10 Strategies to Skyrocket Your Dealership Sales

Dealerships are constantly striving to outpace one another, which necessitates an evolving approach to automotive sales in response to the changing needs of customers. In recent years, significant transformations in sales strategies have emerged, particularly with the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and data-driven approaches. These advancements empower dealerships to better understand customer preferences and behaviors, ultimately enhancing the sales process.

As the industry continues to develop, it’s crucial for salespeople to stay ahead. Let’s explore 10 effective strategies designed to help automotive sales professionals close more deals and improve customer interactions, including understanding the customer’s buying journey, mastering the art of follow-ups, and enhancing in-store experiences.

1. Understand Your Customer’s Buying Journey

Every car buyer follows a unique path and each step along that journey provides valuable insights that you can leverage to create highly personalized customer experiences. Whether a buyer has been researching online for months, opened all your emails but only clicked on one, or scheduled an appointment but never showed, each of these actions reveals something significant about their preferences and the stage they’re at in the car buying process.

The first step in gaining a comprehensive understanding of each individual customer journey is to utilize a Customer Data Platform (CDP). The identity resolution technology typically used within a proper CDP works to consolidate a dealer’s disparate customer data from various sources to identify and merge duplicate profiles into a single entity, offering a cohesive 360-degree view. This unified view encompasses all relevant information about the individual, presenting a clear narrative of the shopper’s history. Beyond just the actions directly linked to a purchase—like sales history or visits to the dealership—you also gain insights into their engagement with marketing communications and other interactions with your dealership, which can reveal their true interests.

With these deep insights into a customer’s relationship with your dealership, you are perfectly positioned to personalize every future interaction. This could involve sending highly targeted emails and texts about vehicles they’ve already viewed on your website, or presenting them with financing options that resonate with them based on the ads they’ve clicked. By tailoring your approach, you can enhance the customer experience and drive sales more effectively.

2. Leverage AI to Identify High-Intent Shoppers

While it may seem that the simplest approach to prioritizing leads involves focusing on the latest shoppers to fill out a form or those who recently responded to an email, this method doesn’t necessarily highlight the biggest opportunities lurking within your first-party data. By leveraging AI to identify your highest intent shoppers, you can significantly reduce the time your dealership staff spends manually building, downloading, and scrolling through lists. More importantly, AI can pinpoint opportunities from within your data that might easily go unnoticed by the human eye.

Traditionally, auto dealerships have relied on ‘ups’ to meet their sales targets, buyers who actively signal their interest in purchasing a new vehicle by calling, visiting the lot, or submitting an online form. AI, however, can identify customers who are shopping behind the scenes but have not declared themselves as active shoppers by submitting a lead. For instance, someone may have entered your CRM as a lead three years ago but never completed a purchase. AI can identify based on their recent activities—such as spending considerable time on your website or opening recent emails—that they are back in the market and serious about buying. Without a new lead form, a member of your team may struggle to locate this individual among thousands of shoppers in your CRM, whereas AI can do this easily by sorting and analyzing millions of data points in a short time. Furthermore, AI can analyze data from your CDP to determine which vehicles the shopper may be most interested in, and even suggest the best wording for a phone call that aligns with their interests to increase the likelihood of a sale.

By fully harnessing the capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI), you not only enhance sales efficiency—making tasks significantly faster than manual efforts—but also free up your sales team to focus on important interactions that require a human touch, such as phone calls and face-to-face meetings.

3. Build Rapport and Trust Early

It’s no secret that customers are more likely to buy from people they trust. Whether they and their family have been purchasing cars from your dealership for decades or you are at the start of what you hope will be a long-term relationship, building and maintaining rapport and trust is essential.

Every interaction—whether online, over the phone, or in person—plays a critical role in establishing a lasting relationship with your dealership’s customers. Given that buying a car is one of the most significant financial decisions many people will ever make, they need to feel confident in your team, your dealership, and your words. Here are a few approaches to fostering trust through every action you take:

• Be knowledgeable: Customers come to you looking for expertise. Ensure they feel confident in your advice and the products you offer.
• Be transparent: Honesty about what you can provide and what is not included builds trust. A seemingly good deal that includes hidden traps or deceptive language in the contract does not contribute positively to the customer experience.
• Avoid pushy tactics: The stereotype of the aggressive car salesperson is (hopefully) a thing of the past. When customers feel they have the time they need to make the best decision for themselves, they are more likely to feel good about buying from you, and will remember that positive experience when it’s time for their next purchase.

