Lead generation is just the first step towards lead closing. With poor lead management, a hot lead can become cold and end up at the dealership next door. In this blog, I am covering few lead assignment and management tips that can help increase lead conversion rates

Auto Assignment: Auto assignment of leads mean zero latency. A lead can come at any time, even at a time when BDC manager is busy or not on his desk. In the current process, by the time a BDC manager checks and assigns a lead, the lead is already cold. Auto-assignment removes the latency by assigning leads real time

“If you call a lead in the 5 minutes after they've submitted a web form, they're 100x more likely to get on the phone.”   

 Lead Assignment Rules: There is no one size fits all when it comes to lead assignment rules. The best way to optimize is to experiment with a mode (or combination) and see what works for your dealership. Here is a list of common lead assignment modes:

• Round Robin: In Round Robin, leads are evenly distributed among sales reps using some rotation logic (either random or in an order). The mode gives equal opportunity to all sales reps to get and handle leads.
• Lead Grabber: In Lead Grabber, web message/ text from a lead is broadcasted to all the reps, and first to respond back to lead own the lead. The mode ensures that a lead is assigned to a sales rep who is available and incentivize sales reps to quickly respond back to lead. Additionally, sales reps can see lead’s initial message and decide to grab a lead based on customer requirements and his expertise.

Cap Max Leads Per Sales Reps: It can be overwhelming for sales reps to serve multiple leads in parallel. It can lead to lower quality interactions and thus lower conversion rates of cherry picking of leads. Based on comments on DS, capping maximum leads per sales rep per month to 125 or 150 might be optimal. (Thanks Derrick, Mark, and Brendan)

Lead Scoring: Lead scoring is the process to assign rank/ weight to a lead based on sales readiness, behavior, demography etc. This is not a static number but keeps changing with each interaction a dealership has with a lead. Lead scoring not only helps sales align their focus, but it also helps a dealership in tailoring marketing campaigns based on where a customer is in its buying cycle.  On top of it, this also helps in mapping and understanding customer life-cycle.

Groups: Every sales rep has an area of expertise. Some are good at phone conversation while others have a handle on social media and texting. One can be an expert on Toyota while other might know ins and outs of Nissan. Grouping sales reps and assigning leads based on area expertise can help in serving a customer better, thus increasing conversion ratio.

Round Robin is one of the most common way leads are assigned to sales reps. And there are strong arguments like fair and equal distribution in favor of round robin. However FAIR does not essentially mean the BEST as

• The odds of qualifying a lead drop 21 times if called in 30 minutes vs 5 minutes.
  • Round robin adds latency: A sales rep might not be available when a lead is assigned
  • Reps have no incentive to reply back quickly in minutes vs hours
• Minimum oversight over lead handling, leading to cherry picking and not serving all leads

In this blog, I am comparing two of the many assignment modes that Braango offers: Round Robin and Lead Grabber mode.

What Are Round Robin And Lead Grabber Modes?

 In Round Robin mode, all sales reps are assigned leads in a rotational order. It is like distributing cookie to kids in a line, one at a time, and when the line is over you again start from the front.  On the other hand, in Lead Grabber mode, a lead is broadcasted to all sales rep and the one who grabs/responds to the lead first gets it. One can relate it with Jeopardy! Buzzer, you get to answer if you press the buzzer first.

Round Robin Adds Latency

The odds of qualifying a lead drop 21 times if called in 30 minutes vs 5 minutes. Auto-assignment of leads in Round Robin adds latency as a sales rep might not be available when the lead is assigned. On the other hand, with lead grabber, lead is grabbed by a lead who is available to take the call or reply back to customer reducing latency to Zero.

No Incentive To Respond Fast With Round Robin

Given a lead is already assigned to the rep, he has no incentive to reply quickly. Whereas, Lead Grabber creates competition. Sales reps who don’t act fast will not get the lead, creating an incentive to reply quickly to a lead.

No Cherry Picking With Lead Grabber

In some cases, sales reps cherry pick and contact only a few leads assigned to them. With Lead Grabber, if a sales rep does not respond to leads quickly, the rep will not get leads, in turn lowering rep’s lead grabbed and served matrix which managers can easily monitor. Thus, lead grabber creates internal competition between reps to grab and serve more leads.

Would to hear what you would prefer at your dealership. Please comment with your preferred mode and why.

