How many times have you driven by a car dealership to find salespeople huddled or lined up by the showroom door like vultures waiting to pounce on the next customer?

In today’s market, spending has significantly decreased, and dealerships must be more proactive in creating a maximized sales environment and managing sales activity if they want to sell more cars and generate profit.

On top of this current problem affecting auto sales, in-store traffic is at an all time low, as many that need to purchase a vehicle do the majority of their research and kicking of the tires online to determine what they want and can afford, and then call the dealership, rather than browse the showroom like the good old days.

The advent of the internet has changed how people shop for cars. Isn’t it time your sales training changed to adapt to get current with the times?

Sales training in the auto industry typically used to just be for the auto sales team. The managers would send their crew to a seminar where they would learn about the latest and greatest tactics and techniques in showroom behavior. The salespeople would return to their dealerships all pumped up and ready to implement what they just learned.  Then two weeks later, it is back to business as usual.

Why This Does Not Work

Bottom Line: You need effective automotive sales management to have effective salespeople.  Managers need automotive training as well as the auto sales staff.

Most sales managers became sales managers because they had high success as a salesperson. That does not necessarily make them good at managing a staff, in the same way that the best player may not make the best coach.

Think of the auto sales manager as sales coach.  A coach oversees performance and creates strategies based on a player’s ability to execute. The sales manager should oversee his or her staff in the same manner and get trained on how to manage effectively to increase automotive sales.

Automotive management training ensures that the managers can comprehensively supervise the showroom and track the individual progress of his or her staff. They will train with the sales staff and should then learn how to set up an in-house continual training regimen.

Salespeople may indeed learn valuable skills from seminars, but the main difference between training and learning is that training is the repeated application of learned skills. There is not a lot of opportunity for salespeople to repeatedly apply what they learn in the period of a single day, or even a week. Training is something you do, not something you did.

Automotive BDC and Telephone Training

Car dealers need to know how to handle inbound sales calls and talk potential customers into the showroom instead of out. While many salespeople do not want to talk about price, customers will inevitably bring it up, so it is crucial to be prepared and know how to handle the issue of price when it comes up.

Furthermore, auto dealerships, and especially the sales staff, need to be informed about current programs. For example, the last hot topic of the auto industry was Cash for Clunkers. Salespeople should know, first off, whether their dealership is participating in a certain program. Then, they should know the exact requirements of the program, and what kind of rebates or incentives their dealership is offering. Once they are sufficiently educated, they need to practice explaining the ins and outs of the program, so that by the time they have a customer on the line or in the showroom, it feels like second nature to them.

This is where telephone sales training comes into play. Although many auto salespeople feel at home in the showroom, they are ill at ease when it comes to handling the phones. There is great debate about the pros and cons of the automotive BDC or business development center. For many dealerships, the BDC staff is made up of telemarketers. On one hand, they have experience with handling inbound and outbound calls. On the other hand, they may know very little about the automotive industry. What if you could combine your auto sales staff with your BDC? With telephone sales training, you can.

With effective telephone training, the auto sales staff will not only be able to handle inbound calls, but also follow up with unsold prospects, and call back sold customers to generate repeaters and referrals. Although there are many good training programs out there, one of the best, in my opinion, is FirePhone, which is part of Proactive Training Solution’s ADAPT VT virtual training program.

One of the main elements of FirePhone is the virtual role-play, which allows salespeople to get ample practice with virtual callers before moving on to real callers. FirePhone also provides scripts for almost any situation, so that the sales staff always knows what to say. Whether your dealership uses FirePhone or another program, having a sales staff that is skilled on the phone will allow you to cut costs and save money that would otherwise be spent on an outside BDC.

In Summary

An ongoing automotive sales training program that incorporates both the showroom and the phone lines is what will keep your dealership efficient and productive during these tough economic times. Through much practice and sound management coaching, the auto sales staff will become more at ease with various situations, have more confidence with the potential customer, and close more sales transactions.

Buying new cars or vehicles has turned to be an easy task compared to previous market situation as searching for right dealers is no more a hard task. A choice of smart dealer is online marketing. An auto dealing website can solve all your queries and doubts within a seconds plus can provide you with enormous benefits with its sound features and services. This online service is not limited to new vehicles only; it can also be selected for used car and vehicles.

An auto dealers site, offers a varied options of selecting the best vehicle of your choice determining the cost and budget at same time. Such dealership websites helps to save your time with automotive benefits like managing your inventories, hosting your site, attractive templates, featuring the best Car of the week and managing your leads.

Such auto dealer sites helps to generate traffic to the websites with focused keywords and advanced tools boosting up leads with running market. Inventories connect you with latest trends and models available with exact pricing policies. A dealership site maintains your vehicle image gallery where you can upload as many photos for your choice. This helps customers to compare type, color, models, features, patterns, prices of particular vehicle from one platform.

A dealership site helps you to boost up your business online with its services and constant support. Emails, chats and communicating via junctions keep dealers and customers constantly in touch through auto sites. Thus the importance of car dealing websites and dealers is increasing at greater extent.

Auto dealers are benefited at both ends; they get services of auto sites at one hand and manage eBay listings on other hand focusing the latest trend of auto market.

For more information visit AutoDealersPoint.com now!

