A new study by VinSolutions and DealerKnows provides some very interesting statistics about everything we didn’t realize we needed to know regarding CRM usage. Check out some of these findings to see how your dealership or store can really make the CRM work for you.

Using The CRM:

• Only 74% of salespeople complete CRM certification courses
• Only 57% of salespeople have active wish lists in their CRM

So what do these numbers mean? These numbers suggest that your store or group isn’t full of salespeople who are actively working with the CRM to improve their sales and the customer experience. Here’s what you can do to help:

• Explain how the CRM will help your employees
• Hold the team accountable
• Have a CRM champion
• Evaluate your CRM to ensure it’s working for your company

Customer Records:

• Roughly 340 customer records in the DMS don’t match the CRM per dealership
• Industry averages show that only 44% have regularly automated reports sent out from their CRM

What do these numbers mean? These numbers show us that even if a CRM is being utilized, it may not be accurate or as useful as possible for a dealership. Here’s what you can do:

• Audit your CRM data to make sure it’s all accurate
• Remove duplicate leads
• Send auto reports
• Get management involved to help

Tasks:

• 16% of tasks in the CRM are overdue
• Average email open rates are only 48% and reply rates are only 11%

What do these numbers mean? These numbers suggest that your store or group should work with employees to understand the priorities of tasks and get them completed on time. It also suggests that you may be sending emails to the wrong people or with the wrong content. Here’s what you can do:

• Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize!
• Re-evaluate your processes for tasks, email, etc.
• Get everyone on the same page

Leads:

• Leads followed up within the hour is around 73%
• Leads never followed up on is around 4% if you have a BDC, and about 34% if you don’t

What do these numbers mean? These numbers suggest that dealerships need to redefine their follow up process so everyone is reached out to, and in a timely manner. Even one person falling through the cracks is too many. Here’s what you can do:

• Evaluate your structure; do you need a BDC staff?
• Speed up internal communications
• Set up CRM alerts

Responses:

• 88% of the time dealerships send a personal response to customers
• 87% of the time dealerships send personal value proposition emails

What do these numbers mean? These numbers tell us that many leads aren’t getting personal responses or invitations. This is an easy thing to fix so that each customer feels like you are looking out for them specifically and working with them individually. Here’s what you can do:

• Take personalization to the next level
• Read, then respond
• Get visual
• Be in charge of the details

Confirming Prices:

• 93% of the time, best in class dealers confirm used car prices
• 85% of the tie, best in class dealers confirm used car prices.

What do these numbers mean? It’s easy to see that this is one of the best uses of CRM capabilities, however it appears that new car confirmations are slipping. This makes sense; salespeople want to get the best price for a car and sometimes knowing which incentives will work or won’t work can be hard. But here’s what you can do:

• Incorporate price transparency
• Provide MSRP, the discount, and the amount they will save
• Validate your prices with third party tools

Preferred Contact Method:

• 89% of the time, the dealership uses the customer’s preferred method
• 90% of the time dealerships send emails that encourage answers

What do these numbers mean? These numbers tell us that dealerships can do a little bit more work to ensure they will get contact with a customer every time. By doing a few simple things, you are incredibly more likely to engage the customer and help them communicate to you what they need. Here’s what you can do

• Skip unhelpful questions like “Are you interested?”
• Reply to each message
• Find out and stick to their preferred contact method
• Be helpful!

Lost Prospects:

• Time before marking prospects as lost is on average, 2 days
• 49% of the time dealerships call customers more than once on day one

What do these numbers mean? These numbers show us how the industry is loaded in the front end and are willing to work hard right at first, but sometimes may call it quits too early. There are a few things you can do to ensure you are moving on from customers at the right time, and not annoying them:

• Front-load your follow up
• Build in accountability

Appointments:

• The average number of appointments set per day, per salesperson is 6
• On average, 89% of customers are marked as “sold” in the CRM after 30 days.

What do these numbers mean? These numbers tell us that there is lots of fast paced, diligent work being done in the industry. But that means that your competition is doing all that work as well! So here’s what you can do:

• Help your salespeople by giving them CRM training
• Evaluate your structure
• Review your process
• Mystery shop yourself, and the competition

Now that you’ve learned more about CRM and how it can help you than you ever wanted to, take it and run!