Does your facility really make any difference to sales success?
The best sales team selling out of a tent will run rings around an unskilled sales team at a beautiful dealership. Dealers quickly learn that skilled and trained employees are the most important ingredient for a successful dealership operation. But what about the facility? How much of a difference does a facility make to sales success?
Compared to the effect of talented employees, a facility’s role in directly selling vehicles may be smaller, but facilities are critical to dealership sales success in five specific ways:
- Attracting first-time shoppers to the dealership – An eye-catching, memorable, easy-to-access dealership will attract more traffic to the dealership.
- Turning existing customers into repeat customers – Customers often have a variety of choices for service—both franchised dealerships and independents—and if a service facility is inefficient or uninviting, customers will choose to go elsewhere for service, which leads not only to losing service business, but losing the replacement sale too.
- Attracting the best employees – The best employees can often choose to work where they wish, so dealerships with subpar facilities will find that they are at a disadvantage when attracting the best employees.
- Keeping the best employees – Similarly, competitors may find it easy to cherry-pick employees from a dealership with an unappealing work environment.
- Setting the stage for the products – Last, but definitely not least, think of the facility as a stage upon which to sell a product. We know that the most profitable dealerships are those who establish value for the products they sell, rather than just selling products as unimportant commodities.
Therefore, the answer to the question about whether or not the facility makes a difference to sales success is yes, absolutely. Talented employees make it all happen, but most dealers also report that facility renovations, redesigns and upgrades drive sales success too.