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Website traffic is an important aspect of Internet marketing for automotive dealers. Tracking website traffic is helpful in lead generation, promotion, and in increasing sales. Measuring the website traffic gives insights in formulating Internet marketing techniques for automotive dealer. It gives valuable inputs on website visitors activity. These inputs help automotive dealers incorporate necessary changes in their marketing campaigns. Also, it enables dealers to decide which marketing technique gives optimum returns on investment.

Helps In Better Optimization of Website
Tracking website traffic through various web analytics programs helps the automotive dealers to know what appeals to their customers on the website. The keywords which the customer used to reach the website can be effectively used by dealer in PPC campaigns for effective website optimization. The automotive dealer can know about which car is searched by the customer for maximum times and in which section the customer is more interested. Thereby, the dealer can expand its inventory list and increase lead conversion rates. Based on the customers actions, the dealer can improve the landing page and website content with specific keywords etc. The navigation of the website can be simplified for better usability of customers. All these aspects help in optimizing the website and increasing its search engine ranking.

Better Internet Marketing Plan
Website traffic tracking equips automotive dealer with valuable real-time data about the Internet marketing plan adopted to generate traffic to website. Based on the tracking information, the dealers can exactly know about the efficiency of Internet marketing plan in increasing website traffic, lead generation, and specifics like how much cars were finally sold. Tracking helps dealers in identifying suitable keywords for the website and how the marketing campaign needs to be performed. Thus, tracking helps to improve Internet marketing strategy to better target visitors that can turn into potential customers.

Monitor the Users and Understand the State Of Customer Base
Tracking website traffic helps automotive dealers to monitor user movements through the website. Also, tracking provides information on what keywords were used by visitor to reach the dealer’s website. Other key information like time period for which the visitor stayed, from where the visitors came like referrals and search engines, bounce rate etc. is obtained. Monitoring the users provides with useful data that helps in better optimization of website. Besides monitoring the user or visitors activities, tracking also provides with information differentiating between real customer and just visitors. Hence, tracking the customer activity gives crucial data about their preferences, choices, interests etc and helps to retain the potential customer base. Thus, website traffic tracking helps to adjust to changing trends and better understand the customer base.

Website traffic tracking is an essential part of automotive internet marketing. The tracking information can be effectively used by automotive dealers to better target its customers and also to consolidate its existing customer base.

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If the system deployed is not user intuitive enough, it will most likely require training to use the system properly. Now if the training is missed, or the user didn’t retain the training course, he or she can enter bad data, or worse yet, no data at all into the CRM, which will defeat all the intended purposes. Just remember the next time you meet with your automotive CRM or DMS system vendor, take a look at the user interface, does it make sense to be where it is? Is the system clearly labeled? Can a high school student figure it out without any training? Unnecessary complexity is not always a good thing, it often create more problems than it solves. So don’t get caught up with the tech savvy acronyms. Make sure the system is secure, well designed and developed, above all users friendly!

So the next time you are putting your CRM solution to the test, make sure you are getting what you are paying for. I hope this article can help you make some more informative decisions when it comes to your next automotive CRM solution. This article is brought to you by Dealer Elite CRM, to visit us online please visit http://www.dealerelites.ca

After been in the automotive industry for the past 8 years I have encountered many so called total CRM solution for your dealership. They usually consists of some poorly developed web site or portal where all of your transactions are based on the page refresh, and it is surprising even with these CRM solutions in place a dealership still relies on the old spread sheet to keep their inventory up to date. What that translates to me is inadequate system support where used car manager still feels the need to have their “holy bible” of used car inventory separately from their CRM system. And the CRM system is incapable of producing a real live inventory that can be accurately captured and delivered to the sales floor. If you are currently running on a system where you need to rely on external source to keep your inventories up to date then you are certainly using the wrong CRM software.

Many of today’s CRM solutions are proprietary technology where they refuse to integrate or work with other systems. For example does your CRM solution export your inventory with ease to Microsoft Excel if that is your preferred method of reproducing your inventory list? Can your currently CRM solution export your sales performance report to a spread sheet so it can be easily emailed to your superior? In another word when you finally settle on the right CRM solution for your dealership, make sure it is flexible and compatible with other existing technologies. Because after all your CRM solutions suppose to help you run your business more effectively not to create more technological obstacles in your path.

Thank you for reading this article it is brought to you by Dealer Elite CRM, for your affordable CRM and DMS solutions please visit us online at Automotive DMS system

A poorly deployed or developed DMS system can actually cost your dealership more money and time in comparsion to a well developed system. Don’t over complicate the simple process of selling a car. Focus your energy on selling cars not to have a seemly complicated system that is full of bugs, and not user friendly at all. If you have a system that can do what you are looking to do with just few simple clicks, don’t you think it is a lot more efficient to manage? When it comes to used car business the biggest challenge is to manage your inventory effectively, your DMS system should help you in this task to make your inventory organized and easy for access, not to create unnecessary obstacles to print, export and publish your inventory to sales staff. So the next time you hear the sales pitch for a CRM or DMS solution remember to ask these questions other than the cost.

This article is brought to you by Dealer Elite CRM your affordable automotive DMS and CRM solution for Canadian dealers. We are your complete web design, hosting an CRM solution all in one. For more details on our product or a video walk through of the system please visit us online at http://www.dealerelites.ca