Exponential Gains from Incremental Change

“If you are going to rake the leaves, then rake them all”

I still hear my dad’s voice. It was part of his never-ending series on anything worth doing is worth doing right.

ROAR customer data indicates that when it comes to what customers experience, dad was right:

• There is 15%-point difference between leads visiting the dealership who waited 30 minutes or less for a response from the dealership compared to waiting longer than 30 minutes for a response.
• Providing the lead a price if they requested it generated an even bigger dealership visit rate difference of 26% points (I realise to provide a price in the lead response is a big discussion, but if we could agree the customer should get at least an average transaction price range based on options, … you would minimise the risk of losing them by ignoring their request completely)
• The difference between a test drive that increases the shopper’s opinion of the vehicle and a test drive that doesn’t improve the opinion is 15 minutes—of course, it’s important to get the test drive started within 5 minutes of the customer agreeing to it (and not the normal 10 or more minutes required to get the drive going).

These are just among the examples of incremental changes in time and content to sales experiences that generate exponentially greater probability of success.

Yes, some process changes will be required to make these incremental changes. And the changes may have some costs attached to them (longer test drive being one). But the higher conversion rates these changes generate are worth it.

The key is to have the data and analysis to identify the “sweet spot” in each experience point that is going to generate this exponential gain for an individual customer.

Thank you for reading ROAR!