Do you spend a lot of time and energy trying to attract new customers to your dealership, hoping to pump up your bottom line? If so, you're probably missing an untapped source of sales that exists right inside your dealership - there's truth in the statement that your customer base is your most valuable asset.
There's a gold mine of opportunities to make easier sales and create a loyal following of customers that will return time and again by using your existing customer base to grow your sales. But when I ask Sales Managers what action they are taking to get their salespeople to keep in touch with current customers, the answer is normally "they don't."
How can you create loyal customers who will return time and again to increase your dealership's bottom line? There are three keys to creating customer loyalty.
1. Know Who They Are
Do your salespeople know who their customers are? I have found that the more I can look at that list of names, and follow-up with them throughout their ownership experience, it became a lot easier for me to remember who they were, and more importantly, their names.
2. Know What They're Worth
Carl Sewell in his book "Customer's for Life" said that an average customer was worth around $500,000 to his dealership over their vehicle ownership life. When you sell a customer for the first time, and you start looking at all the ways you can get additional business from this one sale, it becomes clear that if your salespeople take care of their customers, repeat and referral business will flourish.
3. Take Action
Your salespeople's customers are busy people. They need to be reminded that you exist and how you can eliminate their pain (wants or needs). Have you ever received mail from a company and decided to save it so you could "check them out later?" Then you find that piece of mail in your "to do" stack months later and realize you never contacted them. Your customers do that too. Your salespeople have to remind them, and often.
Customer loyalty is not rocket science. But it does take consistent effort. Over 90% of dealerships are letting money walk out the door of their business each and every day. Are you one of them?
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