No question, the e-mobility is also a challenge for the car dealers: sellers and mechanics must be trained to convince customers with completely new arguments. But it also offers a chance to reposition itself completely, with expertise and motivation to points and to address new buyer layers. But this opportunity is hardly used how the latest dealer test of the consulting company Concertare illustrates.
The classic car dealer is in the crisis. Pandemie-related store closures and unavailable cars Due to the chip man, have revolts break out, but also on the motivation of the seller HAPPERT. The result of the dealer test is more than disappointing overall, albeit with some light looks. Mercedes, for example, has increased by a whopping 21 percentage points compared to the previous year. Above all, the quality of advice and the reception were great. Opel and Land Rover also improved, but only at an average level. Madza, Mitsubishi and Jeep, on the other hand, fail (again). A Mazda tester put it in a nutshell: “The salesman conveyed that he had no time. I felt like I was disturbing.”
But what about those dealers who also sell e-vehicles? A little better, but the potential of this trend with high active demand from customers is largely ignored. Not a single retailer received the “satisfactory” award in 2021. Curiously, Mazda scores here with very good expertise, but weakens when it comes to actually selling the car. Little is said about financing options, hardly any test drives are offered. Here, too, Mercedes stands out pleasantly.
Across brands, however, the testers mostly encountered unmotivated and listless staff. However, interested customers are not deterred by this, because the demand is unbroken: in October alone, 30.560 purely electric vehicles were registered, which is already 17.1% of all new registrations! Those dealers whose salespeople “are not convinced by the electric drive” then probably have a bad hand, as a tester reported after visiting a Fiat branch.
When the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control publishes the new funding guideline, demand will continue to increase. The dealers would therefore do well to make the entire sales process “significantly more customer-oriented”, as the managing director of Concertare, Rabab Charara, emphasizes. The demand is there, you just have to serve it!
Related articles
-
Test benches Busy: VW temporarily introduces sale of e-cars and hybrid vehicles
At the beginning of May, we have our article: “VW Group Chef this sees WLTP test cycle as a risk factor” Now this risk seems to have taken the VW Group….
-
China: Tesla dominated sale of e-cars in July 2020
The automotive future develops in the Middle Reich, believes car professor Ferdinand DudenhOffer. In 2010, only 17 were about 17.000 electric cars on the…
-
Evergrande goes in E-Offensive: 1.600 car dealers for e-cars planned
Self-confidence does not lack the newcomer Evergrande in the car industry. Because these want within the next three to five years, in terms of size and…
-
Mercedes: “We have been torn the e-cars out of hand”
Britta Seeger, Distribution of Mercedes-Benz, talked in an interview over time in detail about the current electric car boom, which fires him, which…
-
Hyundai: Change to e-mobility for dealers and workshops “No reason to panic”
Karl Hell, director of Aftersales by Hyundai Motor Germany, talked to the specialist in car dealership about what the electromobility for the business…
-
Volkswagen brings the first VW ID.3 on the way to his dealers
The modular electric drive kit (MEB) on which the ID.3 is based, serves as a technical backbone of the E-offensive, it allows the construction of many…
-
Opel wants to force dealers to an electric quota to avoid fleet consumption penalties
At the end of last year, OPEL gave an outlook on the electrified future from 2019. We now know that the Opel Corsa-e, the Opel E-Astra and a fully…
-
Association of German metal dealers (VDM) calls for investments in the recycling of rare earths
Opinions, praise and criticism of electromobility are being voiced from all sides. Some of it is appropriate, others just pure opinion. The Association…
-
VW dealers lose with each ID.4-selling cash over combustion
It is part of my daily work to analyze the German automotive industry and to try to distinguish between truth and lie. As in private life, there are…
-
JLR tests battery assembly for e-cars at the Nitra plant
The fact that Jaguar’s I-Pace is manufactured by Magna in Graz has long been no secret. However, it has now been announced that Jaguar Land Rover (JLR)…
The credibility of the car salesman is close to zero. For years, electric cars have been slandered and oaths have been made that they would never offer such rubbish, let alone sell them… Now they are in a dead end like the vaccination swaggerers and can’t get out. In addition, they still have to get rid of all the dinosaur garbage and also the hybrid ulcers, which were announced as saviors. The industry now has a credibility problem. Well-done figures and PR articles are of little help here. The pure BEV producers do not have these problems. They stand for what they sell and don’t carry any legacy issues with them.
It’s perfectly fine for car dealers to be open about their interests. This will make it easier to reduce the number of car dealerships to the required level in the next few years through natural selection..
