If you have a car dealership, believe it or not, you’re not just selling cars. You’re also not just selling merchandise, oil changes, and maintenance plans. No, you’re selling an experience and a relationship. If you fail to sell this experience and make your customers want to have a relationship with you, then you’re losing sales. Let’s talk about a few of the little things you can do that will have surprisingly large effects on your sales.

Do You Sell Luxury?

If you’re selling a line of luxury cars, like Lexus or Mercedes Benz, you can’t just sell them based on the luxury of the car. Your customers are paying more, not just for the car, but for the experience of being a Lexus or Mercedes owner. Have you ever walked into a Nordstrom’s or other high-end department store? They have a very different look and feel than Macy’s or Sear’s.

If you’re selling luxury automobiles, you need to be selling luxury, itself. You need to treat your customers like VIPs because they’re spending VIP money with you. You won’t be able to get away with instant coffee and non-dairy creamer in your waiting area. Everything about the experience should make your customers feel as though they are part of a class all their own.

Wait time? What Wait Time?

No matter what kind of cars you’re selling, when your customers have to wait, you’re opening yourself up for a bad time, unless you make them feel like they haven’t had to wait at all. You can do two simple things that will keep your customers happy and busy while they wait on their car to be detailed or maintained.

First, make sure that there’s a safe place for kids to keep themselves occupied. A playroom with some building blocks and toy cars can keep them busy for hours. This is important because when the kids get bored, they start bugging their parents. When they start bugging their parents, their parents get annoyed with you.

While the kids are keeping themselves busy, you can keep their parents busy by simply providing some up-to-date magazines and free Wi-Fi. Not everyone will bring their laptops, smartphones, or tablets with them, but most people will. For those that don’t, you have some reading material available for them.

Make sure that you have one of the members of your administrative staff peeking in on your customers when they’re waiting to make sure that they’re comfortable and up to date on their wait time. If they feel like they’re being waited on, they’ll be more likely to brag about you than to slam you on Yelp.