I am always surprised the answer I get when I ask a dealership about how many more cars they think they could sell a month if they improved their follow-up process.  This missed opportunity can often be fixed by implement a CRM technology, which is great for processes and campaigns. However, it is ultimately up to the salespeople to do what they are supposed to do. I have found that what you may think is being done in the dealership, often isn’t.

When I sold cars, I remember multiple times when the sales manager would tell a salesperson to make his daily follow-up calls and the salesperson would simply respond that he had already completed his calls.  It became a constant battle.  Apart from not making the calls, salespeople are notorious at finding ways to cut corners and cheat the system.  This not only hurts the salesperson but, the dealership and even the customers.

The first suggestion I have is to utilize reports in your CRM that track the number of new opportunities that your salespeople are entering into the CRM.  Nothing is worse than seeing someone take multiple ups and not having any of the customers entered into the CRM.  This can throw off your marketing and ROI reports.

The 2nd key metric is phone calls.  It is important that your CRM is integrated with your phone system in order to track outbound phone calls.  Having your salespeople mark all of their calls completed is one thing, but its better if there is proof that they actually made the call and how long they were on the call.  You can actually step this up and record their outbound calls.  This is great for managing quality and training.  Looking at the data that I have compiled, the top salespeople are constantly those that make the most calls.

Email and weblead tracking is also important.  You need to know how many emails they are receiving and sending out, as well as how long it is taking them to respond to their webleads.  (On a side note, a dealership recently told me they were going to be pulling the plug on their AutoTrader leads because they weren’t selling as many as they wanted.  I looked at some reports and noticed that all of the AutoTrader leads were being sent to one person and that person took an average of over 2 hours to respond to a lead.  It wasn’t the lead provider’s fault, it was the salesperson.)

Pipeline Management is also important.  Salespeople love people that come in and buy, but what about those that don’t buy or those that they talk to but are hard to get in touch with afterward?  Are they reaching out to them?  Make sure you are looking at reports that reflect this data.

Salespeople also love to move people to Lost. This is a way to get the follow-up to stop.  Do you have a review process in place for a manager to look at each lost deal and try to “save a deal”?

Another suggestion I have to improve accountability is to use a checkout system.  Some CRM tools have a daily activity report or check out report that shows everything the salesperson has done for the day (Ups, Appointments, Calls, Talk Time, E-mails).  One dealership that I was working with that had a problem with accountability, instituted a process that before a salesperson left for the day they would print out a report and give it to their manager to check out.  The report told the manager everything they had done as well as all of their calls (Daily To Dos) that they didn’t do.

Quickly, Managers were able to see what had been done and what had not been done. Often, the manager would send the salesperson back to make more calls before they left.  Salespeople began to feel ashamed when they handed a manager their sheet that said they didn’t do anything which motivated them to make more calls.  The dealership drastically improved their follow up process and began to see an immediate increase in their sales.

These are my suggestions. 

What do you do to make sure that your salespeople are doing what you want them to do?

I had to call a dealership recently about servicing my wife’s vehicle.  At 9:00 am I called the dealership’s main number and the phone rang eight times before it went to voicemail.  I called back and the same thing happened.  I needed an answer right away so I didn’t leave a message and called another dealership that was able to help me.

I understand that the receptionist may have been busy, but this got me to think:

• How many calls does your dealership miss a day?
   
• Does the customer end up calling other dealerships as well?
   
• What do you have in place to insure that you don’t miss phone calls?

One way to fix this issue is to integrate an inbound Call Center.  Majority of dealerships wouldn’t want all of their inbound calls to go to a Call Center, most people think that Call Centers are for prospecting but, what about just the phone calls that don’t get answered?

If all of your calls get answered that’s great, but even if it is just one call a day or even once or twice a week, why not have a safety net or back stop in place, just in case?

If I was able to get someone on the phone to take my message and ensure me that someone would call me back, I would not have gone to another dealership.

What are your thoughts?

I was asked recently to help a dealership with their email templates. Thought I would pass a long some of the tips I suggested:

• The subject line is the single most important indicator of whether an e-mail message will be opened and read. Ensure that the subject line is clear, concise, and, if possible, contains personalization so the recipient will distinguish it as being unique.

• Studies have proven that consumers are more responsive to e-mail communications when they are sent in a consistent format, with the same “look and feel” from one mailing to another.
   
• Dealers are advised to develop an “e-mail template” which will allow their content to change from month to month but still be consistently identifiable, over time, as a message from the dealership.
   
• Send information that is relevant to the customer.
   
• Provide both sales and non-sales content.
   
• Use Data-Mining tools in your CRM to market to the right people, with the right message, at the right time.
   
• Plan e-mail marketing campaigns in advance.
   
• Do not put critical text in images; many people will never see them as they have images off
   
• Make sure you always have Dealership’s contact info on email.
   
• Add any appropriate qualifying price criteria such as “* Your e-Price is valid ONLY on purchases made directly through our Internet Department. All vehicles are subject to prior sale and Price Quotes Expire in 48 hours. Your e-Price includes dealership discount, factory rebates, and online savings certificates.”

Tips for avoiding spam:

• Never send just a picture
   
• Never use all caps
   
• Never use multiple exclamation points (!!!) or multiple non-alphanumeric characters ie: %* #:?.
   
• Never use different colored fonts, Use Black for fonts only

What are your thoughts?

Hunter Swift is the Business Analyst at DealerSocket and specializes in Automotive/Dealership processes that help dealerships become more effective by maximizing their opportunity to improve all aspects of the sales cycle, including: driving traffic, marketing, proper sales, and demonstration techniques. He also specializes in helping dealerships increase their customer satisfaction, reduce their web-lead response times and to improve accountability.

