With the world of business changing as rapidly as it is, it’s often hard to see what’s right around the corner. The next innovation, the newest technology and the latest business model materialize out of nowhere and become commonplace —old hat — in a matter of months. In order to get a bead on what the future may hold, it is sometimes necessary to conduct a little thought experiment by asking yourself a seemingly ridiculous question?

So, today’s seemingly ridiculous question is this: Could a dealership be run without salespeople?

The answer seems obvious… of course not. A dealership without sales people is a dealership that doesn’t sell anything. But what if you weren’t allowed to hire sales people? How would you go about running your dealership?

Well for starters, you’d have to find a new way to interact with customers. New ways to show them the vehicles they’re interested in. And new ways to follow up and stay in touch. And it would have to be automated — probably electronic — and timely. It would have to automatically and proactively push information and collect feedback from customers and prospects. And all those things would have to happen in a way that was engaging and personal to the customer.

You’d have to have a system in place that could do the work of a dozen or more sales people — handling a level of incoming traffic and ongoing communications that would swamp the average salesperson. It would have to optimize, prioritize, calculate and communicate more efficiently than any single human. In short, you’d have to start treating the selling of cars as a science rather than an art.

Now, it’s important to understand that we’re not advocating eliminating your sales staff. We hope this little thought experiment has shown you how their role must be adapted to fit the new high-tech paradigm. It’s interesting to note that, in a lot of ways, the things a sales-less dealership would need are the things a modern dealership web marketing system already does.

The world is going digital and the dealership business is tucked in behind it and drafting right — leaving the analog world in its rear-view mirror. It hasn’t completely turned the dealership business on it’s head… but it’s edging ever-closer to a major shift. And you can be assured that that major shift will be driven by technology.

Newspaper Advertising Goes Digital

Dealer Impact’s new Virtual Newspaper Position (VNP) is a key tool and strategy needed to turn your dealership’s website from a re-active marketing tool to a pro-active machine to drive traffic and create leads. The VNP links to specials and rebates on your site and works in synergy with our VNS to pro-actively push those offers and reasons to buy out to your customers and prospects. It is that information that will bring recurring and consistent traffic to your site — and all that traffic has a much greater chance of generate more leads and more sales.

www.dealerimpact.com/blog