Why are appointments the first big commitment in the sales
process for Internet leads? Now appointments are going to
technically be your customers first, yes, OK, that gives the
customer a little bit momentum behind this deal.
The lead went from browsing to buying.
All right, so a lead submitting a form means that they're
curious. OK, maybe they've made a bunch
of micro decisions along the way.
They've done some research, they've compared models, they've
looked at your website, they've submitted information, requested
information, but now they're going from browsing to buying,
OK? They're setting an appointment,
which means they're committing to a specific time and a
specific day, which ultimately means that you've stopped the
shopping process. They're no longer on their phone
looking at different dealerships and different websites.
They are committed to coming in to visiting your dealership, OK,
on a schedule with intent. So it's really all about a
psychological shift of I'm thinking about it to I've got
somewhere to be, OK. So it's all about psychology.
When you make a commitment to someone and say that you're
going to be there at a specific day and time, you feel obligated
to follow through with that. So do customers, OK, if they
commit to being at your dealership at a specific day on
a specific time, it is now set in their brain that they are
obligated to follow through with that.
And if they don't, likely they're going to give you a
heads up. OK, So this shift actually
really matters because without it, your team is chasing and
they will continuously chase or give up on these leads.
So when you get the appointment, you've earned the right to
prepare, to prioritize and put energy into this buyer who's
mentally already halfway there. All right, now, what's the
impact of having a structured appointment setting process when
it comes to dealership success? A structured process will help
dealers see a higher show rate, meaning you're turning those
online leads into actual customers.
You're going to see faster sales cycles and a stronger ROI from
their leads. A structured process eliminates
guesswork. OK, it gets everyone on the same
page. It's something that you can
teach across the board. This includes scripting,
confirmation timelines, a process for appointment follow
up, and consistent touch points throughout that process.
Don't leave it up to whoever happens to answer the phone, OK?
You build this process. You train this process and leave
it up to those who are trained to accommodate these customers
that are are online or over the phone, OK?
It needs to be a process that's repeatable, trackable and
coachable. So here are some of the
fundamentals when it comes to confirming appointments
effectively. OK, say the appointment out
loud. That is very, very important.
Write it down, have your customer write it down as well
and send it back to the customer.
So what this all means is this is going to be basically a sell
yourself in writing is what we like to call it.
So some techniques that salespeople can do when it comes
to setting their appointment, the 1st is going to be sell
yourself in writing. So this technique is a little
bit dated, but it works OK. This is the actual act of having
your customer write down your information.
It could be as simple as saying, hey, do you have a pen and
paper? If not, I can wait or it can be,
you know, if you don't let me send you a text message.
But what this does is it has your customer actively write
down your information. And the psychology behind that
is that you remember and retain more information if you
physically write it down. Now, the idea behind that is
that if a customer remembers the appointment, they're more likely
to show up to it. So selling yourself in writing
when setting an appointment is going to be important to make
sure that your customer is retaining the information.
They know that you have set time aside for them, and it helps
them feel a little bit, a bit more obligated to follow through
with that commitment. Now, some techniques that you
could use when you're confirming the appointment is say the
appointment out loud. All right.
Hey there, John, I've got you set for 2:15 today.
Do you remember where we're located?
Something small and simple, OK. You can even have them write it
down at this point in the conversation if for any reason
it seemed like maybe they didn't remember and send it back to the
customer. Now, a great example of that
would be great. Jason, I've got you set for
tomorrow at 2:15 to check out that 2023 can am defender that's
preowned on my floor. When you get here, ask for me.
My name is Heather and I'll have it pulled up, cleaned up and
ready for you to take a look at it.
All right, so short, sweet, to the point.
Now, one thing you don't want to do when you're confirming
appointments is ask your customer if that time still
works for you. So if you have called your
customer for that appointment today, they're set to come in
today at 2:15 and you call to confirm that appointment.
What you don't want to do is ask them if that time still works
for them, if they are going to make it, if they remember,
because what you're doing is you're giving your customer an
easy out. OK, working for these
appointments, it is not easy. It's hard work.
So you want to make sure that if you are confirming your
appointment, you don't give them an easy out if they have to
reschedule, make them work for it.
OK, But if you ask something like, are you still going to
make it in today? Are we still set to see you
today? That makes it very, very easy
for them to say, OK, So instead, what you're going to do is you
still want to ask a question to keep control of this short
conversation. OK, But you're going to ask, do
you remember where we're located?
So let me give you to give you that in an example.
OK. So hey, John, this is Heather
with Easygoing Power Sports. I'm just calling to confirm that
I have you set for today at 2:15.
John, do you remember where we're located?
You do Great. That's right.
We're right off of this street and that street.
I'll see you a little bit later. OK, perfect.
So instead of saying something around the lines of hey John, I
have you set for 215, does that time still work for you?
