Be customer centric for success over the next 12 months to win sales

If there’s anything the last 12 months has told us, it’s that you cannot underestimate the resilience, adaptability and sheer determination of the UK automotive industry. Indeed, many retailers have even enjoyed higher profits than they did pre-lockdown by rapidly adapting their business and streamlining processes.

But we’re now at a critical moment, where all the learnings from adapting for survival over the last 12 months need to be channelled into adapting for growth in the next 12 months and beyond. 2020 was the year that digital retailing became unavoidable. 2021 will be the year it becomes essential for growth. With automotive retailing changed forever, it’s the retailers who are willing to constantly adapt to evolving customer behaviours that will benefit the most.

Adapting for different customer types

Our recent and comprehensive Market Report revealed three distinct types of customers that have emerged over the past 12 months. To maximise your sales and profitability, it’s important you understand your customers’ needs, ensuring your business is able to cater for the needs of all three buyer types, otherwise you’re effectively throwing sales away.

Here’s our top tips on how to make sure your business is best place to convert them…

Promote a 14-day moneyback guarantee

Even before the pandemic, test drives were an operational headache for many retailers. And during lockdowns, they became even more of a challenge.  Which is why many retailers adapted and started promoting a 14-day money back guarantee. Now that is bound to raise some concerns about customers purchasing vehicles only to return them before the 14 days is up. But think about the reality of what that would involve for the customer. Researching which vehicle to buy. Finding the money to purchase the vehicle in the first place. Arranging finance and insurance. These are all jobs that take significant mental time, energy and attention. Very, very few people would invest that amount of energy into purchasing a vehicle if their intention was to return it within 14 days. Now 14-day money back guarantees are nothing new or unique, it’s a message that’s been around for some time. Yet new entrants like Cazoo and Cinch have achieved success with grabbing buyers confidence by promoting this as a key message, and many other retailers have also adapted their business to promote this service widely as well; Phil Weaver Automotive being a great example.

Offer Click & Collect

During lockdowns, Click & Collect proved an invaluable way to convert sales. And clearly it has been the norm in other industries for several years already. So, there’s no reason to expect this to go away now that forecourts have reopened. There will remain a significant opportunity for retailers to use Click & Collect as a service that helps buyers decide to choose them over other competitors – this is particularly true for the reluctant showroom shoppers and digital adopters. If you’re not offering Click & Collect, you’re potentially missing out on two out of the three types of buyers revealed above.

Offer Home Delivery

Just like Click & Collect, Home Delivery was and will continue to be a competitive advantage for retailers. Those who offer the service will clearly stand out above their competitors and help influence buyers’ decision on which retailer to purchase from. Think about if you were ordering a pizza, would you choose the one that offered home delivery as standard or the one where you had to go and collect it? For any retailers who feel that they don’t have the resource or infrastructure to provide home delivery, did you know you can use our Vehicle Moves platform to arrange for a specialist logistics partner to collect your vehicles and deliver them to your customers homes? You can access the platform by clicking the ‘Moving’ tab in Portal. Then all you need to do is list the address of the vehicle you’d like moving and where you’d like it moved to. Over 300 logistics partners will then have the option to bid their best price for the move.

Guarantee part-exchange prices

We cover this in length in this blog post here, but we’ve recently launched a brand-new service that enables you to offer guaranteed prices for part-exchanges to help convert more sales. Importantly, the guaranteed price is underwritten by Manheim to give you peace of mind to do the deal even with unwanted part-exchanges. It’s a great way for you to give your customers the confidence of a guaranteed price for their part-exchange that’s provided by a trusted brand in Auto Trader, and it’s a great way for you to source stock more cost-effectively. You can find out more about Guaranteed Part-Exchange here and sign up for your first 60-days free.