Some good news for a change. The enquiries from Qtr2 and Qtr3, that didn’t buy, are still there.
As the old saying goes – “Deal or Dead”, well they didn’t die. They were just asleep and now they are buying.
We just need to make sure it is from you!
Having made enquiry and lost sale follow up calls for Motor Dealers for over 25 years we have a pretty good picture of what goes on in the showroom and in the sales exec’s mind.
“It was ages ago. If they still want to buy, they will come back to me.”
Which as we all know is complete rubbish.
We prefer the adage, “If you don’t ask, you don’t get”. Well that’s what we do, on your behalf so you don’t have to rely upon a disenchanted sales exec’ doing it.
AND THE GREAT NEWS.
Opportunities are flowing back into the showroom, not just from enquiries a month ago (25%) but from customers that didn’t buy during Qtr2 and Qtr3.
A number of retailers are using these older records much like a mini-event campaign, much lower numbers, but we can work through them. AND the deals are coming in.
Do you have stock you didn’t have in May or June?
Do you have a lower rate finance or contribution support from your brand?
Then now is the time to contact those outstanding customers.
If you want to make sure it happens give Cymark a call or have a look on the website, or the Blog pages for similar updates. Its worth a look –
Who remembers the 1970’s ? And I don’t mean the weird music and dress sense. I’m talking about the motor trade for both cars and motorbikes.
In the UK, we were proud of our heritage with motor bikes. We built the best. Ok, they were a bit long in the tooth and you didn’t get much. But it was all about image. And no foreign manufacturers from the East could beat that.
But history proved us wrong. We were slow to compete, couldn’t offer the same value for money and, basically, over the next 10 years the British motor cycle industry died.
Has the European Motor Trade got it’s head in the sand?
Have they forgotten the lessons from the British past?
The Europeans make some bloody good cars. Not just the German models, but the British, Swedish and French as well.
But the Chinese are coming.
How long will the European motor industry last if the Chinese arrive with fully electric models from £10,000? It would have to be an amazing European car that could complete with that while costing £40,000.
Remember the buying public. The early adopters rushed towards the latest European Tesla copies, sure they were better made. But you paid a pretty price. Not all drivers will do that.
So, to compete with the Chinese, will Mercedes knock 20% off the price of their cars? Not if they want a stock holders revolt they won’t.
So where does that leave my colleagues in the UK motor trade. The dealers? I expect that a high percentage will move to welcome the likes of BYD and Geely to UK shores and add Chinese franchises to their existing showrooms or replace existing brands completely. If you can’t beat them join them. Do we have any alternative?
The classic Alfa Romeo GTA Corse ages into the Totem GT-electric.
The 1962 Alfa GTA Corse was a classic the moment it was conceived. To be fair, even the picture doesn’t do it justice. In real life the car is tiny. Small but perfectly proportioned.
And today you can get a modern rendering of that car. Watch the video below of the fantastic Totem GT-electric. Performance is staggering. But, so is the noise. Totem have manage to maintain 60’s style with a truly modern build quality and safety features.
Given that the modern version uses original body panels (sourced by Totem) but combines them with the very latest in electric battery and drive train technology you can see why are lucky few are queuing up to be owners in the 21st Century.
The video is worth watching, so are the links on the companies website (below) they even include a ICE engine sound that is linked to the output of the car. It sounds like a highly strung Italian racing engine is pulling you along.
Like marketing in general. Totem have focused on something that works, something that attracts the buyers and decided to ‘do it again’.
There is no age limit on a good design, be that a motor car, a piece of artwork or an advertising campaign.
If it worked once. It will work again.
In the Motor Trade we routinely run ‘Man from the Bank’, ‘Man from the Factory’, ‘VIP’ style events. Why? because they work.
Cymark is in the fortunate position in being able to provide a telesales and enquiry follow up service that works. A process that has been working since 1995.
Unfortunately not fortunate enough to own either a GTA Corse or a new GT-electric.
We are often asked, “can you help us produce detailed statistics, like you do for all your calling campaigns, for our other marketing.”
eSend emails flying
We do produce complete marketing results for a number of clients, but you can do it yourself very easily.