Only 37% companies respond to their lead within an hour – HBR

Research shows that chances of qualifying a lead decrease drastically with time. Longer wait times means sales lost. Based on Lead360 Research, lead conversion is determined 57% by the lead quality and 43% by lead response time. Reducing latency and improving lead response time can help dealerships improve lead qualification rate and thus boost revenue.

 Timing Is The Key

Based on research from insidesales.com, adds of contacting and qualifying a lead drops 100 times if the response is within 5 minutes vs 30 minutes. The clock starts as soon as a customer contacts dealership or fills a web form. Dealerships are required to have robust technology and process to be able to assign and notify sales rep(s) who are available and can respond back to the lead quickly.

First To Respond

Based on research from insidesales.com, 50% of sales go to the first sales person that contacts a lead. By adopting technologies and process that can help you reach customer faster, dealerships can significantly improve conversion rates.

Personalized Response

Timeliness is important, however, the quality of response still plays a pivotal role in lead conversion. With sales scripts and similar responses from dealerships, customers often feel disconnected. According to a Research by BCG, brands can boost revenue by 6% to 10% by integrating technologies and data to create a personalized experience. Customer segmentation can help dealerships create a more personalized experience for customer, in turn increasing lead qualification rate

Lead Quality

Not all leads are sales-ready. Trying to respond back to each lead as soon as possible might lead to canned and scripted responses without any personal touch. A better strategy would be to quickly analyze and segment cold vs warm lead and set response time targets accordingly.

Contact All Leads

Studies show that only 70% of internet leads are actually contacted. Cold leads might have lower conversion ratio or longer sales cycle but not contacting them means leaving money on the table. A good way to contact these customers can be via personalized text which takes much less time vs a call and at the same time has much higher open (98%) rates vs email (21%)    

Timely Follow Up

By now, everyone has heard of 6 follow up rule. However, don’t assume that a lead is been contacted by sending an email which has a good chance to end up in spam or promotion folder. Actively engage and follow up with a lead on the modes he/she prefer. A good strategy can be to have a multi-channel lead follow up strategy based on lead type and lead preference.      

“The first step in exceeding your customer's expectations is to know those expectations.” — Roy H. Williams

72% customers today want to connect with businesses through multiple channels (www.thebridgecorp.com).

Call and online tracking just paints one side of the picture. To understand customer journey, it is important to track all aspects of customer engagement including text. Integrating text and voice tracking help dealers see the big picture and map customer journey instead of a single call.

Map Customer Journey: Instead of tracking individual calls, dealers can track customer journey across channels. This helps dealership gain useful insight around customer pain points, timeline, channels, and touchpoints. This, in turn, can be used to improve overall customer experience.

Measure ROI Want to measure the success of a marketing campaign or lead conversion for a landing page. 78% customers today want to text businesses, making call tracking an inadequate measure to track success. Integrated text and voice tracking is a better way to track ROI and other success metrics for a campaign.

Consistent Customer Experience: With easy access to information and plethora of choice, customers like to constantly evaluate and re-evaluate products, engage and re-engage with dealerships till they make a purchase decision. Tracking customer journey ensures that at every touch point a sales rep is aware of customer journey and previous information provided to ensure consistent customer experience.

Sales Focus:  Are you so much focused on call and other online channels that texting is getting neglected as a channel. Integrated tracking ensures sales focus and performance across channels ensuring better engagement and thus higher sales.

Based on Forbes study

• Companies take 46 hours and 53 minutes to pick up the phone and respond to a lead
• Only 1.3 attempts are made to reach a lead on average
• These factors combined lead to loss of 71% leads

Lead times are much better for the auto industry, still, there is room for improvement and valuable leads are lost due to latency around internet manager assigning a lead and then sales representative checking the lead and then calling/ texting back. With right technology and channels, dealerships can lower lead time and create a better tracking system to increase lead conversion. Here are few tips and tools that can help dealerships improve conversion rates.

Going Mobile: Desktop-based CRM adds latency and requires constant monitoring. Going for a mobile based platform to receive leads can remove the latency and improve the customer connect time by as much as 20 minutes or more.  

Calling vs Texting: Calling, on an average requires 5-10 minutes. On the other hand, with saved templates, a representative can send 20 texts in 5 minutes. This ensures that leads are reached within 5 minutes, increasing the probability to qualify a lead 21 times. And representatives can further follow up with a call if required.

