As dealerships shift their staffing structure to streamline the car buying experience for today's connected car shopper, Bill Wittenmyer explains the benefits to F&I managers of getting more involved in the sales process from deal origination to the close of sale. 

Bill Wittenmyer offers some advice on how to deal with customers that don't show for appointments in this episode of Witt's Wise Words.

In this episode of Witt's Wise Words, Bill Wittenmyer shares why inaction is your biggest competitor.

In the past, a vehicle sale started and ended on the showroom floor. Today, many of the discovery and purchase steps take place online.

Online retail giants like Amazon have conditioned customers to expect timely and relevant communications across channels, plus a personalized buying experience informed by past behavior.

For automotive retailers, meeting these expectations requires different capabilities within your CRM.

Before, a CRM was primarily a system of record, a place to organize and store customer information. But today, your CRM is a system of engagement.

What does that mean? Your CRM can help facilitate and orchestrate the customer journey through more personalized and seamless interactions across all customer touchpoints.

Yes, your CRM is an essential business tool. But it’s also a way to interact with your customers personally to build trust, and so you can optimize your profitability. 

How do you know if your CRM is a system of engagement? Look for the following four capabilities.

Data aggregation and analysis

Your employees need to be able to deliver relevant information and messages that help build a deeper connection with your customers. A CRM built to engage makes this task easier by aggregating and analyzing customer data. It should also optimize across channels to capture every customer interaction on every device. This way, employees can see the customer’s history and create personalized messages that speak to their needs.

Integration with key systems

The more integrations you can access, the more powerful your CRM becomes.

Think beyond the DMS. An engagement system should communicate with your website, digital shopping tools and third-party integrations. By using this data with your CRM, you can improve the customer experience and enable your staff to have more productive customer conversations.

Intelligence tools and process automation

Predictive and behavioral analytics allow your CRM to analyze and contextualize customer data, inferring customer intent and behavior. With that information, you can segment customers and send out highly targeted communications.

And it pays to leverage pertinent customer data. Open rates for untargeted emails are in the teens. Open rates for targeted emails range from 25% to 30%.

Process automation automates tasks and content based on customer details and segmentation data. You can set up trigger events so customers receive a relevant message through their preferred channels immediately after they perform an action (email, phone call, website form, etc).

Unified customer data management

CRMs designed for engagement give managers a global view of customer activity across all stores in the same dealer group. This ensures that a customer will still be treated as a valuable repeat customer if they call or show up at a different store in the dealer group.

Unfortunately, 99% of dealers don’t enable this feature because stores in the same group may be in competition for the same customer, so they don’t want to share information. That’s crazy! A customer belongs to your brand, not a specific store.

Sharing information enables customer personalization that breeds loyalty and repeat business. It’s better for everyone in the long run.

When you examine your CRM as a system of engagement, remember to prioritize its ability to personalize communications, integrate with key systems, create process automation, deliver intelligent insights and unify data management.

These capabilities will help you deliver a personal, seamless buying journey across channels to win the business of today’s vehicle shoppers.

Eighty-six percent of car shoppers conduct online research before deciding to visit a local dealership, according to research from digital marketing agency Adtaxi.

With all this research being conducted online, most consumers’ first vehicle inquiry is either by phone or email, wanting to know about a specific vehicle. That’s why for salespeople, first impressions are everything. After all, it’s easy for a customer to hang up the phone or ignore an email.

Too often salespeople blame the process when they reach out multiple times and their attempts don’t result in an appointment. But you have to trust the process.

If the process isn’t giving you the results you want, chances are it’s your approach. More specifically, it could be your choice of words.

I recently spoke with a salesperson who said that frequently when he calls a customer and identifies himself and the dealership, the customer hangs up. Most likely because he or she is expecting a hard sales approach and wants none of it.

Does this mean that calling the customer doesn’t work? Of course not. With literally five seconds to engage the customer, this salesperson should try changing his approach to keep the customer on the line.

When you make a call and the customer picks up, immediately make that call all about the customer. Tell them you’re calling about their recent inquiry into [insert vehicle of interest] and let them know you’d like to provide them with information. These words shift the focus to the customer and their needs, making it more likely they’ll stay on the line.

How do you know which words to choose? Training.

Phone training should be ongoing, managed, and monitored. Salespeople need to work on voicemail messages and appointment closing techniques every day to achieve incremental sales success.

I recommend listening to a couple calls every day with your team. Examine what went right, what went wrong, and what words could result in a better outcome next time.

If consistent training is difficult to schedule or if you have high sales turnover rates, another option is to outsource to a BDC with agents who are specially trained in effective phone follow-up techniques.

Words also matter in email communications. Craft emails that are all about the customer. Answer their questions in the first line or two. Include vehicle videos, testimonial videos and other value propositions videos, if you have them. Be relevant and helpful, not pushy.

If at first you don’t get desired results, don’t blame the process. Keep changing your words and approach until you get the results you want.

