How to Sell More Cars at a Dealership: 5 Must-Know Tips

Around 46,575 vehicles find new owners each day across the United States. 

That amounts to approximately 17 million vehicles sold each year, of which your dealership needs to grab a healthy piece of the action. With such high competition for consumer dollars, how do you keep your numbers up?

Keep reading for an in-depth look at five crucial tips on how to sell more cars at a dealership.

1. Treat Every Customer as If They’re Just Looking

Every car salesperson knows the frustration that’s approaching potential customers for a sale only to find they are ‘just looking around.’

If you want to sell more cars, you need to realize something – car dealerships don’t have the best reputation. As such, many potential buyers willing to make a purchase are wary about buying a lemon.

That causes such buyers to claim they are only looking around to protect themselves. If you push them too hard, you’ll drive them away. 

Remember, even if they are only looking, buyers come to these locations for a reason, and you need to nurture that curiosity. 

Treating every buyer who comes to your dealership as one who is only looking will place you in a frame of mind to be more helpful. You’ll be open to giving information that influences purchase decisions instead of looking pushy. 

If you show your usefulness to clients at such a point, you’ll close the sales from more skittish clients who end up feeling you’re not pushing them around. For those clients who do pop in to buy, your guidance will be a bonus to the sale. 

2. Know Each Customer

One of the most helpful tips for selling more cars at a dealership you’ll ever get is to learn the customers that walk in. 

Firstly, when you ask customers more about themselves, it makes them feel you’re paying attention to them. That subconsciously makes a prospect more comfortable to open up.

As the prospective client shares tidbits with you, you get to read in between the lines. 

For example, if they talk quite a bit about their pet, you can infer that they need a car with pet-friendly features. Instead of pitching them blindly, you can accentuate the waterproofed back seats that can appeal to a pet parent buying a car. 

Asking open-ended questions as a way to find a connection point creates a rapport that boosts sales. The more prospects feel they know you can lead to them liking and trusting you, which lifts your sales. 

3. Ask the Right Questions

No matter how well versed a prospect is with a vehicle, they still want to hear your opinion on it. With each conversation, you take on the role of an advisor. Thus, you need to learn the art of asking the right questions. 

Whatever you do, don’t make the classic mistake of starting a conversation with a finance question. While you may want to know the prospect’s budget to advise them better, you come off as being shady.

The last thing you want is a shopper to feel that they are only walking dollar signs to you. There are less aggressive ways to figure out what the client wants.

In addition, don’t ask closed-ended questions as those won’t get you a comprehensive response. You want to ask questions that get a shopper talking as the more they talk, the better you can figure them out. 

For example, when you ask a shopper if they know what car they are on the hunt for, they will likely respond with a brief yes or no. You will then be forced to follow it up with another closed-ended question. 

However, if you were to ask a shopper what their top three must-have car features are, they will respond more comprehensively. You’ll find informational breadcrumbs within such responses that help you build rapport. 

4. Sell the Benefit and Not the Feature

The vast majority of shoppers who come to your dealership aren’t well versed with vehicle features. Consequently, your sales pitch has to include educating them on the features. 

Many dealers make the classic mistake of diving deep into the features and leaving the shopper to figure it out. Unless you’re dealing with the minority of shoppers who are car buffs, most prospects will remain at a loss.

For every feature you educate a shopper about, explain the benefit. Seeing how a feature will improve their life is what moves a shopper to buy from you. 

If you uncovered some useful insights during the question portion of the talk with a shopper, now is the time to use it. Tie the benefit a feature can provide with the customer insight to drive the point home. 

Your pitch won’t pass off as generic but rather as a personalized one that carries weight. 

Let’s say you have a shopper who has never owned an off-road vehicle and comes looking for one. Let’s also imagine that the shopper mentioned they are relocating to a more rural setting for work amid the conversation.

As you talk with such a shopper, you can educate them on what differential lockers are. But don’t stop there. You can show them how differential lockers help them gain more traction off-road, so they don’t get stuck when with the family. 

Such a tactic will help the shopper envision themselves using the features, which lifts the sale’s odds. 

5. Use Data to Sell a Unit

Numbers don’t lie, and shoppers know that. As you take them through their vehicle of interest, rely on data to enhance the car’s value. 

You should never lie or fudge the numbers. Your goal is to look for proven data that can help the shopper see the proven benefits the vehicle has and how many other drivers have found the car invaluable. That edges shoppers towards a sale. 

How to Sell More Cars at a Dealership

Even though many cars go on sale every day across the country, it’s no guarantee you’ll push some units. Each morning you need to work as if you’ve never made a sale before. Invest significant time in learning the ins and outs of how to sell more cars at a dealership to keep your firm at the top of the food chain. 

Growing your sales is one of the many business skills you need to sharpen to succeed. Our website gives entrepreneurs proven strategies to help them scale their businesses. Check out more of our articles today to sharpen your entrepreneurial edge and beat the competition.