Because again, that makes it easier for them to say no.
We're just simply going to ask them if they remember where
we're located and then give our two main cross streets.
Now, this is going to do a couple things.
This is going to make it harder for the customer to back out of
that commitment, but it's also going to make your customer feel
taken care of, respected and scheduled.
And it reduces, you know, it reduces any of that flaky
factor. Now, when it comes to following
through on those appointments, you want to do a couple
different things. The day of the appointment, OK,
the day of the appointment, first thing in the morning after
you've handled new leads, you want to call and confirm.
If you can't get a hold of them via phone, then shoot them a
text message and shoot them an e-mail.
You want to get a confirmation out the same day.
This touch point is going to really help increase that show
rate. OK, There is a much higher show
rate when it comes to confirmed appointments.
And then there is appointments that were set days prior and
then not touched until after they've already missed their
appointment. So taking that extra step and
initiative to confirm from your appointment day of is going to
really help your show right now. A little gravy on top that you
can add. You can always add a picture of
the vehicle, maybe a short video if you want to do it that way.
If that's a little bit more personal, I know a lot of us are
gearing towards the OR leaning towards video nowadays, so
that's definitely going to be something that's helpful.
But this is going to help create more connection and more
importantly, it's going to help create more excitement.
OK, an excited customer is more likely to come into your
dealership and go through all the steps of the sales process
than a customer who isn't excited.
Now a soft appointment is going to be great.
Come in Saturday, I'll be here all day.
Just ask for me. That's a soft appointment.
OK, That's not a customer that's committed to coming into your
dealership. But maybe that customer was a
little bit harder to get to even agree to come in.
So we we set a soft appointment. Now what you can do is send a
text within 30 minutes of their missed time.
Let's say that that they agreed to come in Saturday afternoon or
you had somebody for a specific day and a specific time.
It's Saturday at 12:15. Send them a text message within
30 minutes of their missed time. OK, Something short and sweet.
Hey, Jason, just checking in. I had you on here for 3:45
today. I noticed that you're not here.
I hope everything's OK. Should we reschedule?
Don't be afraid to ask for that reschedule.
It's very important. A closed mouth doesn't get fed.
So make sure that you take the time to ask for that reschedule.
OK. This leaves the door open but
keeps the urgency in the tone. Now for those soft appointments,
those things who say, yeah, I might swing by, maybe I'll come
by this weekend, you need to firm it up a little bit.
OK? Use a phrase such as let's lock
in a time that works for you. I want to make sure my team is
readily available for you. How does tomorrow at either 2:15
or 3:15 work? OK, You want to offer those two
times because it makes it easier for your customer to choose
rather than offering one time in which they can just easily say
no, that does not work for me. When you firm it up a little bit
and use a little bit more of A to the point tone, what you're
doing is you're turning this maybe, or let me check my
schedule into a lead that actually commits.
OK, if you get a lead that commits, you're more likely to
see them turn into a customer. Now, how can dealerships work in
volume to achieve a higher overall show rate?
This is very important. OK, the truth is not all
appointments are going to show, OK?
You could expect about a 50% show rate for solid
appointments. A solid appointment is going to
be a specific day and a specific time that your customer agreed
to come into. You can expect about 50 of those
to come in, OK, And that's OK if you're playing the numbers
right. So what you should be doing is
setting daily appointment goals. An ideal daily appointment goal
should be one appointment per hour.
OK, That is actively picking up the phone, talking to customers,
trying to get at least one appointment per hour.
You can see that slowed down a little bit depending on your
traffic, depending on your lead volume, but that should be a
very solid, well-rounded goal for each of your reps.
OK, so let's say that you have 10 appointments on the board.
You didn't confirm any already. You're shooting yourself in the
foot, giving yourself a chance to lower appointment show rates.
So pick up the phone, call each appointment, all ten of them.
Make sure that you confirm them. And out of those 10, you should
likely see five of them show. That should be your standard
goal. It's a 50% success rate.
So out of those 10 appointments that you set, 50% should show
from those 50% that are showing, 50% should sell and so on and so
forth. So you should be setting
standard daily goals. OK, not just weekly goals, but
daily goals for your teams to hit.
This will help you achieve your overall monthly goal, making
sure that you coach daily to help them hit this goal.
It's going to be very important. All right, if you're your reps
aren't able to get to the appointment and they're not able
to influence or persuade your customers to come into the
dealership, get that commitment from them to set a specific day
and time with them. Then you should be hopping on
the phone, taking A to having them turn that over to a higher
level representative or a higher level of management to try to
get that confirmation or that commitment from that customer.
