One thing many dealers have concluded is that while consumers hesitate to return to showrooms, it is important that dealerships’ sales and marketing employees continue working.
Jimmy Tsung, COO of Lio Ho Vehicle Group China, a Taiwan-based company that runs more than 20 stores in mainland China, most of them Ford franchises, said that while business is down, “salespeople should not stop working.”
The Lio Ho stores were shuttered in January and February, but employees made use of online channels to market products, Tsung said.
“The best thing I have learned is that TikTok proved to be 100 percent helpful in generating sales leads,” he said about the popular short-video app and livestreaming service.
Wang Zhixiong, owner of a Volkswagen dealership in Danyang, a small city in east China’s Jiangsu province, shares the observation. His store didn’t resume full operation until March 1. During the shutdown, his employees used TikTok and a cloud-based showroom for marketing.
“The results were beyond my expectation,” Wang said. “The young generation are the mainstream of our customers, and they really like interacting with us through online platforms.”