With more and more customers originating from the internet, it is important that your dealership has a good internet process to respond to every lead quickly and efficiently. If a customer submits a lead on a Third Party site, that lead is often sent to multiple dealerships. This is one reason why response time is so important because most customers usually buy from the first person who responds to them. What are you doing to make sure your internet depart is doing the absolute best it can do?

One thing I have learned is not every customer that’s sends in a lead is in the market to buy a car right now. Often customers are online doing research and submit a lead or request a quote by mistake. For example, many customers don’t know that when they go to Cars.com or CarsDirect.com they are actually going to be sending a lead to a dealership. Often they just want to know if the car is in their price range. These customers are sometimes as much as six months out from buying a car. This is the leading reason, in my opinion, that sales people often are unable to connect with the customers or they don’t respond to your calls and e-mails. Do you have an internet follow-up campaign that goes out to six months?
 

• It is important that your CRM/ILM handles your webleads correctly. How are the leads routed? Do they all go to one person, or are they distributed to a team? Do you have anything in place to only give leads to those who are working that day?
   
• Are your leads being routed to the salesperson’s phone so they can respond quickly from their phone?
   
• Does your CRM/ILM check for duplicates? Nothing is worse than having your internet department competing against your own showroom.
   
• What is your ideal response time? Are your salespeople held accountable for their response times? Do you monitor reports that show this?
   
• Do you have a process of escalating or transferring the lead to someone if the lead is left untouched?
   
• Do you encourage your salespeople to call or e-mail as their first response?  Which type of response will foster a better relationship?
   
• Do you have someone monitoring social media for leads and opportunities?
   

At the end of the day, it’s all about the relationships. Dealerships have the ability to choose and customize which process they use based on their own unique needs. Just remember that this industry is constantly evolving and what worked a year ago might not have the same success today.

Hunter Swift is the Business Analyst at DealerSocket and specializes in Automotive/Dealership processes that help dealerships become more effective by maximizing their opportunity to improve all aspects of the sales cycle, including: driving traffic, marketing, proper sales, and demonstration techniques. He also specializes in helping dealerships increase their customer satisfaction, reduce their web-lead response times and to improve accountability.

One of the biggest areas of improvement I often see at the dealership is fixing the disconnect, lack of communication and cohesiveness between the sales and service departments. How well is your dealership doing in integrating the two departments at your dealership?
 

• Are you marketing to sold customers who have not been in for service?
   
• If someone comes to your service drive with high mileage or is out of warranty, do you have a process of notifying someone in the sales department?
   
• When one of their sold customers comes in for service, do you notify the salesperson to greet them in the service drive (and ask for referral)?
   
• If a salesperson sells a vehicle, are they setting the customer’s first service appointment?
   
• Do you send out sold anniversary letters and/or emails reminding the customer of their registration renewal, recommended services, their current trade-in value, and current sales specials?
   
• Are you sending to your recently sold customers marketing regarding parts and accessories to customize their new vehicle?
   
• Does your sales department market to your service customers who have never purchase a vehicle from your dealership?

If you answered “no” to any of these questions, you are missing an opportunity to drive more traffic to your sales and service departments.

What are your thoughts?

I have been involved in the auto industry for many years and have encountered this situation multiple times: a person comes in looking for a used vehicle that the dealership just doesn’t have. Most dealers I know either try to change the customer’s mind to a vehicle they do have in stock or simply state that they don’t have the vehicle and let the customer walk away.

Some CRM technologies have a “Check New Inventory” feature which allows the salesperson to save the vehicle of interest, and the CRM will automatically notify the sales person when a similar or matching vehicle is received into inventory. Another feature allows you to pull a list of those looking for a certain vehicle which you can use as a “wish list” for purchasing vehicles at auction. Although these are great features, I have found there is a better way.

Your CRM should have a way to search your historic sold data through some sort of listbuilder. If a customer comes in looking for a specific vehicle which you don’t have, simply go to your CRM and create a search for everyone you have sold the exact vehicle for which your customer is looking. Search for a vehicle that your dealership has sold in the past 36 to 60 months. With this search you should have a large list of owners to call who have had their vehicle for some time and might be looking for a change.

Simply call on the list and state to them that you have a customer looking for the exact vehicle they currently own and you'd like to know if they are willing to sell it. Some dealers I know even look at the service history and state to the customer that the reason they are calling is because they know they take good care of their vehicle.

Remember, your goal is not just to sell the one vehicle but also to sell a replacement vehicle to the person who is getting rid of theirs. You might even luck out and get a trade out of the prospect.

You can also take advantage of a listbuilder every time you receive a trade. The moment you even look at a trade you should be building a list of all active prospects who are interested in this vehicle to gauge interest. This can help forecast if this vehicle is just going to sit on your lot. A good practice is to begin calling on these prospects before you even take in the trade. This can allow you to give more on the trade if you already know you have a potential buyer. And, again, you are hoping that they have a trade as well.

The dealerships I know who use this method are very successful, often turning a one car deal into two or three.

What are your thoughts and opinions?

Hunter Swift is the Business Analyst at DealerSocket and specializes in Automotive/Dealership processes that help dealerships become more effective by maximizing their opportunity to improve all aspects of the sales cycle, including: driving traffic, marketing, proper sales, and demonstration techniques. He also specializes in helping dealerships increase their customer satisfaction, reduce their web-lead response times and to improve accountability.