So why is it important to have your customers write down the
day and time of the appointment? OK, It makes it real, OK, Gives
your customer a tangible piece of paper that they physically
took the time to write on the specific day and specific time
to come into the dealership. OK, This ties into psychology
one O 1. If you are in a classroom and
you're listening to a lecture and you're not taking any notes,
you're only going to retain about 10% of that information
the very next day. But if you're in a classroom and
you're taking notes, you're going to retain about 50% of
that information, OK? Same thing with your customers
they are listening to talk, they're listening to your pitch,
they are listening to all the words that you're saying while
probably multitasking. So making sure that you take a
moment to sell yourself in writing and sell that
appointment in writing is going to make the difference of
whether or not they retain that information.
So what it does is it's going to help them retain that
information and then they're also going to have that tangible
piece of paper with them along for the right.
Now, this doesn't have to be a long drawn out process After
you've got the customer to commit to a specific day and
time, which what you need to do after you got your customer to
commit to a specific day and time, what you need to do is
simply ask them, Great, Jason, do you have a pen and paper
handy? If not, I can wait.
What this does is this lets them know that you are already in the
motion of waiting on them. So they are going to do one of
two things. They're going to tell you, oh,
no, I don't, I'm doing this or no, I don't have access to it
right now. Or two, they're going to hustle
to get that pen and paper. And that's what you want them to
do. You want them to hustle to get
that pen and paper. Now this again does not have to
be long and drawn out, but say great, Jason, write this down.
My name is Heather Deathridge. I'm got you set for Saturday at
2:15. Now remember when you get here,
just ask for me again, my name's Heather.
I'll have that razor out cleaned up and ready for you to check
out when you get here. OK, so something short and
sweet. Have them write down your name,
have them write down the appointment day and time and if
you need to, your number as well.
Now, how can management involvement improve the quality
of appointments? OK, when a manager follows up
before the appointment, it add some credibility, but it also
adds some urgency. OK, You can use something simple
like a text message. Hey, Jason, this is Heather.
I'm the Internet sales director on the Internet sales manager
over here at Easygoing Powersports.
And I just wanted to say thank you for setting an appointment
today. OK, we'll be ready for you.
If you need anything beforehand, just shoot me a text and let me
know. Or you can also make it a call.
OK? It doesn't need to be drawn out.
It doesn't need to be long, but it makes it a little bit more
personal, OK? Not to mention, we all know how
customers feel when they talk to a manager.
They hear the word manager and they get giddy, OK, That
excitement level goes up. They think they're talking to
somebody who calls the shots, who makes the decisions.
So this little bit of effort can make a huge difference in your
show rate when it comes to your digital appointments or your
online appointments. Now, this is going to help keep
your buyers emotionally engaged. OK, get some excited.
Makes them feel all warm and fuzzy.
So make sure that you have a manager touching these
appointments, OK? This is also going to help keep
your team a little bit sharper. All right?
If your reps know managers are reviewing appointments and doing
follow-ups, they're going to be more intentional with how they
set them, which is very important.
OK, that kind of ties back into, you know, previous conversation
of how to pay your Internet department.
But if you want good, well-rounded, solid
appointments, you want to make sure that these managers are
consistently reviewing them. That way they're set with intent
rather than just set to be set. Now, tracking and optimization.
How can dealers measure the effectiveness of their
appointment setting process? OK, so there are some different
keys that you can you can measure, OK, specifically when
it comes to the appointment setting process.
All right, how many people are you talking to your contacts?
How many people are your reps talking to in a day?
From there, how many appointments did they set out of
those conversations that they had?
Now, out of those, how many did they confirm?
Did they confirm all of them? Did they confirm none out of
that? How many of those appointments
that were set showed and then how many sold?
Okay. So realistically we like to use
a kind of general 5 by 50 rule where you track all of those and
divide it by 50%. So let's say that you talk to, I
don't know, 60 people or I'm sorry, call 60 people in a day,
okay? You've made 60 outbound calls,
okay, you talk to maybe 30 of them, maybe a little bit less,
maybe a little bit more. It's typically we do see around
30% contact rate depending on how your your touch points are.
So let's say that you talked to about 20 of those people.
Out of those 20 people that you talked to, you should be able to
set around 10 appointments depending on your skill level as
a Rep. Out of those 10 appointments,
let's say you confirmed all of them, only half of them are
going to show, so 50%. So out of those 10/5 showed out
of those 5, two to three should sell.
OK, so you have got to play the numbers correctly OK?
You want a high productivity when it comes to outbound
activities, OK Outbound calls should be high.
The goal and expectation for outbound calls, a good number to
start with is about 8 to 10 calls an hour OK for Harley
dealers, you're probably looking closer to 5 to 8 calls an hour,
but that's going to be where you start to measure everything is
with the phone call or the outbound activities.
OK, now the numbers will tell the story for you.
So if if you see, you'll end up seeing a Rep setting tons of
fluff appointments that don't show or if they're not following
through with a strong enough call to action.
Now strategies that can improve both the quality and quantity of
booked appointments. Like I said earlier, it all
starts with the outbound activity, OK?
