A2Z NEGOTIATION TOOL
Seamlessly allowing sales members a way to negotiation the customer's deal
The Problem
The A2Z Sync software promotes the use of a one-person sales model in dealerships. But how could a manager and a sales advisor communicate about negotiating on the price of a vehicle?
With most dealerships still negotiating on the price of used vehicles and trade-in values, it's hard for a dealership to use a one-person sales model. But the one-person sales model is becoming industry standard and has proven success results for dealerships that do. So client's using the A2Z Sync software asked if there was a way for them to still use the software and selling process, but still be able to negotiate the prices of vehicles without drawing attention to customers that the sales advisor is in constant communication with their managers.
High-Level Timeline
2 weeks for UX research and design with 2 months of client feedback, iterations and development handoff
Key Goal
Use UX design methods to provide a solution where dealerships can negotiate car prices with the A2Z software
My Roles
UX Research
UX Design
UX Testing and Validation
THE TEAM
1 Head of Product
1 Product Manager
1 UX Designer (Myself)
2 Developers
4 Dealership Managers
UX Research
Starting with empathy storyboards and concern brainstorms, I understood the key concepts and needs for the feature. These ideation methods provided a launch point to start designing wireframes and solutions.
I started by discussing with the Head of Product and Product Manager about the issues on why a client needed this new feature request. I had never sold a car in my life. So I connected with 4 negotiating dealership managers to learn about their typical selling/negotiating process. With the information I gathered, I storyboarded out the current flow managers, sales advisors, and customers go through when negotiating vehicles. Visually seeing the issues arise gave great insight into a potential solution and raised questions I needed clarification from the developers about the software. I then storyboarded the ideal experience out.
With the ideal experience created and approved by the dealership managers, I wanted to break down large concerns and discover any issues to help narrow down the project's scope. So, I worked through the concerns of the primary users of the tool, the sales advisor (called Client Advisor internally) and the manager. Conducting this brainstorm pointed out key experiences and their priority levels.
Understanding the Software
When storyboarding, I connected with developers about the software and its current workings. They answered that 2 users could be on the same deal simultaneously. This gave me an idea to try a solution where managers and sales advisors could communicate while on the same page but in different locations.
Wireframes & Development Handoff
Now that I had a clear understanding of the experience and key issues to address I built wireframes and user story notes for development handoff.
After sketching a handful of layouts based on the solution discovered through the UX research, I used Balsamiq to create digital wireframes. My goal was to create a simple layout where a manager could see all the vehicle's price and cost information to make an informed decision about what the client advisor could negotiate. The wireframes included detailed notes about where each field mapped from and to. And the notes included examples of how the negotiating bumpers worked between the manager and client advisor.
KEY FEATURE REQUIREMENTS
See vehicle's cost to the dealership • Visually show the dealership's profits or loss • Managers need to set negotiating limits • Client Advisors need to know and understand their limits • Cannot draw attention to customers • Live edits and updates
