Another football season comes to an end with the crowning of a Super Bowl champion. Are the Baltimore Ravens the most talented team in the NFL?
Maybe... or maybe not.
Love them or hate them, what the Ravens are is a unified team. Separate units of offense, defense and special teams that worked together to accomplish a goal. Each unit focused on their individual objectives, while at the same time, focused on putting the next unit in position to help influence a win.
A high-performing dealership is similar to a championship football team, with individual units or profit centers working as a unified team to deliver a win; an exceptional consumer experience that results in vehicle, service, parts and accessoriessales.
As consumers interact with profit centers within your dealership, their in-store journey is far from linear. There is a beginning in-store interaction that might be in sales, parts or service; but not a defined path towards the next profit center. Each consumer’s in-store journey takes a slightly different path with a different destination, time frame and points of influence. For a successful automotive consumer journey, profit centers must be unified just like the three phases -- offense, defense & special teams -- of a Super Bowl champion.
But what happens when profit centers are compartmentalized; looking to pad their own stats instead of winning as a team? How many dealerships have loyal sales customers that never visit their service department; or loyal service customers that never set foot on their showroom floor?
Sadly... too many!
Becoming a unified championshipteam begins with each profit center acknowledging their co-dependency. Working together instead of individually has a substantially greater influence on consumer behavior; and adjusting in-store processes to reflect multiple points or channels of influence creates wins for each profit center and the dealership as a whole.
Escorting a customer from the service waiting room to the showroom floor for coffee creates an influence channel with the sales department. A salesperson showing the customer accessories on a vehicle creates an influence channel for the parts department. This unified profit center approach helps high-performing dealers deliver an exceptional consumer experience and increased dealership profits.
A unified profit center approach is not just an in-store best practice, but is also a best practice when it comes to your dealership marketing. Just as a consumer’s journey through a dealership is non-linear, a consumer’s digital journey is even more complex, often with no clear path.
A high-performing dealership will translate its unified profit center processes into a unified, multichannel marketing approach. According to Cobalt’s multichannel eBook:
There’s research that backs-up the multichannel marketing strategy that these top-performing dealership have deployed. Cobalt’s latest eBook also states:
In football terms, that means a serious uptick in roaring fans for you.
While you may never get to experience the thrill of winning a Super Bowl, you can experience the thrill of beating your competition through multichannel marketing; an experience that many high-performing dealerships are experiencing daily.
If you were coaching in the 2013 Marketing Super Bowl, what advice would you give your players?
