Do You Control Your Showroom?

There is a great deal of talk about creating a unique “customer experience” at dealerships today. A huge push towards transparency, trust, and cooperation between dealerships and consumers has pressured dealerships into quite a lot of change. In 2015 many dealerships will have already invested ample dollars to renovate their showroom floor, yet have no real strategy with what to do with that shiny new floor.

The real question is, do you actually control your showroom? After all, if you can’t manage a floor, what makes you think you can handle your customers? At least your janitor can handle the floor, perhaps he deserves a promotion!

All humor aside, it is genuinely necessary to have a solid foundation upon which to build a strategy for handling customers. That foundation needs to be having control of your showroom. In short, managers should NOT be asking their team if a customer has been approached. That should be a known, well-established fact. IF your leadership knows exactly what is happening, then guess what? They are free to do their job, which, in case you’ve forgotten, is to lead. Specifically, they can lead their team to ensure that every customer receives a universally top-notch quality of service.

So how do you take control of your showroom? You need to implement an Up System.

For those who are unfamiliar with the idea of an Up System, don’t worry it’s simple. From a sales perspective, an Up System organizes every potential customer into a very understandable, clearly defined workflow. Everyone knows which customers have been helped, and which haven’t. Managers know what salesperson is occupied, and which is free to take a new up. Plus, the customer tends to feel more comfortable when they don’t feel that they are being ganged up on, or worse, neglected.

If you honestly want to have a top-notch customer experience, then how can you not have a system for handling ups? Nothing makes a customer uncomfortable like seeing a disorganized group of people glance at one another before fighting to greet them first, all in an effort to claim the customer like some sort of commodity. It’s unprofessional to the customer, can frustrate your sales team, and potentially reduce your total number of sales in the long term.

However, for an Up System to be successful you will need to ensure that it is very clearly defined. Your leadership must communicate the details of your Up System effectively enough that nearly every customer-related situation can be understood in the context of the system. There should be no question as to how to handle an appointment, or how to handle a customer that asks for another salesperson.

The only reason for an Up System to result in failure is a lack of clarity. Just as it is necessary to take control of your showroom, you must ensure that your leadership team does not let established Up System rules become warped in a game of telephone. To diffuse any confusion from misinterpretation, managers must emphasize and reemphasize exactly how the Up System works. More importantly, do NOT make the rules solely verbal. Write it down! Everyone should be responsible to learn the Up System, as it only works if every is salesperson truly on board.

If you do this right, your customers will thank you.

The Next Up is one of the fastest-growing solutions in the business. Our team of automotive professionals is deeply rooted in this industry. Our technology brings visibility and key insight into the strengths and weaknesses of your sales team. We will make you more profitable. Even in today’s up-and-down automotive climate, our clients outperform the competition.