Over a weekend last spring, I told a friend that I was thinking of buying a convertible. He asked if I had ever owned one and I said "no." He then proceeded to lecture me about the fact that convertibles are loud – top up or down -- and that in Dallas, you can only have the top down 30 days or 50 nights a year because of our heat. He ranted for a few minutes, giving me a long list of reasons not to buy one.
"So you’re going to give your convertible up at the end of your lease?" I asked.
"Are you kidding?" he said. "I’ve already got a new black one picked out!"
Naturally, that encouraged me to get on the Internet web site CarPoint.com first thing Monday morning. I picked out the car I wanted, the color, the interior and all of the accessories. In moments, CarPoint gave me the completed sticker price and dealer invoice. Fun over, I left it at that and started my workday.
Later that morning, I got a call. "This is Owen Evans with Autobahn Motor Cars in Ft. Worth and we have your auto," the voice said.
"WHAT?" I responded.
Evan reminded me that I had been on the Internet earlier and had been looking for a particular car. I said, "Yes, but I wasn't serious."
"That’s o.k., we have the model and color of car that you requested and wondered if you would like to see it?" Evans persisted.
I told him that he was in Ft. Worth and I was in Dallas and that maybe I'd get by some time that week. "You don’t understand," he said. "I’ll drive it right over to your office and you can see it now," he said.
I am sure you know what happened. I’m the proud owner of a Carnival Red Jaguar XK8 convertible. I was sending out buying signals and this sales professional "struck" while the iron was hot.
I just read some interesting statistics reported in a speech that Steve Ballmer, President of Microsoft, made regarding a survey from dealers that are members of Carpoint, the Microsoft web site devoted to purchasing or selling cars. Mr. Ballmer said that the participating dealers close 35% of the leads if they respond to an e-mail contact in eight hours. If they wait 24 hours, the close rate falls to 20-25%. If they wait 48 hours, the close rate falls to 8%.
The results are obvious: the faster you respond to a customer, the better the results. If they respond to you by e-mail, then, it is better to respond back by e-mail. You have to check your e-mail several times a day not several times a week.
Good prospects must be assumed to be ripe and ready when you first come in contact with them. They need to be treated as if they are perishable and have a limited shelf life. You'll make more sales from the ones who are ready to go than offend the ones who aren't ready to move at this time.
It is like a person who wanders into a store to kill some time. A clerk asks if they can help and the person responds "I'm just looking." A few minutes later, another clerk asks if they can help and the person again says "I'm just looking." Finally, a few minutes later, another salesperson asks to help the person, and they get frustrated and walk out of the store. The store didn't lose a sale -- just a looker.
On the other hand, if no clerk were available to help the ready-to-buy customer who leaves in a huff, the store would have lost a sale.
We certainly don't want to offend anyone because they might become a customer at some point in the future but we do have to take care of our immediate opportunities so we will be in business later to help the future customers.
Recently, I met Sharon Marsh, a RE/MAX top professional from Plano, Texas, when I was teaching a CRS Course. She has an interesting feature on her web site at
