New lockdown will prompt shift to more proactive digital approach, predicts iVendi

New lockdown measures coming into force in England are accelerating a trend towards dealers using the digital tools available to them in a much more proactive manner, reports iVendi.

The company says that, over the period of the pandemic, its products have increasingly been used by sales teams in a targeted manner to offer deals to individual customers and use them as the basis for ongoing negotiation.

James Tew, CEO, said: “Many car, van and motorcycle dealers have historically tended to view their digital offering as essentially passive. However sophisticated their online vehicle buying journey, it is ultimately reliant on the buyer initiating and driving the process, rather than allowing dealers to take a proactive approach.

“What we have seen with this year’s lockdowns and have been able to track from use of our products, especially with the closure of showrooms for long periods, is a strategy that you could describe as much more of a sales push.

“At a time when dealers have a much-reduced opportunity to talk to customers in person and an increasing number of leads arrive through digital channels, this is becoming not just important but an essential means for driving sales.”

James said that a key tool of this type for its dealer customer base during the last few months had been the Digital Deals included in the TRANSACT product that iVendi introduced in April.

“The trend we are seeing is not limited to Digital Deals but they are the most obvious example. They allow a proposition to be created by a sales person including vehicle price, finance, value added products, part exchange and settlement values and then sent to the potential buyer as the basis for an online negotiation designed to replicate the subtleties of an in-person dialogue.

“Vehicles totalling more than £52,984,586 on finance alone, have been sold using Digital Deals during the last six months. We now have dealers who send them to every potential customer with whom they have contact and are subsequently seeing sales increase.

“The value of this approach during lockdown cannot be understated, making absolute sense alongside the adoption of home delivery or click and collect models.”

James added that iVendi believed that the coronavirus crisis had created a situation where the relationship between showroom and digital was being redefined.

“We’ve been saying for many years that when dealers think digitally, they need to conceptualise the showroom and their online presence as parts of the same domain. Few vehicle buyers stay exclusively in one of these spheres. They very much tend to move between the two several times as part of their purchasing journey.

“The last few months have made this even more apparent as dealers have become necessarily adept at switching between times when their showroom is allowed to open and times when they are making sales remotely. There is now much more flexibility built into their processes. Showroom and digital are much closer.

“We’re describing this new approach as ‘connected retailing’ and it is very much at the heart of how we are now looking at the vehicle retailing market in terms of the products we provide and the way in which we provide them.”

About iVendi

Founded in 2009, iVendi is the market leader in connected motor retail technology, creating digital products that help customers to buy vehicles and dealers to sell them more efficiently, both on online and in the showroom.

iVendi technology interacts with around five million consumers every month and thousands of motor retailers, manufacturers and finance providers. The company is based in Colwyn Bay.