Delivering a customized, flexible car-buying experience is key to getting more car buyers in your dealership pipeline and closing more deals. Consumers prefer a unique, personalized car-buying journey, and successful dealerships are adapting.
You don’t want to be left behind – both you and your consumers deserve better.
With VinSolutions, you get proprietary technology that incorporates exclusive Cox Automotive consumer insights that no partner in the industry can match. This allows you to know each shopper’s next move before they make it, allowing you to:
Guide each customer through a distinct buying journey
Streamline each interaction with flexible, integrated solutions
Find shoppers who are nine times more likely to buy*
Watch our new video to see how you can use VinSolutions to access unmatched data, improve your sales processes, and guide each person through a distinct buying journey.
*VinSolutions Connect Automotive Intelligence Data predictions for 30 days prior to purchase from September 2022 – March 2023
When you stitch together technology, you don’t get the complete consumer view nor the data you need to win in today’s market. You need a solution that enables you to create next-level consumer experiences and elevate profits with efficiencies across all departments. VinSolutions is part of a powerful set of solutions from Cox Automotive that helps sales, marketing, service, and operations at your dealership stay in sync. Here is a preview of some of the capabilities to make sure you win in today’s market.
Capitalize on Your Data
With proprietary technology that incorporates first-party Cox Automotive behavioral data from Autotrader, Kelley Blue Book, and Dealer.com, you can identify shoppers who are 15 times more likely to buy.* With VinSolutions, you’ll know each shopper’s next move before they make it — so you can guide each person through their personalized buying journey.
VinSolutions digital sales tools, including Connect CRM and Connect Automotive Intelligence, enable you to capitalize on your data and find in-market shoppers with real-time insights before they submit a lead. You can meet consumers where they are in their car-buying journey, accelerate the path to purchase, and improve the shopper experience.
Personalize Every Consumer Interaction
74% of consumers say that a personalized experience at dealership is important.** With actionable consumer insights from VinSolutions, including the make and model of interest, you can deliver a personalized experience to every shopper. This actionable consumer data gives you an in-depth understanding of your shoppers’ interests and intents, so you can personalize the sales process and accelerate the path to purchase.
Automotive Marketing Platform powered by VinSolutions, which integrates with Connect CRM, uses advanced data insights so you can send 1:1 marketing messages to engage shoppers better and deliver personalized marketing experiences at scale.
Streamline the Buying Process for Shoppers
In the end, isn’t it all about a streamlined, convenient, and flexible buying process for shoppers? Vinessa Virtual Assistant helps you respond to shopper questions 24/7 and capture after-hours internet leads. Vinessa can automate key sales tasks, including responding to consumers via text and email, setting appointments, and scheduling follow-up tasks. At the same time, salespeople can focus their energy on ready-to-buy shoppers.
Creating a connected, cohesive car-buying experience is essential, whether shoppers are finalizing the deal in-store, online, or some combination. But many shoppers are forced to restart their deal-making process every time they interact with the dealership. Connect Desking streamlines the buying process through integration with Cox Automotive Digital Retailing solution Accelerate My Deal, which brings online deal information directly into the CRM so you can always pick up where you left off.
*VinSolutions Connect Automotive Intelligence Data predictions for 30 days prior to purchase in Aug 2020–Feb 2021
**2019 VinSolutions Technology & Transformation of Retail Study
The keys to service department profitability are efficiency and a superior customer experience. You can achieve both when you unlock the power of your service teams. Xtime is the partner that boosts the efficiency of your technicians and advisors, while creating the service experience your customers demand and additional revenue for your dealership.
Dial up your service team to boost profits—to the tune of $123 more per repair order.
With the help of Xtime, you can build customer transparency and trust. Using innovative technology across the service experience—including online appointment booking, self-check-in, and online approvals and payment—you can:
Satisfy consumer demand for a convenient service experience
Boost revenue and shop efficiency
Maximize your service department potential
Watch this video to see how you can unlock the power of your service teams to maximize the opportunity of every RO and build a second-to-none service experience that can make you more money.
VIEW YOUR PERSONALIZED DEMO
Create a custom demo to see how Xtime helps you deliver the ultimate service experience for better retention, more dollars per RO, faster approvals, and higher profits.
Learn tips to overcome supply chain challenges with your service department when you download the Service Solutions for Inventory Challenges guide.
Inventory acquisition challenges are an industry-wide issue with a profound impact on profitability. And while some dealers are choosing to “wait out” the inventory shortage, others are succeeding now. Implement these five service strategies to overcome inventory obstacles and supply chain challenges at your dealership.
Strategy 1: Service Records—Use technology to look for acquisition opportunities, including past shopping behavior, expiring leases and frequency of repair visits.
Strategy 2: Trade-In Reminders—Make offers for repair-pone vehicles and use technology to give customers a chance to tell you they’re trade-in ready.
Strategy 3: Sales-to-Service Communication—Bring sales and service teams together to identify prospects and seek out wanted cars.
