By the Chinese New Year holiday and the epidemic, the automotive industry 2020 start negative pressure, production and sales in January fell about 20% year-on-year. And in the current has started enterprises, still mainly facing the shortage of related materials, customer traffic sharply reduced and other real problems. The lack of users, stagnant sales, shortage of funds, employees to be ...... these are a difficult problem in front of the dealers. Obviously, the epidemic for the entire automotive industry will be a heavy blow, if the epidemic inflection point does not appear in the short term, regardless of the host plant or dealers, will face the challenge of life and death. So dealers under the epidemic, which survival law is the golden law?

Cultivate loyal customers

In the state of supply exceeds demand, the market tends to be saturated, the 4S store competition is fierce, the price war did not stop for a day, and even more so the formation of the same brand dealers, "killing each other" situation. At present, many brand dealers are losing money to sell cars, relying on after-sales to subsidize pre-sales and maintain the operation of the whole company. But surely, keep the old customers is to save strength, increase the competitiveness of the winning way. Liu Hong, general manager of Chongqing Baoyu, said that the cost of a new customer is five times the cost of retaining an old customer, and that retained customers can potentially bring 100% profit for the company.

Another survey said that the loyalty of old customers fell by 5%, the enterprise profitability will fall by 25%; to the new customer sales success rate of only 15%, while to the old customer sales success rate of 50%; 60% of the new customers from the old customer's introduction or influence. To summarize, retaining old customers will make the cost of a substantial reduction, but also greatly conducive to the development of new customers, visible maintenance of old customers to bring great benefits and importance. Han Wei, General Manager of Chongqing Auto Trade, also believes that retaining old customers is a very important task. Satisfied old customers will bring positive, positive word-of-mouth communication, positive communication can bring referrals, adhere to the 4S store maintenance and even used car replacement.

Striving to be a "retrograde"

"Nowadays, the concept of door-to-door car wash, door-to-door maintenance, door-to-door repairs and other services can be found everywhere when you turn on your cell phone, but door-to-door automotive services have always been in the stage of testing and experimentation. However, with the popularization and promotion of online car purchase, the future delivery of car door-to-door and other services are expected to become one of the popular trends." He Ting, sales director of Chongqing Dejialin Lincoln Center, said that recently almost all car companies have launched a series of services such as "VR car", "live car talk", "online ordering", and even provide a test-drive home experience. Test drive door-to-door experience, etc., so that we can see the car without leaving home to buy a car, in order to stimulate consumer desire to buy a car. Standing in the longer term, the outbreak of the epidemic will prompt the online experience, car selection, car purchase based on the car door-to-door service model will accelerate the development.

This "war epidemic" down,? Auto sales online competition and service will start a new "battle", there will be a more comprehensive, more grounded play in the car market. Moreover, car sales from online to offline service and process of full convergence, through this opportunity to interpret more pure. With the rise of the wave of live broadcasting, the media, dealers and manufacturers are all investing some, if not all, of their energy online. This will largely affect user consumption habits, making online car selection more popular, and online car purchase will also become a trend with the improvement of the door-to-door service process.

Willing to be the owner of the "scavenger"

In terms of automobile consumption, more than 60% of the domestic after-market services are completed by the 4S system. At present, the service level of offline stores has become a key variable in the establishment of its brand. Car users are getting younger and younger, while the emergence of more thoughtful and personalized innovative Internet automotive services, but also let the 4S system perceived anxiety. According to statistics, the average customer turnover rate of 4S stores is as high as 65%. In the face of sales as the core to the service as the core of the profit model transformation, 4S store service quality supervision problem needs to be solved. And, most consumers pay more attention to the service experience and service quality, and have the willingness to pay for it.

"The concept of service is a long-term cultivation of a personal charm, each salesman should establish a "sincere customer service" concept, a good after-sales service with a clear conscience, rather than show, and can not be ignored because it is not important. " Changan Valley 4S store after-sales manager Zhang Shengchong said, in the face of fierce competition in the market, if you do the same as your competitors do, why do customers have to you? The real means of maintaining customer relations, is the cumulative treatment of small things in life with customers, which the subtle skills only after a long time in the fumbling and draping in order to be able to get the hang of it, like a fish out of water.

Digging deep and accumulating food

With new car sales almost stagnant during the epidemic, after-sales output greatly reduced, and overall income falling off a cliff, the auto dealer group's monthly salary and social security expenses, rental expenses, bank loan interest and other fixed expenditure items may be the last straw that breaks the camel's back. In this regard, Han Wei, general manager of Chongqing Chamber of Commerce Auto Trade, said, "Dealers need to actively take multiple measures to ease the pressure on cash flow, such as operating costs, to achieve rational spending, cash flow management and forecasting; in strengthening their own management and actively follow up on the progress of the epidemic at the same time, you can seek to transform and diversify the layout of the business and reduce the long-term dependence on a single core business; in addition, you can also optimize the organizational structure, and actively strive for the development of a single core business. It can also optimize the organizational structure, actively seek subsidy policies and funds, and de-stocking to recycle funds.

