Speaker after speaker at the recent Kijiji DealerTalk conference reinforced the event’s central message — that transparency is the name of the game for auto retailers.
Whether it’s transparency in new or used vehicle pricing, availability of inventory, incentives, financing options, F&I offerings, service costs and procedures — it’s all a big open book.
Perhaps the easiest way to think about it is to picture your customers looking through your showroom windows and seeing all the way through your dealership into every nook and cranny and into every computer and desk. Other than your personnel records, there really should be no secrets worth keeping.
The changes have been coming for a long time. For the most part, these are welcome changes. The transparency will build trust with customers. That’s never a bad thing.
Dealers in Canada are adapting well. Many of the dealers I meet with have long since accepted that their customers are well-armed with information. They can cross-shop price at multiple dealerships, have the information about the latest OEM incentives, use vehicle configurators to price their particular model, and can have their own vehicle evaluated using industry standard tools like Canadian Black Book.
The progressive dealerships are not trying to stuff a genie back into the bottle. Instead, they are exploring more ways to differentiate their dealerships in areas like customer service, and developing a powerful brand and reputation. The best are building brands that also leverage the personalities and “personal brands” of their strong performers, usually in sales, but also in service. The more your customers meet and like your key team members, the better off you’ll be.
As keynote speaker Marcus Sheridan reminded us at DealerTalk, when your customers arrive in your showroom there are already big elephants in the room and they should be discussed — not ignored. The biggest elephant is that many customers don’t like the current vehicle buying experience and are very anxious about the entire process.
Sheridan is the founder of the sales, marketing, and personal development blog, The Sales Lion. Known to many as the “pool guy” the New York Times has called him a “web marketing guru.” He’s also a heck of a speaker. “We think the business we are in is cars. But the business we are in is trust,” says Sheridan.
Indeed. So why should transparency be anything but an ally?
But we aren’t all the way there yet. At the DealerTalk event, host Ryan Thompson from Kijiji says his firm still gets calls regularly from dealerships who are frantically asking Kijiji to take down an online listing because the advertised online price is actually lower than the price they just sold the vehicle for to a customer.
Setting aside the ethical concerns for a moment, it’s just not good business. How long do you think it will take for an excited customer to search for his vehicle after he or she just bought it? What will happen to that carefully nurtured trust that the dealership is working so hard to build when
they feel they just overpaid?
The damage to that trust can no longer be contained to that one individual either. It’s really just a post, tweet or review away from permanently attaching itself to your brand.
I have no doubts that Canadian auto dealers will adapt and thrive in this new world of transparency. In fact, it might well be the best thing that ever happened to them. More transparent practices can shed more light on the excellence and fairness in auto retailing, and help dispel some of the old stereotypes that still exist. It’s time to embrace see-through dealerships.
