Pub 10 2020 Issue 3

8 AUTOMOBILE DEALER NEWS ILLINOIS www.illinoisdealers.com Trying to Nail Jell-O to a Tree By Joel Kansanback | Executive Vice President Brown & Brown Dealer Services/Automotive Development Group CONSULTANT’SCORNER A ll the talk right now is about digital retail. Some experts are stating that the COVID-19 pandemic has launched digital retail forward two years in just twomonths. Most experts agree that there is no returning towherewewere. Every dealer must be committed to being the very best at digital. Most retailers that haven’t perfected an online strategy are falling by the wayside. There is a very quick bifur- cation happening within auto dealers — although one camp is having extreme success, the other camp has been caught un- equipped and is either playing catch-up or marching toward a going-out-of-business sale. Choosing to be very good at the other aspects of the business while ignoring digital retail, or putting their toe in the water, isn’t going to work. If you look at the different outcomes of Nike and Under Armor, there are similarities to what’s hap- pening in the retail car business. While Nike was building out the very best in e-commerce, Under Armor was investing in wearable devices that collect data. Today, Nike is thriving and is less dependent than ever on traditional retail. Under Armor is just fighting to stay af loat. Things aren’t going back to the way they used to be. If your dealerships haven’t already committed to being the very best at digital retail, they have to commit now or face certain peril. To be great, we probably need to know exactly what digital retail is and what the measurements for greatness are. De- fining digital retail is surprisingly tricky. Frankly, trying to nail down a definition is like trying to nail Jell-O to a tree. It moves, takes on different shapes and doesn’t have a clear definition or an easy way to succeed. Every customer is already a digital retail customer. On average, they spend19hours online before they come to the dealership.Digital retail is all about how you handle that customer after they get to the dealership. Their education level has changed, and their expecta- tions have changed, too. So maybe digital retail is something to do with a software piece that allows your employees to engage with the customer differently when they enter the dealership. Digital retail is also about advertising. Ideally, you want to reach customers who are in the market by driving your message to them ahead of your competition. You want them to visit your website and keep your dealership top of mind for their next purchase. That means digital retail has to involve your website: the message it carries, its functionality and its ability to convert browsing shoppers into leads. Digital retail has to include BDC, and that department’s ability to manage leads converts leads into showroom appoint- ments or even sales. We recently had a dealership engage us whowanted to take their digital retail to the next level in response to their customer’s needs. When we dug into what they were looking for, what we discovered was that this dealership wanted to streamline the in-dealership process for its customers. For them, that meant responding to their customers’ desires to stop being thrown like a football around the dealership in an old-school back and forth process. They wanted to remove the F&I turnover step to speed up the transactions. Thanks to the pandemic, digital retail may now include pickup and delivery processes for customer cars — sales and service. It also encompasses the ability to do a remote delivery with a digital F&I process and digital signatures.