It’s an understatement to say this year has been unpredictable. In the last few months, showroom traffic has recovered due to pent-up demand and stimulus checks, but there’s no guarantee these levels will stay consistent. Dealers are reporting higher volumes of internet and phone leads due to changes in customers’ daily lives, e.g. people working from home and resistance to going out unnecessarily. How is your dealership keeping up with these shifts in traffic?

During the shutdown, many dealers discovered they could be more profitable with less staff. But if you’re relying solely on your sales team to handle inbound leads, you’re probably missing out on sales opportunities. Same goes if your current team is trying to convert all inbound leads into showroom appointments.

The new reality is, we need to stop thinking of inbound phone and internet inquiries as “leads,” and think of them as “ups” who are already in the buying process. Many of these callers don’t want to come into your store until they’re ready to sign paperwork or pick up their vehicle. At the very least, most want confirmation of availability, price and trade-in valuations.

Handling remote ups requires more than just technology; it requires dedication and finesse. Dealers who can navigate this new normal will be in the best position to make the most of every sales opportunity.

Follow these steps to ensure that your dealership can handle every single up.

Identify Missed Opportunities

Many dealers have no idea how many inbound phone ups they’re really missing. Especially now that dealers may be operating with a leaner staff, calls can go unanswered, or voicemails unreturned. No salesperson wants to admit to their boss that they missed a call that could have led to a sale. Every single phone call should be connected with a live agent, or responded to as fast as possible. Same with internet leads. Speed matters.

This is why it’s so important to use an integrated call monitoring/call reporting system to run reports. This way, you can identify exactly how many opportunities you’re missing and put processes in place to capture them.

Get Help Responding to Leads

It’s time to rethink whether salespeople are the best people to handle inbound phone and internet ups. You hire salespeople because they have great personalities and work well face-to-face. But this personality type does not always perform best while on the phone, or sitting at the computer writing detailed email responses.

You need to figure out how to handle ups who need technical help with tools on your website or need help with vehicle selection. One suggestion is to create a concierge position, someone with great customer service and phone skills who can bring remote ups down funnel to the point where they can be handed over to a single sales or F&I manager to close the deal.

Shorten the Car-Buying Process

Many of today’s car buyers want information about pricing, trade-in valuations, financing and payment options before they visit the dealership. If this part of the process can be handled over the phone and via email, then the in-store purchase process can be shortened to an hour or less. If you can set up a remote signing process so the customer can sign paperwork from home, even better.

Even test drives can be done remotely. I’ve talked to several dealers who are offering virtual test drives—this can be done with pre-recorded video, or you can send your salespeople on a live virtual test drive with a hands-free phone and camera mounted behind their shoulder, so that customers can see what the driver sees and ask questions during the drive.

The more of the car-buying process you can do remotely, the less of it your customers will have to do in the dealership—which also means that your sales and F&I managers can handle more in-person appointments per day. Imagine if they could see one customer every hour! It’s possible with the right process, tools and technology.

Training is Essential

Whatever process you implement to handle remote ups, training is essential. Staff must know how to do virtual product presentations, be experts with your website tools and technology, and should know how to conduct live video calls for consultations and vehicle walk-arounds. Most of all, they need to be more knowledgeable about your product line then today’s savvy car buyers, who spend hours researching online before placing a call.

No matter what the future holds, dealers are resilient and adaptable. You’ve changed before, and you can do it again. It may help to step back from the minutiae of every-day operations and observe how auto industry disruptors are doing things, as well as how processes have changed in other retail industries. Just remember, the ability to navigate through uncharted waters often leads to riches.

Surely, you’ve heard the saying, “Everything old is new again.” But did you know this also applies to your leads?

Old leads can become new sales when you use the data in your CRM to re-start sales conversations with customers who are still in the market, or in the market again. This strategy is especially helpful if you’re not getting the volume of high-quality new leads that you’d like from your website and marketing efforts.

Equity mining is the most well-known source for finding new opportunities from sales and service customers. However, there’s more than one way to mine your CRM.

You know the average closing rate for internet leads is 15 percent. That rate jumps to 25-30 percent for both showroom leads and phone ups. That means anywhere from 70 to 85 percent of all the leads in your CRM are unsold. That’s a huge pool of potential customers – if you take the time to go back and revisit them.

Your CRM software should make it easy for you to create targeted marketing and sales lists based on customer profiles. The following are examples of lists you can create that are not as “obvious” as current sales and service customers in a position of equity. The payoff is more sales, without additional lead acquisition costs.

