In big-ticket retail, the best salespeople don’t just take orders. They help customers through crucial moments of decision making, guiding them to the sale and the best outcome. This isn’t a novel insight, but we hear from a lot of salespeople, particularly in automotive and powersports, that they don’t understand practically how to stop taking orders and start leading.
If that’s the position you find yourself in, not to worry. Here are a few ways that data and technology can help you start leading more conversations.
Help Me, Help You
The best way to engage a lead is to help them. And I mean actually help them. There’s a difference between asking, “How can I help you?” and seeing someone is struggling and acting on a solution. Think about something as simple as a moment when you struggled to carry multiple bags of groceries inside—someone holding the door open for you does more to help than a verbal offer to help.
When you’re following up with leads, before firing off the standard ‘checking in’ message, review each lead’s website history to spot opportunities to better engage them. If you have a lead who is looking at both lease and purchase options on your website, pair your check-in email with an offer to explain the benefits of buying versus leasing if they have any questions. If you have another lead repeatedly using the pricing calculator with different vehicles, see if you have any current offers or incentives that can help get their monthly payment down before giving them a call and letting them know you have new information. Get creative (without being creepy) and you’ll be surprised how often well-timed and on-topic outreach nets you a response.
Know When to Hold and When to Fold
To win more, you need to be able to see each lead for exactly who they are. Take a critical eye to the information you have available because a lead may tell you one thing, but their website activity will tell a different story. When you can see both sides, you can better understand what each lead is really looking for and use the information you have to anticipate their needs and proactively find the solution.
We all know there’s an element of playing hardball in sales. With user-level tracking, you’re able to level the playing field because you can see when leads visit your website and exactly what they look at. A lead may act disinterested, but if you know they’ve been on the website 18 times in the last week and have watched the same walk-around video 4 times, you’ll know to keep working the lead instead of marking them lost. When you can weigh what leads tell you against what their online activity tells you, you can be more strategic with your time and map out a plan that meets leads where they’re at, while ultimately leading them the sale.
It’s Not An Unfair Advantage, It’s Even Footing
The insights I’m describing are nothing new in ecommerce where customers receive personalized ads, emails, and coupon codes specific to their online shopping activity. User-level insights that can influence marketing and sales decisions were previously unavailable to inventory-based businesses who close sales in-person, but Foureyes’ patented technology is the first software to bring these insights to automotive, with tremendous results. The average dealer sees a 41% increase in close rate using Foureyes.
Foureyes sales intelligence software is built to help salespeople win, and when you can have better, more customer-centric conversations that guide your leads to the sale, you win more. Reach out for a free demo to see how Foureyes can empower your sales team to work efficiently and effectively, with sales intelligence that helps you track, protect, engage, and sell better.
This blog was originally published on DrivingSales.