Remember, your CRM and CDP exist for a reason. They house valuable customer data and your notes, allowing you to build a personalized buying experience for every shopper. Even better, when the customer returns in a few years to buy another car, your team won’t have to start from scratch; the insights you’ve gathered over the course of the relationship can help foster long-term loyalty.

4. Master the Art of the Follow-Up

If you find that your sales often require just one meeting or conversation, consider yourself among the fortunate few. For most, potential customers need more time and interaction before committing to a significant purchase. Your role is to ensure that the follow-up experience feels personalized, relevant, and enjoyable. Otherwise, why should customers choose your dealership over a competitor?

Fortunately, implementing AI-powered automation tools can make this process much easier. Automation tools can send timely reminders and offers via emails or text message to shoppers, helping to keep your dealership top-of-mind as they contemplate their decision. The advantage of AI in communication is its ability to analyze your first-party data, ideally through a unifying platform like a Customer Data Platform (CDP), for actions taken by shoppers – both recently and in the past. This allows you to send the most relevant and personalized content at that moment. For example, if a customer initially showed interest in one model but has since browsed another on your website, AI can adjust your communication to include both models, potentially highlighting offers that would resonate with them.

Automated communication isn’t limited to one-time messages. With AI technology well-integrated within your CDP, you can create complete follow-up sequences that trigger different paths for shoppers based on their interactions—all without any manual effort.

This doesn’t mean you should avoid human interactions altogether; this simply allows you to dedicate more time to meaningful conversations with customers instead of drafting and scheduling emails—something AI can accomplish in mere seconds. 

5. Optimize Your Dealership’s Digital Presence

With 95% of car buyers using online research as part of their decision-making process, a subpar online presence could mean losing the market. To ensure your dealership’s website and digital presence effectively represent your brand, consider the following:

• Make your website mobile-friendly. Many users will access your site from their phones, so it’s crucial that the experience is seamless across devices. 
• Use a reliable server to guarantee your website is always accessible and loads quickly. Slow websites can drive potential customers away.
• Integrate an AI-powered chatbot on your website to provide 24/7 responses to customer queries. This can enhance the customer experience and keep potential buyers engaged, even outside of business hours.
• Manage social media pages on the channels most popular with your target audience. Regularly sharing engaging content can draw in potential customers and build community.
• Offer non-sales knowledge online, such as car maintenance tips and advice. Positioning your dealership as a valuable resource can positively influence potential buyers.
• Keep your website updated and fresh. Regularly changing content can improve SEO and keep returning visitors interested.
• Run Google and Facebook ads to bring in more leads, as well as keep you top of mind with known shoppers. 

6. Use Data to Personalize Your Pitch

A one-size-fits-all approach simply doesn’t cut it in today’s diverse market. Every dealership has a target audience, but the demographics of shoppers can vary significantly. Factors such as financial status, interests in specific vehicles, family dynamics, and preferences for interaction all play a crucial role in shaping the customer experience.

Leverage the insights within your CDP can help you tailor your interactions and pitches to each individual. With the data at your fingertips, you can analyze each shopper’s browsing history, trade-in preferences, vehicle interests, and financing eligibility. This enables you to customize every touchpoint, ensuring that the experience meets the unique needs of each customer.

Moreover, consider harnessing AI to automate and enhance this personalization. AI can continuously analyze data and dynamically recommend the most appealing incentives or vehicle models for each shopper. 

