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Back to school?

I was driving past a local dealership earlier today, part of a Top 20 UK group, and saw one of the sales executives returning from a trip to the local shops.  (Sales executives don’t all look the same, but the company tie helps to identify them…)  It triggered a question in my mind about whether as someone at the coalface of new car sales, he had any understanding of what lies ahead if he stays in the job over the next 5-10 years.  It’s arguably a similar change to that faced by journalists as newspapers went to digital composition from ‘hot metal’ in the 1980s, or computers replaced comptometers in accounts departments a few years earlier.

We talk often in ICDP research about the need to determine the required people profiles and the consequent impact on recruitment and development.  Most business leaders in dealers and manufacturers understand that, and there has been a welcome improvement in the quality of staff training in respect of general skills (as opposed to product which I am not focusing on here) over the last five years or so, with dealer groups and consortia setting up training academies with dedicated staff and tailored content.  But what about the inputs to that process i.e. the new hires and existing staff who are sent off to the academies (or more often connected by Zoom in the current climate)?  What is the starting point?  I came up with a test that you might set a new recruit or an existing sales executive, which might indicate their readiness and desire to learn.  Here are my ten questions, none of which are intended to trick the respondent by requiring an understanding of our terminology.

  1. If a prospective customer makes contact by text or email, what do you think would be a good time within which to answer them (not just an acknowledgement)?

  2. How much time do you think a typical customer spends on their online research before they decide they are ready to visit a dealer?

  3. As the result of their research, what proportion of prospects do you think have settled on the brand and model they want before visiting any dealership?

  4. How many dealerships do you think a new car prospective buyer makes (without Covid restrictions) up to and including where they sign the contract?

  5. Relative to the dealership premises and the cars themselves, how influential do you think the way in which dealer staff treat them are on a prospect choosing to buy from a dealership?

  6. What do you think will be the most important personal attribute of a car sales executive in the future?

  7. What proportion of new car buyers would buy a new car without taking a test drive?

  8. Without taking into account the effect of the Covid restrictions, what proportion of customers do you think would ideally like to have the whole buying process online?

  9. Compared to today, what proportion of dealership locations do you think will still play an active role in new car sales in 2030?

  10. Omni-channel is the term used to describe a combined physical and online sales network where the customer has a flexible and seamless choice of channel – in that environment, will it matter if the customer leaves the showroom, saying they will decide and finalise the purchase at home?

My view is that many dealer sales executives and their immediate management (and probably many OEM staff working in their sales organisations) would fail this exam.  I hope that I am wrong, but in my personal experience and anecdotally, many of those at the coal face have a very traditional view of the sales process, and how to ‘manage’ the customer through that in order to close the sale.  On that basis, they are unaware of how their role will change, and the demands that this will put on them for behavioural change.  Where brands have switched to agency, one of the earliest experiences has been that top performing sales people (measured against traditional KPIs) have switched to other brands where they can continue to deploy those traditional skills – at least for now – rather than adapt.  OEMs and dealers need to decide whether that sort of exodus is actually welcome, or something to be managed by stepping up the education and reskilling process now.

If you have the opportunity to put these questions to any dealer sales executives you employ, I would genuinely love to know how they answer.  The answers, mainly based on ICDP research but with a couple personal opinions, are below.

Q1 – within an hour over an extended business day seems to be the level that gets a good reaction – 24 hours is not good enough

Q2 – around 16 hours

Q3 – around a quarter

Q4 – less than three

Q5 – people are the most influential factor

Q6 – derived from our research, listening skills

Q7 – over a quarter even if they have no prior experience of the model, around another quarter if they have some experience of the model

Q8 – less than 4%, possibly a bit higher now, but still likely single digit percentage

Q9 – a personal view, but for a variety of reasons, I would estimate more than half will still be playing a leading or supporting role

Q10 – assuming that the omni-channel design is genuinely seamless, then the customer must be free to complete the sale how and where they choose

Steve Young