Unable to obtain financing. Our economy is rebounding from the massive slowdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The unemployment rate fell to 8.4 percent in August. Now is a good time to revisit leads who previously were unable to secure financing. Perhaps they’ve recently been hired or received a raise. Or they’ve married and a partner that can be a co-signer. We’re also seeing historically low-interest rates and aggressive manufacturer incentives. Any of these factors could help turn a previously denied customer into a closed sale.

Be-Back appointments. Be-back appointments close at a much higher rate than first appointments. The problem is that many salespeople don’t like this follow-up process and give up after a few attempts. A BDC armed with a be-back list can handle the heavy lifting that salespeople don’t have the time, inclination or skill to do. If your budget doesn’t stretch to a BDC, or you’re trying to do more with fewer employees, double down on a stringent follow-up process that includes seven phone calls and five emails in a 30-day period. Pull customer touch reports from your CRM every day to ensure sales associates are following best practices.

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• Unsold leads. Don’t write-off unsold leads. Just because they bought from a competitor, or stopped looking, doesn’t mean they’re not open to communicating again. Use your CRM checkbox functionality to easily create a list of customers who submitted a lead, then dropped out of communication. Reach out to ask if they purchased somewhere else. If they did, offer a coupon or special to win their service business. If they did not purchase a new vehicle, re-engage them in a sales conversation. Again, a BDC can handle the heavy lifting of these long-term follow-up campaigns.
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• Friends and family. The friends and family of sold customers are a fertile field for new sales. Create a list of all customers who purchased a vehicle in the last two years with the purpose of asking them if a friend or family member is thinking about purchasing a vehicle. Write a script for salespeople and/or BDC employees to follow with a conversation path for both affirmative and negative replies. Most CRM platforms have the ability to track relationships. Take advantage of that capability to link customers so that your follow up is more personal and relevant.
• Pre-owned vehicle customers. People who purchase a pre-owned vehicle are likely to go the pre-owned route for their next vehicle, too. Pull a list of customers who purchased pre-owned within the past three to five years. Create a cross-channel marketing campaign featuring the most desirable pre-owned vehicles on your lot and send it to that list. Follow-up with a phone call and then work with a BDC to continue long-term follow-up.

Everything old is new again if you take the time to revisit the lead data already in your CRM. Pull targeted sales and marketing lists, create a follow-up process for each type of lead, and be creative about segmenting your customer profiles. The payoff can be new sales without additional lead acquisition costs.  

Many dealers have seen their online shopping tools be used nearly twice as much over the past six months. With inbound calls also continuing to rise, it seems consumer behavior modification is a natural response to the current climate.

So, what’s interesting about this? Phone and online closing rates are not corresponding to lead volume and the vast majority of customers still want to come into the dealership to finish the buying process.

Customers want an alternative shopping experience married to a traditional buying route. In today’s rapidly-changing retail environment, how do you deliver what customers want and still close leads? Use the following strategies to combine the old with the new for a blended sales process.  

Offer and communicate shopping alternatives.

Several dealers are doing a great job offering up alternative ways to shop. We’re talking about digital retailing tools, of course, but also remote test drives, contactless vehicle delivery and touchless trade-ins.

While we have not seen a big uptick in customers proceeding from start to finish using digital retailing tools, many complete at least a few steps before picking up the phone or submitting a lead form. Other touchless shopping alternatives may likewise not see large adoption, but some customers will want them, so they should be offered.  

The old adage remains true: Communication is key. Customers won’t know how you’ve augmented in-store shopping with digital and touchless alternatives if you don’t talk about it. Make use of cross-channel marketing, keep your website updated and use your CRM to create targeted lists of existing and potential customers. All of these tactics will help get the word out about what you’re doing to help your customers browse and buy safely.

Keep traditional shopping and selling methods high-class.

At the end of the day, the majority of customers still want to touch and feel that new vehicle before they go through with a purchase. It’s important to offer and communicate alternatives to a traditional in-person test-drives, but it’s more important than ever before to make sure the customer gets a high-class sales experience if they take the traditional shopping route. Customers expect a personal, knowledgeable encounter with your staff that above all puts health and safety first.

A trend on the floor that continues to grow is assigning a single point of contact to a buyer. Both because customers prefer it, and because it can be a safer experience for customers to come into contact with fewer people.

Dealers forced to downsize employees are increasingly turning to this new sales model for efficiency. If your team members aren’t taking on the work of two or more employees in the dealership right now, they probably don’t have a job. Creating a customer experience with a single point of contact can be an effective way to deliver a high-class customer experience with a smaller staff.  

Get your systems to talk to each other.

