It involves a bit of preperation
Traditional car dealerships appear to have some shortcomings when it comes to selling electric vehicles. It’s almost like they are trying to kill electric cars. Bring up the topic on an EV Forum and you’re likely to be deluged in bad-experience anecdotes: the dealer didn’t have any EVs in stock; the battery was too low to take for a test drive; the salesperson wouldn’t stop pushing the customer towards a gas-powered car. The list of sins is endless. But, as one particular dealership demonstrates, it doesn’t have to be that way.
Boulder Nissan, located in Boulder, Colorado is demonstrating that when you take the right approach, a traditional dealer can actually have a lot of success sending customers home in a sweet battery-powered ride. Almost half of its total 837 new-vehicle sales in 2017 were of the Nissan LEAF. This year could bring a similar result with 224 electric examples moved so far.
This success did not come overnight. The store began preparing for this future back in 2011, before the LEAF was even available in The Centennial State. According to Automotive News, the store has taken an “EV-centric” approach and includes a number of measures.
First off, while many dealers have an “EV expert” to handle plug-in sales, all salespeople at Boulder Nissan are LEAF specialists and can tell you about the features of the car, what incentives are available to buyers, and whether or not it will be a good match for a customer.
The store itself is EV-friendly. It boasts five charging stations and derives at least some of the energy for the store from a solar array on its roof, along with other environmentally-friendly touches. The dealership has also partnered with local agencies, such as Boulder County’s sustainability office. In that case, they got extra advertising from the office and, offering extra incentives for county employees, had to bring in extra vehicles from outside the state to meet the increased demand. Win win!
These are all relatively easy things any dealership could do. All it takes is for management to realize the future is electric and start properly preparing for that eventuality. The effort at Boulder Nissan is creating happy customers who are now returning to the store to buy their next LEAF.
Source: Automotive News
Source: Read Full Article