What if you're an old-school digital marketer, like me?
I don't think it's wrong to call "pricing" a strategy, or a tactic, a culture, a process or anything else -- just semantics. Pricing may or may not be part of your overall "scheme" (threw another one in there) to get people in your bricks-and-mortar store.
Where the truly "Old-School" guys fail is when they refuse to realize that the "Front Door" is no longer that space 30 feet in front of their desks, and that the "meet-n-greet" is no longer that hand-shake on the lot or on the floor. I've said that before, and often.
But here's a twist: I think the "New School" guys fail when they completely discount the Old School stuff.
Some of the readers here may not understand my reference to APB selling (read-up at your leisure:
Automotive Profit Builders Inc- Company), but if you place it all in the following summarized context, I think it's a valid argument.
The Meet-N-Greet and Qualification and Hood-N-Trunk and Demo Drive and Sold Line and Write-Up really boil-down to the intent to build value in 1. the product, 2. the saleperson, 3. the dealership AND the intent to create the ability to generate an offer after the 1st Pencil.
Let me further summarize: our processes are designed so that our clients will like us and our products enough so that when we hit them at sticker while rolling their trade $1000, we can peel them off the ceiling and agree to a reasonable offer.
That is still our game, folks. There's where the gross is. As long as there is negotiation as part of the process (until there is one-price selling), the stores who make the money and get good CSI are the ones who embrace THIS PROCESS.
Now WHERE and HOW and the TOOLS of this process have changed! And the ones who really get it are the ones who have been able to marry the Old with the New. An example: imagine a showroom where all of the Ups on the floor are there to meet the Sales Manager with whom they have an appointment, which was set by an Appointment Setter. They already have enough information that they are comfortable walking through that scary door. They feel "important" because they are meeting the Manager. And when introduced to the "top salesperson," they are provided with a value-ladened presentation and demonstration. How would that effect negotiations? (If you answered, "it would help," you are correct!).
In the aformentioned example, did the meet-n-greet still occur? Yes! Did it occur at the front door? No! Did we qualify the up? Yes! Did we do it on our Yellow Up Card? No! All the crucial elements for high units, gross, and CSI are still there... they're just not where they used to be.
So I hope the New guys will cut the Old guys some slack, and the Old guys are open to learning some new tricks -- because really, now more then ever, they need each other.