If you're sitting around waiting for leads, you're going to have
very few conversations in the day.
If you're sitting around waiting for the phone to ring, you're
going to have very few conversations in the day.
But if you are proactively picking up the phone, dialing
out and trying to contact these leads, you're going to have more
conversations. So the more outbound activities
that you have in a day, the more conversations you're going to
have. The more conversations you have,
the more appointments you're going to set, OK?
So make sure that you also incentivize the shows and not
necessarily the sets, OK? This is going to pull out all of
those fluff appointments, OK? So offer a small flat Commission
on shown appointments or maybe even a small bonus or incentive
on appointments that show. All right, If you focus on the
sets, you're going to have a high set rate and probably a
much lower show rate. And use manager intros as a way
to build value. OK, A good example of this, when
you come in, you're going to meet with my manager Heather,
who will walk you through all of the trade in values.
They'll show you the machine and they'll they'll get you all
ready for your test ride, whatever the case may be.
OK, use small manager intros. When a customer hears manager on
the other end of the phone, it creates that urgency and they
want to get to the dealership. OK, and then get creative with
some follow up content. All right, send something like a
walk around of the unit. I've got dealers that I'm
working with right now that every single lead gets a walk
around of the unit. I've got other dealers where
they don't even get a phone call.
So send a walk around. Maybe some different model
comparison, send them a few different options if they're
undecided or just a friendly video.
Hey, Jason, it's Heather from Easygoing Powersports.
I'm going to be your main contact when you get here.
Arrive Tuesday at 2:15, and I'll make sure you get taken care of.
OK? I just wanted to say hi ahead of
time. So these strategies are going to
help boost your trust and they're going to help increase
the excitement of your level. They're going to help boost
trust with your customers and it's going to help keep their
excitement, which is very, very important.
We want to keep their level of excitement through the roof, OK?
This is an emotional purchase for them, so you have to make
sure that you're maintaining that excitement.
Now what is 1 simple change that you can do to drastically
improve appointment show rates? OK, confirm and repeat the
appointment details. This is so simple.
Confirm and repeat the appointment details out loud
back to your customer. All right, it sounds very basic,
I know it does, but most reps actually don't do it.
They're so either burnt out or excited that they got the
appointment that they are too nervous to repeat back that it's
an appointment. So a couple different things.
Take out the word appointment from your vocabulary.
OK, let's say visit. Let's say you know your trip to
the dealership, your visit to the dealership, take out the
word appointment. Don't do it, OK?
But always repeat back the details of the visit to your
customer, OK? So great.
I'm set to see you. You're going to be visiting us
on Tuesday at 2:15. Be sure to ask for myself, OK?
This is again, going to increase trust, which is very, very
important for customers nowadays, OK?
Nobody is stepping foot into a dealership unless they trust
them. It's going to increase their
memory and it's going to increase the commitment, OK?
It's going to really solidify that commitment from your
customer, making them feel obligated to follow through with
that. Now layer this with some same
day confirmation or morning check insurance and you're going
to start to see a huge difference when it comes to
these appointment set. I do have an appointment funnel
that we utilize here that we have used for years that has
proven to be super successful. What it does is it basically it
looks like a funnel, right? It's shaped just like a funnel
from top to bottom. It starts very broad until you
can narrow it down to a specific day.
In time. So what you're going to do is
utilize this appointment funnel by asking close ended questions,
OK, A or B1 or two, green or red, you're going to ask close
ended questions, offering two options to help guide or corral
your customer to a specific day and time.
OK, this is very important. So let me give you what an
example of what that looks like. So I'm speaking with a customer
over the phone. They're excited.
I'm trying to get the commitment of the appointment.
I'm going to say great Jason, I have some time available for you
to come visit. Are you thinking you're going to
be available today or tomorrow? Tomorrow.
Wonderful. OK, great.
So I've got you set for tomorrow.
Now Jason, are you more of a morning guy or an afternoon guy?
Afternoon. OK, so are you thinking around
lunchtime like 1215 or are you thinking a little bit later like
315-340-5345? Perfect.
Now from there I'm going to go ahead confirm.
Great. So let's do tomorrow at 3:45 and
I'm going to jump into selling myself in writing.
So it's very important that you have a structured very well
practice because so practice makes prepared OK.
If you practice enough on how you set your appointments, it's
going to roll right off the tongue.
And that's very important. If you are scattering or if it's
too laid back and it doesn't really have a structure, if
you're winging it every single time, you're not going to be
able to measure how successful it is, OK.
So use something that is successful, set these
appointments and and track from there.
If you want to boost your show rate this week, OK, go pull 10
random leads from last week's CRM log.
OK, look at how many had appointment dates, times, names
confirmed and sent back. OK, now if that number is low,
start there. That is your opportunity.
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