As a customer, there’s nothing worse than being ignored or getting a response to your inquiry that doesn’t answer any of your questions. Before the world of Covid, many dealers heavily focused on answering leads in a timely fashion. Heck, even most, if not all, of the OEMs had standards in place to ensure that all leads were answered within a certain time frame. Yet during the height of Covid, when supply and demand weren’t equalizing, some dealers just didn’t answer their leads. Or if they did answer leads, it certainly wasn’t within ten to fifteen minutes. In fact, it was actually noted in a study that dealers slid significantly in 2021 in both response time and actually responding to a customer inquiry.

So, what happened if we know that it’s important to respond to leads and answer the customers’ questions? Well, we can’t fix what didn’t happen, but we can fix how we’re going to respond to leads today. To start, one of the best things you can do is review your CRM workflows. When was the last time they were updated? If it takes you a minute to think about it, it’s time to give it a look. After you’ve completed a check-up on your CRM workflow, take a minute to review the automated emails. Are the signature lines complete? Do your automated emails still make sense? Do all of the social media links work? It sounds simple, but some dealers are still sending out automated responses regarding Covid-19 and store hours!

Once you tackle the core basics with your CRM, meeting with your BD agents and Sales Consultants is best. A quick refresher never hurts. Once you’ve gone over what best practices are for responding to leads, it’s important that they’re held accountable. To hold your teams accountable, you can simply use CRM reporting to check on response time. The other thing to review is the actual response. We can all easily stop the clock. But we’re not all sending out the best response to the lead. Let’s ensure we’re answering the customers’ questions and providing the next steps for the customer. The end goal is to build rapport with the customer to increase the chances of earning their business. But we can’t do that if we’re not responding to the leads or if the responses we’re sending out don’t answer the customers' questions - failing to provide the next steps.

If your teams are still struggling with word tracking or how to best respond to customers' questions and objections - we can help with that. Knowing what to say and when to say it can make or break the chances of your dealership earning that customer's business.

If you’re still on the fence, take a minute and submit a request for a FREE Stealth Test! Once we’ve completed your stealth test, we’ll be in touch with very detailed results. Here’s to getting back to the basics and ensuring we’re proactive instead of reactive. Let’s start 2023 off on the right foot.