Where’s Our Traffic?

Historically, dealers have hovered around the 20-30% closing ratio. Now we are hearing stats that say buyers are only visiting 1.2 dealers before purchasing. Our initial thought when hearing this may be “Impossible”. After all, we have not suddenly reached the 80-90% closing ratio that it seems we would have to have across the board to support this statistic. And although our showroom closing ratio may be significantly higher than past years, our true closing ratios really aren’t any higher. To make sense of the stats, we have to look a little further.

You see, in the past buyers drove around to 4-5 dealerships before choosing where to purchase, which supports that 20-30% closing ratio. Today, the buyers are driving around online looking for an attractive place to click, creating online traffic for about 5-7 dealerships before choosing where to purchase, and once they narrow it down they are more often ready to buy. Our real traffic is online, and even if every customer that drove to our brick and mortars bought a car our closing ratios would be misleading.

Where’s our traffic? We already know. The question, is now that we know where the customer is how do we become the one dealer or even the .2 dealer if the customer meets the “Sales Prevention Team” at the first dealership? We all have a difficult time watching a customer walk off of our lots without purchasing, especially when we know their destination is the next store but it doesn’t sting quite as much when we can’t physically see them. Losing customers online should be no less painful for us than if they were on our blacktop.

The first rule to attracting customers is to become attractive. What are customers finding attractive online that leads them to choosing your store?  Are you providing a simple process online that leads the buyer to the next step? Most of us are fairly confident that if given the shot in person we can make the sale.  How confident are you in your virtual store’s capabilities? Do you really have the edge there? Look, I’m not selling website services, I’m truly concerned that you are one click short of keeping your buyer on the on the virtual lot. That’s where you’ll find your traffic not just visiting but attempting to choose where they would like to buy.