Auto Lead Assignment: Manual lead assignment adds latency. Additionally, the lead might not get assigned to the sales rep who is available at that time, making the situation worse. Next-gen platforms like Braango allow leads to be broadcasted to all the representatives and available representative can grab it by replying back via call or text

Track And Refine: Next-gen customer mapping tools allow sales reps to map their progress and customer journey. They can see for themselves what worked for them and what did not, automatically increasing the awareness and motivation to make more attempts to reach a lead. Given these reports are also available to GMs, it also increases accountability on representatives’ side.

Using right technology can boost sales. Please comment on what tools and channels are preferred and are working for your dealership.

Sources: www.braango.com; www.textrequest.com

Are you looking for ways to increase sales and customer engagement while keeping the cost in control? Customer attention is limited, making it tougher and tougher to grab and keep customers interested. So sharing a few texting strategies that are helping dealerships increase sales and improve customer engagement:

Unified Text And Voice Number: 89% customers want to use SMS/ MMS to communicate with businesses (Twilio). However, maintaining separate number for texting means leads lost. AT&T maintains that 150 million texts are sent to landline numbers every day. Further, having separate numbers restricts customers from switching modes in the middle of a conversation. Go for a texting solution that unifies and let you and your customers switch to voice/ text even in the middle of a conversation.

Videos and Multimedia: Why stop at sending pain texts. Marketers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users. Simply include videos and other multi-media messages in your text conversation with customers to increase conversion rate.

Text Follow Up: Sending a follow-up text is a short yet most effective way to grab customer attention and convert into an appointment. Based on Harris Poll, over 32% customers prefer to schedule or change appointments over text and 31% prefer to make or confirm reservations via text

Information Engine: You might be leaving dealership at 7:00 PM, but this might be exactly the time when your potential customer also leaves from work and want to contact your dealership. With information engine, you can engage with the prospect 24×7. Customers can simply text product code to your central number and receive pictures of the product and three product suggestions.

Texting For Customer Service: Based on research from JD Power, “Proactive communication with the customer, especially while the car is being serviced, is one element that has a direct influence on loyalty.” Among customers who receive text message updates from their service providers, 67% “definitely will” return. Additionally, you will also see as high as 30% drop in calls to your service number.

Equity Mining: Constantly keep in touch with your existing customers as well as lost leads by periodically sending them text messages. High open rate (over 90%), ensures that your messages are read. At the same time, it is short, to the point and non-intrusive, resulting in low unsubscribe rate.

Track And Refine:  Tracking is the first step towards improving your campaigns. Make sure that your text provider has powerful analytical tools that can help you monitor the performance of your text conversations across various texting strategies, segments and group.

Think of a day without texting. Does it sound impossible? Same is true for your customers too.  Based on a survey from Gallup, 68% of millennials accept that they text a lot.  Average text sent per individual per day for the US is around 32 messages. Your business might be losing valuable leads if you are not on the channel that customers prefer. In this blog, I have compiled texting facts that will make you rethink about including texting in your channel strategy.

Texting Has Wide Penetration And Reach

People are still using SMS, and the numbers are increasing year on year. It is the simplest yet most effective way to communicate and engage. In last five years, world wide smart phone installed base has increased by 180% from 1.03 million to 2.89 billion (Statistica), with 98% of smartphone users using texting on regular basis (AT&T)

(Source: Statistica 2017)

Customers Are Open To Receiving Texts

 

People have an inherent need to connect with others, be it family or businesses. Based on IDC survey, the services that drive the highest levels of connectedness across the largest number of people are texting/messaging followed by talking on the phone, and direct messaging via Facebook.

(Source: IDC)

And They Prefer Business Texting Over Other Modes

Unlike other modes, texting has high open and response rate, based on report from Gartner, various sources report SMS open and response rates as high as 98% and 45%, respectively — in contrast to corresponding figures of 20% and 6% for email. Only 17% respondent of survey conducted by SAP & Loudhouse Research, consider SMS messages sent by companies to be intrusive.

Are You On-Board?

 

Based on Gartner research,  SMS, along with consumer messaging apps, will be a primary way for organizations to engage with their customers. However, even after knowing the benefits of texting, many businesses face ongoing challenges in adopting and integrating texting with their existing engagement model, citing technology as prime reason.

If you are thinking of adopting texting for your business, outdated solutions will not cut the mark. Having right tool to seamlessly integrate texting with your existing channel is the way to go. You should opt for a tool or platform like Braango that let you integrate texting with other modes like voice calling, allow customers as well as sales to switch modes effortlessly, record and analyze customer journey across multiple channels and last but not least is TCPA compliant.

