A Q&A with Chorley Group director, Adam Turner
Live webinar interview transcript from Marc Thornborough
For regular viewers of our webinars, you'll remember week two or three of lockdown. We interviewed one of our leading customers, Jacob Freshwater of multi-award-winning independent dealership, Fresh Motors. He shared his experiences of closing his business, but more importantly how he was managing his pipeline and maintaining his business through closure in the early days. This was very popular amongst our viewers, and you said it would be great to hear from another customer.
So, based on your feedback, I'm really pleased to have another multi-award-winning dealership onto the webinar with us. I'm joined by Adam Turner, Sales and Marketing Director of Chorley Group, a multi-franchise dealership based across the North West representing Hyundai, Kia, MG and Nissan.
You can catch the webinar on-demand now here, to listen to this exclusive interview.
Marc: Good morning Adam, are you okay?
Adam: Good morning Marc, I’m very well thank you, are you?
Marc: Good, I’m fine thanks. So, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and Chorley Group?
Adam: Yes, you touched on it there, we’re a multi-franchise dealer group based in the North West. We’re just over 31 years old now, and represent five Nissan franchises, two MG, one Kia and one Hyundai.
Marc: You can’t keep track!
Adam: I know, losing count!
Marc: So can you tell us a little bit about your business throughout lockdown closure. What did you see in terms of sales and leads?
Adam: It's been interesting, to say the least. It’s an experience that I don’t think any of us as retailers would want to go through again. I think personally, starting a the beginning, the closure of the business was the hardest. Closing down in an industry that never closes - it sleeps for three days max a year - and we've just been closed for the best part of two months. So that was challenging in itself, just day-to-day operation-wise, putting things in place. Bins, recycling and stuff like that. Dead basic stuff. As a business, we've been really fortunate that we've always invested in our digital teams - so that we've always got good coverage. So, we have a digital response team, that work until 11 o'clock in the evening every single day, seven days a week. Throughout this period, they have really really come into their own. They've been losing customers, the mix of the enquiry levels has changed so significantly for them. Historically, they deal with probably 70-80% sales inquiries, whereas in the initial period when we closed, we spiked massively in after sales, which you would anticipate with people trying to get their car serviced or MOT’d. Then we started seeing a shift back again now, so the shift is now more heavily weighted toward sales again. And it's been good. It's been an interesting experience, we've worked through a real low as far as enquiries and contact was concerned but we’ve seen a nice steady increase now of about 15-20% week-on-week for the past five or six weeks now, which is good.
Marc: So, what level of sales are you achieving now?
Adam: So we've been open for our click and collect and home delivery service now, for just over two weeks. And we're tracking just over 45% of sales year-on-year. A big swing again, in terms of new and used mix – we’ve probably only done about 10 to 15 new cars in that period, every single other car has been used. Also, the fact that people want the cars quickly has been really helpful for us. Our cars were pre-prepped and ready to roll which helped massively for home delivery. You could come and speak to one of our advisors at 10-11 o'clock at night and by the same time the next day, the car’s on their drive. It’s been a really useful tool for us.
Marc: What kind of feedback are you getting from the services that you're offering now, from consumers?
Adam: It's been really good. We were a little bit concerned that the new safety measures could have put some customers off and make them feel a little bit apprehensive. But the feedback we've had so far has been great. We get one or two, obviously, who don't want to put a mask on and think it’s over the top. Always tends to be the people who are in the high-risk categories as well, unfortunately, who don't tend to want to wear PPE, but the feedback overall has been brilliant from customers. They love the fact we do click and collect, the fact the cars are sanitised. They just feel comfortable, so I think going the extra mile early doors was a little bit of a risk, but so far the feedback’s been really strong.
Marc: Yeah, we’re constantly asked questions about test drives. People asking for advice on how they should handle test drives, unaccompanied test drives and how to social distance during test drives. How are you handling any requests for these?
Adam: At this point in time we're not doing test drives, per se. Like I said, we are offering click and collect and home delivery. If, during the click and collect process, the customer wants a ‘confirmation drive’, so to speak, they can take the car out unaccompanied. I think as an industry, we're going to have to trust customers to go on unaccompanied test drives now. You bet sales executives will be pleased with that to be honest, because it means whilst they have a customer out test driving, they can deal with another customer in the showroom! We're going to operate an unaccompanied test drive policy as the 1st June.
Marc: Right, okay. So, what new initiatives have you put in place - purely for COVID-19, to help you maintain your business - that you're going to continue past lockdown and into re-opening?
Adam: I don't think we've particularly put anything new in, it just kind of cemented the things we'd already done even further. The digital response team was a bit of a gamble, we've had a whole working team there working just over 18 months, maybe two years, now. Working closely with our buy online function, and having them work until 11 o'clock at night - it's quite rare in the industry really. But we look at the data, and the vast majority of our enquiries and traffic comes from seven o'clock onwards in the evening. In my head, being closed in the busiest period just didn't seem to make sense. So, I think what's probably done for us, the COVID situation, is just cement the need to continue to invest in that digital side of things and in the contact centre there.
