24 May 2021

With the end of the pandemic now hopefully in sight, this seems like a good moment to look at the lessons that have been learnt by dealers when facing the challenges of the last year.

These are the top five ideas that, in our experience at iVendi, have proven highly effective through the crisis and which we believe are essential to carry forward into the new normal.

1. The showroom and online are one big sales floor

Before the pandemic even some of the most switched-on retailers tended to think of the showroom and online as different spheres for different customers. A year later that’s no longer the case.

On-off lockdowns have prompted more and more retailers to create processes that completely integrate those two worlds, letting customers switch between them at will. At iVendi, we are calling this “connected retail” and all of our latest technology is based on the thinking that this is the future of selling cars.

2. Ensure your customer journey meets customer expectations

The customer journeys that have delivered results during the pandemic are those that make car buying easy and place the customer in control. People buying cars in 2021 expect a slick process that incorporates online and showroom elements in exactly the same manner as they would find in any other modern shopping environment. Retailers need to enable this.

3. Make your proposition effortless

The single most effective tool we’ve found for dealers since the start of the crisis is something we call Digital Deals. These allow retailers to build a proposition for a customer in less than a minute with elements such as price, part-exchange, finance, upgraded warranty options and more.

They can then be sent and used as the basis for an ongoing negotiation driven by the consumer with parameters set by the dealer. The beauty of Digital Deals is that they make the customer proposition tailored, simple, flexible and direct.

4. Don’t lose profitability from sales add-ons

One of the long-term problems with online car sales is that dealers have found it very difficult to maintain their normal level of penetration for products such as extended warranties and service plans. This is an issue because they are important sources of profit. However, we have found that if they are built into the digital proposition from the start of the customer journey, sales are maintained. It’s a key lesson.

5. Use technology that makes points 1-4 possible

At iVendi, we’ve recently started talking about dealer technology that we call “online retail 1.0.” By this, we mean older systems that impose processes on dealers and their customers rather than being adaptable to what both those parties want and need. If this sounds like your current tech, you should take a look at what else is available on the market.

Tags: iVendi