Dealership leaders stand at a crossroads today. Many of them are asking, “How can I increase car sales at my dealership?” Yet, it’s not a question born out of incompetence or inability to sell. It’s a recognition that the market has shifted, and with it, the expectations of the consumers has evolved.
Today, we’re dissecting modern car sales strategies and illuminating more actionable approaches to help you revive your sales numbers. From the initial phone greeting to closing the deal, every interaction is an opportunity for your dealership—and we’re here to help you seize it.
Understanding Modern Customer Needs
The subtle art of empathy has never been more important than it is today. Modern customers are not merely observers but informed participants in the sales journey. They come armed with research, expectations, and a clear vision of what they want.
The initial challenge is for you to re-focus on their perspective. You need to comprehend their needs, anticipate their concerns, and gently correct their misconceptions. Instead of acting like a typical salesperson, you must take on the role of an earnest guide helping them down a path that feels personalized and honest.
Empathy also helps your sales team uncover customer concerns, including issues they might have kept to themselves because they felt unheard. As auto industry publication CBT News writes, “Empathetic salespeople are skilled at devising tailored solutions perfectly suited to resolve their clients’ problems.”
Your goal should be to create a space where customers feel heard, understood, and prioritized. Start there, and you’ll quickly find one-time buyers turning into lifelong customers.
Harnessing a Continuously Improving Sales Engine
If you’ve ever asked, “How can I increase car sales at my dealership?”, you might be working with sales agents who are struggling to grow on their own. So, let’s be real for a minute: a stagnant sales team is a sinking ship. That said, don’t be fooled by fake sales gurus and fire-and-forget solutions—one-time workshops or yearly seminars simply can’t bail you out in the long term. You need a relentless, ever-churning engine of continuous training to propel the vessel forward.
Continuous improvement isn’t just a box to tick. It’s a serious commitment to regular reviews, feedback sessions, coaching, and real-world exercises. It means embracing tools like mystery shops and motivational incentives. But with personalized active coaching, your team can move beyond generic, one-size-fits-all advice and into the realm of practical, self-sustaining tactics.
But even with consistent training, you can’t keep tabs on your team’s development without meticulous session notes and progress tracking. Active, dynamic updates are nearly as important as the coaching sessions themselves, and closely monitoring your individual sales agents’ progress will help you better understand where they can improve.
Mystery Shopping for Unbiased Insights
Picture this: a customer submits their information on your dealership’s website, gets a call from your sales team, receives a follow-up email, and then never contacts your business again. What just happened in that buyer’s journey? What worked, and what didn’t? Mystery shopping would give you the answers to those questions—and so much more.
It’s no secret that numbers can lie; whether it’s an inconsistent CRM, a shared spreadsheet, or even individual sales agent reports, the only surefire way to get an honest look at your performance is with outside help. A company that isn’t connected to your business can tell you where each agent needs to improve, how your website feels to use, and even whether your internal numbers match up with their testing.
With Phone Ninjas, mystery shopping isn’t a way for us to critique your business. It’s a constructive journey we take together toward growth and a better bottom line. Our mystery shopping services are built into our coaching methodology, allowing us to incorporate unbiased and data-driven strategies into individual sessions for maximum results. We dive deep, ensuring your agents understand and implement feedback in future interactions—a proven recipe for continuous improvement.
The Path Forward to Increasing Car Sales
Empathy, continuous improvement, and reliable feedback… these are just some of the tools you’ll need to face the shifting car sales market of tomorrow. But the good news is that you don’t have to walk that path alone.
Enter Phone Ninjas, your ally in this evolution toward revitalizing your team’s sales tactics. From mystery shopping to continuous, active coaching, we provide ongoing training services to help every sales agent reach their full potential.
So, the next time you ponder, “How can I increase car sales at my dealership?”, think about partnering up with Phone Ninjas, the new game changer in car phone sales training. We can empower your sales team to adapt to changing consumer demands using bite-sized, 20-minute coaching sessions personalized for each individual.
Ready to transform your dealership sales numbers? Reach out to Phone Ninjas today.
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.
