It was reported late last year that franchised dealers are doing a consistently poor job when it comes to selling service plans. Some one in five customers are being lost to independent garages.
Service plans are effective long-term retention tools, they encourage customers to come back to the showroom and maintain contact with the franchised dealership.
So why do so many slip through the net?
It’s certainly not a question of customer appetite. AutoBuzz data shows that when service plans are presented to customers in the order to handover section of the buying journey they are among the most popular in terms of engagement and conversion.
It’s not just down to a lack of motivation on the front line because there is also the ever-present challenge of time. Getting an order taken on a new or used car is one thing, but then to present all the different products and services that go with that purchase, is another job in itself.
Crucially though, this is typically in a scenario where the customer comes to the sales team with a request to purchase post-order or while they wait for their new car to arrive. Is the real blocker the fact that there’s really very little in it for the sales executive to be proactive at order point?
Retaining a customer across a three or four year term alongside some minor commission may not cut it for the sales team and this is a rift that is clearly starting to create a few headaches further up the hierarchy of automotive retailers.
It’s not just down to a lack of motivation on the front line because there is also the ever-present challenge of time. Getting an order taken on a new or used car is one thing, but then to present all the different products and services that go with that purchase, is another job in itself.
That will undoubtedly be the case for some of the more profitable and finically-lucrative products like GAP and paint protection. Is there more value for the sales executive to simply head back to the showroom door and let in the next ordering customer?
If none of the above are likely to change anytime soon, except for the desire to get more customers armed with a service plan by handover point, the only thing that can be done is to leverage extra time in the buying journey.
Traditionally the referee’s whistle blows at order point, but those dealer groups starting to move into extra time and engage the order to handover space might discover a new hunting ground for service plans and the like.
The customer has time to think rationally about parting with yet more cash, it has to be the toughest time to sell additional products at point of order when the customer has just made the second biggest buying decision in his or her life.
Leaving the upsell conversation for a few weeks or months even has proven to be a positive step.
If you’d like to find out more about the order to handover marketplace, get in touch with us today so we can show you how your dealer group can start to flip this anxious waiting time into an exciting market place without putting an extra pressure on the sales team.
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