WHEN DO THEY BUY?

I find that most dealers are confused about this. Some say that Internet shoppers all buy within 3 days, others say they take 2 weeks to buy, another says they take 30 days to buy, or whatever. Every person I ask has a unique opinion and not many get it right.

Using Ford OEM new car leads data from fmcdealer.com, we can piece together an accurate "Days To The Sale" analysis for every store. A typical 2010 Dallas Region store results might look like this:

    34% sales (sold by dealer or lost to rival dealer) = Day 1 – 5
    25% sales (sold by dealer or lost to rival dealer) = Day 6 – 10
    16% sales (sold by dealer or lost to rival dealer) = Day 11 - 30
    25% sales (sold by dealer or lost to rival dealer) = >Day 30
    Average day to buy for those >30 days: Day 70.

This is valuable data. For example; most dealerships get their majority share of the Day 1 – 5 sales, and that makes sense. These are the people with urgency and are, therefore, the low hanging fruit. But starting Day 6 many dealerships start losing majority share to other Ford dealers - and usually the farther out we track it (Day 30 and beyond), the more the market share drops. This is a clear indicator that the store being analyzed does not have a viable long-term follow-up process for eLeads. Fortunately, this is a problem that can be fixed.

In the example above 66% of the buyers did so after Day 5. And a full 25% did so after Day 30. Don’t we all want our fair share of this additional 66%? We can get it - all it takes is a long term follow-up process and somebody willing to insure that the process is worked.