Press

Successful car salespeople regularly follow established sales processes, says Fran O’Hagan, president and CEO of Pied Piper Management, a consulting firm that mystery shops dealerships to determine showroom effectiveness. 
Dealers themselves, not automakers, should establish those processes. And it shouldn’t be optional for staffers to follow them or not, he says. For the second year, Nissan’s Infiniti brand dealerships ranked highest in the 2017 Pied Piper Prospect Satisfaction Index. It measures treatment of the mystery shoppers who visited 5,289 dealerships throughout the U.S. Dealerships for Toyota’s Lexus brand were ranked second, and dealerships selling Mercedes-Benz were ranked third. 

Brands which improved the most from year to year were Tesla, Mitsubishi, Lincoln, Ram, Subaru and Chevrolet. Brands suffering the greatest declines were Jeep, Fiat, Volkswagen and BMW. 

Performance varied substantially by brand for many sales steps. For example, salespeople representing Lincoln, Hyundai, Infiniti, Lexus and Smart most often attempted to build rapport rather than just saying, “Can I help you?” (About 60% of the time.) Conversely, salespeople least likely to attempt to build rapport represented Porsche, Jeep, Fiat, Volvo, Ford. (About 35% of the time.)

Although the Tesla retail network this year again ranked last (with a PSI score of 94), it went up eight points from 2016, the most improvement of any brand. Tesla’s low PSI score was not caused by differences in sales process consistently followed by all Tesla locations nationally. Instead, the low score resulted from high variability in sales process behaviors from one dealership location to another.