Tesla’s Ex-President Boosted Sales With a Trick Learned From Domino’s Pizza

He got a hint from the king of pizza.

BY MOSES JEANFRANCOIS, NEWS WRITER @MOSESJEANS

Illustration: Inc; Photo: Tesla

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Tesla’s former president said in a recent interview that in order to boost sales, he looked at Domino’s Pizza’s ordering model. 

During his time at the company, Jon McNeill was challenged by Elon Musk to increase digital car sales by roughly 2,000 percent. Looking to make things easier to buy online, McNeill took note of Domino’s pizza and how their website had only 10 clicks to buy a pizza, while Tesla had 64. 

“We gotta figure out how to sell cars online,” said McNeill during an interview on the My First Million podcast, stating that users were getting decision fatigue from the website. “We had created 360,000 versions of the car, but people weren’t buying 360,000 versions. They were buying two.” 

McNeill took to manufacturing and engineering to simplify Tesla’s options and reduced clicks from 64 through reduced offerings of 2-3 preconfigured models, and cutting customizations. Fewer clicks caused less decision fatigue for users, creating more and easier orders. 

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McNeill, who worked at Tesla from 2015 to 2018, made this simplifying change as the start of his time within the company, looking to help Tesla, its teams, and its customer base across all boards. 

“By going to two or three configurations, we removed clicks, removed decision fatigue, and removed friction from the sales process.” 

Thanks to McNeill, Tesla’s digital operations became significantly more streamlined. According to Business Insider, it takes about five clicks to buy a new Model 3 on Tesla’s website. 

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