Doing a good job of "red anchor"

With the continuous penetration and integration of the automotive industry and the Internet, artificial intelligence and other technologies, not only in brand exposure, lead collection, sales conversion in-depth application, but also in the customer return to the factory to enhance the value-added business sales, service appointments and other aspects of the full range of applications. The online platform is not only an online trading platform for dealer groups, but also has strong marketing value, media value, data value and service value. While building offline stores, dealer groups further increase the integration with online platforms (APP, WeChat, professional websites, etc.), which can realize a full range of target service capabilities.

Experiencing this epidemic, many companies have realized the importance of "online customer acquisition" capability. Regardless of the type of enterprise, must have a kind of online customer acquisition ability, the traditional customer acquisition method is only telephone, advertising, distribution, etc. But these modes of initiative is getting smaller and smaller. But these modes of initiative is getting smaller and smaller, and the cost will be more and more high. "The essence of online customer acquisition, is to rely on content diversion customer acquisition, the future of a variety of online platforms will be more and more open, the automotive aftermarket enterprises can use the Internet big data, artificial intelligence and other tools to create a variety of graphic, short video and other forms of content to increase the degree of relevance to customers." Beijing Hyundai Yongda 4S store marketing manager Li Fang said, the previous method of play is low-priced sales, special sales, etc., to enhance brand awareness, and the next step is to truly achieve the depth of the integration of online and offline.

To create a super "square cabin"

At present, with the changing environment of China's automobile market, the form of new channels, new consumption, new people are changing the development of the traditional automobile circulation market. Among them, post-90s consumers present the characteristics of willing to accept new things, wide range of interests and hobbies, opinionated, and like to socialize, etc.; compared with post-80s, their consumption trend is more diversified, differentiated, and quality; and they pay more attention to health, maintain youthful vitality, and enjoy life. It happens to be that these subtle changes to a certain extent to promote China's automobile circulation field practice mode of continuous evolution, years of mature operation of the 4S store single channel is being broken.

For example, BMW took the lead in launching the "BMW Network Leadership Program", working with dealer partners to carry out comprehensive innovation and upgrading of the dealer network in terms of software and hardware, with the aim of providing customers with a warm, comfortable and sense of belonging to the brand and service experience; Chongqing Bao Yu is also a part of this "change". Chongqing Bao Yu is also the forerunner of this "change". In fact, although the car dealership store upgrades is not a big deal, but also to a certain extent reflects the trend of automotive service links, that is, the implementation of a more perfect level of service to the offline. Coupled with the fact that the quality of automotive products, youth, diversification, as well as the increasing changes in the consumer groups, prompting companies have to work on the level of after-sales service. On the other hand, when a high-quality, high-performance and stylish new car on the market, is it willing to show in a space and service are relatively "simple" in the store?

Using the "support" from all sides

In response to the impact of the epidemic on the industry, many automotive companies are working with auto dealers to combat risk, at the financing level to liberalize the loan cycle, or the implementation of the interest-free policy; at the operational level to relax the assessment objectives, advocating digital services. And previously, the China Automobile Dealers Association also called on the relevant departments to strengthen the supervision of financial institutions to provide policy protection to distressed enterprises, and to provide auto dealers with debt extension approval facilitation, increase the credit limit, accelerate the efficiency of lending, reduce the cost of financing, special circumstances of overdue penalty and interest relief and credit protection and other related policy support.

So, with the good eight "support", but also dealers a ladder over the wall. For example, Chongqing Automobile Business Association President Yang Min said, dealers short-term self-help is not very effective, and in the long term still need relevant policies to break the situation. Specifically to the consumer level, if together with some relief, the automotive consumer market appropriate liberalization of the policy of limiting the purchase of licenses, dealers can drive consumption and stimulate economic growth. At the tax level, make good use of the relevant policies of the special period, can help to help enterprises to slow down the pressure; especially more specific, point-to-point support, such as financing loan level.

Automotive Review

In fact, in the face of the epidemic, dealers are taking measures to improve the overall resistance of the automotive industry chain to the "epidemic" ability. For example, they are gradually resuming their sales activities, sorting out potential customers, providing online training to their employees, and marketing their experience around the customer's temperature, and so on. But the real war is in the aftermath of the epidemic, dealers only in the old customers, strengthen after-sales service, improve the integration of online and offline, accelerate the upgrading of stores, use the eight "support", may be able to stand firm in the future.

This article comes from the author of the automobile home car, does not represent the views of the automobile home position.