A brand-new survey just completed by drivingsales.com gives clear insight into why you need to be ramping up your skills for selling to female drivers if you want to excel in today’s marketplace.  That and the fact that female Customers influence 80% of all car buying decisions should bring this home to anyone who makes their living selling or servicing cars. 

According to this report, women car buyers are much more valuable to Salespeople and to your Dealership when it comes to monitoring how you are doing with Customer relations.  91% of the female shoppers surveyed said the Salesperson was respectful and friendly,  83% said they received follow-up from the Dealership and 85% said they would recommend their Salesperson.  It is a proven fact that women in both sales and the service department pay more attention to CSI Reports than men do.  These numbers affirm the value they bring to the process as well.  The numbers were even higher for those females who purchased a vehicle.

Some other aspects of this report are also very valuable.   On average, women shoppers will visit two dealerships before making the purchase and 6 of 10 who leave without buying will not return there.  As for the value of a dealership website, only 27% of the women surveyed said the dealership website was not a valuable resource for the process.  Since females spend more time than men on social media, that sounds like a great incentive for investing in your website and social media promotions.  Even more interesting is that only 1 in 10 said they were influenced by ads on TV, radio and /or newspaper.

Service Departments did well on this survey which shows greater effort being made to serve female Customers.  9.2 of 10 women said it was easy to schedule their service appointment,  7 of 20 reported receiving follow-up communication and 84% said they plan to return there for future service needs.