Ed Legge

"What if you asked someone – completely removed from the business of selling cars – what they would do to improve your car dealership?" There's a simple answer to this. The most important thing is the way people are treated - so the the dealer staff are the "glue". It doesn't matter what technologies you use or how you spend on slick showrooms if you don't get back to people fast enough and treat them in the way in which they expect to be treated. When you go into a dealership do you feel like a valued customer or a profit opportunity? Apple's marketing may feel like genius, but it's nothing many luxury brands haven't achieved many years earlier. I like Mike Brewer's take on an Apple store - sounds just like a Land Rover dealership....

I've done some experimentation with this. We found that an honest, detailed description of stock sold more cars and saved us time. For example, displaying the full details of the service history (good or bad) didn't deter buyers and saved us a lot of time constantly calling people back with any details we'd omitted. There's the view that you need to get people through the door at all costs so you can sell them into the car when they're on site. We found that more often than not, customers didn't want to be persuaded that the car was actually OK even though it wasn't exactly what they were looking for.