Steps To Improve Your Close Rate

Step 1 – How Do Get Customers To Find Us Online We must know exactly where the traffic is actually coming from. Let not put pressure on our staff to artificially increase traffic from a certain source – No Smoke Is Allowed.

Different traffic has different close rates: These are just estimates – You can put your own numbers here – Everyone agrees the number one highest close rate is repeat and referrals – Repeats and Referrals 70-80%, Lot Ups 45-55% Service 30-40% Phone calls 20-25% Chats 20-25% eMail 10-12%. Many dealerships micro manage Internet leads, yet they have the lowest close ratio of all leads. How about we concentrate on the highest close rate rather than the lowest close rate?

Advertising: An auto dealership has to be very careful not to spend advertising dollars to generate leads for cars they do not have available to sell. Why pay for traffic with Google and 3rd party leads when you can earn traffic with good quality content, blog posts, social media and videos? A sales person can also generate high quality traffic by simply being nice to our customers, employees, vendors and being involved in the community. 

Step 2 – Communicating With The Customer: A well-trained and certified salesperson should be the first person and the last person to talk to every customer with close Manager and BDC support. We want the best long-term sales staff we can get and we need to take special care to keep them. In 3 to 5 years each salesperson should be only working his existing customers; the ones with the 70-80% close rate. 

Step 3 -The Customer Experience At The Dealership: We are looking for a special customer experience at the dealership, from the time they arrive to the time they leave. All hands must be on deck working together. How do we exceed the customers’ expectations? 

Step 4 – Follow Up After The Visit: The follow-up after a visit or sale must be memorable for the life of the customer. These are the 70-80% repeat customers that we are after. Once we get a customer, let’s not lose them.