11 Top Tips to Increase Profitability in Your Dealership!

Here’s 11 top tips from Click on how to increase profitability in your dealership!

Some of our profitability tips might be new and some you may have tried before but sometimes the old ones are the best! It’s often the simplest of ideas that are the most effective, it’s just a matter of putting them into practice on a daily basis!

1 – Invest in Silent Salespeople: Promote your special offers, stock clearances, services, MOT’s and Valets by placing leaflets on the dashboard of every single car that leaves the forecourt. Whether it be a car you’ve sold or a service/MOT you’ve completed, make sure they never leave without a leaflet promoting your business! You can even attach a flyer to your invoices to make sure your customers keep hold of it.

2- Keep it in the Family: Make sure that you include every member of the customer’s family when collecting data for your CRM. Ask questions like ‘What other vehicles do you have in the family?’ These days it’s common for people’s children to still be at home well into their twenties, meaning there could be three or four cars per household all needing a service and MOT every year! Can you afford to miss out on these opportunities to increase profitability?

3- Pre-Appoint Sales, Services & MOT’s: Customers are far more likely to keep coming back to your dealership if you make it more like a dentist! As soon as they buy a car, book in their appointment for an MOT and service when it’s next due! Get your clients booked in for a vehicle renewal appointment or if someone comes in for an MOT, book them in for their next appointment the following year! This means they don’t have any hassle and you can send them a reminder email or give them a call to remind them about the appointment nearer the time. Surely this is an easy way to build up a relationship and keep your customers coming back for more?

4– Offer Incentives for Referrals: By offering customers money every time they refer a friend or family member to buy a car from you, everybody is winning! It doesn’t even have to be actual cash, it could be a free voucher to spend on add on sales at your dealership or money off their next MOT/service. Give people a reason other than your great service to recommend you to their friends, people are fickle and can often be bought!

5– Make Sure Your Cars Are Gleaming: A dealer’s valet team is one of its most valuable marketing tools! You wouldn’t buy a sofa if it had chocolate stains all over it and crisp packets stuffed between the cushions, so why is a used car any different? Make sure somebody takes responsibility for ‘beauty treatment’ of all your stock and that each vehicle is 100% retail ready!

6- Draw Attention to Special Offers: Make sure it’s clear which cars are on special offer on your forecourt! Potential customers need to be able see discounts when they drive or walk by your premises to entice them inside. Windscreen stickers, signs and posters all work well for grabbing people’s attention. This can even be done online with stylish image overlays to attract attention to your stock on AutoTrader and other advertising portals!

7- Show the Vehicle Detail Clearly: Avoid general shots and focus on close ups of important features such as dashboard extras like: air-con, Bluetooth and reversing cameras. Even tyre tread depth and the size of the boot space can make all the difference to an online stock posting. They say a picture speaks a thousand words after all…

8- Direct Users to Your Website from Advertising Portals: With limits on photo uploads per vehicle on advertising portals, why not use one photo slot to direct people to your website, where images are unlimited and extra details can be given about factory fitted extras and key selling points etc.

9- Make Your Customers an Offer: Sales staff should be able to hand out money off coupons for a customer’s next visit or even a free part when they buy a vehicle, this sort of thing keeps clients coming back for more and builds up brand loyalty and ultimately increases profitability. Getting on the phone and making special offers to leads can also be the difference between making the sale and losing out to a nearby rival, don’t expect deals to land in your lap!

10 – Make Stock Photos as Good as They Can Be: When was the last time you checked how your stock photos look in comparison to your competitors on AutoTrader? Do yours stand out from the crowd? Are you looking more professional than they are? Using an image overlay creator can make stock photos stand out and promote special offers at the same time!

11- Remind Customers About Advisories: When customers receive the results of their MOT test, they often ignore the advisory warnings issued by expert mechanics! Make sure you make follow up calls to your customers reminding them to act on their amber warnings and offering them discounts for coming back to you to get the work done. Follow ups should be made at every opportunity in order to increase profitability, a dashboard sticker reminding customers to act on their advisories could also be helpful.