March 4, 2020

Digital Sales Tools for Auto Sales Reps

Guest AuthorAutomotive, Sales, Technology, Video and Email

Guest Post by Stephaine Singletary, Account Exectutive at Covideo

Previously, on the Covideo BLOG, Jeff McCracken wrote about the importance of organizing your video strategy to create a better experience for the customer. This week, I want to discuss WHY a video strategy is important in the automotive industry.

As a senior account executive at Covideo, I work with auto dealers every single day, and the most common thread among the dealers I speak to is that, despite the various–and often expensive--digital sales tools they’re utilizing to increase their lead volume, they are still struggling to mirror that increase in their contact ratio and appointment set-to-show ratio.

WHY? In our current cultural climate, people LOVE the comfort and ease of being able to shop from their homes (or offices, or subway stations, or carpool lines) using their computers and phones. That’s why dealers are seeing 70+% of their leads coming from the internet. The conundrum here is that while people enjoy shopping online, they ALSO want to do business with real people, not computers. When a consumer feels like they’re interacting with an email, rather than a person, it’s difficult for the sales rep to truly get the prospect engaged.

Take a moment, and put yourself in the buyers’ shoes. Imagine you’re buying a car, and you send in internet inquiries to five dealerships (that’s the average). Keep in mind, you are only going to end up visiting one or two (the average in-store visits for a customer are down to 1.5). You get five email responses to your inquiries: four are plain text, and one has a video with the dealership rep introducing themselves to you, personally, showing you the vehicle you’re interested in, and letting you know when they are available to host you for a test drive. Which one are you most likely to respond to?

Click here to view your video

That’s where sales tools for sales reps, like Covideo, come into play. Not only do people like working with people, they also love video. In fact, only 20% of people will read through a plain text email, while 80% will watch a video. So, when you incorporate video into your responses throughout the digital portion of your sales process, you’re accomplishing a few key things that will increase your contact ratio, and get more buyers into the dealership:

By having a video visible in your email and/or text communication, you are visually differentiating yourself from your competition.
Because you’re differentiating utilizing video, you know you’re communicating in a way that consumers are 60% more likely to engage with than a plain text communication.
Increased engagement means you have the opportunity to build rapport and relationship BEFORE the customer visits the dealership, which increases the chances that your dealership will be the one–or one of the two–the customer will decide to visit.
By the time a customer comes for an appointment at the dealership (remember to send an appointment confirmation video. It will increase your set-to-show ratio because people feel accountable to people, not automated-looking emails), they are likely ready to buy.

As a sales rep, incorporating video into your communication process helps you to encourage customer engagement and build strong relationships in ways that are not otherwise possible in a digital sales environment. That level of connectedness provides customers with a sense of truly being valued, which will draw them to you for their current vehicle purchase, and, perhaps, future vehicle purchases, as well.