What’s the most iconic noise of our time? I’d argue it’s the text message alert sound associated with the iPhone. No matter where you are – the grocery store, Home Depot, a wedding – if you play this sound, people around will freeze and make an instinctual grab for their iPhones.

We’ve all been trained to react to it. That’s why texting is such an effective customer communication channel. People can’t help but respond, like Pavlov’s dog, to that sound.

Various studies back up this claim. Research shows text open rates are as high as 98 percent, compared to just 20 percent for emails. And, on average, it takes 90 seconds for someone to respond to a text and 90 minutes to respond to an email.

That doesn’t mean email is dead – far from it. But it does mean that texting is an extremely effective way to communicate with customers and should be included in every dealership’s communication strategy.

Like any type of communication, there are best practices. These texting dos and don’ts will help your team get the best results from this highly effective way of communicating.

Texting dos.

Keep it simple – Don’t try to say too much with a text. Your message is supposed to be short and sweet. If you have paragraphs to say, put it in an email. Then send a text asking the customer to please check email for an important message.

Limit videos to 30 seconds – Text is a great way to share videos of vehicle walk-arounds, service inspections, sales introductions, and more. But keep videos to 30-seconds or less. It’s difficult to hold attention past that point. So, keep it precise, get to the point, and make sure you’re smiling and welcoming throughout.

Transcend language barriers – Have a great conversation with customers who speak another language by using Google translate, or another service, to translate texts. You both “speak” in your native languages, something you cannot do effortlessly over the phone, for a seamless and gratifying experience.

Limit no-shows – Start texting customers to confirm sales appointments instead of calling. Confirming via text is easier and less pressure for customers. Think about it: Sales wants to close the deal so they probably convey a sense of urgency over the phone that can cause anxiety in customers and lead to no-shows. Text is a low-pressure, more neutral channel with better response rates.

Texting don’ts.

Allow employees to use personal phones – This has been said before, but bears repeating. Supply dealership-owned, CRM-integrated mobile phones to employees and mandate only those phones are used to communicate with customers. When employees use personal phones, you cannot track, manage, or review texts for quality control or continuity of customer records. Plus, if that employee leaves, those conversations and relationships go out the door too.

Allow messaging without templates – Text templates are hugely important to make sure messages are professional, on-brand, and include the right call to action. Create categories and templates for different messages that you want to parley into sales, including: service appointment confirmation, payment portal notification, CSI follow-up, sales appointment, and recommended services notification. Make sure to include a map hyperlink so customers can easily navigate to your store via GPS.

Ignore texting rules and regulations – The Telephone Consumer Protection Act includes specific rules about obtaining consent before sending texts to customers. It’s important to play by the rules. Fines are as high as $500 for every unsolicited text a consumer reports.

A couple more tips that don’t necessarily fall into the dos and don’ts categories include initiating texting while a customer is in the store. Face-to-face is the quickest and easiest way to nudge customers to opt-in to messaging. Ask if you can send them a text, then encourage them to save your number under your name, while they have their phone out. Becoming a saved contact and a customer’s “go to car guy” is a powerful opportunity to establish a relationship that will continue beyond the initial transaction.  

The last tip is to think ahead to all the possible ways you want to you use texting in the future and find a solutions partner that can handle what you want to do now and grow with you. A good list starts with sales quotes and worksheets, inventory links, vehicle photos and walk-around videos, secure credit app links, and completed work notifications. I’m sure you can think of more. Also, ensure that all texting will integrate with your CRM so you can track and manage conversations for quality control and better customer experiences.

Thanks to that iconic ‘ping’ alert and the ease and simplicity of responding, text messaging is an extremely effective way to communicate with customers. With a few dos and don’ts and a couple tips, you can use texting to establish strong customer relationships for years to come.

If you’ve been in the business for a long time like I have, you’ll remember when every dealership desk had a built-in ashtray. When I’m in a dealership and the desk manager pulls out a green Sharpie and a piece of paper to work a deal, I flash back to that time. We’re not smoking in dealerships anymore, so why are so many still using pen and paper instead of a digital desking tool?

I know what you’re thinking: “That’s the way we’ve always done it and it’s profitable.” That may be true when it comes to the uneducated buyer but, in our increasingly digital world, those buyers are becoming few and far between.

The modern buyer knows exactly what a car is worth before they ever step foot on your floor. If you try to keep numbers close to your chest, they’ll know you’re hiding something. That’s no way to build trust.

The average shopper knows so much ahead of time that they visit an average of only 1.2 dealerships before buying. You give that buyer an old-school experience and they’ll never give you another chance to earn their business. The old-school store is that 0.2 that doesn’t get the deal. 

Old habits are hard to break. The good news is that the right desking tool can help you deliver the transparency that today’s buyers demand and structure more profitable deals in less time.

For the next few minutes, let’s pretend I’m in charge of evaluating and hiring a desking provider at your store. Here’s what I would look for:

Auditing in real time

I want a tool that prompts salespeople to enter all the deal information before they approach the desk. It’s a waste of time to go back and forth when a salesperson says they’re ready to go but hasn’t collected all the necessary details, like if the buyer has a trade and if tax credits apply, or even contact info that includes a zip code. Searching for the answers to these questions slows down deals. Give me a tool that automatically alerts the desk manager when information is missing, so they can hold their salespeople accountable to collect everything needed to accurately desk the deal before approaching the desk.

