How to Unite Your Pre-Owned and New Car Sales Teams

by automotiveMastermind

How many sales teams does your dealership have? If your answer is more than one, you may be missing valuable opportunities related to uniting your used and new car sales teams into a cohesive dealership team. .

Auto industry sales trends illustrate shocks to customer finances and reduced new vehicle inventory has many would-be new car shoppers opting for pre-owned car options. As a result, a recent used car sales study found used vehicle sales grew by 105.5% from April to May 2020.

By uniting your dealership’s new and pre-owned sales teams, you empower them to take advantage of every opportunity by matching prospects to the vehicle they’re most likely to purchase (whether pre-owned or new) and delivering a consistently excellent dealership customer experience.

In this blog post, we’ll share how dealership leaders can bring together their new and used car sales teams by:

Setting clear expectations
Rewarding the right behaviors
Working from the same information

Set Expectations and Inspire Action

The road to a united car sales team starts with clear expectations and direction from dealer leadership. Your people need to understand that working together as a united sales team will benefit the dealership and one another by improving the customer experience and ultimately the bottom line.

This needs to be part of your efforts to create a dealership culture built on delivering great customer experience, as your sales team is a critical component of that effort. Research finds salespeople are the largest driver of car buyer satisfaction, ranking more than twice as important to customers than the time a purchase takes or even the vehicle sales price.

Find opportunities, such as during your daily Save-a-Deal meetings, to inspire your team while setting collective expectations and promoting collaboration by giving your teams a collective goal to work toward.

Recognize and Reward Teamwork

When your team meets these car sales goals – reward them. Make sure your compensation and employee recognition tools can identify and track both individual and group efforts. Reward teamwork that closes a sale and gives the customer a great experience.

For example, one key dealer solution Market EyeQ includes in the performance insights reporting is a user-by-user view of how each of your salespeople is using the dealership platform tools, including total activity, activity by deal type (lease, cash or finance) and activity by Behavior Prediction Score®.

This practice is valuable beyond just your sales teams, of course. BDC, F&I, fixed ops – if there were ever a time to identify and recognize employees who are making an extra effort to help deliver a great customer experience and contribute to the dealership’s bottom line, it’s now.

Work From the Same Information and Insights

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of having your entire car sales team working from the same set of customer and inventory insights. Collecting and analyzing data from your dealership’s CMS, DMS and inventory from a single sales platform allows your sales team to create a consistent sales experience while maximizing customer engagement by efficiently matching customers with the right offer and vehicle.

For example, Market EyeQ provides sales teams with unified customer insights to allow them to identify which prospects in your marketplace are most likely to purchase, whether that’s new or used. It also interfaces with personalized marketing campaigns to engage your best prospects with high-ROI marketing touchpoints selected by predictive analytics tools that deliver actionable offers at the right time, in the right form and through the right channel to maximize customer engagement.

Beyond solely improving your used and certified pre-owned (CPO) lead generation, marketing ROI and closure rates, putting everyone on a single platform also sends the message that your dealership places equal importance on both new and used car sales teams. It makes it easier for employees in different roles to work together to meet customer needs and expectations and reduces the potential for friction between teammates.

Interested in learning more about how a single dealership sales platform can empower your car sales teams to work more efficiently and effectively? Contact us for a free demo.