There’s so much for owners and GMs to do in a busy marine dealership, but so little time. It feels like you’re always playing catch-up, and you never seem to get to new projects that could enhance your revenue stream.
So, how can you get your KPIs trending in a positive direction? In many cases, hiring dealership consultants who specialize in phone training can give you a tremendous edge. However, it’s critical to pick the right partner—the marine industry is extremely unique, and it takes dedicated dealership consultants to make an impact that resonates.
In an age where foot traffic is dwindling and phone interactions are leading new consumer trends, it’s long past time to elevate your team’s phone game. In fact, it’s an area in which most dealerships haven’t made big improvements over the last few decades, so it’s a real opportunity to differentiate your business and raise your brand profile in your community! How can boat dealership consultants help? We’ll walk you through it.
1. Retain Existing Customers and Develop Your Leads
You’ve crunched the numbers: it can be up to 25 times more expensive to acquire new customers than developing the ones you already have. Of course, no business can thrive without bringing in fresh faces, but the marine industry is populated by enthusiasts who are investing in a lifestyle—often for a lifetime!
Boat dealership consultants can show you where you’re leaving money on the table and help your team make the most of the leads they have. Through carefully developed phone scripts supported by training to deliver them with ease, they will help your team capitalize on all their revenue opportunities with existing clients.
2. Custom Scripts Improve Customer Care
Successful marine dealerships everywhere are relying on high-quality, customized scripts that leverage their company’s strengths. With more and more customers engaging online and through the phone, it’s critical to align your sales strategy to meet them where they are when they pick up the phone.
For example, only about 28% of phone calls to boat dealerships result in appointments, mainly because the question is never asked! This is an obvious training point that’s often overlooked, and it’s one of a hundred different angles great boat dealership consultants can drill down on with a script.
Scripts also ensure your clients experience your dealership’s amazing personality consistently no matter who picks up the phone. Customer service will be reliable, as a well-planned script provides accurate information and conversational guidance for standard scenarios your employees are likely to encounter. They’re ready to handle any problems that arise and build credibility and confidence with your customers.
3. Outsourcing Training Saves Time and Money
You know the marine industry well, but there’s a big difference between understanding your business and being an expert at training a sales team. Teaching and coaching are very specific skills that take a lot of time and experience to deliver effectively.
This is where boat dealership consultants can save you hours and hours of trial and error and produce the return on your investment you need to see. These industry experts know the marine industry inside and out and understand what it takes to reliably boost your bottom line.
The best dealership consultants will provide regular one-on-one training with your employees that’s both personalized and reflective of their real-world performance. And despite working with your people on a weekly basis, training sessions can be kept short and to the point so they don’t interfere with your day-to-day operations.
4. Maintain a Keen Edge on Your Team’s Skills
Mystery shops are incredible tools that are too often ignored by general sales consultants in favor of less useful automated phone and internet surveys. While surveys may provide a few data points about what can be improved, only mystery shops give you insight about how to get better.
During a mystery shop, boat dealership consultants are able to identify tangible teaching points that your team can use to boost sales today. They can also dig deep and mine for useful information to help solve problems. Mystery shoppers can ask pertinent follow-up questions that could never have been anticipated, catch slight errors or deviations, and precisely detail all components of the employee’s performance.
Great boat dealership consultants perform their own mystery shops, as well as follow up with the shopped employee later so they can be coached up on any deficiencies.
Experience a Wave of Success with Phone Ninas
At Phone Ninjas, we’ve turned our passion for the boating industry into a business that’s helping dealerships elevate their phones into powerful tools for building their business. Our clients reliably see appointments from phone traffic double and triple after working with us. And it all happens in a hands-off manner for owners and GMs, as we take care of everything—even the mystery shops and follow-up coaching.
Our active coaching strategy improves your team with weekly personalized sessions that strengthen your sales across the board. We use examples from their everyday job experience to improve their delivery and naturalness, while our customized scripts put them in control of every call.
Get in touch today so we can demonstrate how much we have to offer! We’ll even perform two free mystery shops to gauge the current effectiveness of your phone and digital lead generation game. We can’t help until you call us!
As the COO | Partner of Phone Ninjas, Chris delivers leadership, coaching, and mentorship to 55 team members providing software sales and phone skills coaching. He fosters powerful partnerships and collaborations with leaders across various business sectors, establishing expectations, communicating vision, and escalating performance to maximize productivity and effectiveness.
Chris is an innovation-driven business executive with over 25 years of experience delivering leadership to teams of up to 75 overseeing development, launch, and sale of website lead acquisition, reconditioning process software systems, and technology that support automotive dealerships across the U.S., Canada, and Europe.
