What will future dealerships possibly look like?

Fasten your seatbelts. You are about to dive into an alternate universe.

You are a farmer running a tractor rental business in this universe, who just received a bumper revenue this harvesting season. Your tractors serviced a total of 1000 acres for customers. With cash in hand, and the business forecast looking good, you are entertaining thoughts of upgrading your 41 HP FutureTractor 999 tractor that you had purchased about 3 years ago. It served you well in the last 3 years and clocked more than 4000+ engine hours. But now, due to the heavy usage, its performance has deteriorated and it was negatively affecting your revenue. It was time to let it rest. Suddenly, your smartphone rings.

The call is from your local Mahindra dealership. They are advertising you the latest 50 HP model at a special discount. What’s more, they are also offering you a good resale value for your FutureTractor 999 model. At this point, you are wondering if you were thinking so loudly that your thoughts reached the Mahindra dealership.

The call continues. The executive is explaining in detail the features of their latest 50 HP model. He is, to your amusement, specifically highlighting the features relevant to your operations.

At one point he says “Suppose you want to, in the offseason, use this tractor for brick transport. We are offering you a combo offer — a higher capacity carriage along with this tractor. This will also increase your revenue per transport trip.” You are both delighted and astonished at this offer. Delighted because this combo offer is definitely in your best interests. You do use your tractors for brick transport in the offseason. Astonished because of the relevance of the example provided by the executive.

By this time, you’ve started to feel special. It is almost like a ‘made for you’ offer, an opportunity knocking at your door. The best part, you did not even have to make any efforts to look for a suitable bargain. You go ahead with the purchase process, visit the dealership, have a look at the model, perform a test drive, and finally purchase the model. It was the easiest tractor purchase decision you made in your life. Finally, after the purchase is done, you ask the executive to install a Simha Kit in your new tractor as well. You tell him that you’ve developed a habit of tracking and managing your tractors’ activity using Simha Kit. At this point, the executive smiles, gets the device installed, and helps you register the new device in your app.

How was the ride? Enjoyed it? Want to take a dive again? This time as the dealer, instead of the farmer? Luckily, you need not dive into an alternate universe for that. This universe, or rather a very-near-future version of it, will do.

Not convinced? Have a look at the video below:

As we speak, Simha Profiler — An AI-based leads management tool, is already running in the pilot phase with at least 3 dealerships across India. Hot leads, right at the dealers’ fingertips, information related to the usage pattern of these leads, and their business hotspots, all are accessible through a few clicks. After having experienced the Covid-19 induced lockdown, when physically meeting customers was nearly impossible and business had to be conducted virtually, a tool like Simha Profiler becomes all the more necessary. Pointed insights related to potential customers’ usage patterns and behaviors can make the difference between a sale and a missed opportunity, especially when conducting business virtually.

Now go back to the conversation that happened in the alternate universe. Do you now agree that such conversations are just around the corner in our universe? When such conversations do happen, where do you see yourself? As the dealer making the phone call, or the dealer wondering how his competitor’s sales have suddenly increased?

Enjoyed this article? Then be on the lookout for another two weeks later. Till then, for any data related discussions, feel free to drop us a line at datalabs@carnot.co.in. And don’t forget to follow Data Kisaan on Medium.