What are you focusing on?

Dealers and car companies need to sell cars; that’s where their focus lies. It makes sense because there is a lot of additional business involved. You have trade-ins, and you can offer maintenance, repairs, and services. Once you’ve sold a car, the business starts rolling.

If you sell a lot of cars of a particular type, you want more of those cars to sell faster and more. And for that popular model, you always give extra attention.

Noteworthy

What stands out is that we often pay little attention to cars that are harder to sell, the ones that linger on the lot. These are essentially the cars that have been in stock for more than 60 days.

We all know that the best way to sell a slow-mover is to give it to the new salesperson. That salesperson has no history, no mental block, and is free to sell. And they often do, right?

Focus

Focusing on cars that aren’t selling, both by the sales department and marketing, undoubtedly works, but we don’t do it enough. Sales too often resorts to the discount model too quickly, while marketing doesn’t think about promoting that specific car better and more actively on platforms like Marktplaats and Autotrack.

I personally focus solely on slow-movers. I consistently raise their visibility, provide premium packages, make them daily and weekly highlights. I do a lot to bring these cars to the attention of as many people as possible.

What instruction do you give your salespeople?
In addition, I instruct salespeople to work from the ‘oldest’ car. If a customer comes in for a car and can’t agree on the price, I don’t want them negotiating for that specific car. Instead, I ask them to offer the oldest car, to ‘down-sell,’ so to speak.

My approach often works only with similar models, but giving customers options does help. We need to focus on the cars we’re not selling! Are there even quotes being made for those slow-movers, are there leads coming in, or calls? If not, then it’s time for marketing to step in!

Jasen Rice

The sales manager can focus on sales and demand that sales always provide a comparable quote for the slow-mover, even if the customer doesn’t ask for an alternative. If you are consistent with that approach, you will sooner rather than later see that the slow-moving stock gets sold!

If you want to learn more about how to shorten the turnaround time of your inventory, come to our #DCDW Event on April 16 or 17 with keynote speaker Jasen Rice, the USA expert in increasing your turnover to a healthy 12 times per year! You can register via this link for Mechelen and this one for Almere. See you then!