RESEARCH into car dealers’ post-scrappage plans has found many car dealers are missing a trick.

Now the successful scheme has finished, car dealers must find other ways to incentivise customers into the showrooms – but some are doing this better than others.

An rts researcher telephoned 50 dealers posing as a potential scrappage customer, with a qualifying vehicle, enquiring what deal the scheme could offer him.

Richard Wells, rts MD, said: ‘Naturally, we expected to be told that scrappage was over, so it was not a surprise to have that confirmed at every single dealer contacted.

‘What did come as a surprise, though, was the lack of a positive response of any kind to keep the customer interested.

‘Almost without exception, it was down to our researcher to ask what the other options were – at one dealership, the ‘scrappage has finished’ statement was so brusque and the following silence so long, it was almost as if the call had been disconnected.’

This has led Wells to suggest car dealers have become complacent, due to the success of scrappage and currently-buoyant used car sales. Just 10 percent of dealers contacted were described as ‘very good’ by the rts researcher.

‘If dealers want to build on the momentum generated by scrappage, our litmus test suggests that many sales teams still have a lot of work to do.’

Have you any post-scrappage plans to build upon customers’ interest?

Tags: rts, scrappage

This entry was last updated on Tuesday, April 20th, 2010 at 12:49 pm and is filed under News.