Digital Retailing: Just a New Objection?

[Rick Buffkin]

That in fact, it’s often the archaic tools in place at the dealership that create the confusion and logjams that result in those negative scores about the process. And there you have it: the reason that most dealers reject digital retailing tools and that digital retailing solutions have poor market share in the industry is that the tools were designed to bypass a process, instead of streamline a process.

You gotta remember. The F&I process is the last process on the sales side that hasn't been affected by digital and the internet the way everything else has. Alot of dealers look at it as DR is aiming at disrupting the last profit center on the sales side. We all know that front end margins are shrinking across the boards on both new and used. The one place that they're not really shrinking that much is F&I. And, thats the department and process what DR is directly going after. Dealers will prob continue to be and stay hesitant on DR until someone can show them a profit increase. Or at least show them that F&I profits won't be stripped away the same way front-end profit margins have been.

Also - The only people that really care about the scores are the OEM's. Most dealers prob want those surveys to simply disappear.

 

[Chris Cachor]

In my opinion you can't really implement DR into the existing sales flow and that's one of the reasons it's failed. If you really want to embrace DR you've got to go back the drawing board and overhaul the whole sales and delivery experience from online to in-store. Then you've got to get dealers to buy into it. And I think the latter is the hardest to change.