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Survey at Delivery: A Road Map to Your Store

joe.pistell

Uncle Joe
Apr 7, 2009
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Joe
I am looking for a few dealers that want to participate in a web survey, done at delivery.

Goal: Create a Road Map to Your Store.

Concept:
A high level look at your shoppers journey to gain insights into invisible parts of the car buying journey.

It's a web based survey. You'll need to come up with a system and oversee this. Your org will interview every buyer at some time before they leave your store. It can be done at F&I or by your reps. If you're interested, this takes effort for me and you, so only sign up if you have authority to make this happen on your end ;-)

PM me here or send me an email at joe [dot] pistell at dealer [dot] com
 
Your shoppers will answer questions like:


How did you hear about us?
(check all that apply)
____ Friend or Relative
____ Internet
____ Newspaper
____ TV
____ Radio
____ Driving By

While shopping, you...
____ Shopped for Used Cars Only
____ Shopped for New Cars Only
____ Shopped for New and Used Cars


As best as you can recall, how long have you been looking to replace your old vehicle?
____ Less than one week
____ 1-2 weeks
____ 3-4 weeks
____ 4-8 weeks
____ More than 2 months

While you were car shopping, where did you go to get most of your ideas?
(check all that apply)
____ Internet
____ Newspaper
____ TV
____ Radio
____ Friend
____ Driving by


How many Dealerships did you visit before you bought from us?

____ Just [your store name] (no other dealers)
____ 1 + [your store name]
____ 2 + [your store name]
____ 3 or more + [your store name]


Have you seen our TV ads?
____ Yes
____ No


Did you find the TV ads helpful?
____ Not helpful
____ Somewhat helpful
____ Average
____ Better Than Average
____ An Excellent Help


Do you consider yourself a frequent Internet user?
____ Yes (about 30mins or more per day)
____ No


Did you shop online at: (check all that apply)
____ AutoTrader.com
____ Cars.com
____ [local newspaper site]
____other_____________________________________


Did you visit [your store site.com]?
____ Yes
____ No

IF YES…
Did you visit [your store site.com] more than once?
____ One time
____ Two times
____ less than 5 times
____ I went there a LOT!


How did you find our web site, [your store site.com]? (check all that apply)
____ Heard it on TV
____ Heard it on Radio
____ A friend at work showed it to me
____ AutoTrader.com or Cars.com
____ Google, Yahoo, AOL search engines
____ Other: _________________________________


Do use FaceBook.com?
___Yes
___No

If yes, how often do you visit FaceBook.com?
___Rarely
___A couple times a week
___Daily
___Several times a day
 
Your shoppers will answer questions like:

Do you use FaceBook.com?
___Yes
___No

If yes, how often do you visit FaceBook.com?
___Rarely
___A couple times a week
___Daily
___Several times a day


Joe, I believe it's just "Facebook". Not sure people use the ".com" at the end anymore. ;)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this is the same post survey you used at Sun back in the day. Well, not that long ago.

Would you agree that a solid survey taken at the right time can help you make decisions around your dealers marketing efforts?
 
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Yes, this is a post sale, in-store survey that I ran at my old store. Car buyers are nearly invisible, I found out:

INTERNET
80% consider themselves a "frequent internet user" (more than 30 mins a day)
22% of all of my buyers used Cars.com or Autotrader at sometime.
85% of all sales were on my site prior to purchase
...and 70% of these went to my site 3x or more

COMPETITION
43% of all buyers shopped never stopped at another store.
25% of all buyers shopped at one other store

LOYALTY & REPUTATION
70% of all sales were to either a repeat buyer, or to someone who knew a friend or family that was a buyer.

TIME TO SALE
50% were in shopping 3 months or longer


TRADITIONAL AD PERFORMANCE
90% of all buyers saw my TV ads, but...
25% found these ads helpful
 
We've been looking to implement a post sale survey for awhile. Just haven't pulled the trigger yet. Quick question, will you be hosting survey or will it be local? What if we do not use TV?

hi Grant, this survey will be tailored to you, so, we'll adjust it as needed. It'll be an alpha project, I'll host it via surveygizmo, we'll share its construction, login and review.

A post sale Survey can help us understand what your stores shoppers profile looks like. Heres one small sample of why why I did this survey and why I want others to try it...

