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The Great Escape

Do you know why your customers are leaving?

I learned early in my management career that the key to increasing sales performance in my dealership was to understand why customers were leaving and to develop strategies to address the key reasons. Even the best salespeople will only close 30% of first time customers. That means 70% will walk. If you don't know why they are leaving, you'll have less of a chance to get them back.

Reasons for leaving

The main reasons customers leave without buying include:

They don't like the vehicle
They don't like the price
They don't like the way they were treated

These 3 areas make up over 80% of the reasons given by customers in follow up surveys conducted by companies like JD Power and Associates. What's interesting to note is that less than 25% leave because they don't like the vehicle. That means of the 70 shoppers out of every 100 that leave without buying, you still have the chance to sell to 52 of them.

And the number one reason customers leave without buying is because of the way they were treated. Not price!

Reasons customers give salespeople: After asking them for the sale, customers will present their objections along one of four categories:

Time
Money (Payment, Price, Down Payment, Interest rate or Trade In)
People (Spouse, Parent, Friend)
Competition

Since "time" is really just a smoke screen, the real reason is one of the other 3. It's important to realize that while price is common to both the survey response and the response customers give to salespeople, they rarely will tell the salesperson that they don't like how they are being treated.

So here's the question: Do you have specific strategies in place to address the concerns about the way your sales team treats the customer and how the customer perceives the vehicles price? Remember, price is a value issue. At Auto University w'�ve worked hard to develop courses that will address both of these important issues. All of our courses are customer focused. And we have specific courses on how to build strong relationships such as Connecting with Customers. Or you can enroll in our Enhanced Sales Presentations course to learn more about building value.

We also want to hear from you! So take the time to post your comments and ideas!