 

“92% of online population use Emoji”. From Baskin Robins to GE to Goldman Sachs, everyone is using Emojis. Emojis can be very powerful and memorable. However, using inappropriate Emojis can hurt reputation too. So, I have listed 5 tips to get you started with using Emojis

Read More Emoji Facts Here

Emojis Know No Age Limit: Feel free to use Emojis for all your customers. Research shows that Four out of five 18 to 65 year-olds use emojis on a regular basis.

Emojis In Subject Line: Research has shown that Emojis in subject line can increase response rate by 22%. Emoji’s are visual, more memorable and can give customers that little push to open the message.

Use appropriate Emojis: It is important to know meaning of Emojis before you use them. Although most Emojis are intuitive, when in doubt, you can refer to Emojipedia

Appropriate Time and Tone: Not all topics get benefited by Emojis, specifically ones with serious tone. Similarly, holiday Emojis are good for Christmas. Ensure you use appropriate Emoji for appropriate occasion

Emojis Based On Position: Although customers in all age group use Emojis, it might not be the most appropriate way of communication when it comes to interacting with senior executes or customers in similar position. Emojis are not for everyone and every occasion. So use it based on the situation

Test And Refine: Guides can be a good reference, but every business and its target audience is different. Thus conduct A/B Testing to see what your customers prefer

As customers become more and more interconnected, Multi-Channel engagement is need of the hour. A typical digital customer today owns 3.64 devices (Source: GlobalWebIndex). Today’s empowered customers demand the flexibility to use or switch communication mode while interacting with businesses. Based on research published by mycustomer.com, over 90% of customers expect multi-channel experience. It is new normal for a customer to see a car ad on eBay or Craigslist, download pictures and description through MMS/text and then call sales representative to start a conversation.

However, as per an IBM survey reported by The Marketer, nearly 4 in every 10 marketers are failing to adopt an integrated multi-channel approach. The report also states that poor and inconsistent customer experiences, caused largely due to lack of cross-channel integration can result in around $83bn in lost sales every year.

Here is some advice on adopting a the multi-channel engagement strategy

Know your Customer – The first step a business can take towards a multi-channel approach is to understand what the key channels that their customers prefer are. There is a gamut of channels available from voice, text, email live chat, self-service, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Excelling in all of them might not be possible in one go. Additionally, it will be time-consuming and costly to manage a channel that customers are not inclined to use. Businesses must make sure they know their customer preference before investing in a specific channel.

Invest in Integrated Customer Engagement Solution – Next generation customer engagement platforms like Braango can help customers save the time and efforts required to deploy an IVR or manage multiple channels separately. Maintaining separate voice, text, email or social media channels can be difficult. Further maintaining these channels across multiple locations, multiple departments, multiple sales reps and multiple devices make it even worse. Investing in a customer engagement solution can help businesses reduce cost and enable growth to maintain more channels simultaneously.

Deliver Seamless Customer Experience – Internally a business might have separate modes of communication. However, for a customer, they just view them as one single entity. Thus it is of utmost priority that firstly, the information that is shared with customers across multiple channels is consistent and secondly, all channels have visibility into prior conversations with a specific customer for seamless customer experience. An icing on cake will be if the same representative is interacting with the customer across all channels for a specific query or sales conversation.

Mapping Customer Journey – Current mindset is to evaluate a lead or conversion based on quantitative matrices like channels used, call minutes, number of calls and time to conversion. However, to differentiate good customer experience with bad or how a sales representative effectively converted a bad lead or vice versa, it is important to map customer journey using quantitative measures. Recording voice and text conversation can be helpful for further training as well as determining performance and areas of improvement for a sales rep.

Unified Campaigns – Businesses can leverage the multi-channel platform and grow sales by crafting a coordinated campaign across multiple channels. Multi-channel approach gives flexibility to businesses to switch mode based on customer profile and preference. For example, businesses can use text to deliver crisp but subtle marketing promotion to attract a relatively cold lead and use voice for a hot lead. However, businesses should be extra careful to not to overwhelm customers with information overload. Businesses should make sure that content is customized for a specific channel and at the same time, it should be in tandem with other channels to ensure consistent messaging and positioning.

In conclusion, multi-channel approach is the right step towards engaging customers and growing business. And businesses need to follow a systematic approach to devise and deploy a multi-channel engagement strategy to get maximum benefit out of it. A half-baked approach will result in loss of time and efforts with no significant results.