Congratulations to Carlos Sousa for having the top DrivingSales blog in February 2017. His blog titled "Top 5 Reasons You're Wasting Internet Leads" looks at the ways dealerships utilize their internet leads, and what they can do to improve. We caught up with him to learn more! 

We interviewed many vendors during NADA 2017 to hear what they think is ahead for the auto industry. Check out our interview with Allstate Dealer Services.

*The thoughts and opinions expressed by interviewees do not reflect the opinions of DrivingSales. These interviews are purely editorial content and are not sponsored by any party.

Desking tool upgrade makes desking deals more profitable for dealerships

MISSION, Kan. (January 12, 2016) —VinSolutions announced today the availability of Rates & Residuals, a new upgrade to its Connect Desking tool that integrates Dealertrack’s comprehensive lender data to help with more accurate, efficient and profitable deal making.

With the Rates & Residuals enhancement, dealerships now have the ability to structure deals for new and pre-owned vehicles by accessing incentives, rates and programs of both their captive and non-captive lenders, all within VinSolutions. VinSolutions’ Rates & Residuals portal, powered by Dealertrack, returns the top retail and/or lease programs based on consumer credit scores. Access to the portal allows dealership personnel to quickly compare, select and build multiple deal structures in VinSolutions’ desking product and optimize front- and back-end profits. The desking solution offers the opportunity to improve the customer experience with a more streamlined desking process that benefits both customers and dealers.

“At Cox Automotive, we’re always looking for ways to help dealers succeed with their customers. This new desking capability is something we’re pleased to offer and is the first of many exciting improvements in desking and deal management that will be coming in 2017,” said James Maynard, vice president of product for VinSolutions. “Rates& Residuals combines accurate lender data from Dealertrack and deep customer insights from our Connect CRM to help make desking — a critical step in the sales process — more accurate and more profitable than ever.”

To date, several dealerships have participated in a pilot program for Rates & Residuals, with the upgrade being made more widely available in 2017.

“Accuracy is paramount to our business model,” said David Greenly, e-commerce director at Dorschel Automotive Group, a pilot location for the new desking add-on. “The integration of Dealertrack data within VinSolutions is an immense advantage for us as we strive to be more efficient.”

Dealers interested in more information on the Rates & Residuals add-on to Connect Desking can visit VinSolutions at booth #1523 during the 2017 NADA Convention & Expo, January 26–29, at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans.

About VinSolutions

VinSolutions helps make every customer connection count by providing individual dealers and dealer groups with sophisticated yet easy-to-use software solutions that span the scope of dealership operations. With its cloud-based system, VinSolutions’ all-in-one internal management, sales and service marketing solutions platform is accessible from anywhere an Internet connection is available, including mobile devices.

VinSolutions has been named to the Inc. 5000 every year since 2011 and has received numerous industry awards for its innovative products. VinSolutions is OEM certified by every major manufacturer and is Autosoft, CDK, Reynolds & Reynolds and Dealertrack DMS certified. Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Mission, Kansas, VinSolutions is a Cox Automotive™ brand. Visit VinSolutions online atvinsolutions.com

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!

Driverless cars are the subject of chatter from many people. Tech and car experts agree: It isn’t so much whether driverless cars will happen, but when.

But with more connected cars comes concerns for hacking: Driverless cars need the internet, and the internet is full of bullies and thieves. Those people could take over a car, subjecting it to dangerous behavior. They could also steal the data that helps a car function, or they might even be able to hack into electronically controlled roadway systems.

As these cars approach reality for everyone, you need to arm yourself with knowledge about what they do and what the risks are. This graphic from Vound-Software can help.

Originally Published By Digital Trends

Buying cars online seems simple, but what if you could do it as quickly and easily at a dealership, and still get a test drive? Stanford StartX accelerator graduate Prodigy wants to give auto dealerships a tool set to modernize selling cars on the lot.

According to a Prodigy release, “More than ever, this industry key to our economy is being threatened by increased regulation, changes in car buying habits, and car buying startups such as Beepi and Carvana. Prodigy is giving dealers a chance to fight back and adapt to rapidly changing car buying habits.”

The tablet-based Prodigy sales platform, is designed to streamline the customer buying experience from “Hi, how can I help you?” to closing the deal. Major elements of the Prodigy platform include “predictive inventory filters” to narrow the inventory search quickly based on customer preferences, mobile driver’s license scanning to speed up moving from the greeting to a test drive, and access to OEM specifications and third party info sites such as Edmunds.com and Kelly Blue Book to answer questions on the spot.

Once you’ve decided on the car you want, the Prodigy platform gives the sales person “penny perfect” payment options to present based on the customer’s credit, current OEM promotions and offers, and dealer margins. You won’t have to wait for a sales manager to approve the deal or sit in a finance manager’s office endlessly — real-time communication from the tablet will speed both of those steps.

Finally, digital signature capture on the tablet and a full credit application connect the dealer with more than 1,300 lenders. Theoretically, you could do the entire deal on the lot and drive off, never having to acquiesce to a request to “Let’s go back to my desk and see what we can work out.” The aim of the platform is to get the deal done on the lot, if it’s right for the dealer, the lender, and the buyer.

“Car buying habits have been rapidly changing over the last few years, but technology within a dealership has remained stagnant,” said Michia Rohrssen, Prodigy founder and CEO. “Our mission is to equip dealers with the technology needed to serve the modern car buyer in the most efficient and streamlined manner possible. With our new platform, dealerships can offer an entirely unprecedented customer experience from a single platform.”