New approaches help ease the painful customer interaction when assessing the value of their trade
Should you quote a trade-in value on a sales call or an e-lead?
This question gets the most debate when facilitating Sales Manager workshops across the country.
Some Sales Managers swear they never quote a trade value over the phone or on an e-lead inquiry and we ask them: “How’s that working for you?”
We rarely get a solid answer as most dealerships are not keeping track of how their strategies are working for them let alone appointment and closing performance statistics.
It’s also quite odd that many dealerships offer a trade value right on their websites — some directed to third party sources while others to a landing page to generate a lead.
We came across an interesting strategy that seems to be gaining traction and results. It leverages third party sources and an introduction to the dealership’s unique appraisal process. The strategy goes something like this:
“Mr. Jackson, to give you an idea of how much your vehicle is worth, you can research the values yourself from several credible sources.
- www.canadianblackbook.com/value-your-vehicle-2/
- www.carfax.ca/car-value
- ico.autotrader.ca/Ico/
- www.vmrcanada.com/canada_makes.html
However, to get the highest trade value, I recommend that you visit us first as we have a very unique appraisal process that the dealership has invested in. It costs us some money, but it makes us lots of deals and ensures our customers get top trade-in values. When you visit us, I have an app on my phone that allows me to scan the bar code inside your driver’s door.
All the information about your vehicle (where it was built, when it was built, all the features and the colour) are uploaded to my Sales Manager’s computer where the software scrapes over 10,000 websites in real time to see what vehicles similar to yours are fetching in the marketplace.
While you’re here and with your permission, I’ll take some pictures of your vehicle so that my Sales Manager can load them onto live online auctions that we are registered with in Canada and even the U.S. so we can guarantee you a top trade-in value. The process takes about 45 minutes so while you’re here, you can look at some of our outstanding vehicles we have to offer.”
It has always been a hard and fast rule that if you give customers what they want, they’ll give you what you want — in this case, an appointment.
This strategy provides an answer to the potential customer’s question which is a professional courtesy but further creates a legitimate reason why the customer should visit the dealership — that’s selling!
It has always been a hard and fast rule that if you give customers what they want, they’ll give you what you want — in this case, an appointment.
Please take note of the call to action: “see us first.” There are two parts to our brains — the conscious and subconscious. Logic prevails in the conscious part of the brain but is nowhere to be found in the subconscious; this is where dreams occur.
When you have a nightmare, your body reacts as if it were real. Your heart races, your body moves violently and you sweat because your body believes the dream to be real.
When you see a sign, SALE ENDS SATURDAY, your conscious mind doesn’t believe it, but your subconscious mind believes it to be so and drives you to the retailer by Saturday. If you always ask your potential customers to SEE US FIRST or VISIT US FIRST, more will do so and you’ll have the first crack at selling them a vehicle.
A variation to the dealership’s unique appraisal process that we’ve observed is the following:
“However, to get the highest trade value, I recommend that you see us first as we have a very unique appraisal process. We have a registered appraiser here that uses their resources to find the highest possible trade value for your vehicle.
While you’re here and with your permission, I’ll take some pictures of your vehicle so that my Sales Manager can load them onto LIVE online auctions that we are registered with in Canada and even the U.S. so we can guarantee you a top trade-in value. The process takes about 45 minutes so while you’re here, you can look at some of our outstanding vehicles we have to offer.”
Perhaps this is an option for you to consider.
Today’s internet savvy customers are demanding more transparency than ever before and dealerships providing more transparency are earning their customers’ trust and more business. Deciding how to deal with a trade-in value request should always be handled on a case-by-case situation.
