Do you know why Carvana is revolutionizing the way people are buying and selling cars? Their offer is well-crafted and their service seems to be great, but the thing that is at the heart of their success goes much deeper than that.
For decades, the car sales industry has done such an incredibly poor job at humanizing car-buying. The experience can be soul-sucking, demeaning and exhausting. It’s gotten so bad that people dread having to interact with car salespeople, and so, they’ve found creative ways around having to speak to sales agents. Nowadays, buyers don’t really believe that a human being can do a better job at selling them a car than an algorithm. This is how far it has come. And it is mostly the car dealers’ fault. Had they put their human potential first and used it to craft a value-based experience that makes people appreciate them, we would not be having this conversation. But they didn’t. Be it out of laziness, complacency, tradition. It doesn’t matter. The fact is, their time is up. And when you lose your right to exist and you are out of excuses to stick around, you have to pack your bags and leave. We will see a lot more of this happen because many business owners and leaders don’t invest in human value based experiences.
If our potential is not used to build businesses that deliver a real human experience that puts people at its center (by people I mean- staff, clients, suppliers, HUMANS), then there is no reason for us to exist. This is basically what Carvana is saying to all the dealers in America right now: Since you have failed at being human, the machines are taking over, and they are doing a marvelous job.
Let’s learn from this and dedicate ourselves to delivering real, human value.
