Leaving Electric Avenue

The big news, (for me) in November, was my departure from Electric Avenue, our EV & hybrid sales center. Fret not! I am NOT giving up on plug-in vehicle sales, but need to make a living. I specialize in the Volt and Bolt EV at my dealership, but I still sell everything Chevrolet makes.

I have to, to make a living.

EV sales in the U.S. account for about 1% of total vehicle sales. After a very financially difficult year, I decided I needed to be back in the main showroom, where customer traffic is much higher. What I kept seeing was:

• People pulling up to my building, reading the “EV & Hybrid Sales Center” signs and then immediately backing out of their parking spot and heading to another building (and another salesperson).
• People coming into my building and asking, “Is this the Parts Department?” or “Is this used cars?” This was the part that stumped me, finally. I had giant banners put up all over the Electric Avenue area, to make certain the customers looking for plug-in vehicles would find my building…and me. I had signs and banners everywhere, but it made no difference.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

• The dealership had tried to promote the EV & Hybrid Sales Center in print ads, radio spots, radio interviews, internet ads and mailers. Nothing any of us did seemed to fix the issue of invisibility.
• Other salespeople coming down to get a Volt or Bolt EV, from the area in front of my building, and taking it to their building, presumably to show it to a potential customer.” 95% of the time, the vehicle would be brought back to my building, because it did not sell. In my heart of hearts, I felt if I had been the person presenting the vehicle, it would have sold.
• Internet leads on Bolt EV and Volt were kept by our Internet Department, rather than being forwarded to me.
• Anytime I left the area around Electric Avenue, to find a customer that I could sell to, it always seemed a customer would show up at Electric Avenue. Not finding a salesperson there, they’d wander to another salesperson. Since I was the only person in the building, I wouldn’t find out until the customer had already left or had purchased a vehicle from someone else. It seemed that I was “damned if I do, damned if I don’t,” when it came to looking for clients elsewhere.
• People that knew me from a previous purchase, this blog, Facebook or Twitter continued to look for me and that helped my dealership dominate plug-in vehicle sales in most the zip codes in the DFW area. However, new customers were too rare, down at my end of the dealership.
• But the final straw, was that in November, the first five plug-in vehicle sales were made by someone other than me. I realized that, as the tax year was drawing to a close, people were coming to the dealership specifically to get a Volt or Bolt EV, regardless of salesperson knowledge. I knew being in my little building was going to cost me dearly in December.

After 21 months of trying to achieve my vision for EV & hybrid sales, I moved back to where I started at the dealership, the main Showroom. For the entire month of October, I only sold four vehicles, one of which I sold to myself! In the first 26 days of November, while situated at Electric Avenue, I only sold three vehicles, none of which were plug-ins. In the final four days of November, after my move to the main showroom, I sold four vehicles, all of which were plug-ins!

In the first ten days of December, I have already sold five vehicles (yes, ALL plug-ins).

I take some small consolation, in the fact that another salesperson, who usually sells the most vehicles for the entire dealership, had tried to make a go of the same building, selling traditional vehicles. He gave up after only three months. Based on that, I feel I gave the building the best shot I could afford (and more). He had told me, back when I first moved into Electric Avenue, that I was making a mistake. It turns out he was right and it was a costly mistake indeed.

During my tenure, in the building, I sold out our entire stock of Bolt EVs, as the supply became very constrained. I continued to place orders for clients and that is starting to pay off. One month, I got down to only having one Volt left, so I think I can share my defeat with GM’s inability to provide me with Volts and Bolt EVs.