Supagard’s Craig Hepworth set the scene perfectly for this article at AM Live 2024, when he said that add-on products will have to play a “bigger part” if automotive retail businesses are to deliver more profit from less cars sold for the next few years.
He actually went on to say that to not offer a customer a product like paint protection, warranty or a lifestyle accessory is “treating them unfairly”.
Understandably as we near the end of 2024, retail automotive will have one eye on managing performance in what can be a tricky retailing month, as well as having the other on planning and strategy for 2025.
There have been some common themes coming from the industry of late, notably that driving profit remains challenging amid, most recently, scrutiny on finance commission, but earlier in the year the removal of Gap Insurance as an add-on sale in its traditional form.
This will of course carry us into the new year as well, but there are a number of ‘controllables’ that can make a significant difference to business performance.
Do we present 100% of products and services to 100% of our customers 100% of the time?
This was a question that one of our customers put to us before we integrated AutoBuzz to their DMS to support the sale of additional products and services.
The answer, unsurprisingly, was ‘no’. With the best will in the world it will always be hard for sales teams to execute this, though it’s pretty easy to work out the impact that it would have on business performance if they did.
It’s a powerful question because it’s something that can be controlled in a way that many other important sales factors simply cannot. If, as this particular business pointed out, we don’t present every product to every customer, we’re simply not maximising the impact that we could have.
Trust in the sales team?
Too often in automotive retail the selling of profitable add-on products and services like accessories, warranties, insurance, protection products and EV wall chargers is left to the discretion of the sales executive during the order process. There’s no real clarity on how many actually present these products because most of the time the sales team are so focused on getting the car order confirmed.
With AutoBuzz, from the moment a car is ordered, a digital WelcomeHub is created packed full of information on value-add products and useful details on the ordered car and the handover process.
Retail groups spend time, effort and money on getting the best suite of add-on products for customers but then do not maximise the sale. Rather than looking at how they are sold, perhaps a more pertinent question is, ‘are they being sold at all?’.
So, are you sure that 100% of value-add products are presented to 100% of customers 100% of the time? If not, set up a demo with AutoBuzz as we might just be able to close up that gap and support an improved performance in 2025.
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