10 Small Ways You Can Increase Your Car Dealership’s Sales

Anyone in the car business knows that it’s ultra-competitive and dependent on a lot of external factors, such as seasonality, interest rates, and the labor market. However, that doesn’t stop the most successful car dealerships from meeting and even exceeding their sales goals, even in the most challenging conditions.

How do they do this? There’s more to it than simply running more commercials and advertisements. This blog post discusses several ways that your car dealership can increase its sales and boost its overall results.

1. Expand Your Availability

Today’s car buyers are probably up in the middle of the night scanning listings on your website, making comparisons, and reading reviews. If your dealership has limited hours, this is going to severely impact your business. While this can be tough for smaller dealerships to manage, you’ll certainly make more money if you can expand your availability. The more hours you can have someone on hand to show vehicles in person, the better. 

2. Price Vehicles Competitively

Again, many customers are going to know about pricing better than your own salespeople. They might walk onto your lot with printouts of comparable vehicles all over town. If your inventory is overpriced, some prospective customers may not even bother to contact you at all. By pricing your vehicles competitively from the start, you will earn the respect of prospects and get more traffic. 

3. Choose Inventory Wisely

While pricing is important, your inventory is just as essential. Take note of which cars are flying off the lot and which ones are sticking around for 60 days or longer. You will be much more profitable if your dealership is stocking popular brands, models, and vehicles with the most desirable colors and features. 

4. Create a Winning Team

You’ll never get the results you want and need if you don’t have the right people on your team. This starts at the top with your leadership and flows all the way through to the person answering the phone and greeting people as they walk through the door. 

You’ll want to specifically build your sales team with people who are self-motivated and customer-oriented. Sales reps must have strong emotional intelligence and should be accountable for personal and company-wide results. 

5. Streamline Your Sales Process

Beyond getting the right people on your team, you need to be able to define your sales process in concise and clear terms so that it is repeatable. According to McKinsey, organizations with a focused and defined pre-sales process have “win rates” of more than 40%. 

If you want to give your sales team the best chance for success, establish an effective pre-sales and sales process. Thoroughly vet prospects to determine their intentions and ability to purchase. This will free up time for your best salespeople to dedicate resources to the most qualified leads. 

6. Provide Valuable Customer Perks

Today’s consumers make buying decisions based on more than just price. Convenience and value play a significant role as well. One of the best ways to increase car sales at your dealership is to offer some unique customer perks, including the following.

• Free oil changes for the first two years
• Discounts on wear and tear items like tires, brakes, or wiper blades
• Various reconditioning services
• Loaner vehicles when the vehicle is being serviced

7. Improve Your Communication Skills 

Another way to boost your overall results is to improve your dealership’s communication skills. One pet peeve of many auto consumers is a lack of communication or poor communication with their dealership. Customers are not happy when they don’t get prompt answers to their questions, have unreturned phone calls or emails, or receive inaccurate information. 

Making customer communication an essential foundation of your dealership’s business can lead to increased sales, more referrals, and more repeat sales. Encourage your team to promptly respond to phone calls, texts, and emails. Additionally, roleplay with sales associates to emphasize problem-solving instead of traditional pushy sales tactics. 

8. Host Public Events

When someone gets ready to buy a car, they might have some brand names and local dealerships already floating around in their head. You may have the best dealership in town, but you can’t sell to anyone if they don’t know you exist. One way you can become the business they immediately think of when they’re ready to buy is by becoming a fixture in your community. 

Start hosting and sponsoring local events. Sure it will cost some money upfront, but it will get your business’s name and some of your employees in front of potential customers. The more people that remember your brand name, the more foot traffic your dealership will receive. 

9. Offer Loyalty or Incentive Programs

People like to know that a company values their repeat business and recommendations. You can improve your results by offering loyalty and incentive programs to your customers. Essentially, you can provide a better deal or various prizes (free oil changes, etc.) to repeat customers and those who refer others to your dealership. 

10. Sell Valuable Service and Limited Warranty Programs

You can only discount your vehicles so much and still make enough money to sustain your dealership. You’re running a business, after all.

Your customers want not only a good deal but also peace of mind that they can afford to weather any storm. In fact, studies show that most Americans can’t afford to shoulder a $1,000 emergency expense. 

Your dealership can provide peace of mind and improve its overall results by offering valuable service and limited warranty programs to customers. The cost of these contracts can be built into their financing, making them incredibly affordable. When a covered service is needed, the customer will be able to use the program instead of tapping into their savings. 

Titan Warranty Administration specializes in creating and administering customized “Why Buy Here” limited warranty and full spectrum service contract programs for automobiles. We serve the franchised auto dealer, independent auto dealer, and RV dealer markets with partners nationwide. 

Unlike other industry programs, Titan’s products are fully customizable and flexible, offering the best value and service to your customers. Call (833) 317-3720 or email hello@titanwarrantyadministration.com to learn more about how adding these options can increase your car dealership’s sales!