Accountability and consistency

I want to know how my desking managers are writing deals. Who immediately discounts the deal right away? Who goes back and forth with the customer and holds onto gross profit? I want a tool that allows me to review deals by employee so I can hold them accountable for who’s working to hold onto the most profit. I also want to account for consistency. If I train my salespeople in how to negotiate, but my desk managers don’t follow that process, I lose the equity in that training. A DMS desking tool isn’t going to tell me, but the right digital tool will.

The best rates — period

My people are pulling captive rates out of the and writing deals, but are those the best rates? What if a third-party lender is offering a special rate that will lower a customer’s payment without discounting the sales price? Or what if there’s a lower rate out there that will help the customer afford additional back-end products? The CRM isn’t going to show me special rates from my non-captive lenders. I want a digital tool that does so I can transparently build the most profitable deals.

Integration with my CRM

I want a desking tool that is housed within my CRM. Why? It’s an easy way to ensure your salespeople and desking managers use it. If the only way to desk a deal is by entering deal information into the CRM, guess what? Everyone starts using the CRM.

All the bells and whistles

I want to make it easier and faster to build and present accurate deals. That means I need a tool that highlights the best rates and incentives, gives side-by-side comparisons, generates an accurate tax number and is mobile so I can work a deal in the dealership’s parking lot if I want to capitalize on the customer’s excitement immediately after a test drive, or at the customer’s home or office  The bells and whistles help generate profitable deals for a healthier bottom line and meet the needs of modern buyers for greater customer satisfaction and higher CSI. Everybody wins.

I’ve worked deals with a green Sharpie and with a digital desking tool. The right digital tool always wins. It’s faster, more accurate and, ultimately, more profitable. Use my list as a starting point when evaluating desk providers and challenge them all to a desking duel. If your Sharpie wins, it’s not the right provider.

If you’re like most independent dealers, you loaded up on used inventory  during the first few months of the pandemic. Inventory shortages and high demand pointed toward selling those cars all day long at higher-than-average prices. Now that the market is beginning to correct, book values are dropping. Are you concerned about moving that inventory?

A robust CRM system is a proven way to move vehicles faster because leads don’t fall through the cracks. Don’t get me wrong - I’m not saying a CRM is a magic bullet. As the saying goes, you put garbage in, and you’ll get garbage out. But CRM software backed by strong lead management processes is proven to get you results.

Consider a smaller independent store that sells less than 50 cars a month but, because there is no clear lead follow-up process, the store misses out on 5% of their deals. Those few deals can make the difference between being in the red or in the black. Just a handful of deals! 

How do you know if you are losing deals due to poor lead management? Mystery shop your store. Have someone go to your website and submit a lead. Then have that person call your sales line and leave a message. See what happens. Does that person get a follow-up call or an email? If so, how many?

More times than not, an email goes to the owner’s personal email. He or she prints it out, hands it off to a salesperson and then never knows what happened. The same scenario happens with phone messages.

It’s understandable. Your store is likely employing fewer people, all wearing multiple hats. You don’t have time to go back and manage the lead process. A CRM backed by proper processes helps you capture every lead and monitor follow-up efforts so you can close more deals.

I know I’m hammering on proper process, but behind-the-scenes training is the only way to make a CRM work for you. You can’t just plug it in and watch your sales numbers soar. Look for a CRM provider that offers account management along with software. The provider should check in on you, call you at least quarterly to see how things are going and offer you the option to train in the way that is best for your store. Look for options such as remote, in-person and completely self-paced training.

The aftershock effect of a solid lead follow-up process is robust CRM reporting. Once you have a process down and employees are accountable for using the system properly, reporting becomes invaluable. You can manage and monitor salesperson activity to see who needs more training, check daily traffic reports to see where your leads are coming in and regularly review opportunity reports to see leads that need attention. Therefore, your CRM should operate from a mobile device. That way, accountability can be enforced and stats can be confirmed from anywhere anytime in real time.

Another key report tracks the growth of your customer database. Building a database in your CRM of every person that has ever shopped your store (whether they purchased or not) has huge marketing value.

Typically, a dealership without a CRM will add the names of sold customers to an Excel spreadsheet or another type of software. A store that sold 300 cars last year added 300 names to its database. That next email blast will reach 300 more people. Sounds good, right?

Not when you consider that you’re missing all those people who shopped but didn’t buy. For easy math, let’s say the store’s closing rate was 10 percent. So, ten times the customers should have been added to the database. That email blast should reach 3,000 customers that in some way contacted the store and shopped the inventory but bought elsewhere.

A CRM captures all those leads and provides reports to monitor the database on a regular basis so you can market to everybody and grow your business. The best part? That marketing costs you pennies. You don’t have to buy a list or partner with a bank. It’s your customer data and you own it. You can build your recession-proof book of business and reduce your reliance on advertising budgets and marketing specifications. It costs a lot of money to go out and find lists. It costs pennies to market to those already in your database.

CRM software backed by clear lead management processes is the best way for independent dealers to record every lead, grow a customer database, and move more inventory. Don’t overlook revenue producing technology that can help your business grow for years to come.