What a sport has in common w/ dealership customer retention

Automotive Customer Retention: Lessons Learned from Watching Basketball

If you’re a basketball fan, then you’ve had plenty of exciting action to watch during the NBA playoffs – and, if you think about it, successful teams have certain facets in common: they have knowledge of other people involved, they create a solid plan involving the entire court – and then they are proactive. Dealerships that want to successfully retain customers need to sharpen the same skills.

Know Who Else is in the Game

On a sales floor, you need to know information about potential customers and Info Entrepreneur shares ten questions to which you ideally will have the answers. These include knowing what makes customers feel good about buying – is it getting the best value? Choosing a vehicle that presents the right image for their careers? Having cutting-edge technical features and accessories? The way you’d sell to the value-seeking person isn’t at all the way you’d sell to people in the other two categories – and, before you can make that call, you need to know the other person.

The time tested way to learn more about someone else: listening. To quote Alan Hall, entrepreneur and columnist for Forbes, “Individuals and families are looking to fulfill basic human needs with products and services that will improve their lives. Wise business executives listen to their customers.”

Create a Solid Court-wide Plan

Basketball is a fluid sport, with participants in constant motion. And, it’s not enough for a player to be aware of what just one other player is doing. They need, instead, to know the big picture. In business, data collection and analytics tools can help your dealership understand customer patterns – the big picture – and results can be surprising.

Using an example from another industry: UK retailer, Tesco will put beer as a value item for its Clubcard holders when they buy baby diapers. Seems strange, right? But, here’s the connection. New dads weren’t going out to the pub with their mates very often after their babies were born, so they were more likely to purchase beer to drink at home.

So, you’ll want to use big data for your dealership to determine what people are buying, when they’re buying it, how they’re paying for it and more, putting preconceived notions to the side. This leads us to our third point.

Be Proactive

In basketball, winning teams play the game their way, making the first moves. At your dealership, if you know car-buying patterns and trends, you can anticipate customer needs – and already have solutions waiting for them. Hall notes that Steve Jobs of Apple was a genius at this: Jobs not only knew the current needs and wants of people, but he also possessed the uncanny ability to foresee future wishes.

Automotive CRM Software: Key to Dealership Customer Retention

Use AutoAwards’ Flexstat, the automotive customer retention software that provides you with a clear snapshot of customer behavior and allows you to proactively provide customers with what they want, when they need it. Contact us to talk about automotive customer retention strategies and tools or call 302-696-6000 today!