Customers are doing their own vehicle research and gathering their own knowledge. By the time they call or contact your dealership online, they are at the stage of the process where they’re looking for validity. If customers see something online and then get different information from your sales representative, it delivers an inconsistent experience that leaves a bad taste in the customer’s mouth. A better approach is to develop an omni-channel retail strategy that creates a fully integrated user experience - from mobile shopping to the brick and mortar store, and everything in between.

Systems that integrate, talk to each other and share data are even more critical now to provide the consultative sales approach that customers demand. The process has to be seamless or you may as well not have it at all. Make sure your phone system and digital retailing tools tie into your CRM so information is readily available during customer interactions.  Sales reps should have instant access to inventory and pricing. Keep inventory up-to-date on your website and in other tools. The trick is that all your systems have to communicate so you can deliver correct information to customers at a fast pace to keep transaction moving.

A lot of customers are eager to take advantage of aggressive manufacturer incentives and historically low interest rates. But shopping and buying needs to be on-demand, seamless, and safe. Offer shopping alternatives, make sure your traditional in-store experience is high-class, integrate your systems so customer information is standardized across all platforms, and communicate everything that you offer. That’s how you close leads in today’s retail environment.

Stay tuned for part two of this blog where we’ll discuss: So, you closed a sale. Now what?

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If your CRM helped you nurture customer relationships, could you transform more leads into loyal customers?

The short answer is “yes,” and here’s why:

 - Today, a great customer experience drives loyalty, not product and/or price.

 - Consumers expect personalized, relevant information to help them make the best purchasing  decisions. 

- Self-educated consumers want a consultative experience, not a hard sell.

Lead volume is up dramatically as people continue to shift from traditional drive by to more touchless research and shopping. What customers expect from a shopping experience has changed. Your dealership needs to change too.

The more you know about a customer, the better you can tailor and personalize your lead follow-up. You become a trusted expert, not just another dealer out for a quick sale. Customers will appreciate and reward your efforts. 

So, how do you get to know your customers better and nurture long-lasting relationships?

A recommended first step is to use a CRM that includes shopping intelligence tools. These tools allow you to track, record and analyze your customers’ online shopping behavior, tying it back to the customer record in your CRM. You can know where they are shopping, what vehicles they’re researching and what features matter most to them.

The CRM aggregates all of this data so your salespeople can have more relevant, consultative conversations with potential customers - and you get a true view of every customer. This includes their online activity, how the customer prefers to be contacted, vehicles of interest, pricing, etc. This level of insight contributes to more thorough, personal follow-up for a better customer experience that leads to long-term relationships.

Then, email alerts notify you when a customer is shopping on your website. They can also flag when they’re shopping with a competitor, or on a third-party site. This empowers salespeople to reach out at exactly the right time, with exactly the right information for that customer.

This technology is also a powerful addition to your marketing efforts. The perfect time to send a personalized email message or offer is right after a customer is looking at a particular vehicle make and model. Getting a pop-up notification in the CRM when the customer is actively shopping makes this type of hyper-personal and relevant marketing a breeze.

Remember that instantaneous communication is important to today’s always-connected consumer. If your staff is too busy to immediately follow up with a lead, your customer experience suffers. But many dealerships are experiencing limited resources right now. So, how do you make sure that you’re providing that instant communication customers have grown to expect?

Here’s where you can lean on a trained automotive virtual BDC to function as an extension of your dealership. The BDC can respond to requests, make follow-up calls and track every interaction in your CRM. When a tracking alert pops up, the BDC can jump on it immediately and send personal communications to keep relationships growing, while you staff can focus on the customers in front of them. A flexible mobile platform gives staff the ability to engage in conversations quickly and manage customer details from anywhere at any time.

A virtual BDC can nurture leads on an ongoing, long-term basis, using proven strategies to move customers down the funnel. The best part is, all of this ties back to the customer record in the CRM. When you aggregate all customer data in one system, you can have more productive conversations with customers and deliver a personal experience every time.

Your CRM can also help you make the most of the customers you already have. Most dealerships have hundreds of unclosed leads already in their CRM.

Using an integrated equity mining tool can leverage your existing database to generate more revenue. Lean on your CRM and shopping intelligence technology to nurture these relationships with personal, relevant communications that will help you transform leads into loyal customers.  

It’s much more cost effective to sell to a current customer than to acquire a new one, so there is a huge opportunity to increase profits without incurring those hefty customer acquisition costs. And who doesn’t want to do more while spending less?

Your CRM is a powerful tool that can certainly help you transform more leads into loyal customers. Make sure you are utilizing your tools to their fullest extent so you can have happier customers and close more deals.

