The Death of the BeBack (Fight)!

Mathematically and certainly, the BeBack Fight is dead. JD Power shows us in the graph below that the average dealerships visited by vehicle shoppers dropped from 4.1 in 2005 to 1.3 in 2010. Don’t expect 2012 to raise that number.

Why does this “kill” the BeBack fight? First, logically, it at least kills it as we’ve known it. If a person left the dealership in 2005, statistically we knew they were prone to leave and we fought to get them back. This number tells us that we were one of four dealerships visited in 2005, so we were right to fight. We were competing.

Yes, what you’re thinking right now remains correct: We should still contact customers to get them back, of course. However, the shopper’s choice of who to come back to is not our biggest issue any longer--to begin seeing why that is the case, start here with the aforementioned JD Power data graph (thanks for the graphic to a friend of mine):

NOW, clearly, the big fight is to be the ONE dealership they visit. To be the first dealership, actually! Because shoppers, of course, can’t visit a partial dealership, so they must visit 1, 2, 3, and so on. And mathematically, in order to average 1.3 that means that at least 70 out of 100 shoppers (that’s 70%!) visit only ONE dealership during their shopping. If we account for rounding down from 1.34 to 1.3, for 100 shoppers that still means that at least 65% of the shoppers visited only ONE dealership during their shopping. And, if you believe that the maximum number of dealerships normally shopped is no more than five, then the math shows that 91 out of 100 (or 91%!) shoppers visit only one dealership!

Why is this happening? Because the customers are, of course, shopping ONLINE now (84% on this graph and 90%+ according to some OEMS), and so they don’t need to visit until they are ready to buy! Really, on a customer visit nowadays the sale is in our hands more than ever and is, really, ours to lose.

So, to help, what makes them come to you first? Some of that is their habits: Are you making your customers habitual for service and repeats? (“Habitual” will be the subject of a later article). The rest is your advertising, your website, your online presence—essentially, your digital lot—and your work with leads, equity, and the like. Everything you learn here and in workshops, conferences, battle plans, etc. is VERY VALUABLE on this issue. It is all gold.

However, there's also platinum--and diamonds!--to be had for being the first dealership visited, as well! And we need all the help we can get with that. Including the most powerful sales-enabling tools we can muster.

And that leads me, in this article, to Big Data. Would you like to know who in your customer base and aged leads are shopping for vehicles? What their targets are for vehicle type and price range? How to help them come to your dealership first? Or what households in your area to best target? So that you are as position ONE in the “1.3” and get the most sales?

THAT is the promise, really the result, of Big Data for Dealerships for sales: Because being #1 isn’t just a "thing" now.

It’s the ONLY thing.

(P.S. How can Big Data specifically help you with this? More to come on that!)

By Keith Shetterly, keithshetterly@gmail.com
Copyright 2012 All Rights Reserved
www.keithshetterly.com

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Comment by Doug Davis on September 21, 2012 at 11:44pm: Shoppers don't put up the defense mechanisms, that buyers do. That can make them more difficult to deal with. You can't afford to have them mishandled, or even broomed, by some green pea. The dealerships that flood their floors with idiots, are costing themselves business. It is proven by their closing percentages. The ones with highly experienced salespeople will do well.

Comment by Keith Shetterly on September 21, 2012 at 11:10pm: Doug, that's no kidding on that one. We have to fight to be FIRST so we can be only.

I didn't mention it too much, but there is a turning point on the math when it reaches less than 1.5. The first turn is below 2, but below 1.5 is . . . well, as I wrote, it's at least 70% of the folks go to ONE dealership to buy. that's the math, like gravity: It takes so much acceleration to achieve orbit. The shopper once took 4x the energy to do that and orbited several times before falling to earth at a dealership; the shopper now "falls to earth" for the sale right where they began, at the first dealership they visited. How do we BECOME FIRST? Every da*n way we can.

Comment by Doug Davis on September 21, 2012 at 6:41pm: Keith,

Being a good Internet Director goes beyond just how many cars your department sells. It is also how much your marketing influences the number of people that walk in the door.

The last figure that I had on the number of dealerships customers actually visit was 1.8. I see that that has gone down dramatically. That is information that dealers don't want to hear. That is something they prefer to sweep under the rug. If you are looking at the daily traffic log and half of those people didn't buy, what is that telling you?