Turn More Shoppers into Buyers

Retail sales declining? Growth not fast enough? Fewer shoppers through the doors?

How can we turn more of the “exotic car” shoppers we already have into buyers?

That's where we can help. Manufacturers such as Ferrari, Rolls-Royce, Lamborghini and others hire us to measure and help improve the effectiveness of an exotic car dealership’s sales process by conducting anonymous shopper evaluations using the exotic car version of our patent-pending Pied Piper Prospect Satisfaction Index® (PSI®).

Dealers use Pied Piper PSI to quickly and easily

• Measure their own sales process
• Compare their own sales process to that of same-brand dealers nationwide
• Identify sales process areas in need of improvement
• Improve their sales effectiveness and retail incremental units

What's different about our patent-pending approach?

Get rid of Guesses and Opinions: Traditional “mystery shopping” is often helpful, but does it leave you with nagging doubts and questions? How can you be sure you’re asking the right questions? Do the “fake shoppers” behave the same way as “real” buyers? When you have the results, what do they mean? Compared to what benchmarks?

Bring on Facts and Science: Our patent-pending process removes all of the fatal flaws of the traditional mystery shopping process. Pied Piper PSI first starts with mathematical facts and science gathered from “real” shoppers throughout the country to determine what is important to an industry's sales process and what is not. This unique approach allows us to then use hired anonymous shoppers merely as “fact gatherers” rather than relying on them to tell us what's important and what is not.

National Benchmarking: The patent-pending Pied Piper PSI process is the only one which provides national benchmarking by brand. How does the sales effectiveness of your dealership compare to the national average performance of other same-brand dealerships? How does the performance of one brand compare nationally to the performance of a competitor brand, or to the industry average?

Step-by-Step Diagnostics: See how your dealership compares—overall as well as step by step of the sales process—and quickly determine sales process areas needing additional attention.

Easy-to-use Reporting: Pied Piper PSI is quick and simple to use. Reports are provided by email and on-line, and both management and salespeople will find the reporting powerful but straight-forward, easily identifying areas of opportunity.

Just the facts: “Switzerland”: Do we tell dealers how to sell using “our” method? No, we are neutral, (like Switzerland). We first measure the mathematical relationship between each aspect of the industry-specific sales process; then measure how—on average—each brand’s dealerships sell. We report these facts to our clients along with measurement of how their dealership sells. Just the facts. We believe that our clients are more than capable of using these facts as a benchmark to then decide how best for them to sell at their dealership.

Best Practices: Some manufacturers have us add a “Best Practices” section for their dealers, where we share examples of how top-performing dealerships handle each aspect of the sales process.

Does it work? Dealers and manufacturers who improve Pied Piper PSI sell more vehicles

What are the facts? On a brand level, dealer networks which as a whole improve their PSI performance also improve their retail sales performance; and brands with declining PSI scores suffer declining retail sales. Example: Each year when U.S. auto brands are ranked from top to bottom for change in retail sales vs the previous year, most of the top brands will have also increased or maintained their average PSI scores from year to year. And most of the bottom brands for retail sales performance will also have declining PSI scores from year to year.

How about a dealership-by-dealership example? A manufacturer client who purchases monthly Pied Piper PSI evaluations for all of its U.S. & Canadian dealers provided some interesting statistics to us after their first year as a Pied Piper PSI client:

• Dealers who improved their average Pied Piper PSI scores by 10 points or more from year to year saw retail sales increase 9% during the same time period.
• On the other hand, dealers for whom PSI dropped by 10 points or more saw their retail sales drop 6%.
• The top one-fourth of the entire dealer network, when ranked by PSI scores, saw retail sales grow 5% from the previous year.
• In contrast, the bottom one-fourth of their dealer network by PSI scores suffered a 4% drop in retail sales.

What can Pied Piper PSI tell us about specific sales process behaviors and their impact on retail sales?

Manufacturer clients for whom nationwide Pied Piper PSI evaluations are completed monthly generate enough data to calculate statistical relationships between specific sales process behaviors and dealer retail sales success or higher than average per-unit dealer gross profit. Some examples?

• An auto manufacturer used Pied Piper PSI to find that their dealerships which always ask for contact information retailed 29% more units than those who did not. Pied Piper PSI U.S. Auto Industry Benchmarking shows that on average salespeople ask for contact information 83% of the time.
• An auto manufacturer used Pied Piper PSI to find that their dealerships with salespeople who provided compelling reasons to buy from their dealership at least 75% of the time generated an average per-unit gross profit $477 higher than those who did not. Pied Piper PSI U.S. Auto Industry Benchmarking shows that on average salespeople provide compelling reasons to buy from their dealership only 49% of the time.

What do others say about Pied Piper PSI?

Manufacturer: “We have been blown-away by what Pied Piper PSI has done for our dealer network. Here’s the bottom line: Poor performing dealers who have used PSI to “act like” a great performing sales dealer have soon become a great performing sales dealer.”

Manufacturer: “I think the concept of measuring ‘Prospect Satisfaction' and using it to generate incremental retails is something the auto industry has been missing for years, and I believe that Pied Piper PSI will continue to grow as an automotive industry benchmark. PSI is the rare program that delivered immediately for us, and was also embraced by our dealers.”

Dealer: “I think your program is fantastic. We’ve used the bad surveys (we’ve had a bunch) to do some individual training. And we’re training the entire staff using the survey format. Thanks for your help.”

Manufacturer: Explaining why his company chose to measure and benchmark dealer sales performance every month using “prospect satisfaction” and Pied Piper PSI instead of using the more common measuring stick—customer sales satisfaction, the CEO said that they opted against CSI surveys—because “it's creating the wrong type of relationship between the dealer and the customer.” He said such surveys put pressure on dealer staff to convince consumers to give them high scores on such surveys. By choosing Pied Piper PSI instead, they ensured that the evaluation of the dealership's retail practices are kept between the dealer and the OEM, and do not involve the customer, something the CEO saw as key.

Dealer: “Pied Piper PSI showed that we didn't ask for the sale, which surprised me... We're good at educating people, but that makes us a museum, rather than a retail outlet. We've already taken steps to change…"

Press: “Pied Piper PSI results show that it is possible for automobile salespeople to effectively ask for the sale without seeming either overbearing of ambivalent.”

See how your dealerships compare:

Please call or email if you have any questions. We look forward to helping you turn more of your shoppers into buyers.