In its 25 years, the Canadian-based Absolute Results has 9000 dealer clients in 28 countries and has sold nearly one million vehicles. In the process it has gained very strong insights into dealership operations with special expertise in maximising the value of the portfolio of customers residing in dealership databases.

By linking together its expertise in sales training, the generation of customer appointments and the administration of sales events, Absolute Results is typically able to generate weeks or even months of sales in one day.

Along the way the company came to understand that rather than being tied to conducting  events in response to one-off sales drives, it is now in possession of such valuable accumulated knowledge about car retailing that it is in a position to assist retailers with advice and insights on an ongoing basis.

R&D is a priority and is among the biggest single items in Absolute Results’ annual budget.

Steve Zanlunghi

The company has invested heavily (more than $10 million) in IT developing tools that dealers can use to create special insights into the nature of the customers in the customer portfolio of the dealership.

It is able to reveal on an ongoing basis the customers who are loyal, their value to the business, those who need to be contacted, those who are most likely to be soon entering the buying cycle and even those most likely to defect.

The platform processes daily and weekly feeds of data from dozens of dealer systems: DMS, CRM, finance, inventory, and so on for hundreds of dealers in North America, Asia-Pacific and Europe.

Absolute Results says that by sharing analysis of this globally-sourced sales and marketing information with dealers and dealer groups, it is in a position to give retailers and OEMs more understanding of their customers than they have ever possessed before.

The company says that it is now able to empower retailers to realise their full sales potential by providing marketing services, sales leadership training, showroom activations and the technology to maximise the value of their customer portfolio.

At its most basic, Absolute Results cleanses the customer databases of retailers by removing duplications and errors to provide a more accurate window on the wide variety of people who touch the business in some way.  

Absolute Results says that under its new Absolute Results Insights umbrella, it has changed its mindset from mining dealership owner portfolios to farming them.

The company, which says that it always wants the leave things better than it found them, has spent the past two years transforming the enterprise into four main divisions:

Absolute Consulting: including, Portfolio Audit, Strategic Planning, Sales Process Audit,  Leadership Workshops and Retail-of-the-Future Forums.

The company measures the performance of the portfolio and its potential, audits digital lead handling, showroom sales process, guest experience and portfolio management; builds a daily and weekly plan for farming the portfolio and for the sales team.

In addition it says it can connect Australian dealers with top dealers globally who are preparing for the future and is offering its service as keynote speakers at conferences, performance groups and mastermind sessions.

Absolute Leadership:  The company’s training division which aims to equip the dealership’s team with the skills needed to succeed, install scalable processes and best practices, develop customer centric language and behaviour, create signature moments and measure and coach activity-based KPI’s. A particular focus is the development of an appointments-based selling system or culture.

Absolute Engagement: using the customer portfolio to create an ongoing conversation with those who touch the business. The company says that all of its communication by phone, email, SMS, WhatsApp, and print is designed to engage customers in a dialogue.

“We can have a personal conversation with a customer about what’s changed in the market, what’s changed with our product and with their driving needs; then we can engage in conversations that add value.

Absolute Experiences: These are the events which have a track record for engaging hundreds of a dealership’s customers in “an upgrade conversation” . The Absolute Results system elevates the sales team with appointment-selling skills, activates the showroom by filling it with customer appointments and helping the dealership sell one to two weeks of sales volume in one day.

On the eve of announcing the transformation of the company from a reactive to an ongoing partner for retailers,  Absolute Results has released its most recent data on sales volumes achieved in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region mostly utilising the new Absolute Insights technology from this month.

Steve Zanlunghi, director of operations USA and Asia-Pacific regions told GoAutoNews Premium:

“Agency Brand Dealer – August: 103 Appointments set; 69 appointment shows (67 per cent show rate); 29 sales. This amounted to two weeks worth of sales. Not once did we use the term or discuss discount, sale or deal. It was all about the experience and building value in the brand. This event also took in 10 retailable trades that will in turn bring additional profit to the dealer.

“Provincial Skoda dealer – August: 44 appointments set; 32 appointment shows (73 per cent show rate); 12 sold (two weeks of sales)

“Mazda dealer outside a metro city- August: 118 appointments set; 54 appointment shows; 29 sales. The dealer recognised their order bank was shrinking and wanted to get it back to comfortable levels, which was achieved.

“Super Luxury Brand – June: We put one dealer’s entire sales team through a condensed version of our Sales Essentials training program the second week of June and followed up with an VIP Campaign/experience the third week of June (the week after the training). 

“The result was 89 appointments set; 30 appointment shows; 24 orders taken (80 per cent close rate), in one capital city. To put that into perspective this same brand reported less than 50 sales the month before in May for the entire country. The result came from working with only one of the dealers in the network over nine days

“Korean Brand Group Sales Challenge – July: Four participating dealers from the same brand in a smaller capital city. 185 appointments set; 119 shows (64 per cent show rate); 70 sold (59 per cent close rate). 

“Again, this dealer group saw their order bank depleting and wanted to reinforce their order bank. In the current environment success is no longer measured on cars sold, or market share, or even profits, but is the order bank. 

“The question we ask is if the order bank is increasing or decreasing. If the order bank is decreasing at many brands it is a negative trend. If it is increasing or remaining the same, the trend is positive.”

Mr Zanlunghi said some other activities in the APAC region outside of Australia include:

• “Absolute Results was named the white label sales process training company for a luxury brand in the APAC region in the second quarter.
• “We have also continued our expansion into APAC markets, most recently running our first training sessions followed by VIP experiences in Brunei where we assisted the dealer in selling two weeks worth of vehicles in four days.
• “We are scheduled for our first training sessions and campaign in Indonesia next month.”

Mr Zanlunghi said: “The reason the show and conversion rates are so high can be directly attributed to the proprietary technology we use to analyse the dealers sales and service databases. 

“We assign a retention score and can determine with a good degree of accuracy if the customer is or about to be in the market to purchase a new vehicle. 

“We also determine if they are a loyal customer or a customer that has the profile of someone with a high probability to defect from the dealer and/or brand. This in turn helps the dealer farm their database with our help and training.

“In this day and age it is no longer about a sale, but the experience. The experience of the dealer interaction, the experience with the brand and ultimately the experience they have with the vehicles they are interested in,” Mr Zanlunghi said.

By John Mellor