TESLA Lessons for the Business World

The idea of buying a new car can be very seductive. Visiting dealerships on the weekend, sitting in the model that attracted us, strolling through the various showrooms admiring the new possibilities offered by the dealers at the time.

That illusion and expectations are not entirely equivalent to the reality that presents itself after much walking, with the accumulated fatigue, the children (when there are any). For simply running around and doing the day's errands, buying a car often turns into another exhausting race.

That yes, the car is worth it, so we go ahead, and most of us start banking procedures to acquire the chosen vehicle. The experience is lengthened by the banking paperwork that, although it has a promise of agility, the expectation meets again with a reality very well exemplified in the "facebookian" memes.

"If everything is already invented," my grandfather once mentioned. TESLA appears on the automotive scene to contradict the familiar paradigm, the same one in which many organizations live, and shows that today more than ever. We have tools that can impact our business models, which often find a brake in the lack of business vision.

Previous background

First, a bit of context. Fifteen years ago, TESLA had not released its first vehicle. Despite its founding in 2004, its first car came to market in 2008, contrasting with established competitors such as FORD, GM, and TOYOTA, with histories that exceed or approach 100 years of history.

In just 15 years, TESLA has become the Giant in the Automotive Industry and has done so in a masterful way, leaving us lessons for today's business world.

What can we learn from this new player in the automotive world that presents itself as the "New Kid on the block" and gets the looks of the girls in the neighborhood?

I hope four lessons worth recapping can provide insight into the business model you are in.

TESLA as a service (TaaS)

Don't buy your TESLA; subscribe to one. It is well known that the vehicle sales model has been made possible by bank financing, financial leasing, and other financial leverage models. TESLA comes along and revolutionizes how we look at the business and provides the option for you to subscribe starting at $995 per month. Yes, that's what you may be thinking, just like a subscription to your favorite magazine, only this time it's a car.

TESLA's innovative service is the automation of its sales processes. While it is true that product innovation is total merit, this would not be enough without going to the forefront in designing a transformative digital experience with automation engines that allow the customer to take a unique shopping experience. Managing to abide by the hand (digitally speaking), each buyer within an extraordinary digital experience.


Read: Generation of effective sales


Tesla without face-to-face sales

To make an analogy to our times, Tesla is only "teleworking" when selling its vehicles. You can't possibly find a dealership where you can buy a TESLA. Everything is sold online through the brand's official website, eliminating the traditional paradigm of investing in physical dealerships because face-to-face sales of a TESLA don't exist.

Tesla teaches us that in the business world, the one who manages to change the traditional paradigm and connects its value proposition through the automation of its sales management has the advantage. It is no coincidence that TESLA has been overwhelming in its growth as opposed to long-standing competitors who have been unable to respond to TESLA's automation strategies.

In today's business world, I have come across companies that have e-Commerce but continue to push physical sales, missing out on the enormous advantages of incorporating strategies that bring customers to their online stores.

Once again, the automation of the online sales process is the impulse with which TESLA manages to appropriate a privileged market share. How to track the buying process of someone who abandons the online purchase after being interested in a model? 
The answer is: by automating the tracking flows of what happens online.


With Ecommerce, driven by automation, TESLA sells 24/7, provides tracking of orders without time limits, and achieves an increase in productivity reflected in the capitalization level achieved in just a few years.

Tesla on your way

When ordering a TESLA, it will be possible; or, what's more, it will be necessary to go through the design space, where you can modify and customize each model, making the experience very personalized. You can choose the exterior color, panel, and interiors of the vehicle.

While it is true that this has been around for some years, few companies achieve sites with intuitive levels of customization as TESLA does today.

Hyper-personalization is only possible through automation because it allows each customer to have an extremely differentiated treatment, making the experience unique.

By choosing the style, and the color, each buyer, enters an automation flow of preferences that will allow him to receive accessories, offers, promotions, maintenance, and even remind him when it is time to replace his car.

Tesla and it's reading of the market.

From a business point of view, TESLA again shows mastery in reading, managing to generate an automated integration, with which customers achieve updates without resorting to workshops, as traditional vehicles would do.

It only takes one update for every TESLA owner to get an update that fixes something in their systems or improves driving methods. Updates to traditional vehicle software platforms require the vehicle to go to authorized workshops, whereas with TESLA, every update is just a click away.

Tesla and its technology architecture

Tesla supports its digital strategy on three technology pillars: 

1. eCommerce: its web platform is designed on an eCommerce platform that allows accessing the product catalog and the different configurations of its vehicles. At first glance, you can make the mistake of thinking that this is "just a website," but really, the logic in your system is more than that. It is necessary to manage advanced catalog configurations, pricing settings, and inventory rules that allow that digital experience. Robust platforms that can satisfy this type of need are, for example, Adobe Commerce (Magento Commerce) or Salesforce Commerce, to name two of the most robust. 

2. Marketing and Sales Automation: The sequence of actions after a customer visits Tesla's website is more than a fluke. It is a complex decision tree configured in a marketing and sales automation platform. The first phase is to follow up on the abandonment on the page and confirm whether there is genuine interest in the vehicle or not. The second is to invite the customer to finalize their order on the e-commerce platform (product catalog). Finally, the sales automation executes the final follow-up process on purchasing the car (Follow up on a qualified lead).

3. Data: Like everything in Tesla, data is one of the company's pillars and is no exception in its commercial process. Here comes the management of customer data through CRM and databases. This aspect is one of the pillars of a successful business in the everyday world. Here we can find a comprehensive portfolio of solutions. Salesforce CRM is the most used at the enterprise level, and platforms such as HubSpot CRM are used in small and medium companies.

Conclusions

Fifteen years ago, TESLA was an unknown player in the automotive world. Already in 2019, its market capitalization had surpassed any competitor. The engine with which TESLA continues to accelerate its growth is reading the market and knowing how to adapt its business to transformative models.

Beyond e-Commerce, Tesla automates its sales, marketing, and service processes, revolutionizes payment models through subscriptions, and generates revolutionary personalization spaces.

Perhaps my grandfather is no longer around to tell you that not everything has been invented. Still, I hope these lines invite each CEO, entrepreneur, and manager to rethink their business model. Adding automation that is now entirely possible in Marketing, sales, or service before someone else shows, as TESLA did, that not everything has been invented.