A successful dealer once told me that people want to buy from people. We can see this for ourselves because the blooming ecommerce retailers haven’t caused near the disruption we expected. Yet still we continue to see a decline in foot traffic, lead submissions, and conversions. So what’s really going on here, and how do we make it better?
The problem is that we are taking our people out of the sales experience. Somewhere in the race for technological efficiency we have forgotten that a personal shopping experience means providing personal interactions.
It starts with our language. I encourage everyone to sit down with your CRM and read your scheduled email templates out loud- one after another like a conversation. Is the language natural? Establish a scoring system and take away points when you find phrases like “the information you need to make the right purchase decision” or “our current sale is generating a lot of excitement” or “we look forward to earning your business”. Real people- at least in my experience- do not talk to each other like that.
But our language isn’t the only reason outgoing templates are generally ineffective. Templates are another reason outgoing templates are generally ineffective. Continuity and time management are the most common motivators for implementing a template contact schedule, so let’s explore:
Salespeople and BDRs should be perfectly comfortable improvising dialogue in a natural conversation with a potential buyer. That is exactly the role requirement. Do you need a dialogue outline for all of your natural conversations? Do you need keypoints and leading questions queued up when talking with your friends or neighbors? If we are being natural everytime, continuity will be unavoidable. We only start repeating or stumbling over ourselves when our goal is to execute stale scripts like, “There can be a lot of information to consider.”
On a template system, most outgoing emails aren’t previewed. The template loads, the salesperson/BDR does a quick keyword glance, maybe double checks their signature, then off it goes. But what happens when the form submission was partially incomplete and some of the template autofill fields don’t populate any information? What if there’s an inventory link issue and the pre-loaded e-brochure doesn’t match the vehicle of interest? What if the assigned BDR’s email address is listed as the sender but the email signature identifies the assigned salesperson? These user experience (UX) disruptions occur about 30% of the time- more than 1 in 4 emails you send out are doomed to fail because they make your dealership look disconnected and disorganized.
To avoid these issues we would have to invest time previewing our template system. Every pre-loaded email would have to be thoroughly checked for accurate “automated personalization”. But doesn’t that defeat the purpose of having a convenient template system implemented? Wouldn’t it be easier to just build a natural email every time? There are professional BDC trainers who teach that it’s good practice to put intentional spelling or grammatical errors into templates to convince customers they’re getting a human experience. Wouldn’t it be best for everyone if we just provided an imperfect human experience organically? Isn’t that exactly what we mean by “customers are seeking a personal shopping experience”?
I have witnessed technologically reluctant salespeople turn exponentially higher-than-national-average conversions just because their customers knew they were talking to a real person.
People want to buy from people.
Suppose an employee has 100 CRM tasks for the day. It takes about 10 seconds to load a template, quick scan it, and send it off. At this rate, any salesperson or BDR could complete an entire 8-12 hour day’s worth of direct customer correspondence in less than 20 minutes. Suppose it takes 30 seconds to type out, “Hi this is [John] at [AB dealership] how can I help you?” Industry data (lacking as it is) suggests anywhere from a 20-50% increase in conversions when generic templates are replaced with that kind of personal correspondence. Even at 30 seconds per task, we are still looking at less than 1 hour of work each day, and now we’re talking about a 20-50% increase in sales opportunities.
So does time management mean saving time, or does it mean making the best use of our time?
As a salesperson I was taught that we want to create as many customer interactions as possible. But traffic doesn’t just pass through our lot at creeper speeds with the windows rolled up all day long. Traffic is online now, so we need to create real personal interactions online just like we used to do on the lot. Automated sales experience tools don’t always help us accomplish this goal. AI-driven chat bots cannibalizing our customer conversations don’t always promote a positive brand image. Canned correspondence and email templates don’t always align with the user experience.
This also applies to social media content, website design, OTT media… but here we are using non-human text arrangers to generate effective social interactions without the ability to infer emotional or even cultural/social context. If we’re really “eager to earn [their] business” then we should probably start by actually talking to them directly.
People want to buy from people, so why are we replacing people with bots and scripts at every turn?
In automotive, we seem to think of a personal shopping experience as buying the same item for everyone, but monogrammed. In reality, we need to be looking for a unique item for each person. Some shoppers want a direct, dry, efficient experience. Some people will need support for the full length (an average of 45-60 days) of their shopping process. Some shoppers will want you to be professional, while others will prefer a more intimate and casual experience.
Instead of paying third parties for tech and tools that remove us from this customer experience, let’s save some money and trust our own team to do their job. Conversions will increase, the dealer brand will gain trust and loyalty, reviews and referrals and service retention will all rise because your audience will once again be directly and personally connected to your dealership.
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