Rural Kentucky Dealership Becomes Accessories Sales Champion

In late 2010, Toyota presented a challenge to the 8 Toyota dealerships in Dry Ridge's Kentucky and nearby Cincinnati region: increase your accessories sales by 20% within 6 months, by adopting new Internet-based accessories sales tools, and Toyota will reimburse you for half the tool's cost. With almost no experience in accessories sales, Dry Ridge decided to take on this challenge and adopted izmocars' AddOnAuto (AOA), an in-store digital sales tool that allows customers to virtually add or remove car accessories and instantly view them on their vehicle of choice. Not only did they meet the goal, they far exceeded it, achieving 412% of the sales objective. The next runner up achieved only 92% of their sales objective.
The case study demonstrates how the implementation of AOA combined with an innovative sales process and a consumer-friendly environment drove eye-opening results for Dry Ridge. It also highlights how this new focus and process has inspired a culture-change at their store - building unprecedented unity among team members.
"We made [accessories sales] a priority," said Rob Marshall, Dry Ridge Toyota's Dealer Principal. "In 2010, we put in the right accessories sales processes and invested in the right training. As a result, we now sell an accessory of some type to two out of three new-car buyers and to about a third of our used-car buyers for about $700,000 a year in accessories sales."Dry Ridge Toyota's winning process and use of the AOA sales tool is driving $50,000-plus a month in accessories sold with 2 in 3 car buyers converted to accessories purchases. Other results include:
Our also recently released its Midyear 2011 AOA Accessories Trend Report(1), which analyzes accessories sales of dealerships across the country. The AOA report is based on sales data from a diverse sampling of 180 dealerships, representing 13 brands and 5 regions across 30 states. The dealerships studied in this report, in aggregate, sold $10.6 million in accessories in Q2 2011, for a total of over $20 million for the first half of the year. The average dealership analyzed increased accessories sales by $475 per-vehicle-sold, with average gross margins of 47% and average net profit margins of 32.8%, compared to 45% and 28% respectively for all of 2010.