"You don’t pay the price for success. You enjoy the price for success."
- Zig Ziglar

Support & Resources

Internet as a Selling Machine

Support & Resources > Dealer Articles > The Internet as a Selling Machine

November 20, 2006
By Vic Kovacs

One of the statements that we constantly hear is that the Internet is a great place to advertise and get leads. But have you stopped to think of the possibilities of what the Internet actually offers you? You may be amazed.

The first thing that we have to look at is the buying cycle of the consumer. This is a bit complicated but the focus should not only be on what drives him or her to buy but also how often he or she buys. Since the average consumer is in the market place once in every 3.7 years, they may want to take their time on buying a new vehicle (it may be a used vehicle but it is still new to them). Studies conducted by ASL (our company), J.D. Powers, General Motors, Ford and the University of Ottawa all show that most buyers between the ages of 22 and 35 will now take longer to research their purchases than ever before. Their first choice on research medium... you guessed it... the Internet. 85 percent of all new vehicle buyers are researching their potential choice on-line.

So we have a buyer researching new vehicle products on-line once every 3.7 years for as long as 90 days prior to his or her decision date. When the decision is made it generally takes the buyer 48 hours to complete the purchase. So in a given month this buying cycle represents 7 percent. In a year it means less than .03 percent.

What happens in a market when you feel you have to advertise to maintain (never mind gain) your market share? In the case of this buyer what if you advertised on a Saturday and his buying cycle ended on the following Thursday he may have missed your expensive advertising.

Okay, so this is only hypothetical but let's pretend that we had a web site that had great reference material, great interactivity for the customer and the dealership promoted these unique benefits in lots of smaller ads like "Do vehicle comparison shopping at ABCMotors.com" His web site is up 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year. Shoppers could visit the site any time that they wanted to. In fact, a lot more shoppers are saving dealership websites in their favorites till they make a decision on a particular vehicle.

So, "big deal" you say, you already have a web site. Okay let's go look at the stats. JD POWERS reported that 82% of all shoppers (all ages) will go to the manufacturer's site to research their prospective vehicle. JD Powers also tells us that out of those buyers researching 68% will then go to the dealers own web site to make contact. So I ask myself why more people aren't going to the dealers own web sites right from the start.

Now this is strange but has anybody looked at their own web sites? Buy this or buy that! This on sale for this price! Come down for this week only and save big dough! The buyer is feeling that he is back on the sales lot. This is exactly what he tries to avoid by being on line. So he goes to the manufacture's site where he can feel he is getting information without it being jaded by price and sales burgerville.

So "what's wrong with this" you may ask? Nothing, but if the customer wants to locate a dealer now within the 300 kilometers that he is willing travel for the right deal he is now out of your hands. You may not have even known he was in the market for the first time in 3.7 years. So 7.4 years will now go by before he's in the market for you again.

Before I ride any heat by the manufacturers I want to be clear. We are not knocking manufacturers; we just think dealers can do a way better job of exposing research material on their own sites (but they rarely ever do it). Just imagine the guy again in your market area that shops for a vehicle once every 3.7 years. He goes to your site and he finds a wealth of information on his potential new vehicle. He now uses your web site for his decision making. Your site now becomes "sticky" We use this term to mean he stays on your virtual lot for more than one or two page views. This is a good thing! That means he will come back to your site for comparison material during his research stage of the car buying cycle.

During this part of the information gathering process our potential new buyer is building not only the brand in his memory banks but also the dealer that gives him the most material for his decision. Come to think of it, isn't this the rapport building process that most sales trainers are teaching our sales people? The sales person that gives the most pertinent information in the relationship-building selling-cycle usually wins the sale. The next step on the sales floor is generally the hardest and most important part of the transaction and that is the qualifying stage. But on-line the customer is qualifying himself with the adequate price points and payment calculators (if the web site has this information). If the dealer's site is giving him this information, guess what? He is not going to the manufactures site where he's shopping in his 300 km radius.

Your web site must have research and interactive materials to build on-line rapport and to qualify your buyer. Without these tools your web site is just another advertisement in a sea of advertisements that the buyer sees on the web today.

The most compelling resource we have is our statistical log files from all of our dealer sites. The most common entry pages are the information-rich consumer help pages. These pages are the ones that the search engines find friendly and therefore they get indexed most often. Inventory and prices are important, no doubt, but they are the "close". The selling cycle still needs the rapport building and the qualifying at the beginning or the close becomes just numbers spewed out indiscriminately.

We would love to hear what you think of this article. And of course, if you have any suggestions for future articles that you'd like to share with us, please send those, too!

Need some fresh, free content for your web site or e-zine? You are welcome to reprint this article on your web site or in your e-zine. We simply ask that you let us know where the article will be appearing, and include our byline with a link to the ASLInternet.com website.

Vic Kovacs is a co-founder and the President of ASL Internet (Aged Stock Ltd), a company that provides Internet and sales systems for automotive dealers to increase traffic, increase leads and increase the sales closing ratio.

Products Support & Resources Portfolio Company Search Contact Site Map Legal & Privacy