You probably didn’t lose that deal on price

You know the feeling. A customer who was in on Saturday, drove the truck and loved the truck goes quiet. Two weeks later you see it in the CRM: sold elsewhere.

The easy explanation is price. They found it cheaper. Sometimes that’s true. More often, if you could replay the whole thing, you’d find a handful of small moments where the other store just did it a little better.

They’re shopping you right now

Buyers don’t pick a store and stay put. In Cox Automotive’s 2025 Car Buyer Journey study, buyers spent about 2 hours and 55 minutes visiting other dealerships and sellers, the same amount of time they spent with the store they bought from.

In other words, for every hour a customer gives you, assume they’re giving about an hour to someone else. The deal is decided by what happens in both.

Run the post-mortem

Here’s an exercise that costs nothing and tells you more than any report. Pull your last ten sold-elsewhere leads. For each one, write down the last thing your store said to the customer, and when.

You’ll probably see gaps, some of them long. You’ll see messages that could have gone to anyone. You’ll see questions that never got answered. When you sort what you find, it usually falls into a few piles.

The callback came late. The customer called with a question Saturday night, and nobody called back until Monday afternoon. The other store called back Sunday.

The question never got answered. They asked whether the back seat fits two car seats. Instead of an answer, they got a “still interested?” text.

They had to start over. The BDC, then a salesperson, then a manager, and each one asked the same questions. By the third time they felt like a ticket number.

The trade conversation turned into a standoff. They mentioned another store’s number and the rep got defensive. The other store said, “Send it over, let’s look.”

The follow-up was generic. Everybody’s follow-up looked the same except one, and that one mentioned their dog, or their commute, or the camping trip. Guess which store they went back to.

None of these piles is labeled price. They’re about whether the customer felt known. Pick the biggest one and fix just that. Maybe it’s weekend callbacks, maybe it’s the BDC handoff, maybe nobody reads the comments box on the web form.

Then ask the people who left

This part is uncomfortable, and it works. Call a few customers who bought somewhere else in the last month, not to win them back, just to ask: “No pressure at all. I’m trying to get better. What made you go with them?”

People tend to be candid when you’re clearly not selling. Whatever you hear, whether it’s speed, a trade number someone remembered or having to repeat themselves, write it down and share it with the team without names or blame. It’s the cheapest training you’ll ever get.

When it really is price

Sometimes it is. When a customer tells you another store has a better number, you may or may not be able to meet it, but either way they’ve told you they’re still talking to you. That’s good news. “Before you make the drive, send me what they sent you. I’ll sit down with my manager and see what we can do here” keeps you in it without a fight.

Still, you’d rather win before it gets there. Price is easy to match. Attention isn’t. The store that answers fast, remembers the customer and makes them feel like a person usually doesn’t have to be the cheapest. That’s the whole idea behind HeyG: your team knows who they’re talking to before they dial, so the moments that tip a deal tip your way.