I don’t sell CRM anymore, but since I work with data I’m a little bias when it comes to over-input. Yes, dealers are creating a tremendous amount of data. The problem is, most of it is junk. Data is like a 1958 Tops Baseball Card Complete Set. You have it all, or you don’t and no one cares.

Dealers need their people to use CRM (obviously), more importantly they need their people to use it well. Here are four reasons to improve your CRM utilization in 2017:

1. It Works
   • I get that a “roll-a-dex” was once a valuable piece of business equipment, but if a sales person says “CRM doesn’t work” ask them what they know Salesforce.com doesn’t. With 288% gains in the past 5 years, the idea that a powerful CRM can’t help small business went out the window with 4 squares and VW Diesel.
2. It Keeps Your People Honest
   • Even today, there are dealers out there who don’t have their employees making phone calls that integrate with their CRM. It’s easy to spot, because half the sales people tend to “make” their phone calls between 11 and 11:15AM. Phone call reporting at the time the call was made is immensely valuable: if your prospect isn’t available at 11AM, have the follow up call scheduled for 2PM the next day. I’ll bet even your off-brand CRM’s can schedule follow up based on time-of-day.
3. You’re Guessing Without Data
   • You'll need facts to make decisions in 2017. If your people don’t enter every single phone call into your CRM, you’ll never know how effective your sales people are on the phone (I can’t believe I have to say that). If you don’t want to pay for texting-integration with your CRM, at least give your sales people the option to use “Text” as a lead source, or “Closed via Text” so you can track how texting impacts your sales.
4. They Don’t Come Cheap
   • If you improve your CRM utilization for no other reason than you’re paying for it, well that is as good a reason as any. CRM decisions take months. Demos from potential vendors, then demos of the “new” platform from your current vendor, then NADA demos of the same thing one more time. Then you finally decide and you wait 3 months for your first day of training. More effort is put into trying to save $100 a month on a CRM bill than ever goes into making sure your people are using it. Be better than that.

One word of caution: if you push your sales team to enter every interaction into your CRM, you may need to define new performance metrics. If you have a closing ratio of 30%, but your sales people don’t enter every up or lead they receive, you should expect that closing ratio to go down when you start getting all the information.

If you’re team’s productivity is tied to their comp plan, you may need to evaluate their pay structure after you begin the new process. Your team’s output won’t change, the reports simply haven’t been reflecting their real productivity, and it can take some adjustments to get it right.

If you would like to see how ƒrogdata uses analytics to help dealers analyze and improve performance and profitability, check out frogdata.com for more info.