How to Increase Sales at Your Dealership with Text Messages [On-Demand Webinar]
Dealers are facing some mounting, unprecedented challenges:
• One-time customers
• Seasonal sales peaks and valleys
• Overwhelming peak season
• A limited supply of products
But despite those challenges, dealers are still finding ways to increase sales and grow their business. They’re doing so by unblocking some of the biggest bottlenecks that dealers typically run into: communication with customers.
How are they doing that? By incorporating text messaging into their customer communications.
There is no silver bullet to double your sales
First things first: there is no quick fix to increasing sales.
Doubling your sales takes a lot of hard work and an openness to change. When you carry on doing things the way you always have, your growth plateaus. But when you embrace new approaches to how you do business—including leveraging new technology—that’s where growth happens.
Communication with the customer is one area where we’re seeing the biggest shift. According to a 2019 survey commissioned by Avochato, over 69% of respondents across all generations would prefer companies to contact them via text rather than a phone call. That has only picked up since pandemic restrictions pushed more businesses to operate online.
By embracing this new avenue of communicating with customers, you can not only reach them the way they want to be reached but also streamline your communications to deliver a better overall dealership experience.
Speed up follow-up time texting
As the old saying goes, fortune is in the follow up. On average, it takes about five follow ups to close a sale. But if your sales team isn’t being proactive in following up with customers, you’re probably missing out on opportunities.
If you’re not winning those deals, someone else is who is following up with customers will.
Leads are the hottest when you follow up with them within one hour. But that’s hard to do when you’re relying on phone calls. That’s where text messaging becomes essential. Texting makes it easy to automate follow ups, keeping your customers in the loop while keeping your phone lines free.
Enable customers to pay by text
With supply chains backed up, a lot of your stock is probably running low. You may only have one of a given product on the floor. You can secure your sales opportunity while also giving your customer peace of mind by collecting a sales deposit.
The way to make this process scalable is to collect the deposit via text. Rather than needing to get on the phone and copy down a bunch of credit card numbers on file, text your customers a link that they can use to submit their deposit by ACH or credit card.
Text-enable your landline
Another way you can streamline communications while also freeing up your phone lines is by creating direct hotlines for each department of your dealership. This removes the need for a gatekeeper to direct the calls, which speeds things up specifically.
Now, you might be concerned that by removing that gatekeeper, you’re taking away that human touchpoint with your customers. But consider this: think how many opportunities to connect with your customers are missed because the phone line is tied up? By directing your customers to the right department, right away, you’re putting them in front of the person they need to talk to faster.
You’re removing friction from their interaction with your team.
Survey your customers by text
Regularly getting dealership reviews is an important part of building up your online reputation. To increase the volume and frequency of reviews, send automated requests for reviews to customers via text message.
The key here is to only request reviews from happy customers. You can do this by first asking them to rate their experience with your business on a scale of one-ten (very unlikely to very likely).
Then, send customers who are “very likely” recommend your business a link to your Google My Business or Facebook Business page, to make it easy for them to leave the review.
How to put all of these tips into action
To leverage text messaging at your dealership, you need a text message automation tool.
Tim Berman, Innovation Manager at Ideal, c-Systems, and Charter, shares his tested approach for using text messaging to increase dealership sales using TargetCRM.
Watch Tim’s webinar below:
Ready to streamline customer communications and boost sales at your dealership?
