Even in today’s fast-paced digital world, the phone is still the most important business generator for every successful dealership. That means your team’s phone skills must be razor-sharp to capitalize on every revenue opportunity.
Unfortunately, these critical phone interactions can be hard to evaluate, and a few small but important details can be the difference between a sale and a fail. On top of that, most generic training doesn’t address their actual performance, so it’s difficult for both managers and employees to identify and correct any problems.
Phone mystery shops are the ideal way to discover what’s actually happening on sales calls, and empower your team with the constructive feedback they need to start closing more deals. Here are the top ways this mystery shopping can help you increase appointment rates and crush your monthly sales goals.
A Real Customer’s Perspective
What you need to know most about your customers is why they choose to purchase… and why they don’t. Since mystery shoppers pose as real customers, they get an honest look at how your sales team manages the experience.
There are many invaluable aspects of calls that phone mystery shoppers can identify and highlight that won’t show up in any other training scenario or in customer surveys. These include key areas like appointment setting, asking for referrals, and confirming important customer details. They are also able to evaluate how sales representatives use scripted language to drive sales and examine soft skills like tone and delivery.
And because auto sales are so specific, a training partner with industry experience is essential for providing mystery shops that can make the biggest impact. They’ll uncover every missed opportunity, and if something comes up in the moment, they’ll know how to dig deeper and explore new scenarios.
Actionable Feedback for Follow-up Training
Because mystery shops are based on real-world calls, your training partner will be in the perfect position to identify specific language and teachable moments that can be shared with the team and developed individually to improve sales outcomes.
Some common issues include not asking for an appointment, deviating from the sales script, improperly navigating branching scripts, forgetting to collect full customer details, excessive hold times, and off-message conversations. All of these elements lead directly to gains and losses on your bottom line and can be easily addressed with timely feedback and coaching support.
Drive High-Margin Upsells
These are hugely profitable for dealerships and offer customers a ton of extra value. These service contracts, extended warranties, comfort and performance upgrades, subscription apps, and vehicle treatments do a lot more for your dealership than bolster the bottom line. They offer your customers increased comfort, performance, and peace of mind—all of which foster loyalty with your dealership.
Phone mystery shops will consistently identify missed opportunities when presenting these high-margin upsells. This enables you to modify sales scripts and conduct supplemental training to improve your upselling ratios.
Improved Brand Messaging
Every employee is an ambassador for your business, and phone interactions should provide continuity between online content and larger corporate messaging. A uniform, high-quality brand messaging campaign improves every aspect of your business: brand perception, customer loyalty, marketing effectiveness, sales volume, word-of-mouth referrals, top-of-funnel lead generation, and trust in your brand. Every single one of these is essential to a healthy, growing business.
Phone mystery shops will tell you how effectively your team is presenting your dealership and the brands you carry, and where your training partner can help them be even better.
Keep Tabs on the Competition
Phone mystery shops can help you improve your business’s sales strategy, but they aren’t just internal processes. They can also tell you how you measure up to the competition—something every business owner absolutely must know.
By mystery shopping the competition, you can gain critical intel on pricing, special promotions, competitive advantages, opportunities for differentiation, quality of customer service, inventory levels, inventory variety and availability, and a host of other details you must be aware of to remain competitive.
Keeping Your Team Sharp and on Point
Phone mystery shops are the best way to get very specific feedback on every aspect of your team’s phone game. They arm you with the information you need to improve your sales scripts and sales team’s presentations so you don’t lose out on sales and upsells.
At Phone Ninjas, we use mystery shops as a foundational part of all our automotive training and consulting services to improve every aspect of your sales team’s strategy. Our in-house mystery shoppers are trained to spot every dollar left on the table, allowing our coaches to sharpen your representatives’ phone skills in efficient one-on-one sessions that examine the actual calls they handled for your dealership.
By helping people build durable skills that will stand the test of time, this approach allows our clients to routinely exceed their competition’s appointment set rates and outperform them on the bottom line. Reach out today for two free mystery shops, and find out the difference that a true automotive industry expert can make.
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.
