What would a salesperson from 30 years ago experience in a modern dealership today?
If you’ve been living under a rock or have been trapped in a time capsule for the past 30 years, you would be absolutely shocked at the amount of transformation that has taken place in automotive retail.
The sheer quantity of change would be mind-numbing. If you happened to be a car salesman 30 plus years ago, and just stepped forward into the present, you might suffer a cardiac arrest.
Accustomed to telling the customer what you wanted them to know, you would wander through today’s showroom in amazement. The sheer size alone would blow you away.
The fact that there are so few customers would confuse the hell out of you. Your observation that all employees in the store were still busy doing things would seem perplexing. No smoking, no liquid lunches, no customers. You’d wonder how these stores could stay open and how any salesperson could make a living.
You would soon ask, why are people busy, what are they doing and where are the customers?
You would quickly learn that there are customers in the store — the virtual store.
Relationships are thriving but the Rolodex on your desk no longer exists in a physical form.
If you received a demonstration on how customers shop today, you would note in disbelief that fancy colour brochures have now come to life in a customer controlled world.
Customers can research, compare, read reviews and build their own vehicle without stepping into a showroom. They can get prices, become pre-approved for financing or leasing, all while sitting in their pajamas watching TV without connecting with a dealership.
You were a top salesman in your day and lived by your Rolodex. That Rolodex was your life line. You worked it every day to create opportunities. You wonder how you can transition to the new auto retail world.
As you sit with your store’s general manager, you start asking questions to gain further perspective and insight, so you can get back to work and start making some money.
After a few weeks of relearning the ropes you hit a mental stumbling block. You are shocked to learn that your dealership shares its data with dozens of organizations.
In fact, the complete dependence on computers means that every critical point of data accumulation is initiated by 3rd party organizations.
Nothing of significance has been developed by the dealership for the dealership, with the exception of some outdated spreadsheets.
You are shocked to see how much data is now shared with the factory. You are even more shocked to learn that so many parties have access to your data. You wonder who owns that data?
Naturally, this is an oversimplification but it does drive home an important point.
There are initiatives in the real world around data accumulation, sharing and analytics that basically conclude that products only exist to produce data.
It’s the data where the future monetary value lies and the product itself is merely a point along the data accumulation process pathway. Data is quickly becoming the ultimate product and the ultimate value creator.
At the recent CADA Summit we heard about the Internet of Things (“IoT”). It’s the interconnection through the Internet of computing devices embedded in everyday day objects, enabling them to send and receive data.
IoT will be the next big game changer in society. Automobiles will play a critical role, some say a leadership role, in sourcing and transmitting data in the future.
Much of the data produced can be aggregated and sorted into consumer behaviour traits and practices.
Other parts of the data pool can serve to analyze the state of infrastructure in our cities and on our streets as buildings, stoplights, electric light towers and multiple other devices all become communication hubs.
Other data will be accumulated to monitor health information of drivers and passengers. Potential applications are endless. But the vehicle is a key component in collecting and sharing data.
The world is quickly moving to smart devices and smart communications with the high-level social goal of providing citizens with a safer and more secure environment.
All this sounds a little like science fiction. It’s not. It’s beginning to happen today in small controllable pockets around the world and Canada is no exception. In fact, cities, like Stratford, Ont. are leading the way to smart cities on the global stage.
It’s also happening in our everyday Internet lives already. How many times have you googled a product only to receive pop-ups on similar items in the following weeks?
When you travel, and you want to check out the weather forecast on your smartphone, your weather app knows where you are and gives you the local weather forecast based on where you happen to be at that moment.
When you land after a flight, your smartphone automatically connects you to local cellular networks. Your behaviour is creating data points.
There are hundreds of examples as to how data can be tracked about our behaviour. We use facial recognition to access our smartphones and our fingerprint to unlock our computers. In many ways, the cow has already left the barn.
Going back to our salesman from the time capsule, he lived in a world where everything personal was private. It only became public if he wanted it to. Today he notices that information is public unless you chose to make it private.
As our salesman gained more and more insight into that way things are today and where they could be heading in the future, he spoke to his dealer principal about how dealerships can gain back control of their data.
He asked “how will the dealership be able to financially participate in all the information that is and will be produced by their customers from their connected vehicles in the future? How will they be able to protect and secure their customers’ data?”
Our salesman is extremely excited about all the new information about consumer purchasing patterns and preferences. He told a colleague how lucky he was to now be able to have access to so much quality information. It’s much better than his old Rolodex. “It will be like shooting ducks in a pond,” he exclaimed.
His concern, however, is that without some controls on who has access to the dealership data, the advantage will shift to others outside the dealership family.
He sees the importance of key partnerships. The dealership’s data and the customers’ vehicle data, are key to the dealership in producing and monetizing all the data that will be produced within the dealership ecosystem. It’s also the key to maintaining long-term customer relationships.
Our salesman concluded that his dealership produces lots of quality data about a whole host of things. This will only increase in the future as the vehicle increases its two-way communication capabilities.
A shared view of the customer and the data surrounding customers is likely the way to go but he fears that his dealership is lagging behind the momentum.
He recognizes that the brand and his dealership should be completely aligned to give his customers the best experience possible on the road to maintaining lifelong relationships.
He told his dealer principal that it was time to roll up their virtual sleeves and gain back control of the data that will be so vital to the dealership’s future. “These are exciting times” he told his dealer principal, “but there is no time to waste.”