Strategy 4: Declined Services—Have a process in place for acquiring a vehicle when customers decline service recommendations.
Strategy 5: Dealership-Wide Plan—Ensure marketing, sales, and service are all in sync, connecting workflows across departments, to accomplish inventory acquisition goals.
With these five proven service strategies, you can outlast current supply chain challenges to keep profits high, even as inventory is low.
To learn more about these strategies and other tips for acquiring inventory, check out our guide, “Service Solutions for Inventory Challenges.”
Every dealership is dealing with inventory acquisition challenges. It’s an industry-wide issue that has had a profound impact on profitability. And while some dealers are choosing to “wait out” the inventory shortage, others are succeeding now. Implement these five sales strategies to overcome inventory obstacles and supply chain challenges at your dealership.
Strategy 1: Review Past Customers—Use your CRM to find acquisition opportunities based on past shopping behavior, frequency of repair visits, declined services, and more.
Strategy 2: Visit the Service Department—Send sales staff to the service department in search of sought-after cars and repair-weary customers.
Strategy 3: Mine Equity—Find customers with a favorable equity position in their current cars who may be more likely to become buyers with trade-in vehicles.
Strategy 4: Adjust Digital Retailing Responses—Communicate to digital retailing customers that you’re willing to pay top dollar for trade-ins, regardless of condition.
Strategy 5: Dealership-Wide Plan—Ensure marketing, sales, and service are all in sync, connecting workflows across departments, to accomplish inventory acquisition goals.
The current inventory shortage is a major challenge, and it’s not going away anytime soon. With these five proven sales strategies, you can outlast current supply chain challenges to keep profits high, even as inventory is low.
To learn more about these strategies and other tips for acquiring inventory, check out our guide, “Sales Solutions for Inventory Challenges.”
5 strategies to help your dealership overcome industry obstacles
5 sales strategies to keep profits high when inventory is low.
Inventory shortages are impacting every corner of the industry—no dealership is immune. Many are facing severe profitability problems without enough cars to sell, but some dealers are succeeding now.
By implementing a few sales strategies developed explicitly for lean inventory times, these dealers are finding creative ways to source inventory and stay profitable.
Our new guide, Sales Solutions for Inventory Challenges, will give you 5 strategies to overcome industry obstacles and thrive in this unique market. You’ll learn how to:
Source cars from past sales and service customers
Look for possible customers in your service department
Find customers with favorable equity positions
Accept more trade-in vehicles
Ready to face your challenges with data-driven sales solutions?
Your service department’s name says it all. Yes, you’re in the vehicle service industry, but you’re also in the customer service business, and your customers expect a streamlined, top-of-the-line service experience. Join Xtime Performance Manager Tiffani Stefanescu, with special guest Patti Tremonti, managing partner at MTN Automotive Training Systems, for a webinar all about improving the customer experience with Xtime. Topics include: making appointment scheduling seamless for customers, best practices for greeting service appointment customers, keeping the customer updated and satisfied while their vehicle is being worked on and effective follow-up steps to keep the customer coming back and increase retention.
By Heather Ellis, Dealer.com AVP of Dealer Marketing
The auto industry often talks about the idea of being “better” in the market, but in truth there still is a lot of work to do to before automotive can catch up with other verticals. Time and again, “better” is a marathon and not a sprint. It is a continual, ongoing drive to fix what is broken, an unrelenting desire to push and to optimize.
It’s not easy to unwind the nuances of automotive digital marketing, and no one-size-fits-all playbook exists to address the myriad challenges across all tiers of the marketplace. We are seeing an industry-wide common goal to create advertising programs that spend less and sell more, and ultimately move closer toward a trusted digital experience across the board.
To accomplish this, it is imperative for both OEMs and dealerships to have the best consumer data at their disposal, and arguably it is even more important to know what to do with it. By harnessing the right data into the right insights, OEMs and dealers can work more efficiently to eradicate overmarketing and instead target their advertising to go directly where there is demand.
Leading with first-party and audience data, maximized through strategic partnerships, results in improved connectivity that dives deeper and provides a crisper, clearer view of consumers to help automotive companies cut through the noise and propel the entire industry forward.
Advertising strategy is complex and the market is ever-changing. Traditional advertising is not as effective as it used to be, and infinite other channels are competing for consumer attention. Failing to utilize a data-driven, multichannel strategy, dealers decrease the leads they generate by an astounding 164%, according to the Dealer.com Advertising Product Summary.
The most successful dealers utilize a multichannel marketing strategy and approach auto advertising based on their unique goals. They can identify and target qualified audiences at the right time with the right message, to sell more cars profitably and deliver a superior dealership experience. At a time when inventory is tighter than ever, having an automated platform can help dealers instantly recommend the best match for their customers from current inventory without any manual input.
That real-time targeting can only be fueled by first-party data across different channels. The right advertising maximizes return on investment by connecting real-time data across channels, and increasing website traffic, quality visits, engagement, and conversions.
