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Recent Press - Wards Auto (Page 2)
Wards Auto
Dealership Study: Overactive Filters Block Some Legit Customer Leads
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March 2018
Bots don’t buy cars, but efforts to block them can unwittingly prevent real customer digital leads from reaching car dealerships. When Internet filters diligently battle bots and spammers, such collateral damage can occur. That’s an ancillary finding of the 2018 Internet mystery-shopping study by consultancy Pied Piper Management Co. Overall, it annually measures how dealerships by brand respond to customer inquiries received through dealer ... Read More >
CBT Automotive Network
What a mystery shopping study reveals about dealership processes
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July 2017
Joe talks to Steve Finlay about a recent article he wrote for WardsAuto, building rapport, and a mystery shopping study. Read More >
Wards Auto
Why Dealership Showroom Staffers Should Follow Sales Process
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July 2017
Successful car salespeople regularly follow established sales processes, says Fran O’Hagan, president and CEO of Pied Piper Management, a consulting firm that mystery shops dealerships to determine showroom effectiveness. Dealers themselves, not automakers, should establish those processes. And it shouldn’t be optional for staffers to follow them or not, he says. For the second year, Nissan’s Infiniti brand dealerships ranked highest in the 2017 ... Read More >
Wards Auto
Dealership Internet Effectiveness Has Long Way to Go
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March 2017
Before Porsche gets up and accepts an award for the auto brand with the most Internet-effective dealerships, here’s a qualifier: It could have done better. So could virtually all the brands on the Pied Piper’s annual Internet Lead Effectiveness Benchmarking Study, says Fran O’Hagan, the consultancy’s president and CEO. The company measures and indexes how dealerships by brand respond to mystery shopping inquiries received through a store’s ... Read More >
Wards Auto
Mystery Shoppers Put Tesla Dealerships in Cellar – Again
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July 2016
Fran O’Hagan is a methodical guy who’s baffled as to why Tesla stores year after year score so low in an annual mystery-shopping study of dealership sales effectiveness. The electric-car maker, which has skirted the traditional dealership franchise system in favor of owning its own sales outlets, ranked dead last on this year’s Pied Piper Prospect Satisfaction Index. The study by brand measures how well dealerships follow sales processes, such ... Read More >
Wards Auto
Study Shows ‘Great Variability' in How Auto Dealers Field e-Leads
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March 2016
It’s a given today that customer Internet inquiries are important to vehicle sales. That’s why there’s an element of mystery to the results of a mystery-shopping study on how well dealerships handle online leads. The industry average performance hasn’t increased in the past three years. It even dropped slightly this year, with 21 of 33 brands declining. That’s according to the latest 2016 Pied Piper PSI Internet Lead Effectiveness Benchmarking ... Read More >
Wards Auto
Luxury Brands Have Great Cars, and Great Salespeople
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July 2015
Why do Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Lexus rank 1-2-3 in U.S. luxury-brand sales? Reasons vary. But one of them is that their dealership salespeople are real pros. And a reason for that is their staff retention rates are high, meaning good people stick around. And they do so because they're earning a good living from healthy margins on premium cars. “It boils down to profitability,” says Fran O'Hagan, head of Piped Piper Management, a consulting company ... Read More >
Wards Auto
Some Dealership Effectiveness Gets Lost in the Email
March 2015
Lexus dealerships respond best to customer Internet inquiries, even though Toyota's luxury brand shows imperfections here and there. That's according to consultancy Pied Piper's annual by-brand mystery-shopping study for its Internet Lead Effectiveness Index. Lexus ranks first with a score of 70 (out of a possible 100), followed by Porsche at 65, Fiat at 62, Dodge and Infiniti both at 61 and Acura, Honda Jaguar and Toyota at 60. Low scorers ... Read More >
Wards Auto
Tesla Salespeople Would Make Great Museum Curators
July 2014
I ask Fran O'Hagan for a point of clarification after he says he would have been impressed if his consulting firm's study showed Tesla dealerships were consistent “regardless of whether I believe they're doing the right thing.” Wait? Does that mean he might think it is wrong for Tesla to bypass the traditional franchised dealership system and instead run its own stores? A lot of state dealer associations think it's wrong. They cite various state ... Read More >
Wards Auto
Lexus Best, Mini Worst at Handling Customer Internet Leads
March 2014
March 2014 In a perfect world, every dealership would act on every Internet lead, responding quickly and following all the right steps leading to a sale. Some individual dealers currently do all that all the time, and their high Internet-related sales serve as evidence. But when it comes to groups of dealers representing particular auto brands, it's an imperfect world, according to a Pied Piper annual mystery-shopping study measuring dealership ... Read More >
