Larry H. Miller Toyota Boulder
Larry H. Miller Toyota Boulder is located in the Mountain States region of Colorado, otherwise known locally as the Front Range. They are celebrating 40 years of serving customers in Denver, Longmont and Broomfield, Colorado.
Challenge
In 2018, the Larry H. Miller Group embarked on a journey to bring digital retailing capabilities to all 60+ rooftops within the group. They were particularly interested in having the Toyota Boulder store try Roadster given General Manager, Jarred Black’s, process oriented approach. Jarred had tried other tools in the past, but found them to be glorified payment calculators. He was really looking for something that could empower his sales staff to work with customers not just in the showroom, but also online, with little management oversight. He knew there were a lot of inefficiencies happening and that if he could significantly reduce the time his sales team spent waiting in line at the sales manager’s desk for information-- it would increase their productivity, lead to more sales per person and result in higher customer satisfaction scores.
Solution
Larry H. Miller Toyota Boulder partnered with Roadster in December of 2018 to utilize both the Express Storefront and Express Trade products. After getting comfortable with the online transaction platform, Jarred quickly moved to mastering the in-store component. it didn’t take long for him to realize the power of having his team use it to engage customers regardless of their location. By September of 2019, he knew he was on to something. He took a portion of his staff and dedicated them to using Roadster with every customer, both online and in the showroom. Not only did customer satisfaction sky rocket, but this Roadster team was so much more efficient than everyone else, pulling the average cars sold per person up from the typical 8-9 units to 15+.
By January, he was ready to roll this out to the rest of his staff. He centered his entire sales process around the capabilities of his Express Store. Things had just begun to hum when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Much like other stores around the country, his physical showroom was shut down and sales transitioned to by appointment only. While Jarred had to reduce his headcount due to lower demand at first, he didn’t skip a beat process-wise. Afterall, they had been perfecting it for the previous 12+ months. With remote selling already in their blood, Jared and Toyota Boulder went on to sell the same amount of cars in May vs. pre COVID, but with half the staff. Staff members that were not 100% on board previously, quickly got on board. In fact, one of his most successful sales professionals went from selling on average 25 cars a month to 44+ in April.
“Express Storefront has made us way more efficient. Not only does it allow our sales people to control their own destiny and spend more time selling cars vs. waiting to get information from the desk, but it has created a better experience for the customer!”