The live chat team are responding in just under three seconds now - which I’d hazard a guess is one of the fastest in the country. And they're so proud of it, because the feedback they get from customers is brilliant.
Marc: And what plans do you have to get back on track, as soon as you’re allowed to open?
Adam: I've spoke to quite a lot of dealers over the last few weeks who are saying, okay, 1st June, that’s the line in the sand, we're going to get everybody back in 1st June. We aren’t bringing everyone back on 1st June, but we've done a very phased return so far, and we'll continue to do so.
On your poll before you had some questions, and I think as a business, our priority is trying to break even month-on-month. We can forecast all we want, but none of us actually know what’s going to happen. So we’re just looking to break even and take one step at a time.
Marc: So, what’s your feel then? What do you think the market will do once we're allowed to reopen on 1st June?
Adam: That's the million-dollar question, isn’t it! My gut feeling, for what it's worth, and what we keep saying to our team, is that we think we're going to experience pent-up demand. I think it’s going to be a little bit sporadic, which we've already experienced with the click and collect, we'll have some dealerships doing seven or eight cars in a day, and the next day don't sell a car. I do think we will see that pent-up demand come back. I'm hoping that we see a better Q4 than we’d usually have, you’d like to think we’re further through the process then. Q4 is typically a bit of a disaster for the industry, so I’d like to think Q4 could possibly be better than usual. It’d make my Christmas better, I know that! And hopefully it's just the same and the business has been paused and just been pushed further back in the year, rather than taken away completely.
Marc: We’ve had Felix Frank on from AutoScout24, a big marketplace in Germany and Europe. He was saying that once the German dealers were allowed to reopen that people didn't automatically rush back to showrooms or physical visits. But they did see a big spike in leads, and we're seeing that on our platform too. I know you mentioned an increase in leads as well. Felix was saying it's quite a shock to some dealers to gear up for that online lead capture management system, rather than those physical visits that people were relying on. Six months ago, people would just turn up unannounced and 90% of the sale would be done. Are you seeing that in terms of the leads that you're getting in?
Adam: Yeah, definitely. So our leads, in this strange marketplace, are actually 140% up. Now, I caveat that with the fact that the quality of the leads dropped ever so slightly, because I think you've probably got more people fishing in that pond, doing an initial enquiry than you previously would have and they've also got more time on hands. But I do anticipate that will continue in the same vein, that we're going to see a big spike in digital leads with people doing as much research as they can from home like you’ve said, and then visiting. From my perspective, lead attribution by channel and working out the actual return on investment is brilliant because the biggest challenge, as we all know, is customers walking into the dealership and you're expecting sales execs to correctly capture someone’s enquiry which is the one of the biggest challenges in the industry. So, the more that come through digital as the first port of call, for me, is absolutely perfect.
Marc: It sounds like you’re all geared up with your digital team, did you say they’re working until 11 o'clock at night!?
Adam: Yeah, they’d be working later If I had my way, but I can't get them to work until midnight unfortunately.
Marc: Have you seen a difference in, when people are contacting you and how they're contacting you?
Before, we saw map clicks and directions, as a lead metric, drop off whilst we saw an increase in live chats, calls, emails and texts, but where are you seeing the majority of your leads coming through?
Adam: Live chat has gone through the roof. We've always been self-managed as far as live chat’s concerned, because I know there's some fantastic providers how they can do a managed service - which you guys provide as well. But we've always managed our live chat in house because I personally think it's the next best thing to that face-to-face interaction because you are talking. The only downside is, when you get going, customers like the interaction and we've had a situation where our live chat team have been on 35 chats at once. Trying to manage that and go through it has been quite challenging for them – so they keep reminding me!
Marc: I was speaking with one of our Product Managers today, and the longest chat that we've seen was over 500 days. And during that period, they’d sold two vehicles and done a service – they’d kept a relationship with this customer. So what advice would you give, finally, for retailers that are watching this now?
Adam: My biggest piece of advice would be to take it one step at a time. I’d hate to see dealers rush back and try to force something that isn’t there, to force this kind of physical environment that might not necessarily return straight away. We're very digitally focused as a business, and sometimes people expect me to say ‘bricks and mortar are dead, you don’t need them’, but I don’t think that’s case. I’m confident it’ll come back and I don’t think this change is for life. But I think in the initial stages, we just need to be really careful not to try to force the physical side back too soon and just do it based on demand. The furlough scheme has been phenomenal for all businesses, it’s saved peoples jobs and lives. Just take advantage of that as long as you can really, and just step change people back into your business is my personal opinion.
Marc: Brilliant, thanks for that. Stay around for the Q&A at the end, I know they’ve probably got quite a few questions for you! Just before we move on, and you’re going to hate me for doing this, but just a shout-out to your dad, at the back end of last year, getting the MBE for all the work he’s done for the Chorley Youth Zone – I thought that was amazing, must have been very proud of that!
Adam: Yeah a very proud moment! He claimed to be embarrassed about it, but he changed his Facebook name to ‘Andrew Turner MBE’ so I’m not quite sure how that works!
Marc: Brilliant, thanks for that Adam!