Velocity Gains Notice—Next Stop, Your Sales Process

In its coverage of the New York Auto Show this week, Automotive News picked up on a concept that’s long been familiar here—the benefits that the Velocity Method of Management® offers for dealers and their manufacturer partners.

The coverage alluded to two points that are relevant to share:

First, velocity principles are coming quickly to new cars. Now, dealers have the on-the-ground competitive insights and market data to fashion fast-selling new vehicle inventories. There’s also a growing understanding that the “right” cars, coupled with more transparent pricing and promotion (as well as more credible trade-in evaluations and easier access to credit/financing information) will lead to a faster rate of sales.

Second, the traditional way of selling new or used vehicles—where customers effectively play a time-consuming game of ping pong with sales associates and managers to lock in the price of a car—needs a velocity-minded makeover. The Automotive News article quotes a TrueCar executive saying if dealers offer “a more efficient and more transparent process, people will actually come back and buy cars more frequently.”

I’m not sure that a more efficient sales process, in and of itself, will mean customers buy vehicles more frequently—especially with the financial strains many families still feel in their budgets. However, I completely agree that dealers who reinvent their sales processes to deliver vehicles in two hours or less will sell more cars and set the stage for repeat business better than those who don’t.