Will A Car Dealer Be Gone As A Role?
Opening a physical car dealership in the US requires a serious investment. The costs start from $100K and can be up to $500K depending on the state you want to open it in.
By making such a financial commitment, you need to be sure that it will eventually pay off, but, will it? With so many consumers buying a car online and having them delivered right to their front door, can a car dealer job extinct and join obsolete professions like a lamplighter or an iceman?
The Future of Car Dealerships
Digital retailing impacted almost every industry but the automotive is among those being shaken to the core. Physical dealerships keep losing customers to online retailers that put money into car dealer software and bypassed spending hundreds of thousands on big fancy buildings.
Given these circumstances, continue investing solely in your brick-and-mortar lots is like pumping gas into a leaking tank.
Still, some dealerships are reluctant to invest in automotive digital retailing. Negative experience in the past is one of the reasons behind it. Tried and failed once, they are back to the way it was done in the 80’s: offline.
The right way to know what’s wrong is to look at what car buyers are saying.
Car buying trends 2019: love cars, hate the process
The recent study involving almost 3,000 car shoppers found that to have better customer experience, 89% of respondents would drive 30 minutes further and 58% said they would pay a $1,000 more.
What constitutes a “better experience” though? People still like buying a car per se: I want that one, here is my money. What they don’t like is an exhausting process that they are usually involved in most of the physical dealerships. They’re being approached with annoying age-old sales techniques, kept waiting, pressured into buying add-ons, and all kinds of things that initially forced them out of physical dealerships and into the online ones.
According to the study, car buyers would prefer overpaying a one thousand bucks for an ability to do the deal online, check the condition reports, calculate correct payments, and sign everything from the comfort of their homes.
So there would be only one thing left to do: test-drive and pick up a vehicle at the dealership and bring the old one in case of a trade-in. As we mentioned before, 58% of car buyers would prefer a dealership that is located 50-60 miles away if it provides the car buying process of this kind.
Autoxloo Car Dealer Software Solutions
To be a dealer that is worth a 50-mile drive and a 1000-dollar overpayment, you have to rethink the way you sell cars. As a car dealer software provider, we can hold your hand through the automotive digital retailing setup.
The software packages and standalone products that we have developed, can help you to improve your bottom line while reducing labor costs. With our tools your customers can have the type of car buying process they are requesting for: go through inventory online, compare vehicles, apply for financing, and be able to make payments online. The uncertainty of remote car buying can be addressed with our Vehicle Inspection Report™ feature that allows car dealers to provide detailed information about the true condition of the vehicle online.
Takeaway
For the next decade, a car dealer role will remain important though reshaped. Dealers have to acknowledge that investing in car dealer software the same amounts or even more than they invest in customer lounges, is a key to really serve those customers.
If you want to become one of the “renewed” car dealers that keep making money even after the wind has changed for the automotive industry, contact us today.
