It's why DR failed. How do you improve it?
I've been thinking about this a lot, but I told myself I wouldn't work on it until I got a couple other projects out of the way. But in the spirit of impulsiveness I think I'll share some of my ideas and maybe work on this in the open with fellow DR members cause I think a lot of the real work with DR is more operational. I think the customer side is actually pretty easy.
So way back I had an idea to build a dealer website platform in a similar fashion to Shopify. Complete with a pseudo "App Store", shared promotion assets, etc. But it was just too big of a project to do solo in my spare time. Anyways, I watched the whole DR stuff come and go, but I always thought you know, I think this a problem worth solving. If anyone here follow Naval Ravikant, I always loved this quote: "You will get rich by giving society what it wants but does not yet know how to get". Ironically, I was calling the platform "Dealer Commerce".
Fast forward to today and I think there's 2 major problems with DR.
1. Nobody wants to use it
2. Everyone is doing the same thing
Today car buyers suffer from the same problem they had at Disney World.
They don't want to wait. Disney customers will actually pay extra to not have to wait. What's this ultimately mean? Customers want a more productive car buying experience.
Idea #1. Dealer Wallet Passes
Call it a FastPass, DealerPass, whatever. It's a QR code that gets added to your smartphone wallet. Here's what I'm thinking:
1. Customer is on the site. Finds a car they're interested in. See information about an expedited sales process and clicks to learn more. Enter their basic information, opt-in for a simple soft credit pull (that more or less returns a FICO score from their info (email -> fall back to SSN). This is all a slick process requiring the user to enter minimal info.
2. Pass is created, dealer is notified, pass also sent to customers email. Also important is customer is required to bring valid form of ID. Dealer is aware there's a hit on that specific vehicle. Backend system also determines similar vehicles (by using data from behavior analytics).
3. Customer visits dealer, explains they have FastPass for expedited process. Sales person opens their phone, scans the QR code as well as valid ID barcode/QR code. Customer information sent to CRM/DMS/Desking. Sales person see's customer information, basic credit profile, vehicles they've browsed along with similar vehicles other people looked at.
That's the gist of it. There's a few things happening here. The customer is already primed to hand over their information but it's seamless AND they're getting something in return; the expectation that when they say "Yes", they're fast tracked to take delivery ASAP. When the customer scans the pass, any traffic source that brought them to the site get's the sale. No more exit survey -- you know the referrer for that customer and that's encoded in the pass.
There's two steps I didn't include and that's because I'm unsure how it works. From previous experience, though, when I've said "Yes", I had to wait for the car to be cleaned up and wait for finance.
If you want to expedite this process - when the pass is created and the dealer is notified, operationally this is an opportunity to get the car cleaned up. As far as the finance process goes I'm not sure if they have to wait or if their sales person can handle this. There's a lot of things that can occur here so I'm gonna leave that for some DR discussion. But I think a process similar to how Apple adopted in their retail stores. There's no checkout line. Your salesperson handles it. Ideally this creates a lot more efficiency in this process and also allows the sales person more opportunity on upsells for financial products. But it might be like this at all dealers for a reason so idk.
Idea #2. More Efficient Website
Build the site around a pseudo eCommerce model. When I land on the site, I shouldn't have to click off to whatever New/Used. Just make the homepage the store. Design the site around a "Jobs to be Done" model. I'm either buying a car, researching the dealer, or scheduling service. Assess the most common use cases and deliver a slick on boarding experience.
Which brings up the most important part:
There is no bridge between online and offline sales in car buying. During Covid - it was the phone. But customers still want to scope out other cars and have a productive delivery experience. What they don't want to do is fill out paper forms, wait for credit approvals, sit at a desk or wait for finance.
Making the process more efficient for both the buyer and seller helps both parties get what they want. And I think operationally for dealers and sales people, can help with the staggering amount of hours they have to hang at the dealership for. More on that later!
I'd love to make this happen though. If someone else beats me to it - fair game! Would love to hear everyone's thoughts.
(Standard Equip since 2017ish. haha)
