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.

Customer touch points are important, however in this world of sales & marketing overload, customers have become unresponsive to sales and marketing emails that they receive and thus respond to few interesting ones that hit a chord with their needs. With spam filters and gmail promotion filter, there is very high probability that your email will go unnoticed. Here is a side by side comparison of SMS and Email stats that will make you think about your engagement strategy.

Open Rates: Based on Mailchimp’s latest survey, average open rate for email range from 20% to 25%. In contrast, SMS has 98% open rate.

(Source: Mailchimp)

Email Click Rate: Similarly, average click rate for emails is between 2% to 3%. In contrast, SMS has click rates as high as 45% making it a preferred option for sales & marketing.

(Source: Mailchimp)

Would to hear what is happening at your dealership. Please comment with your preferred mode and success rates.