Finding great leads and hitting your monthly sales goals in the automotive industry is a more difficult task than ever before—unless you’ve got the right strategy. Drops in inventory and changing consumer patterns mean that fewer people are walking onto car lots these days, and that makes the phone a primary tool for creating new business.
So, how do you leverage this new normal? Most dealerships haven’t substantially improved their telephone customer service in decades. On average, only 28% of phone contacts result in appointments, and now that most leads come from remote sources, you need to convert these contacts into in-person appointments if you want to keep sales numbers up.
Fortunately, a dedicated consultant and training partner can offer the perfect automotive dealer solution to the problem. By upping their phone game with scripts and coaching, the top dealerships can elevate their appointment rates to as high as 60%. We’ll show you how to set your team up for success and get new leads pouring in.
Great Scripts Mean Great Leads
Scripts sometimes have a bad reputation in sales. We all remember the bored customer service folks we have to talk to from time to time who dryly and impersonally deliver pre-written content; it’s not conducive to sales, and it turns off even the most eager customer.
But when scripts are written specifically for your dealership and your team is trained to use them properly, scripts can be an automotive dealer solution that makes your customers feel at home.
Great scripts should always:
- Start with a friendly and professional greeting.
- Include appropriate requests for contact information.
- Prompt important questions and follow customer needs.
- Provide multiple branching opportunities to guide sales.
- Set and confirm appointments.
- Provide the name of your dealership and directions for the customer.
- Thank the customer and close the conversation.
And of course, be sure to re-confirm with a follow-up call. This makes it more likely the customer will keep the appointment.
Coach Your Team Members To Deliver Scripts Properly
Even the best script doesn’t work if employees sound bored. Individual team members should be permitted to tweak the language in the script to match their strengths as a person and a sales expert. The overall tone, message, and content will not change, but by making it their own it will sound natural and they’ll feel much more comfortable using it.
Also, fully integrating scripts does not happen overnight. Most people learn best over time and with a mentor guiding their learning. Memorization is ideal, but it can take a lot of practice—especially if they need to jump around quickly to troubleshoot an issue.
Ideally, an automotive dealer solution specialist can take care of all your coaching needs. Not only will they write scripts that are customized to your business, but they can work one-on-one with your team in short, high-intensity sessions to make sure training sticks. In as little as 15 minutes a week per employee, the best phone training experts can help boost your bottom line without breaking your sales team’s rhythm.
Check the Learning on the Job
Many dealers rely on traditional phone and internet surveys to guide training, but these tools are often too general and don’t provide the depth of insight you need to make meaningful changes. They can tell you if your team is struggling, but not how and what to fix.
This is why mystery shops are an indispensable automotive dealer solution. Mystery shops check that employees are delivering the content as coached, hitting all necessary points, and they allow the shopper to ask follow-up questions no survey can anticipate.
More than that, the results aren’t just a distant memory (like with a survey). They are real-time, real-world job performance evaluations that see the employee as any customer would. Your training partner can use the results of the mystery shop to further coach the shopped employee.
Excellence is a habit formed by what we do every day, and no one is perfect right out of the gate. By reinforcing principles and teaching points, employees become more and more comfortable with the material and start reliably using it to generate leads and explore sales opportunities.
Coaching Agencies Are a Huge Asset
In-house training departments are expensive, long-term investments, and deploying an automotive dealership solution to phone challenges that elevates your business and consistently puts up great numbers takes a dedicated training partner.
An active coaching agency like Phone Ninjas is exactly what you’re looking for. We’re so confident our training is the best we utilize a month-to-month business model that’s backed by the results we deliver. Our clients go from converting 28% of their calls to appointments to 60-80%, and that translates into higher sales and happier customers who keep coming back.
How do we get KPIs to spike like this? We take care of everything, from figuring out what you need and hand-tailoring scripts to your company, to coaching your team members individually in weekly sessions until we get it right. We even do our own mystery shops and follow-up training to make sure your sales team keeps building on their success.
Reach out today so we can schedule a demo and answer any questions. We’ll even throw in two free mystery shops of your dealership to show you exactly how we can help. We can’t wait to hear from you!
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.
