Automotive News
How dealerships can fix 'underselling' right away
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July 2016
Changes in auto retailing can take effort and time. Lots of time. Think of changing consumer attitudes towards a brand, increasing foot traffic or moving a dealership to a new location. But on the sales floor, change can occur immediately. There are numerous things dealerships can do fairly quickly to improve their sales processes and boost the satisfaction of potential buyers, says Fran O’Hagan, CEO of Pied Piper, a company that deploys mystery ...
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Automotive News
Infiniti impresses mystery shoppers
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July 2016
Infiniti stores outperformed all brands in a study on prospect satisfaction, while Tesla lagged all brands. The 2016 Pied Piper Prospect Satisfaction Index is based on the treatment of mystery shoppers who visited 6,157 stores in the U.S. between July 2015 and June 2016. Lexus and Mercedes-Benz stores tied for second behind Infiniti, followed by Toyota, Audi and BMW. Porsche, Land Rover and Mitsubishi had the biggest year-over-year ...
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Autoweek
New survey names Infiniti best shopping experience, Tesla worst
July 2016
As per the Pied Piper (no, not that Pied Piper) Prospect satisfaction index, Infiniti offers the best vehicle sales experience, while far at the other end of the spectrum is Tesla, rated as the worst of all manufacturers. So how did Tesla, a brand that touts its next-generation way of selling cars, end up at the bottom of this list? Well, much of it has to do with how the study was designed, but Tesla could still learn a few things from the top ...
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Automotive News
Infiniti tops survey on satisfaction among sales prospects
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July 2016
Infiniti stores outperformed all brands in a new study on prospect satisfaction. The 2016 Pied Piper Prospect Satisfaction Index is based on the treatment of mystery shoppers who visited 6,157 stores in the U.S. The study was conducted between July 2015 and June 2016. Foreign brands dominated the upper echelon of the index -- now in its 10th year -- taking nine of the top 10 spots. Lexus and Mercedes-Benz stores tied for second; Toyota ranked ...
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Wards Auto
Mystery Shoppers Put Tesla Dealerships in Cellar – Again
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July 2016
Fran O’Hagan is a methodical guy who’s baffled as to why Tesla stores year after year score so low in an annual mystery-shopping study of dealership sales effectiveness. The electric-car maker, which has skirted the traditional dealership franchise system in favor of owning its own sales outlets, ranked dead last on this year’s Pied Piper Prospect Satisfaction Index. The study by brand measures how well dealerships follow sales processes, such ...
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Powersports Business
Triple threat: Ducati's PSI score tops again
June 2016
Pied Piper Management Company LLC reached a new milestone in 2016 — it published its 10th annual motorcycle Prospect Satisfaction Index (PSI) that measures how dealerships treat motorcycle shoppers in a variety of sales process categories. “We’ve had an interesting seat to observe what has happened in the motorcycle industry over the past 10 years. The motorcycle industry has improved dramatically; there’s no question about it,” said Fran ...
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Motorcycle & Powersport News
New Study Ranks Ducati Dealers Highest For Third Straight Year
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May 2016
Ducati dealerships were the top ranked brand in the recently released 2016 Pied Piper Prospect Satisfaction Index (PSI) U.S. Motorcycle Industry Benchmarking Study, which marks the third consecutive year that Ducati finished at the top. The study measured dealership treatment of motorcycle shoppers, with rankings by brand determined by the patent-pending Pied Piper PSI process, which ties “mystery shopping” measurement and scoring to industry ...
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Truth About Cars
Tesla Dead Last in Dealer Experience, First in PR
July 2015
We have opined in these pages before about how for every Tesla sold in America, there are two or three glowing stories written about the electric automaker. There are days when over 50 percent of the pieces on auto industry news feeds are about Tesla, which is not bad for a company capturing 0.1 percent of the U.S. automobile market. Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk is truly a marketing and public relations genius. Given that, it is fascinating when a ...
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Wards Auto
Luxury Brands Have Great Cars, and Great Salespeople
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July 2015
Why do Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Lexus rank 1-2-3 in U.S. luxury-brand sales? Reasons vary. But one of them is that their dealership salespeople are real pros. And a reason for that is their staff retention rates are high, meaning good people stick around. And they do so because they're earning a good living from healthy margins on premium cars. “It boils down to profitability,” says Fran O'Hagan, head of Piped Piper Management, a consulting company ...
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The Car Connection
Mercedes-Benz Is Tops In Shopper Satisfaction, But Tesla? Not So Much
July 2015
Today's auto market is a tough one for consumers. There are loads of great cars on the lots, and the differences between those from Toyota, Ford, Volkswagen, and most other mass-market automakers are disappearing. In that kind of environment, customer service is king. The way sales personnel treat shoppers can make or break a dealership. That's why studies like the Prospect Satisfaction Index (PSI) from research firm Pied Piper are so important ...
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