Selling Audi: the harder half is before the sale

1. Three words, one line

Brand acceptance, market share and customer satisfaction are three columns on the OEM scorecard. In a store they are one line. If the customer does not accept the brand, they walk in and compare prices. Price-only deals are won by discounting, and discount customers are rarely satisfied. Low satisfaction kills repeat purchase and referrals, and market share then depends on buying more leads.

So we stopped talking about enhancing brand image and turned it into something measurable: when a customer leaves, they should be able to name one thing this store does better than the next. If they cannot, the visit failed.

2. Before the sale: stop lecturing, start walking with them

The Audi range is long, and trim differences on one model can reach a hundred thousand yuan. When a salesperson opens with specifications, the customer checks their phone by the third sentence.

We start with use: how many people in the household, how long the daily commute, can the parking space take a charger, what annoyed them most about the last car. Four questions and the shortlist halves itself.

On the walk-around we cover three things only: how this car solves what you just described, why this option is worth the money, and what you give up without it. Once those are on the table, the customer does the arithmetic themselves.

We changed the test-drive route. It used to be a straight road, and all customers remembered was that it was quick. Now the loop includes broken asphalt, a basement ramp and a stretch of expressway — deliberately chosen for ride, quattro and noise. What a customer says after that loop beats half an hour of our talking.

3. During the sale: delivery is the most wasted moment

However nice the handover ceremony, what the customer remembers is how long the paperwork took. Our target is two hours end to end: temporary plates, insurance, purchase tax, registration booking, one person following it through so nobody queues at three counters.

One step we insist on: set up the infotainment, driver assistance and charging in front of the customer, to their habits rather than factory defaults. It takes twenty minutes and saves a week of phone calls.

For EVs there is one more: install the home-charging app, bind the account, demonstrate scheduled charging. Skip it and the customer asks after-sales, who explains it all again. Explaining the same thing twice makes a store look amateur.

4. After-sales: waiting for customers never fills the workshop

After-sales revenue comes from workshop visits. If you wait for customers to remember, the bay count never fills. We run two reminder streams by mileage and by time: first service two weeks ahead, routine service one month ahead, pushed through WeCom rather than a phone campaign.

Accident repair is a separate line. The first reaction to a crash is panic, and whoever answers first wins the job. Our advisers call back within fifteen minutes and say three things: is anyone hurt, can the car be driven, where are you now. After those three, the customer has usually decided.

Those three sentences are taped next to every adviser's desk. Not as a script — because in a panic people need an order to do things in.

5. Where market share actually comes from

Share in a city grows from three places: replacement, additional cars, and conquest from other brands. The first two come from existing customers; the third from reputation and comparison drives.

For existing customers we did something plain: group buyers from the last three years by model and run a quarterly event. No vouchers — a free inspection and a wash. Attendance is modest; referral rates from that group run well above average.

Conquest depends on comparison drives. We keep two rivals at the same level so a customer can drive them back to back. There is a risk: they might prefer the other car. But customers who spend two hours comparing convert far better than walk-ins. Letting people compare is itself an argument.

6. Do not judge satisfaction by the score alone

OEM survey scores are noisy. A customer who is polite in person may not give full marks, and the genuinely unhappy ones often do not fill in the survey at all.

We watch three behavioural numbers instead: first-service return rate, insurance renewal rate, and referral count. Those three cannot be faked.

When the score drops, do not start with script training. Go through the complaint log; eight times out of ten one step keeps failing — parts waiting, estimates that change, promised times missed. Fix one of those and the score recovers a notch.

7. In the end

Before the sale decides whether they come, during the sale decides whether they believe you, after the sale decides whether they come back. Fail one of the three and the other two are discounted.

Market share is not announced, it is accumulated customer by customer. It is a cliché, and after a few years in a store we have not found another route.

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