7. Create a Sense of Urgency

Everybody loves a good deal, and by implementing time-sensitive promotions, you can significantly accelerate the decision-making process for car buyers. Creating urgency not only enhances the appeal of your dealership’s offerings but also encourages potential customers to act faster. Here are several strategies to evoke that sense of urgency:

• Limited-Time Promotions: Offer special deals that are available for a short period. Highlighting that a promotion is valid only for a certain period of time can motivate buyers to make quicker decisions.
• Exclusive Test-Drive Opportunities: Create exclusive events where customers can test-drive select vehicles for a limited time. Emphasizing that these opportunities are rare can entice customers to try the vehicles, leading to potential sales.
• Indicate Inventory Scarcity: Use messaging that emphasizes the limited availability of certain models or deals. Phrases like “only a few left in stock” or “while supplies last” can create a sense of urgency and prompt customers to act quickly.
• Seasonal Offers: Align your promotions with holidays or seasonal events. Think about crafting unique offers for major holidays like Labor Day, Christmas, or local events. Not only does this help in scheduling your promotions, but it also allows for thematic marketing efforts that resonate with customers.
• Monthly Featured Offers: Consider having a rotating focus on different vehicle offers each month. This strategy keeps your inventory fresh in the eyes of potential buyers and encourages them to take advantage of one-time deals they might miss if they wait too long.

By employing these tactics, not only will you boost the urgency of your offers, but you’ll also enhance the overall customer experience. Shoppers will feel they’re getting an exceptional deal, one that’s not typically available, leading to increased engagement and ultimately, higher sales. Embracing exclusive opportunities or seasonal offers can also provide the marketing team with specific content around which to build campaigns, making your dealership’s promotional efforts fresh and more impactful.

8. Cross-Sell and Upsell

Your dealership has far more to offer shoppers than just the vehicle itself. The additional products and services not only enhance your revenue and customer lifetime value but also enrich your customers’ overall car ownership experience. It’s mutually beneficial for you to effectively cross-sell and upsell relevant items. 

Consider the unique interests of each customer when suggesting car accessories—whether it’s a young professional buying their first car or a parent of four, different lifestyles demand different products. Extended warranties can appeal to a wide range of demographics, so be sure to mention them in all final sales conversations. Service packages are also relevant to many buyers; planning ahead for maintenance can alleviate some of the mental load for customers. 

Upselling unrelated products or services may deter customers from engaging with more relevant options, so consider leveraging AI technology to analyze each shopper’s history and behavior, allowing you to identify upsell opportunities that are most likely to resonate.

9. Enhance In-Store Experiences with AI Insights

While much of the car research process has moved online, the in-store experience remains crucial for building lasting relationships with shoppers. Their face-to-face interactions—whether positive or negative—with you and your dealership will stick in their memory, impacting not only the current sale but also influencing future sales and customer lifetime value, potentially extending to their network.

When a shopper enters your dealership, always strive to greet them by name, reference past visits or interactions, and utilize your existing customer data to deliver data-driven recommendations. This may be more challenging during spontaneous visits, but if shoppers notify you in advance or schedule appointments, it should only take a few minutes in the CDP to gather the necessary information for a personalized experience.

10. Measure, Analyze, and Improve

Without a solid understanding of  the results  of your existing sales efforts, you won’t fully grasp what’s working, what isn’t, and what might need adjusting. Tracking KPIs, such as test-drive-to-sale ratios, response times, and lead conversion rates, is essential to improving sales at your dealership.

Whether you’re utilizing your Customer Data Platform, collaborating with an analytical expert at your dealership, or using another tool, you shouldn’t have to manage this process manually—nor should you. With the right AI tools, you can automate this tracking and analysis, ensuring that the specific results and analyses you need are delivered directly to your inbox at your desired frequency. Alternatively, you can access your CDP any time to find this data ready and waiting for your review.

The Power is in Your Willingness to Adapt 

The automotive market is evolving rapidly, and staying competitive requires dealerships to adapt their sales approaches accordingly. By integrating a deep understanding of customer behaviors and preferences with advanced AI-powered tools, salespeople can create personalized experiences that resonate with potential buyers. This combination of personal skills and innovative technology not only streamlines the sales process but also fosters stronger relationships with customers, ultimately leading to increased sales and customer loyalty.

It’s now time to put your insights into action. With innovative, data-driven, and AI-powered solutions from Fullpath, you can leverage their CDP and connected tools to streamline your sales processes and elevate your customer engagement. Ready to supercharge your dealership’s sales? Schedule a demo with Fullpath today to see AI-driven sales strategies in action.