How To Use Technology To Overcome Sales Objections
Let’s face it. If we’re in sales, then we hear a lot of objections.
“I can’t.” “I don’t have time.” “It’s not my time.”
The objections we hear play out in our closing ratio. According to Autoremarketing.com, close ratios increase as you add a human touch. Internet sales start at 15%, phone inches up to 20%, and in-dealership sales rise to between 40 and 50%.
How does your dealership compare?
With the Covid-19 pandemic forcing us to shutter our dealerships for three months, the sales dynamic has evolved. Even before we were forced to furlough our people, our prospects were educating themselves online. They even surprise us with how much they know about our products.
Now, as we slowly open our dealerships, we need to play catch up. With months of lost sales, it’s time to reconnect with many of our prospects.
But how do we do it?
With technology.
Check out our captain insight!
step 1 – know your customer
Though they may use the internet to do their research, people still buy cars from people. Whether they come into the dealership through a digital lead or walk through the front door, when prospects get to this stage in their purchase journey, they’ve shown their intention to buy.
According to Dan Liska, Sales Director of software company Mobials, there are no bad leads, just poor processes. In essence, we need to understand that actions speak the truth.
Imagine for a moment you have a prospect downloading used trade-in values. They’re just doing some research, right?
Liska’s response is to look at the actions they’ve taken. He’s in the auto industry, and he doesn’t download used trade-in values for fun.
Technology has a tremendous capacity to gather information. Whether it’s on our website or through the digital communications we have, we can accumulate a tremendous amount of information on our prospects. We just have to understand what it’s telling us.
step 2 – educate & Nurture
Everyone has an anecdotal story about a pushy salesperson. It doesn’t matter what industry they’re in; we don’t like them.
As digital technology grows, we’re able to push more info out to our audiences.
Websites, social media, and simple email campaigns allow us to connect like never before, even during the time our dealerships were closed.
We have to acknowledge that it is the customer’s journey. They are the centre of the story with us as support characters. Our technology lets us navigate the conversation away from a concept of sell, sell, sell towards a more nurturing prospect. We don’t need to convince our customers of anything.
According to Liska, you’ll likely be ghosted if you try to persuade anyone. Instead, we need to acknowledge that vehicle buyers value their time more than their money.
We need to use technology to connect before it’s too late.
step 3 – solve their problems
Those prospects we’ve been speaking to, whether it was before the pandemic started or now, have a problem. They wouldn’t be looking at a car, new or used unless they needed it for something, for a commute to a new job, for their kids, or perhaps to replace another vehicle.
As salespeople, our job isn’t to just sell a vehicle, but to solve our customer’s problems with the vehicles we sell. We need to ask questions and gather info about a timeline. That timeline will tell us exactly why they need the vehicle. Once we understand why they need it, then we can look at the vehicles we have access to so we can solve their problems. That could mean solving it immediately or for those whose situations have changed, we could have the opportunity to continue looking for the best solution.
Take that time to continue getting feedback about their future purchase, acknowledging the life events that need to or will eventually happen.
future purchases
Armed with our new technologies, we can now address the objections we’ve been given.
Oh, you’re just doing research? That’s okay, I saw you had a trade-in. Would it be okay if I see it? We’d like to buy it. Oh, you’ve been looking at our website? May I have the opportunity to show you how that Equinox you’ve priced five times drives?
Oh, you don’t have time right now? Would it be helpful to send you some information?
Liska’s final thoughts on prospects are compassionate and straightforward. Prospect knowledge beats product knowledge. It’s never about the car, but their life moments. It’s time we put our technology to work to solve those issues.
You won’t know until you complete your review.
