The public often makes the mistake of assuming car dealers make their money on the sale of a new car. It makes sense; they’re big ticket items and it’s easy to assume that someone is profiting when you pay a few tens of thousands of dollars. But as you know, selling cars has a very thin profit margin, and only about 30 percent of a dealership’s gross profits come from the sale of new cars.
Dealerships make most of their money from their two other major departments: Finance & Insurance and Parts & Service. According to Edmunds, the average dealership saw 37 percent of their gross profits come from Finance & Insurance and 44 percent from parts and service. Products like gap insurance, extended warranties, alarm systems, and car loans bring in a lot more money for dealerships, as does the sale of parts and maintenance. So why doesn’t your car dealer chat software do more to drive leads toward finance and parts and service?
Today, thousands of car dealerships are utilizing chat software to generate more leads online and drive up their sales, but most target new sales and leave it to personnel to sell financial products and service.
Enter Gubagoo ChatSmart. The app takes the conventional features further by offering features like credit check and parts & service booking.
Speed Up Credit Checks
If you want to speed up new car sales and persuade more customers to use your financing department, you need to make it easier for customers to pre-qualify for credit and make it part of your online conversation. You might think that your online submission form is fast and easy, but even waiting 24 hours is too long. Lead follow-up that happens within one hour is seven times more likely to succeed than follow up that takes 24 hours or longer – and credit checks are lead follow up.
In a recent announcement, car dealer chat software company Gubagoo unveiled a new credit check feature integrated into their software. Their Credit Pre-Qualification feature can access the pre-qualification form in live chat, and the feature checks their data with national credit bureaus. Then, dealers receive rich data about the lead’s qualification, helping them adjust their sales strategy for the client for both products and financing.
Booking Parts and Service
With Parts & Service making up the most profitable arm of most dealerships, car dealer chat should be designed to capitalize. A new Parts Director feature found in Gubagoo car dealer chat software has the potential to streamline customers’ search for parts through live chat. It can save you time as you will no longer have to answer cold calls from customers looking for a part, while it saves customers from having to make endless calls or flip through catalogues. Chat operators quickly search a part database using the customer’s VIN, make, model, and the name of the part, and then they can quickly push it through the live chat.
Conclusion
Your bottom line is based on Financing and Parts & Service, and the lead generation tools you use should reflect that reality. Invest in a car dealer chat software that does more than just sell than vehicles.
