| Marketing Repurchase Quotes to Your Entire DMS Customer Base |
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| Written by Chip King |
| Wednesday, 18 November 2009 00:00 |
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An automobile dealer who asks his sales management team to produce an exact repurchase quote for every customer who purchased a vehicle from their dealership in the last 72 months…let’s say the last 72 hours…will probably hear back that they can’t do it (in even the next 72 days) with their current DMS software.
Thankfully this problem has been addressed by a few external vendor applications that combine the details of a customer’s previous purchase with their current service history data, trade value, applicable payoff, new vehicle pricing, plus current rebates and incentives to produce the repurchase quotes. Yet to date only a fraction of dealers are utilizing this type of technology in their current marketing efforts.
Your existing customer base is your best resource for future sales. Knowing the exact details of what it would take for them to purchase a replacement new or used vehicle is powerful information. Approximately 25-30 percent of a dealer’s customer base can reduce their current monthly payment with no money out of pocket, but dealers don’t know which customers make up that 25–30 percent.
Benefits of marketing to these clients:
· Your past and current customers know you.
· They have an established relationship with your dealership.
· They have proven that they are credit worthy.
· You stay ahead of your customers’ active imaginations.
· You receive higher grosses because the price is perceived as “set.”
· It allows you to target specific new vehicle inventory.
· It allows you to target specific usedvehicle inventory.
· It allows you to target customers whose cars are being serviced.
· It is proactive, not reactive.
· Results can be finitely measured.
· Your sales team is in a constant state of action.
· Campaigns can be done instantly.
· It reduces seasonal highs and lows.
· It enhances CSI when presented as a customer service.
· It works within an existing BDC center.
The key to this type of marketing is the trust factor gained when your customer correspondence references pertinent details and specifics relevant to that customer’s previous purchase, as well as the specific details going forward regarding their repurchase options.
There are several things to keep in mind when choosing a company that provides these services. Like wine, the products may look very similar from a distance, but have vastly different degrees of quality.
Things to look for:
A. Is their product sophisticated enough to match the trim level of the vehicle the customer is driving now to the closest current trim level offered or do they just come close? Example: A customer driving a two-door Honda Civic Si six-speed is offered a quote on a four-door Honda Civic Hybrid Automatic. Obviously two different demographics!
B. Does their final quote offer incorporate State specific sales tax ramifications as well as doc fees, title fees, etc, or will you have to place the dreaded asterisk informing the customer that these are not included?
C. Is their product web-based so that a dealer can make instantaneous quote parameter changes that can be applied to thousands of quotes in a matter of minutes?
As you can imagine, when consistently applied, the ROI on this type of marketing is substantially higher than current efforts. So it is not a question of if you should market this way…it is just a question of when?
Chip King is the CEO of AutoExcavations, a CRM company focused on marketing to dealers, direct mail companies and OEMs. He can be reached at 860-777-5471,
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
, or www.autoexcavations.com.
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