Three Clever Sales Lead Generation Ideas for Your Auto Shop
Cold Calling
It may seem old fashioned, but cold calling still works! When you make a cold call, do not read off of a script. Keep in the forefront of your mind what your offer is and why it is valuable to the customer. Don’t be shy about telling them why your cars are great, fantastic value, and why they need them in their life! Brush up on all facets of your knowledge related to the cars and offers you are proffering.
Have a script, but don’t stick to it mechanically. Be prepared for the potential customer to say something that deviates from what you had in mind. Know it is fine for any polite exchange to happen, just attempt to make all exchanges with the goal of gaining a new customer, even if that person ends up remembering the call and coming back to you in the future. If you are going to have multiple people working on a cold call team, make sure they are well prepared. Rotate those employees you use for cold calls and those you use in other sales. All employees should be learning the flip sides of the skills they already utilise on a daily basis.
Videos
Videos on your website are great. They should always be informative about your product and geared towards making more sales, but after that you can get creative. For example, they could be humorous (videos about a large family travelling far squashed in a tiny car and needing a bigger one, as an example) or educational (videos about how a specific part of the car on offer is manufactured, for example), amongst other things.
Taking the time to make a video with your team can be a rewarding and enriching activity in itself, which draws the team closer together, which also helps to generate more sales. You may also post your videos on YouTube or another video sharing site like Vimeo. We are largely a species of visual learners, and people usually want what they can see. A good quality video that gives a good impression of the cars you sell can be invaluable.
Family Days
Family Days at your dealership are a fantastic way to generate business. By allowing people to come to your dealership in a more relaxed and causal setting than they may otherwise, you are effectively priming them to associate good times with buying from you. It can also be immensely useful in helping to firm up the plans of the casual buyer. If they have come in for food, music, fireworks, facepainting, or the like at your dealership, they will be more likely to come back to you rather than someone else when their purchasing plans start to solidify.
Visuals are powerful stimulators of desire; once you have potential customers in a place where they are surrounded by your cars, they are more likely to buy. You have to see it to believe it, as the saying goes.