In this changing landscape of consumer demand, industry players will discover the solutions lie in working together toward a common goal to sell more cars and make more profits. To help get there, we should continually align the necessary jobs, prioritize them, and check them off one by one. We are going to have to adapt and change the way we do business to combat industry challenges using our best and brightest resources.
Once the industry understands that the best solutions focus on activating based on behaviors and audiences first, and then matching channels, tactics and messages to that secondly — that is when the auto industry will be firmly on its path to “better,” finally starting to catch up with other verticals slaying the marketing game.
There is an accelerated need in the auto industry for innovation and focus on the total consumer experience, a practice that is now commonplace in other industries — including first-visit personalization and first-party data application. OEMs and dealerships will celebrate success and collectively win when there is a common focus on the end consumer, and collective work to solve their problems.
Ultimately, we all want an experience that’s efficient, productive, and complete, so it’s imperative to find the right partner offering the advertising solutions that deliver that level of flexibility and transparency.
A version of this article originally appeared in Auto Remarketing.
By Noah Lee, Director of Sales Engineering for Dealer.com
Used-vehicle inventory levels are at the lowest point in almost nine years. Twenty years from now, economists will not have much difficulty explaining what happened. A confluence of factors, starting with the semiconductor shortage and pandemic-induced consumer behavior changes, upended supply and demand.
With fleet and rental car providers scrambling to regrow fleets, and consumers leasing less because of rising costs associated with supply constraints, reliable channels for used vehicles have dried up. Based on current forecasts, it doesn’t appear 2022 will offer much of a respite.
The market conditions that restrained the used-car market show no signs of reversing soon, with U.S. new-car production reduced by 3.4 million units in 2021. During this period of lean inventory, dealers have looked beyond traditional methods for acquiring inventory, in many ways transforming the fundamentals of auto retailing.
To withstand the used-car shortage expected in 2022, dealers must consider sourcing vehicles outside of the traditional box and through channels beyond billboard and TV advertising.
Service Bay as an Inventory Source
For many consumers, dealerships are points of service. And with used cars appreciating in value during 2021, dealerships should expect that most customers will elect for repairs, as fixing a used car likely is more economical than trading it in for a new one.
Nevertheless, dealerships cannot discount the service bay as an opportunity for inventory. Dealers should be identifying weary customers who may not be ready to take on a large repair bill. With appointment management platforms, used-car managers can easily track upcoming service appointments, proactively looking for vehicle owners who are likely to trade or sell their cars. They also can tailor their search to target customers with high-demand used cars to maximize inventory. This type of technology helps find the needle—a.k.a., your inventory—in the haystack much faster.
The rise of ecommerce in the auto industry has led many to question the role of physical dealerships. However, their relevance remains clear. There always will be a segment of the population who wants to test-drive a car before making a purchase, and dealerships are still a “go-to” when it comes to repairs.
By servicing cars already owned by consumers, dealerships have a whole ledger of used vehicles that could serve as potential inventory in 2022. Used-car managers must be proactive and precise to take advantage of this valuable data.
Customers as Sellers
During times of economic uncertainty, there is an urge for dealerships to cut advertising. But when dealers are competing with each other and consumers at the same time for used cars, they run the risk of empty lots.
If used-car managers hope to fill lots, they must consider “We’ll Buy Your Vehicle” auto advertising, leveraging the dealer’s website to promote the purchase of used vehicles. With modern platforms, dealers can brand and proactively market their car-buying processes using banners and website landing pages.
Data is King
Many dealers are sitting on troves of valuable customer data that can optimize their automotive digital marketing. Data-driven dealerships can establish campaigns to source inventory from customers who have high interest rates, substantial equity, or a history of frequent repair. Though few and far between, off-lease vehicles also remain attractive and can help boost dealership inventories.
With the right data points, dealerships can create personalized content that informs consumers about selling their current car to the dealer quickly and without friction.
Undoubtedly, dealerships are facing precarious times. To succeed, they must be savvy to the habits and needs of their buyers while remaining the trusted, go-to resource for existing customers who are in a prime position to sell their cars. Ultimately, the goal is to help used-car buyers understand that they have options, and there is no need to settle when it comes to making a purchase.
Now is the time for dealerships to leverage the latest tactics, tools and tech to help expand their inventory with more options, enhance the used-car buying journey, and help buyers forget all about the inventory shortage—because they got a fair deal and the car they wanted.
A version of this article originally appeared in CBT News.
When was the last time you took a close look at your CRM?
As priorities in the auto retail industry and within your dealership change, the way you use the CRM and other sales tools at your dealership should also change.
But there can be a lot of factors to consider when examining a tool as complex as a CRM and figuring out exactly what to do can be a monumental task.
In this webinar, Mark Vickery, Senior Director of Performance Management for Cox Automotive, will share actionable tips for evaluating your CRM, including key questions to ask and strategies for spotting gaps.
Watch the webinar for tips on reevaluating your sales tools.