Your first communication with a customer could make the difference between a dial tone and a sale. If you change your words, you’ll change your results.

Text messaging is the most popular data service in the world. It’s quick, easy and effective. The open rate for texts is a sky-high 98 percent, while email open rates hover at only 20 percent.

The average person looks at their mobile phone 150 times a day. It’s no wonder more than 90% of texts are read within 3 minutes of being received.

Texting is an effective way to communicate with prospects, engage with current customers and send inventory or service status updates.

Texting allows for two-way conversations in real time. That means the information you share is up to date, which is especially important when talking about inventory.

It also eliminates putting customers on hold. Sales staff can answer multiple questions simultaneously for a better customer experience.

Let’s dive into a few best practices to ensure that your dealership remains compliant while driving sales success with texting.

1. Know the rules

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act includes very specific rules about obtaining consent before sending texts to customers. Make sure you review them carefully before taking any action. Do your research and be sure to train your employees, so they know how to stay in compliance. It pays to play by the rules.

1. Own your devices

Too many dealers allow sales and service personnel to conduct dealership business on their personal phones. This is simply a bad business practice.

A private phone is not tied to your CRM. You can’t capture conversations, monitor for productivity, or review exchanges for training purposes.

It’s crucial to be able to monitor and measure conversations. Just because your employees look busy doesn’t mean they’re focused on activities that produce results. Even a motivated salesperson may need some help figuring out how to have conversations that drive conversions.

With high employee turnover in our business, you’re also taking the chance that employees will take customer contact information with them if they leave the company.

So, how do you mitigate this risk? Purchase business-only cell devices for employees. The cost is minuscule compared to losing valuable customer data and conversations.

1. Make it relevant

Don’t give prospects and customers a reason to opt-out of text messages. Whether you use an automation solution or prefer a more informal one-on-one texting strategy, make sure the messages you send are relevant and personal to the recipient.

For example, don’t send a text about new vehicle inventory to a customer who just purchased a car. Instead, group contacts into categories such as “sales leads” and “service leads” and craft your messages accordingly.

1. Gather analytics

Route all device numbers through a call tracking solution so you can gather analytics to measure customer opinions, feedback, reviews and more.

Your analytics can also reveal valuable training opportunities. For example, if the phrase “test drive” often appears in a salesperson’s text conversations but appointments are stagnant, that person may need more training to get customers through your doors.

Texting is a fast and easy way to communicate with prospects and customers and deliver a better buying experience. Follow the four easy steps outlined above to maintain compliance while boosting vehicle sales and service through texting.  

New leads are important, and you always want to keep the pipeline full.

Yet, it can cost as much as five times more to attract a new customer than to retain an existing one.

Doesn’t it make more sense to spend time nurturing the leads you already have?

According to research firm Bain & Company, a five percent increase in customer retention can increase profits by as much as 25 percent.

Therefore, nurturing a customer you already have is more profitable in the long run.

Loyal customers refer friends and family, and are less expensive to service. Many will stay loyal even if you don’t always have the best deals. Why?

Because they buy into your value proposition and prefer to do business with a dealership, sales staff and service team they already know and trust. 

Of course, you still need to market to new customers. But the biggest opportunity to keep costs down and increase profitability lies in nurturing the relationships you already have in your CRM.

These three tips will help you create a strategy to nurture your existing leads.

Personalize your marketing

Today’s customers expect a personalized experience that speaks to their needs and wants.

Technology has advanced to track a customer’s online behavior and make relevant purchase suggestions. Therefore, customers have become conditioned to that level of personal engagement from companies they do business with.

So, how can you meet these expectations?

Use historical data in your CRM to predict when a customer will be in the market for a new vehicle or service.

Create service offers that target a particular customer segment or promote a seasonal service.  For example, offer oil, brake, and tire specials for customers hitting 50,000 miles or run an air conditioning deal in the summer.

Send personalized messages through the customer’s preferred communication channels – and increase reach and frequency with multi-channel marketing.

Identify and reward VIP customers

Eighty-percent of your future profits will come from just 20 percent of your existing customers, according to Small Business Trends.

There are various ways to identify your VIPs.

Track dollars spent over a defined period in both service and sales.

Analyze the best reviews on your website and social media.

Count the number of friends and family referrals.

Once you’ve identified your most supportive customers, implement a reward or recognition program to maintain these relationships. Consider rewards points, loaner cars, service discounts, gas cards, and other perks.

Include the human touch  

Digital retailing is gaining in popularity, and it’s safe to say all customers research online before stepping onto your floor.

But this is still a people business. Don’t forget the power of human connection.

Encourage your sales and service teams to pick up the phone and send check-in emails to your customer base.

The better relationship your employees have with your customers, the more likely those customers will return to your dealership.

To prioritize the customers already in your CRM, remember to engage with personalized communications, identify and reward your VIPs, and never forget the power of human touch. These three strategies will help you increase customer retention for greater profitability today and in the future.

Good selling!

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