Automotive sales... without borders...
Last week when I picked up the rental car for our holiday in France, something magical happened. To be honest, I think it was by accident, but I really hope, deep down, that someone has listened to one of my long running rants about how selling cars could be done in a different way.
After landing, I head over to Sixt, where everything is slowing down to a halt, making me think I'm stuck in some time-space warp. It takes about 30 minutes for the three people in front of me to be serviced at the four open counters, and finally it's my turn to step up and receive my below minimum spec'ed piece of metal on wheels... Or so I think, tainted by numerous rental experiences over the years.
And then...
It takes a while, but then something happens. The man behind the counter upgrades my rental, quite substantially actually, and soon I find myself driving away from the lot to pick up the rest of the family at the terminal, in a fully spec'ed, brand new, Seat Tarraco. It's all nice, but what makes it magical, is that I have been looking at getting a new car, as the lease on my old one is running out. I've been looking at Volvo, Seat and a few other medium sized SUV's.
The previously mentioned rant is a frustration about lack of reaching out from car companies to rental companies. It should be relatively easy, since I booked my car online, to check out my browsing history and see that I'm obviously in the market for one of these cars. So why on earth are the car manufacturers not fighting each other to have Sixt give me their car, and in the nicest possible version?
Why would this be an epic way to sell cars?
A few things would happen, as I see it, that all help the brand tremendously to get me to buy their car when I get home.
Ownership Bias. Once we use, or feel like we own something, it becomes much more valuable to us. It has been shown in numerous experiments how well this bias works. One of the popular experiments gives half the control group some tickets to an event, and the other half get no tickets. Without putting a value on the tickets beforehand, each person has to say how much they would be willing to pay to buy a ticket from a person who has one, or how much they would want someone to pay for the ticket they have to give it up. Without fail, the people with the tickets value them much much higher than the people without. Having driven the SEAT for a week now, I value it much higher than the other cars I was looking at.
Positive Experiences. When we're on vacation, we would hope that the experience and the memories would be fond ones. This means that when I get home and start looking at cars again, I already have great memories of driving around the most beautiful roads in the Alpes, finding waterfalls we can jump in, and stopping to eat lunch on the go with amazing vistas unfolding before the whole family. Or the thrill of venturing up small dirt roads, having to switch the 4wd to offroad mode and struggling with dirt flying and the vistas I mentioned before seeming a bit to close to the narrow rocky surface... Pretty valuable, even compared to the most charming slick car dealer.
The extras become the standard. This version of the car has every extra you can imagine. I love it. 3D view of the surroundings, auto parking, lane assist, cooler in the glove compartment and much more. Most of these things are things that are extras, and things I would normally not add when getting a new car. But to be honest... I feel like there is no going back now...
So, what does this all mean? Well, it means that I'm getting a SEAT when I get home. I'm going to opt for the Ateca, since the Tarraco is just a bit to big for our family, but the competitors have been blown away by this single act of either luck or brilliant use of data.
I can't help but wonder how many other opportunities like this there are out there. To be honest, I'm thinking of quite a few already, and can't wait to see where else I can spot these cross industry collaborations that could make such a great impact for both brands, and for the end user to be honest.
