November 2013 Success Story

Success Story

long Island City hyundai Long Island City Hyundai Rises to the Top in 16 Months How using iPads helped make them New York City’s No. 1 Hyundai dealership for CPO and premium model sales.

To say that Criss Castle was facing an uphill battle when she started with Long Island City Hyundai is a massive understatement. LIC Hyundai had a “nostars” online reputation, limited space and was literally faced with some of the strongest competition in the world.

It would have been easy to settle for simply surviving. That, however, wasn’t good enough for Castle. She just needed to find an advantage….

Fast forward a bit, and LIC Hyundai is now the No. 1 Certified Pre-Owned Hyundai dealer in New York City, New York City’s No. 1 Rated Hyundai Dealer on DealerRater.com and Edmunds.com and the top-ranked premium model Hyundai dealer in their district. Overall sales have increased by 54 percent.

Perhaps most remarkable, though, is that this turnaround happened in only 16 months.

Castle serves as a senior manager for New York based Leader Auto Group, which makes its corporate home in Queens at Long Island City Hyundai. With a ten year background in automotive management in the Midwest, Castle found the challenges faced at Long Island City Hyundai quite different from what most would deem as normal.

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“The location was not a ‘destination’ dealership,” Castle said. “Space was also a major factor. We often used demos to sell the vehicle before pulling the cars out of storage, as our inventory is housed in four separate storage lots.”

The competition, in fact, was probably the most intimidating factor. “With new cars, we were competing with three of the top Hyundai volume store in America,” Castle said. The used-vehicle picture was even worse. “Our dealership is situated across the street from the largest used car store on the planet,” she said. “It’s quite a sight to see!”

The Change Castle started working with General Manager, Paul Passarelli and their management team to transform the dealership as soon as she arrived. We took stock of the situation. “We had some key advantages going in,” Castle said. “We have great owners who are supportive and open to new ideas, along with a future-minded management team. Together, we reevaluated every piece of technology our dealership was using and created a new type of sales team that was digitally inclined and capable of using all of our tools, including iPads, to their fullest potential.

and decided on a plan. They would make superior customer service their competitive advantage, and they would use technology to do it.

This technology would turn out to be familiar to almost everyone in the country, and was already being used by many customers in the market to shop for vehicles — the iPad. Communication with customers is, of course, key to superior customer service.

Having information a customer wants, and the ability to show it to them immediately — literally at the salesperson’s fingertips — goes a long way in providing that service.

Keys to Success In order to get the new technology-driven process off to the right start, Castle and the other managers focused on three crucial factors: people, processes and tools.

People: When beginning the program, staff members were given a choice whether or not to embrace the new iPad-driven sales process, forming two teams. “Like Jim Collins writes in his book, Good to Great, you want to have ‘the right people on the bus’,” Castle said. “iPad-driven sales isn’t for everyone, and we didn’t want to disrupt the performance of the ‘oldschool’ sales staff. For this new initiative to be successful, we wanted to be able to focus on the people who wanted to be on the team.”

This process has paid off for the dealership, and having teams offers a contrast to show the impact the iPad system has had.

LIC Hyundai’s iPad sales team puts 300 percent more customer records into the CRM, sets 11 percent more appointments and has show rates that are 26 percent higher than the dealership’s non-iPad sales team members.

Processes: The mind-set of the dealership’s team members had to be in the right place for this to work, Castle said. “This was a new methodology, a new way of doing things,” she said.

“This wasn’t a widget — this was the way we were going to sell vehicles. We had to hold people accountable for adopting this new program, but we had to leave space for people to find their own way to adapt it to their selling styles, as well. Above all, we had to be able to measure the progress;

In the beginning, Castle and her team looked at what they could change and what they couldn’t,

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Long Island City Hyundai otherwise, we wouldn’t know how well it was working, or where improvements could be made.”

Tools: Once the people were ready and the process was laid out, the tool had to work.

For it to make a difference, Castle knew the iPad selling system had to have specific strengths and features.

“First, it had to fit into our existing processes, and not put us in a box,” Castle said. “It had to be easy to use, but be adaptable enough for us to add or delete tools as we needed, It had to work with our CRM, and it had to allow both proprietary and thirdparty tools to work together. Most of all, though — it had to help us provide a new level of customer service.”