Track your email campaigns like your web traffic.
A number of companies completely skip the FREE OPTION of tracking their email campaigns beyond the very basic.
Use Google Analytics to track your email campaigns exactly like you would a pay per click Online Ad.
Plus, if you do it all through Google Analytics (GA4) you can compare and combined the email results with the rest of your marketing – Interest from Facebook, Pinterest, Blog posts.
Tie it all together. It will make your life much easier and is a HUGE step forward from the ‘Sent / Delivered / Bounced / Opened’ responses that are pretty inaccurate. (Does your smartphone open your emails automatically, or do you read the bulk of the incoming email in Outlook without actually opening it?)
Sound like too much work?, Too complicated?, Have a look through the following steps and short video. You could have all this new information by the end of the afternoon.
Why Email Campaigns?
Recognised as the most cost-effective technique to grow your business. Email marketing builds your brand awareness and expands your customer base.
But you need to know which bit is generating you sales.
Simply put, because most of your ad’s are through Google – probably – and it is completely free.
You can see both which email generate interest. You can see which landing page they visited. Plus, being free, you can play with it without worrying about wasting money.
So what do I need?
To get this to work you are going to need the following:
A Google account. It can be a new Marketing account, rather than your own.
A Google Analytics account. This is where you will see all the statistics.
A Google Tag Manager account. This is the middle step, between your own website and the analysis.
Aware of URL/ATM codes. Really easy, this is the code you put in your email.
There are hundreds of very detailed Google help video’s online to walk you through these three items, but we can recommend starting with –
This instructor will walk through using all four steps above, it might take you 40 minutes. But it can save you hours if you are not familiar with Google Analytics.
I now have GA4 and the other bits. What happens now?
You are probably familiar with links within emails. These are the little blue buttons or phrases that you are encouraged to click, which then leaps you forward onto the senders website, normally to show you more information on the item you were interested in.
The leap to the website is the stage most users stop at. But there is so much more.
The URL/ATM code mentioned above lets you add a little bit of description to the blue link. All of which will take you to the same page on your website.
For example –
Link will go to. Harris Tweed Jacket Page.
Google Analytics will show – 317 users went to the Harris Tweed Jacket Page.
With URL/ATM Code –
Link will go to. Harris Tweed Jacket Page.
Google Analytics will show – 27 users went from your Newsletter email.
104 users went from your autumn offers email.
172 users went from your summer offers email.
14 users went from your ‘Not seen you recently’ email.
In fact, once you become used to Google Analytics you can track exactly which of those user types above ran through the whole website, put items if the sales cart (if used) and bought. Or completed a ‘more information’ form.
The links for the above products – all free and not connected to eSend in any way –
Once everything is hooked up above, you go into Google Analytics. Given the amount of data that Google fights through, there is often a delay of a few hours before data starts initially coming through.
We are the first to admit, that Google Analytics can look very daunting to start with. So we have put together some screens, with ‘Click this bit now’ arrows. (Google has a habit of upgrading GA4 all the time, the exact position on the screen may vary from those below, but you should be able to find the steps. Plus you will know what to type into the help screen should you get lost.
The opening Analytics page (demo account shown) shows the overall site traffic. Follow the arrows.
For a little more information, have a look at the eSend page on the Cymark website or visit the dedicated eSend website.
Since Q4 2022 dealership stock have risen back towards pre-Covid levels. In some cases, too much stock. But getting back to normal is not just about stock levels. It’s about attitude.
Over the last 6 months, through our lost sale follow-up calls, we have seen a continuation of the ‘reason for lost sale’ that became prevalent when we had limited stock. Namely – “We didn’t have exactly what they wanted, so they bought one elsewhere”.
Speaking to Sales Managers this has not been the whole truth. Quite often we get – ‘bloody hell, we have two of those!’.
The strong sales managers, before 2020, always seemed to know which people in the team were the closers, the working sales exec’s you could rely upon to talk the customer into the car you had. It might not have been the right colour, or the right spec, but – “Today Mr Customer, this is the right car for you.”
Have we been developing teams of order takers? It has been a growing issue for perhaps the past 10 years, but the pandemic brought it on in waves.
