As a salesperson, it’s your job to know your product, sell your product and most importantly, make your customers happy. In 2024, it doesn’t matter how great your product is or how well you can pitch your product, if you can’t make your customers happy, you’re not going to have much success selling. Since buying a car is one of the biggest purchases people make other than buying a house, you need to ensure satisfaction in your customers. 

As digital retail continues to evolve in all industries, so have the customer’s expectations of how the sales journey should go. Customers are comparing how they buy a car from one dealership to another, they’re comparing buying a car with buying something off Amazon, Canadian Tire, or Uber. The problem is most dealerships have not come close to catching up to those three companies’ sales processes. Right now, many dealerships foster uncertainty, frustration and tension in the customers that hurt the dealership’s odds of making a sale. 

So how does your dealership adapt to the times and what are customers looking for most when they’re buying a car? In this article, we’ll talk about customer expectations and the role of car sales online and how your dealership can thrive in 2024 and beyond. 

The Three Things Your Customers Want Most

1. Convenience 

Depending on the customer and dealership, it can take up to 7 hours to buy a car. Typically, the part of the process that takes the longest is the credit process. For many people, this is also the most stressful part of the process because they’re unsure if they’ll be approved or not. We designed AVA Credit to combat this issue specifically, customers no longer need to wonder about where their credit stands. They can go into a dealership with the confidence in knowing exactly what their credit score is without taking a hard hit to their credit. 

In the age of instant gratification and one-click buying, people don’t like to wait. If you have the option to make the car buying process quicker, more convenient and less stressful, why not do it? Stand out from other dealerships and see the results for yourself. 

2. To Know The ACTUAL Cost

Take a moment and think for a second, how many shopping experiences in North America include haggling and negotiation? My guess is you couldn’t think of any other than buying a car, house, or negotiating with someone on Kijiji. Most businesses have a sale price on an item and that price will not be negotiated or haggled. In the automotive industry, most customers know that the sticker price is not the actual price and there is always room for negotiation. What this does is create stress in a lot of customers because they don’t feel confident in their ability to negotiate on a vehicle. When your customer feels stressed and uncertain about their ability to negotiate, it creates distrust. 

With digital retail, the customer gets a more transparent look at the true cost of the vehicles they’re looking at. It creates less anxiety in the customer, allowing for you to build a more trusting relationship and in turn, a happy customer. We’ve noticed a strong correlation between the dealers that put an effort in promoting their digital retail experience and them having a larger market share, higher gross profit per vehicle and better CSI.  

3. Third-Party Car Websites

As we’ve talked about many times before, the way customers shop for cars today is much different than it was even 5 years ago. A study was done by Google that found 95% of shoppers do research online on the vehicles they’re interested in before entering the showroom. We’ve also found that most shoppers claim that their brand loyalty is mostly impacted by their sales experience. As we see fewer people visiting dealer’s showrooms, brands/dealerships have even fewer opportunities to make a positive influence on their shoppers. 

With this, a massive opportunity is created to join the wave of automotive digital retailing and make an impact on customers before they enter your dealership. This needs to happen online and you need to make a consistent effort to have your customers come to your website instead of third-party websites. 

Be An Innovator in Your City!

Imagine knowing how big Bitcoin was going to be 5 years ago, you’d probably invest every last penny of your savings in it, right? Sure maybe we’re being a bit dramatic, but you should have this same mentality when thinking about new car buying technology. Be the first in your city to introduce new car buying technology that gives your customers the car buying experience that they want! Your customers will thank you for it and you’ll thank yourself for it when you reap the benefits. Autocorp.ai can help you take your digital retailing to the next level with our tools like AVA Credit, AVA Trade and AVA ID. Book a demo with us today and get started!