The (Very Well Known) Secret to More Showroom Traffic: The Phone

Every day, thousands of dealerships across the country struggle with the same issue: "How do I get more people to walk into my showroom???"

Increasingly, dealerships are finding it harder to get traditional advertising and marketing to produce successful results. More money is being spent to generate more leads that convert into fewer UP's on your showroom floor. Does the problem lie in the advertising? The sales rep? Inventory? Competition?

The simplistic answer is that it's a combination of all those things. What many in the business will point to however, is that the benefits of the Internet also include some new challenges, primarily in the form of increased competition. Any dealer in your market can now not only get massive exposure, but they can compete on a car-by-car basis well before the customers ever steps out of their door.

So how are the dealerships that are continuously busy staying busy? How are they beating out the competition? How are they converting more leads into showroom traffic?

The answer is very simple: The phone.

The majority of dealerships that are successfully answering the above mentioned challenges are using the phone to pro-actively reach out to their leads. Revenue growth requires a strong dealership sales cycle, and the best way to add both revenues & profit is to spend the same or less while selling more. Improving your lead conversion rate does just that.

Current Response Rates:
Telephone (8.21%) once again ranks highest, ahead of oversized mail (1.44%), letter-sized direct mail (1.28%), postcard (1.12%) and catalog (0.94%). The median conversion rate for email is 0.03%, while the mean conversion rate is 0.21%. Conversion rates for paid search and display ads are 0.22% and 0.04%, respectively.

Utilizing a Business Development Center (BDC) to make pro-active contact with new and unsold leads is proven to result in higher lead conversion rates. A phone call helps build excitement, create a sense of urgency. A one-one conversation also helps built rapport, overcome objections and sell the appointment.

With a BDC, the dealership benefits from:

• Dedicated phone professionals
• Consistency in the handling of new leads and follow up with unsold leads/past customers
• Ability to handle any lead source and any volume
• A lead-to-buyer cycle that converts more leads into showroom traffic 

Whether you decide to implement a full fledged in-house BDC, a partial BDC or outsource it all together, a BDC and the phone calls they generate is a powerful source of new business, if done correctly. 

In our next article, we'll discuss:

• The 3 key essentials of a successful BDC