Unlike in the US, there is no culture here of just driving to the dealership to buy a car. But you look, ask, look, discuss – and don’t buy. This has only gotten worse over the decades. It destroys the structure of small retailers, so they have their salespeople busy with real customers. These are regular customers and companies. Actually, small dealers only have to become agencies, where neither a test drive nor a showroom is offered. Advice and test drives as well as experts for detailed questions will only be available at flagship stores with an appointment. The barrier to entry is a database query for creditworthiness, so that test drive tourists and long-term doubters fall out. Without all that, there is only the showroom and information material in the flagship store.
The concept has been known for a long time, but will probably only be implemented when the proportion of electric cars is high. That’s how long you have to stick to luxury brands like Porsche if you want good advice.
As an old hand, my outrage at commercial ignorance is now very limited. First experience at the age of 15: Hardware store, I want to buy a certain type of screw, I stand in the shop for 20 minutes, three salespeople in blue overalls walk around and go in and out through all the existing interior doors and straight back in and straight back again… Then I have my screws bought somewhere else, and the blue coat flea circus is long history. Later, the cabaret artist Malmsheimer made similar comments about ghost sellers in the hardware store: Somehow it makes mjumm short, and there wasn’t just another seller? Second experience as a young used car driver: At the age of 7, my Polo I had rusting through on the battery compartment, which the TuV complained about. A repair request from VW brought me roaring laughter and the comment: Clap your hands and the box collapses. An independent workshop did it easily and inexpensively and got the Tuv at the same time.
Third experience: Will at 16.30 o’clock in a branch of a hairdressing chain my 6-year-old son get a haircut, a customer under the scissors, otherwise yawning emptiness: No, we’re not taking any more orders today, we have to clean now. So I went to a hairdresser who also wants to earn his money during normal business hours, wrote a letter to the editor in the newspaper with reference to a Time article “The German Disease” and thought, VEB and HO and planned economy apparently don’t only exist in the East. (It was before the wall came down.) There was something good about my letter, as friends told me: The following week, someone from the company headquarters came to the branch and made the branch manager and the rest of the team really long.
In many cases it is the frustration of the car salesman because the car manufacturers are constantly reducing the margins and the salesmen often receive lower commissions, which in turn has a strong effect on motivation. If it doesn’t exist, the customer is king, but the seller doesn’t give a damn. In a Salzburg car dealership I wanted to take a closer look at a Ford Mustang Mach E, the seller didn’t even come to the car but just called out if we want to know anything about the car then we should get in touch. Thank you that’s it again, drove to TESLA, got top advice there and finally bought it. Having worked in sales for fifty years, I know what customers expect from a consultant and I would like to assume the same from a car salesman.
I cannot confirm this statement. My car dealer / customer advisor turned to the trend early on and took great care of e-cars, so that two years ago he was able to explain the ecological and economic advantages (then an eGolf) to me very well. And he still has a big problem to overcome, he sells VW models. My expectations were significantly exceeded with the eGolf, but I am still missing a suitable model for the subsequent models in the Golf class (ID3). But that’s not the dealer’s fault, it’s the manufacturer’s responsibility. The revision of the ID3 was announced full-bodied, but is still a long time coming. And whether this is then expedient, especially in terms of price, is a completely different matter. Just look at the ID3 configurator at VW – what were they thinking?? Scare off / scare off the potential customer?
Yes, the service in the BEV area could be better. You can’t blame the car dealers,
if you want to sell SUVs and “fat” combustion engines and then a service package with all 15.000, 20.000 or 30.000 km oil change. annual oil change. They just make better money than that. This is an issue for politicians to tax these vehicles so high and the income from them goes to the small BEV (under 35.000 euros gross) to be sent.
Oh my God. When I look at the comments like this, you can immediately see how people are just making excuses and not wanting to change. As long as there are still burners in the yard, no seller will change. But the fish starts to stink at the head. As soon as you stop building stinkers, the job description of a car salesman will inevitably change and natural selection will determine who will continue to sell cars in the future. It gets embarrassing when you pride yourself on a lack of specialist knowledge and want to take the customers for fools. I shudder when combustion engine salespeople, suddenly through a training weekend at Chiemsee or now online, quickly become experts in electromobility and you notice that they are absolutely not in the mood because they have to do it. You will have to look for a passionate e-car salesman for a long time, because it is difficult to sell something that you do not stand behind. But I have no sympathy when such salespeople fall by the wayside, because change is imminent in every industry, including the car market. Even if some car dealers and companies still don’t get it. You’ve slept long enough in this area, it’s just about time to wake up.
The Revolluzzer