Why Your Sales Team Should Be Focused On Value

In auto sales, building trust with your customers isn’t just important to today’s sale – it’s also critical to ensure continued loyalty to your service department, and possible future trade-ins and sales. Customer trust leads to long-term relationships that you just can’t create out of thin air.

One of the biggest problems in the industry today, though, comes from the way sales teams follow up with customers through their buying journey and beyond. Specifically we’re talking about overly-aggressive follow-ups that seek to close deals without providing real value.

Adding real value to your responses and touchpoints with leads can be a real game-changer for automotive dealerships. By being more consultative and less aggressive, you can build stronger relationships with your customers, increase your sales, and improve your overall reputation while building a strong return pipeline. Let’s dive into the benefits of adding value in your sales lead responses a bit, and see how it can lead to a more successful sales process for your dealership.

Getting a hot lead in from a customer is always an exciting thing for a salesperson, which is understandable. But speaking of understanding, it’s critical for your sales staff to really know what a potential or existing customer’s needs really are and to offer solutions that will benefit them. The real trick is to take a consultative approach, and to demonstrate experience and expertise in the industry. This helps you become a trusted advisor, not just another salesperson.

By doing this, and really seeking to know what your customer needs you to help them with, you establish credibility and trust, which will not only help deals close quicker and more efficiently, but also establishes a relationship with your dealership which can lead to ongoing service engagements, and even future trade-ins and sales.

Positive ratings and reviews come from happy customers, and that has almost everything to do with what they receive from you. That means more than just selling them a great product – it means providing ongoing and valuable information and advice, and making sure your customer feels heard and appreciated. Obviously this increases their overall satisfaction with your dealership, but it also means a likely boost in word-of-mouth marketing and recommendations for you.

We all know there’s a lot of value in repeat business and genuine referrals. There’s also a lot of value in online recommendations and positive reviews, because a true and loyal customer suggesting you as a great provider means much more than just a few repeat oil changes. So it’s key for your sales team to make sure their follow-up conversations provide just as much value as their initial outreaches.

As important as follow-up and ongoing advice can be for a relationship, those first impressions are super important too. And that means that your initial sales process should always be consultative and, of course, should provide plenty of value as well. It also increases your overall chances of closing that first sale. Customers are much more likely to make a purchase with a dealership that they believe has their best interests in mind.

This is why providing an abundance of helpful information on your initial sales outreaches is so critical. It’s also a great opportunity to educate the customer on options and future services, which helps them to make a more informed buying decision (which will obviously boost future sales too). Remember the most important rule: whenever you’re sharing anything with a prospective or current customer, make sure they’re getting more out of the exchange than you and you’ll always be providing value in your communications.