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Car sales nationwide have taken a beating since March. Dealers, both franchise and independent, are trying to find creative ways to move units and stop the bleeding. Brutal is not a strong enough word to describe the market this far into the year.

Even with an increased reliance on digital retailing and dealers doing everything possible to make car shoppers feel confident about coming to the lot, it’s still not enough for some stores. The question on everyone’s mind now is ‘What can we do that is truly unique to sell more?’

One answer is to offer a special, preloaded ancillary package that is branded to your store. You name it, you market it in your own ‘brand voice’, and you make it a standard Line 1 add to every car on the lot.

Let’s see what that looks like and how it can help you move more cars…

A Simple, Powerful Statement

Including a preloaded appearance package not only gives the dealership easy front-end profit, but it also helps to send a message to the local market about how YOU see the value in protecting your inventory. If you create a marketing message saying that the dealership believes in making sure every car’s appearance is a top priority for every buyer, that will set up a powerful ‘Why Buy Here?’ value proposition.

Local shoppers (and even some not-so-local shoppers) will immediately feel as though the dealership is offering something unique and valuable to help THEM. And that sells more cars.

What’s in a Name? Everything.

Rolling out a preloaded ancillary package to the market is the easy part...the hard part is coming up with the right name for it. Focus on something short but dramatic. Dealerships that use the words ‘shield’ or ‘guard’ tend to get a very different customer reaction to protections like these.

‘Total 360 Shield’ or ‘Whole Car Protection’. Don’t laugh. Customers react strongly to words that paint a picture. This preloaded package should explain clearly that the entire car, inside and out, is protected and that it’s exclusive to YOUR store. This makes buyers less likely to push back on the cost and keep it in the deal. Don’t be afraid to be creative.

The Price Better Be Right

This preloaded appearance package should never be priced too high. Depending on the aftermarket provider you work with, the profit margin should at LEAST come in about $200 net per unit. If it is higher than that, customers will ask for it to be removed. Come in lower and it won’t make the impact you want it to.

Understand some buyers will push back saying that they won’t pay for something on the car that was added at the lot. If the bundle price is $399 for example and includes much more than just paint and fabric, they will be more likely to keep it. It’s cheaper than most ‘hard’ adds to the car anyway.

Which leads to another important factor in using a preloaded bundle to help sell more cars…

Offer Everything But the Kitchen Sink

If dealerships want to sell more cars in an uncertain market, they need to offer more value than ever. Paint and fabric can’t be all that the preloaded bundle includes.

Key replacement, interior/exterior protection, windshield coverage, 24/7 roadside are also valuable adds for the buyer that gives them a more holistic, ‘total car’ protection that most dealers would not offer all in one package.

Go a step further and throw in cosmetic alloy protection and PDR. Offer that on every car, market it using powerful benefit-rich copy, and watch the sales numbers rise. It gives valuable protections for all the parts of the car that aren’t addressed in VSC’s and yet they are more likely to use this protection in the course of everyday driving.

The Protection for Right Now

Now is the time to take it a step further and include an antimicrobial treatment in the bundle. Maybe your store offers it separately but consider offering it as an ‘all-in-one’ protection package while COVID-19 is still raging in parts of the country.

Antimicrobial applications have found their time and with buyers being increasingly worried about the interiors of their cars being more susceptible to viruses and bacteria, offering this protection as a part of a larger package makes perfect sense right now.

By including it in the customized bundle, dealerships help make it an even easier fee to get on Line 1 with no objection. After all, how many buyers will REALLY balk at paying to keep the high-touch surfaces inside the car safe from viruses and other germs? Not many.

Selling more cars today means having to get creative. Offering a special preloaded protection package will help do that by delivering peace of mind that other dealerships in the market may not be offering. By branding it to your existing marketing platform, it becomes a powerful way to differentiate the store from every other in town. It provides a next-level benefit much the same way a CPO program benefits a buyer with longer warranty protection and better pricing.

ExoGloss can help your dealership set up this all-in-one ancillary package with remote addition through your DMS, marketing materials and custom branding, and all the administrative support needed to make this offering a no-brainer.

Click here to take a closer look and reach out...we would love to show you how to leverage these bundles to get ahead in sales.