What would happen to the car sales industry if it changed it's focus to begin marketing with the sales representatives, rather than the dealership? According to Auto Alliance, in 2015 there were 1.65 million Americans working at car dealerships. Just think of the the untapped resource of marketing individual salespeople as well as the dealerships.
The majority of time customers spend during the car buying process is with their salesperson, and 71% of customers say they bought their vehicle because they liked, trusted and respected their salesperson, according to Jeff Kershner of Dealer Refresh. Now imagine fostering those relationships before the customers even walk on the lot.
With a personal website, regular blogging, emailing, and social media integration a salesperson can do just that. It is a win for the dealership too, as all leads and sales through their reps ultimately come to them. Failure to encourage and help their salespeople to do so means the dealer is not maximizing their advertising dollars. Remember, buying a car is one of the most expensive and personal purchases that people make, so focusing on building a rapport between a customer and their salesperson is really a no-brainer. Why do you think most dealers don't embrace this potential?
2 comments:
Mostly, because they have no idea how to build traffic (based on duplicate content!) and start generating leads. Some of these salespeople are our customers, and there is a higher turnover rate among them when compared with dealers proper. (See what I did there?)
The higher turnover (nice touch!) among salespeople is definitely a challenge, not only for the dealers but for us as well. We've seen some strategies used to help with this (such as having the dealership own the salesperson's website and recommissioning/rebranding it for a new rep if the first one leaves). At this stage of personal branding and how it relates to dealer marketing, very few dealers are utilizing it, so it can actually be used as a retention strategy..."work at our dealership and you'll get the tools you need to be successful that other dealers don't provide". Not always easy getting someone to change their thinking from the way they've been doing things for 50 years though. I guess we're the modern day equivalent of the horseless carriage. Nobody really saw the potential in the 1800's but fast forward a century and now we can't imagine life without them, or at least the more modern iterations.
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