Part 3: How Did Tim Dahle Nissan Double Sales Inside Of 6 Months?

Part 1 & Part 2

This is our third installment in our series on Tim Dahle Nissan in South Jordan, Utah This time we are going to investigate the customer experience focus at this store and find out how they’ve managed to double their sales six months into their new facility.

Car shoppers are evolving and some of the modern consumer experience expectations are not being fully met by dealerships we found in our recent DrivingSales Customer Experience Study. However, Tim Dahle Nissan appears to be winning at customer experience.

In an effort to streamline the process at their store, Tim Dahle Nissan has a process in place to customize the customer experience. That customization starts with knowing what customers don’t like; Managing Partner Tyler Slade noted that long wait times at a dealership are of particular annoyance to customers.

“From a customer standpoint, you said ‘yes, you want to buy the car’ and its hurry up and wait,” Slade explained. “I mean, they’ll sit there and they’ll wait and they’ll wait and they’ll wait and what we find out through surveys is that it’s one of the most frustrating things for them. It’s like ‘hey I want to buy the car now why do I have to wait so long?’”

That waiting Slade is referring to could be for numerous reasons, however, two dealership bottlenecks he touched on were the finance department and the detail and delivery prep process. Part of that streamlined process is having 4 finance offices, which they consciously built to accommodate customers on busy days. Slade referenced the importance of a streamlined process on a day like Memorial Day when his store sold 38 cars.

Speaking on this subject, Slade said, “Monday (Memorial Day) when we sold 38 cars, you’ve got to fit 38 people through that bottleneck. So now you have four nice offices where you can do that and that allows you to do that. So boom, car goes off for delivery. You have the delivery center back there for delivery detail. It gets cleaned up and brought right back into the delivery room. Garage shut. The car looks immaculate. It’s right next to the finance offices so when they’re signing for the car, they can see their car right there in the delivery room. Again it’s all glass, they’re not confounded, and they’re not feeling like they’re stuck. Its all open, there’s your car, no pressure.”

When Slade says no pressure, he also means that at his store customers won’t feel sardined into a certain selling process. Tim Dahle certainly practices responsive selling, which means the customer sets the tone of the sales process. If the customer wants to take their time or wants you to get the process cranking faster, the sales person responds to the customer and they stay in charge of their vehicle purchase process.

When asked how his store approaches the sales process, Slade said, “Because here’s the deal: You’re driving. If you want to take eight hours, completely fine. We’ll take eight hours and we’ll drive every car on the lot. If you want to make this an hour, we’ve got the facility to do that as well. Its completely up to you and you just let us know if we’re going too fast or we’re going too slow.”

Now there are the types of customers who want the process to go slower or much faster, then there’s another category: the modern consumer. According to Slade, this could mean a very streamlined process very much at the customer’s pace.

Describing this type of customer, Slade explained, “I’ve already done my research, I already know what I want, I already know what my hot buttons are, here’s what I need: boom, boom, boom. Do I really need to come in to go though all of this stuff? Well, no you don’t. This is the car that you want? This is that car that I want? This is the price that you’re going to pay? OK. Here’s my trade-in, or no trade. Here’s my credit. I need you to finance. I know rates are this. OK, so here’s what I’ll do. I’ll have the car prepped; ready for delivery and the paperwork will be ready and when you come in I mean literally this is a 10-15 minute deal.”

A question that you might have is how Tim Dahle Nissan is able to facilitate the faster-paced customers. They do it by having speedy systems in place. They invested in a fuel tank on their lot so that they can fill up vehicles without leaving the lot. And as managing partner Tyler Slade explains, after fueling up, the vehicle prep rolls quickly forward.

“And so boom, there they are we have this whole streamlined gas it up on the lot, through the automated car wash, into the detail center to be touched up and back into the delivery room. We can do that in 15 minutes. So the customer’s not seeing what’s going on behind the scenes, but as a general manager I’m seeing it and I’m realizing this is helping the customer experience because I realize that they’re not waiting for a car to go get gassed up, to be manually washed, they could have already signed up their paper and their cars’ not ready and again, we’ve all been there where it’s a busy day if you don’t have a streamlined process to handle those busy days, yeah the customer experience yeah its not going to be as neat.”

Keeping that customer experience neat has meant incredible gains in sales for Tim Dahle. Since the opening of their new facility in January, they have doubled their sales numbers. That means their savvy customer experience strategy is working very well. The main goal of Tim Dahle’s customer experience intentions is that customers will come back again and again after that initial experience. Slade said that a streamlined customer experience means repeat business.

“I’m after customers coming back and feeling comfortable at this lot because when they need a car, we’re going to be on their shopping list and when they need to fix their car, they’ll just think of us,” Slade explained.

From the focus on Fixed Ops, to a state-of-the-art facility onto to a streamlined customer experience, we’ve shown you what one dealership is doing that has brought them success. Be sure to keep keeping checking in with DrivingSales News as we find more dealerships like like Tim Dahle Nissan who dare to innovate and see powerful results.