True, when the only cars to sell are new cars, cars that aren’t in stock and aren’t available to demonstrate, we built some very good teams of order takers. Explaining the pro’s and con’s of a vehicle that, as yet, doesn’t exist is not always easy.
But has it gone too far?
Our ‘Reason for Lost Sale’ analysis is showing more and more that the real reason your customer decided to buying elsewhere, wasn’t price or availability. They just weren’t closed.
Thankfully our calls are still showing that roughly 55% of customers still haven’t bought any car a month after they initially enquired. Out of those half again are actively looking for your brand now. Today.
So all is not lost.
You just have to know which ones to chase. Which is where Cymark comes in.
Is the general motor trade, slightly xenophobic? And if it is, has that proven to be a bad thing for the countries that are slightly ‘more’ than others?
Not trying to be contentious, but the motor trade, like its buying public has always been slightly xenophobic, you only have to watch American films covering the last 30 years to see the shift away from Detroit iron to euro boxes as they used to call them over the pond.
The move has certainly been bad for Detroit and Michigan as a whole.
But across Europe, did the British stand out as ‘less’ xenophobic? We welcomed innovative design from our European neighbours with open arms through the 70’s and 80’s at the sad loss of our own Motor Trade. As Birmingham will attest.
Can we honestly say that the Triumph Dolomite or Austin Princess were worse than the Renault 12 or Fiat 128. Or a decade later was the Maestro much worse than a Renault 11 or a Fiat Strada.
Yet, these two countries probably lean towards ‘more’ xenophobia, France is still awash with Renault, Peugeot and Citroen, while Italy is strongly Fiat and Lancia. Have they done better out of a slightly nationalistic stance?
The concerns this week in the mainstream press, with France unwilling to bend over Chinese EV imports into Europe. I can see why. Out of all the European manufacturers producing today, the French machines are likely to be the most competitive against the emerging Asian brands.
I think Italy would be standing firm alongside France, except Italian politics is a law unto itself at the moment.
So where does it leave UK retailers? Over the next few years I won’t be surprised if they embrace the EV’s from China and Korea, we have done it before, we will do it again. Certainly with our handover calls, or service follow-up calls we are not seeing worse customer comments than the more UK established brands.
If new makes drive customers through the showroom door, it can only be a good thing for the retail motor trade. We need products that can be sold, or rather bought by the general public. Not just as a first car, but as a second or third.
The future is rosy, complicated, but hopefully profitable. Retail dealers are very good at finding a profit where there doesn’t always seem to be one.
Do you need to close as many of those EV opportunities as possible before the latest EV reports reaches the mainstream motoring press?
Just this week, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) answered a simple question, “When will electric cars be cheaper than ICE models?”. We aren’t 100% sure who asked the question but their response was interesting.
BNEF : “Well if you count the whole life costs of the car, you could say that is now. But, looking at manufacturing, we expect EV’s to be just 10% more expensive than their equivalent petrol engine model by 2027.”
Again, more great news for the buying public. At last the future of motoring comes back into the reach of so many small car buyers.
But TODAY, you need to make the most of all those EV enquiries. What if they dry up, waiting for these new 10% cars to arrive.
If Bloomberg are to be believed, and why not they are one of the largest financial institutions in America, then would you pay today, what is roughly a 40% over charge for some models, or would you buy something short term and wait it out.
Sure, there are some exceptions. The new Volvo EX30, when it arrives will be just £34k, only slightly smaller than the existing XC40, but starting price is exactly the same.
A bit like shrinkage in the supermarket, maybe that 10% was the packaging size.
If more manufacturers follow this Swedish lead, then perhaps the 10% models will be here sooner rather than later. However, looking at the other prestige models, the current line up’s all seem to be focused on the more expensive models.
We can only wait.
If you have rising manufacturers targets, that include EV sales you need to convert as many of those EV enquiries as possible with different enquiry management programmes like Cymarks Lost Sale and Enquiry Follow-Up programmes, both improve conversion rates.
In some ways it a good thing. Pushing back the time line for the mandatory ‘turning off’ of ICE engine cars until 2035.