Good selling!

How well do you retain sales staff?  The average annual turnover rate for salespeople in our business is 67 percent, according to Automotive News.

That’s an alarming statistic when you consider it can cost upwards of $10,000 to replace one salesperson, according to CPA Lane Mecham who has worked with dealerships for over a decade. This figure accounts for recruiting fees, on-boarding costs and potential lost revenue from missed deals.

The good news is that there are proactive steps you can take to stop, or at least slow down, the revolving door of sales employee turnover. These five tips will help reduce the likelihood that your sales team and your profits will disappear.  

Invest in digital training

Training isn’t an expense. It’s an investment. And it pays off in a number of ways, including lower turnover, better customer relationships and more sales.

Poorly trained sales staff can’t succeed in volume selling. When you set your team up to fail, it leads to frustration and often means they quit before they reach their full potential.

An efficient and cost-effective way to help train your employees is by utilizing online courses in addition to your in-person training efforts. Online courses can be taken at the employees’ own pace and schedule and is a great remote option for dealers. You should provide at least a couple of weeks of additional online training before allowing new salespeople to greet prospects on their own.

Training should focus on soft skills (such as problem-solving) and technical skills like CRM training and certification programs. Your CRM partner should have remote and in-person training and certification resources available.

Get serious about phone handling skills

Don’t skimp on phone training. A single 30-minute session or a one-time visit from an outside trainer just won’t cut it in today’s market.

Up to 61 percent of vehicle shoppers make initial contact with dealerships over the phone, according to the Local Search Association. You only get one chance to impress those callers. That first impression could mean the difference between a buyer visiting your dealership or choosing your competitor down the street.

Phone training should be on-going, managed and monitored. Practice effective voicemail messages and appointment closing techniques with your team every day.

Invest in a call recording and analysis solution and listen to a couple of calls every day with your team. Identify the most challenging phone calls and make those the focus of your meetings, using peer collaboration and feedback to brainstorm what could be improved. This will create a thriving culture of continuous improvement make your team feel more connected and boost morale.

Create a collaborative culture

It doesn’t help anyone when you pit salespeople against each other. Everyone needs to work together to reach the common goal of a thriving dealership – and that’s not going to happen if your team is competing with each other.

Create a collaborative culture by encouraging salespeople to share techniques that work for them. Include winning strategies for converting customers over the phone, via text, and on the floor. 

Promote mentoring. Pair a newbie with a seasoned veteran for at least 30 days and encourage collaboration by compensating the veteran with a bonus or a percentage of the mentee’s sales. This helps build relationships within your team by giving your veterans a way to earn more and refine their skills while giving newbies a mentor who can provide guidance and advice.

Encourage your managers to prioritize staff development and team cooperation by tying a portion of your sales managers’ compensation to sales staff productivity. That way, when the team wins, everyone wins.

Let data drive your sales goals

Having specific goals increases motivation and drives better results. Salespeople who stick to a goal-orientated plan perform 30 percent better than those who don’t, according to a Harvard Business study. 

Lean on trend and tracking reports in your CRM to set precise and attainable goals for every salesperson. A good rule of thumb is to have a 90-day sales plan based on each individual’s 90-day rolling average.

For example, a salesperson who sells 10 cars in January, eight in February and five in March has sold a total of 23 cars, divided by three months, for a rolling average of 7.6 cars. Thus, it’s reasonable and fair to set a monthly goal of seven cars for this salesperson.

When you forecast goal attainment you can identify and flag those salespeople at risk for attrition. This allows you to offer more training before they throw in the towel and cost you money as a result.

Commit to helping employees grow

Not all salespeople want to remain in the same role forever.  Some may want to climb the corporate ladder, and it behooves you to encourage their ambition.

When these high-achievers don’t have a clear advancement path, they start to question their place in your dealership and may set their sights on new opportunities.

Be a “scale-up” dealership. Help employees grow and find advancement. It’s important to encourage your sales and human resources leaders to work together to develop career advancement paths. Share these paths with salespeople to demonstrate that a career at your dealership can be long-lasting and fulfilling.

You can also share success stories with your team. If someone has taken the path of advancement a salesperson wants for him- or herself, connect the two employees so the junior can learn what the senior did to get there.

Your dealership can buck the trend of high sales staff turnover by taking the proactive steps outlined above. You have the ability to make changes that encourage employees to stick around for the long haul and reward them for doing so. When you invest in training and execute retention strategies, you’ll reap the benefits of a thriving dealership today and far into the future.

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