Stefanie van Dijk: Why Customers Drive Past Four Dealers to Buy From a Fifth

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What if the biggest problem in your dealership isn't your tools, your leads, or even your team but the conversations you're not having?

That's the thread running through my chat with Stefanie van Dijk, and it might just be the most honest conversation we've had on this podcast in a while.

Stefanie has spent over a decade in automotive, starting on the dealership floor, then spending eight years at DCDW helping dealers across the Netherlands and Europe get better at converting online interest into actual showroom visits. She knows the gap between what dealers think is holding them back and what's actually holding them back. Spoiler: it's usually not the tech.

In this episode, we get into:

• Why giving a trade-in estimate upfront can quietly cost you the deal, and what to do instead
• The real reason customers drive past four Mercedes dealers to buy from a fifth one an hour and a half away
• How to sell the appointment, not the car, and what that actually sounds like on a call
• Why so many digital initiatives in dealerships die on the floor
• Stefanie's Power Women in Automotive podcast and what she's learned after two and a half years of conversations
• Drive Together, her new movement pushing for real cultural change in automotive, not just diversity as a buzzword, but diversity as a business strategy
• The tension between AI and the human connection, and where she believes the line should be drawn

This one goes beyond the usual sales tactics. Stefanie is someone who's spent years in the rooms where dealers make decisions, and she's watched enough good ideas fail because of people problems disguised as process problems. She's direct, thoughtful, and genuinely trying to move the needle on something bigger than lead conversion.