I always thought 2030 was a bit optimistic, but to be fair car manufacturers grabbed it by the scruff of the neck, invested huge amounts of money and looked like they were on target to achieve it.
But the Government have now moved the goal posts.
Which will definitely affect customer confidence. Is this likely to affect the number of people enquiring about your cars?
Over the last couple of months we have had BMW make a couple of sweeping statements regarding the Electric Mini brand. First, it was being moved to China. With only ICE engine models being made in Cowley. Then 2 weeks ago it announced that the electric models would also be made in Cowley.
This is great news for the Oxfordshire site.
But the enquiry levels at the time certainly didn’t reflect that, with an immediate dip in showroom enquiries just after both events.
It looks like the buying public are more concerned about knowing exactly what is happening, slightly less than where the car is made. (which is a little sad).
I suspect that this weeks announcement is likely to worry the customer base even further. Already listening to half the motoring press criticising the move to electric and emphasising the potential financial costs to early adopters. Will the second wave of EV buyers be affected. Unfortunately I think so.
During our enquiry follow up and lost sale telemarketing programmes we have seen a number of customers site that exact reason “I’m unsure about EV, so I’m going to wait a year” and “I decided to buy an old petrol / diesel model to get me through the next couple of years”
Neither response helps the retailer out. Especially if you are struggling for sensibly priced used stock and the manufacturer has given you a solid EV target.
I assume that the government know all of this. The car industry is professional, if the world said – “We want all cars to run on Rape Seed Oil by August 1st”, the motor trade is likely to swear for 10 minutes and then ask “What time on the 1st?”
So it is probably the Government itself that is behind with its forced introduction – we may have the cars but not the infrastructure, and may be wavering in the face of new advances for Hydrogen models. And yet again the Motor Trade is having to pay for it.
Like most companies we send out email updates, newsletters etc to former customers / collegues etc. We aren’t a retail business, instead a business consultancy within the Motor Trade so my own subscriber list is thousands not millions.
By accident, our admin team sent out this weeks “Have a good September 1st” email, but instead of using the latest subscriber list they picked my own list from Spring 2020.
58% of my former colleagues and contacts are no longer there. Some 4,500 senior managers in the Motor Trade.
A lot of statistics will tell you that people move every 4-5 years, we have had a pandemic, blah blah. But mainly that is to sell the “updated industry list” they are trying to push.
I know people change jobs, but the Motor Trade is quite a family – sometimes a pretty dysfunctional family -, you might move jobs, but often with the same retailer, or certainly within the same group. You have just moved branch. Or quite commonly, returned to a group you were with originally.
So 58% gone, seeing it in one go is quite sobering. I hadn’t noticed it as we update our database and subscriber lists on a rolling basis, happily we have the telesales staff that can call the bounced emails to update the current managers details each week.
If you’re marketing cars and vans to local business and fleet buyers then your database probably went through the same changes as mine and need to have a chat with our data team to see how we can help. They have been making B2B marketing and research calls for over 25 years, and know how to do it.
I know every time they update my database they generate new opportunities for me to call and introduce the marketing services of Cymark. If we can be of help, drop me an email or DM.
Here in the UK, I am sure many of you are aware of the Candlelighters Charity for Children with Cancer. https://www.candlelighters.org.uk
They have run a couple of great events this summer and I just wanted to say – if you get the opportunity pop along and support them. Worldwide there are similar charities and they all deserve our support.
The Fire Engine?
At a recent event we were able to book a seat in a fire engine and given a ride around an old airfield test track. Many of us, especially in the Motor Trade are familiar with performance cars from every brand and have been lucky enough to experience a pro-driver throwing a supercar around a track while we grin manically from the passenger seat.
If you haven’t tried the Fire Engine, your missing something!
The “it’s not going to make it, it’s not going to make it”, is heightened to an unprecedented level when the 8m long, 11 tonne vehicle your in is hurtling towards a 90 degree corner and the driver is showing no intention of slowing down. Impressive just doesn’t cover it.
And Impressive is one thing I can say about the kids at the event. No one should have to cope with Cancer, least of all children. They are some of the bravest people I have ever met. Send them some money!
