A SOUTH Australian dealer selling a popular Asian brand has sold 23 cars in two days with just three sales staff following a training, customer appointments and sales event organised by Absolute Results.

The 23 cars sold in the two days was one short of the dealership’s monthly sales target from the OEM and was a store record. It “significantly out-performed” other brands sold over the weekend by the group.

The sales were executed by just three sales staff who achieved a sales rate of seven cars per staff member in the two days.

The event focussed on appointment targets generated by new software being used by Absolute Results to identify existing customers for that brand who are most likely to be ready for a new car and then training sales staff to make appointments with the customers for the event.

A breakdown of the data showed

• Three sales executives trained
• 53 appointments set
• 36 appointment shows
• 23 cars sold
• 64 per cent closing rate
• More than seven sales per executive

Steve Zanlunghi, director of operations – Asia Pacific Region for Absolute Results told GoAutoNews Premium the aggregate results for three events within the same brand across SA during the campaign were:

• Nine sales executives trained
• 173 appointments set
• 94 appointment shows
• 76 cars sold
• 67 per cent closing rate
• More than over eight sales per executive in one weekend

“When we are engaged with a dealer we only utilise that brand’s database and that brand’s sales executives. The event starts with retention training for the sales executives followed by an event that immediately puts that training to use,” he said.

“Our focus is on training sales execs for retention conversations with existing customers of that dealership.

“We use our technology introduced last June that identifies customers with the highest propensity to buy within a dealer’s database. We then combine that with training an engaged sales team. That is what’s driving these results.

“Also driving the results are a committed and driven sales team as well.

“Due to stock shortages we can be very surgical with the technology and focus on the vehicles that the dealer has in stock, or vehicles that customers are driving that the dealer knows they can flip quickly and profitably. In essence a new car sale with a trade-in is a two-car deal.

“Customers who are coming in through our appointments-driven private sale events are trading in their current vehicles at 45 per cent versus the current market average of 20 per cent.

“In Australia in 2019 and 2020 we saw closing rates of 52 per cent. The technology we are using to identify customers has helped to substantially increase our close rate.

“We know through studies that only eight per cent of a dealer’s database is shopping at any given time, so these are well and truly incremental to any sales that would have occurred through traditional marketing or walk-ins.

“The best part is that it is fully measurable. We track the appointments made, register them in when they show up to the dealership, and obviously reconcile with the sales team when they buy or if they did not buy.

“We are also able to feed back valuable trade data to the dealerships, and to the OEM if they are sponsoring the event,” Mr Zanlunghi said.

Some other results we have posted recently that stand out are as follows:

• 50 per cent of a super luxury brands sales in May went through just three of our events in two cities
• A German luxury brand had been averaging 33 sales during our events in 2019 and 2020 are now averaging 52 sales, including one event with 102 new sold in  one week, and multiple store records
• We have also posted other individual store records across Mazda, Hyundai, Skoda and Maserati franchises with closing rates touching 70 per cent in some campaigns.

By John Mellor