the consumer a virtual walk around and sell the car just as if they were in the showroom?

An additional challenge is proper usage of these enhanced communication channels by the sales team. You can market and socialize that you have great tools for video communication, but the salesperson must use them! Otherwise, it is mainly window dressing to make the outside world believe that you are progressive and making valuable improvements.

New solutions

New solutions must be evaluated and integrated for process improvements that make a difference within the dealership and for the customer. If the initiative for change only comes from the customer, don’t expect miracles from adding new techniques. Train and coach your sales team to embrace process improvement, setting goals on how they can use it to become more effective in their daily activities.

Change

Change happens fastest when there is a storm. However, it is an illusion to think you’ll get out of trouble by putting a few gadgets online to solve a problem. All new customer-facing features have one common goal: the seller must start a dialogue with the customer in order to be able to sell a car. Establishing a productive dialogue happens too infrequently. Many sellers no longer know how to effectively sell a car, they are waiting on the buyer to do all of the work…