Based on most customer satisfaction and experience surveys, time significantly impacts the overall customer experience when buying a new vehicle. 

For years customers have been frustrated with the time it takes to purchase a new vehicle, and customer satisfaction surveys reflect their frustration.  As professionals in retail vehicle sales, now more than ever, we need to be obsessed with time. Time is nonrenewable resource. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever. 

Time of the Essence

I have been working with a large dealer group that is focused on time, specifically transaction time, and is trying to achieve a sales, F&I and delivery process that takes no longer than 90 minutes. That is a lofty goal considering that when it started working toward it, its average transaction time was just north of three hours. 

What it is discovering along the way is that to cut the time it takes to purchase a vehicle in half, there were some things they needed to change, and some things they couldn’t change. What it found it could change was process. What it couldn’t change was the wide variations in its customer base’s demographics, creditworthiness, transaction type preference, and so on – all factors that can contribute to the transaction time. 

Some deals take longer than others because of the unique characteristics and objectives of each customer and transaction type. No matter the customer, when it comes to the time it takes to purchase a vehicle, less is better.

Pinpoint Processes

Our business is process-driven. Without a sales process, an F&I process, a delivery and follow-up process, we wouldn’t be able to drive the accountability throughout the enterprise needed to ensure we are making the most of every opportunity we are presented with. 

This dealer group took the time to seriously examine its processes. It concluded that overall, most or its processes were well thought-out and were intended to accommodate the responsibilities of dealerships, as well as the customer’s desire to speed up the vehicle-buying process, and it created a better experience for all stakeholders in the deal.

One major process change they decided on was to present the vehicle’s technology to the customer prior to going into F&I instead of after F&I. (The result of that process change could be another article!) However, the most significant discovery it made through all of this is that although it had documented processes and in the past had trained on the processes, it wasn’t following them consistently, resulting in little if any progress on gaining time or becoming more efficient.

As it turns out, the trouble with a process is the assumption that it is being followed. As an example, the dealer group uncovered that it was only utilizing the customer relationship-management system at a fraction of its full functionality. Even worse was the discovery that managers weren’t driving accountability on the CRM because they weren’t proficient in its functionality. This led to incomplete information at the beginning of the deal process chain when completeness and accuracy count the most, costing the group valuable time to fill in the blanks along the way. Recommitting to learning how to utilize the CRM as intended and having the commitment and discipline to hold each other accountable in execution is paying off in saved time and more deals – everyone wins. 

It hasn’t reached its 90-minute deal yet, but it is on the right track and making significant gains on its objective. I encourage you to take a hard look at your sales process, F&I process and delivery process. You may have heard the adage “Time kills deals.” There is another adage that, “Pace equals profit.” The slower the pace, the lower the profit. If you think about it, I’m confident you would agree. 

Granted we still need to make sure that we dot the Is and cross the Ts. I’m not advocating speed at the cost of compliance or accuracy. What I would advocate, however, is a complete and thorough examination of your processes with the purpose of gaining time and efficiency. The 90-minute deal is a great objective for all of us to consider. If your dealership is closer to three hours instead of 90 minutes, you might want to pick up the pace. If you do, you might just pick up some more profit, as well.

John Tabar serves as executive director of training for Brown & Brown.

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