Putting It Into Action “We use the iPad system in every step of our process,” Castle said. In the preshowroom phase, when trying to get the customer into the store, the iPad allows dealership staff to communicate with customers the way the customer prefers — text, FaceTime, e-mail, etc. Sales team members can send information such as videos, reviews, specs, photos and more to entice the customer to make the trip to the dealership. The salesperson can pull up safety data, an image gallery, test drive video, specs, trim comparisons, side-byside comparisons with competing brands, incentive information and reviews — all of which can be sent to the prospect when trying to set the appointment. This allows the salesperson to answer questions immediately, instead of having to stop to go look it up. Customers are kept engaged; lags that delay, or derail, the sales process are avoided.

Getting the customer to the store, of course, is only the first step of the process. Once they are in the showroom, the system is integral to LIC Hyundai’s sales process: Meet and greet: The salesperson can collect the customer’s information immediately,

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which gets entered into the CRM. The selection and qualification process for a vehicle begins immediately.

Selection: By having the store’s inventory, trim comparison, test drive videos, electronic brochures and other information instantly available, the salesperson never has to leave the customer to go find information. The customer stays engaged, and momentum is kept.

Test Drive: The iPad equips the salesperson with the specs, features and vehicle information to answer the customer’s questions and show them the differences between the different trim levels.

Delivery: While the customer is waiting for his or her new vehicle to be delivered, that waiting time can be filled by showing them how-to videos or other information about features of their new car, keeping the excitement level high. This is also a great time to gather reviews; the customer will never be as excited about their new vehicle as they are at this point. The iPad system allows LIC Hyundai to use this time constructively.

Introduction to the Service Department: Because return customers are vital to a dealership’s health, the LIC Hyundai also shows their customers a virtual tour of the

service department, along with a video from the service director. Putting a face to a department and making it feel more familiar is a huge step to getting that customer back into the dealership regularly.

A Destination Castle notes that the dealership has now achieved “destination” dealership status. “Customers regularly drive more than two hours, and by-pass multiple dealerships, to buy from us,” she said.

Part of the reason why people are willing to travel to the store is the online ratings the dealership has earned in the past 16 months. “We’ve gone from ‘no-stars’ to five stars on DealerRater.com, Edumunds.com and Cars.com,” Castle said. “The way our dealership’s sales team can quickly and painlessly provide information — and make that all-important human connection — its a completely different experience and our customers love it.”

The Bottom Line “We’ve seen a lot of benefits in using the iPad selling system,” Castle said. “We get more productive hours out of every work day, generate more sales from the same number of salespeople, get more and better information into our CRM. We also have higher appointment rates, show rates and get more positive reviews for the dealership.”

“Using a mobile sales tool is key to connecting with today’s customers,” said Jim Hughes, co-owner of Intellacar.com. “The modern consumer doesn’t like to wait for information; they don’t see the need for it, and they will often seek to get it from another dealership if they can’t get it from yours.”

“The growth we’ve seen in the past 16 months has shown us that how you treat the customer can give you the biggest advantage in the marketplace,” Castle said.

“Long Island City Hyundai couldn’t control a lot of the factors that were against us, but customer service was something we could control, and it has made all the difference.”

Success Story

Success Story “The math is simple. When we get more customers into the showroom we sell more cars.”

CrISS CaSTLe Senior Automotive Operations Manager Leader auto Group

Long Island City Hyundai

11%

26%

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300% Higher

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With iPads

appointment Appointment rate Rate

Without iPads

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appointment Appointment Show Rate rate Show

Without iPads

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Data Into CrM Data Info CRM

In a nutshell

Long Island City Hyundai Rises to the Top in 16 Months

How using iPads helped make them New York City’s No. 1 Hyundai dealership for CPO and premium model sales.

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Implemented an innovative, iPad-based sales approach that allowed Long Island City Hyundai to increase YOY sales volume by 54 percent and become New York City’s number one dealership for both CPO sales and highline Hyundai sales volume.

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Overcame a ‘no-star’ online reputation to become the highest ranked Hyundai dealership in New York City on all three of the industry’s top reputation sites.

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Created an iPad driven sales team that delivers 300 percent more customer records into the CRM, sets 11 percent more appointments and has show rates that are 25 percent higher than the dealership’s non-iPad sales team.

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Shortened overall sales process by 25 percent by giving salespersons the ability to search inventory, verify incentives, perform side-by-side comparisons, communicate with managers and many other time-saving activities directly from their iPads.

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Using IntellaCar.com’s iPad selling system to integrate all of their proprietary and 3rd-party apps into a single tool has allowed Long Island City Hyundai to generate more sales from the same number of opportunities without increasing HR or advertising expenses.

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