My Leads from autotrader and cars were low, fees were high. My boss saw little ROI and wanted to cut them out. I knew if I wasn't in the classified sites then my competitors would get more opportunities. I couldn't explain why shoppers were not walking around with autotrader printouts. I assumed that shoppers use the classified sites to discover product vs price but they moved away from the classified sites. I can't recall shoppers asking sales reps to go to autotrader to show them a lower priced car. I felt shoppers were looking at dealer sites to identify one or more cars to "prepare for the visit". So... No leads does not mean no sales! IMO, Cut out cars.com and you'll see less ups (which we don't track as well as leads). The post sale survey can help expose this invisible activity (aka marketing attribution).

hth
joe
 
Joe, do you feel that customers ever answered a question a certain way because they felt it was expected of them?
We did a study with a local ad source [tv/digital/paper] the answers didn't match what I see online or what any of the "automotive research" shows. Given the grain of salt due the source, post activity reflection still seems skewed. Thought the "right questions" can help, how did/do you account for this in taking action on the data you collect?
 
Great questions Kelly.

Joe, do you feel that customers ever answered a question a certain way because they felt it was expected of them? ...

Yes. I carefully considered this. A survey done pre-sale is a fail. Their guard is way up and the sales rep feels the questions put the shopper into full defense mode. Post-sale, near delivery, the game is over, the shopper is all warm and fuzzy and the shopper's guard is nearly gone.

(note: This is the core reason why a CRM that asks a walk in for a lead source is a total fail.)

...We did a study with a local ad source [tv/digital/paper] the answers didn't match what I see online or what any of the "automotive research" shows. Given the grain of salt due the source, post activity reflection still seems skewed. Thought the "right questions" can help, how did/do you account for this in taking action on the data you collect?

The shoppers journey is a looooong and complicated trip. It lasts several weeks or months, the shopper is exposed to hundreds of auto marketing messages and dozens of websites AND its NOT a clean and linear path. Our shopper goes in-market on tuesday, then vanishes for 3 weeks and is back in-market again (they saw a tv ad, or their odo hit 50,000 and they're back looking at cars again).

The survey has to embrace this reality and keep it's questions high level (i.e. "when you were car shopping, where did you look to get ideas? TV, Radio, NewsPaper, Internet, Magazine, ....(check all that apply) "

You can't ask them: "Did you see any of our cars on: Cars.com, Autotrader.com, LocalNewsPapersite.com, etc...(check all that apply)" You can't ask them "Where did you see the car you bought?" The shopping journey is way too complex and foggy to get these answers, so the shopper will not want to appear ignorant and will plug in answers as needed.

The mission here is to create a profile of the shopper's habits, a top level look at how they go about their STEALTH shopping.

A few take-aways should look like:

Whats my referral biz look like (friends and family)

Where's my store in the shoppers buying journey? Do I get the easy "one store closes", or, do I get shoppers that are grinders and bouncing from store to store? (note: this is complex, it's influenced by your stores profile and your position in the marketplace. It is influenced by your franchise, your inventory profile (width & depth), your Geo (relative to the major market), TV spending, Digital spending, web marketing & merchandising, your stores sales skills, etc...)

What influence does used car shopping have on my shoppers mix? (i.e. do my shoppers look for new and used simultaneously? If so, what merchandising efforts do I make on the site and on the lot to address this?")

Do shoppers visit my site?
--if so, why and how often do they look at it? (just how important is our site to the shopper?)

Some of the best take aways from the survey can be sent right back to all the decision makers and the sales team. Like...

Do my shoppers consider themselves frequent internet users?
--if so, can someone shove this survey in the face of the UC manager, so he/she'll to stop blowing their ad spend on newsprint! ;-)

How long do OUR shoppers take before they buy a car?

--Show this to the ENTIRE sales staff. Example could be: "50% of YOUR sales came from shoppers that we're in-market for longer than 4 weeks... Old does not mean cold! Give yourself a raise, WORK YOUR CRM"



My take aways...
I was marketing director, from my survey, I found the single greatest signature of a "sale in the making" was a shopper at my web site for a repeat visit. The "repeat visitor" stat became my obsession which lead me to build all kinds of awesome merchandising tools on my old site, including MyCars, Big ass Pics, LESS Lead Gen buttons AND putting them below the fold (satisfy the shopper 1st, lead gen will follow), Automatic comment generator, Hot Feature call outs, reverse transparency messaging, etc... In my case, once I had my merchandising game going, I ramped up PPC spending so I could fuel more repeat visits.
 
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Hypothetical Example of a survey delivery report

The Road to Johnson Ford
-Results from your survey at delivery-
2013 YTD: 973 sales total
2-repeat.jpg
Does the manager at the desk know he's got a repeat buyer? Do you make repeat buyers feel special (free gift?)
 
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