CarZeus Car Tips

The reasons for using an Internet Lead Management Tool / Customer Relation Management Tool (ILM/CRM) are abounding, almost limitless. Astonishingly, in this day and age, there are dealers out there still not utilizing any ILM/CRM! Comparably, not using an ILM/CRM in today’s e-world is like using a bar of soap and a wash board to do your laundry. An ILM/CRM is paramount in managing your classic and e-business. Furthermore, e-business is morphing into day to day dealership classical business and is more or less one in the same. Essentially, not utilizing an ILM/CRM is business suicide and utilizing a poor ILM/CRM is like smoking unfiltered cigarettes, it is only a matter of time before it takes you down. In the ancient world of 1995, when corporate e-mails did not exist, I used AOL to receive and work my leads. This was way before I even knew what Outlook was or for that matter, Microsoft. AOL served its purpose, but it was really a less than desirable tool in truly connecting with my e-customers. In the ensuing years, as technology developed and the need for the functions of an ILM evolved, e-savvy dealers recognized that simply receiving e-mail requests and replying to them was not enough to sell cars online. In the late 1990’s, I attended one of the country’s premier automotive sales trainer’s seminars. I asked him for Internet sales tips. He replied, "What’s the Internet?" Today, that gentleman’s interactive presence is impressively upfront and personal. The analogies are never ending in the utilization of Internet Lead Management / Customer Relation Management. It further illustrates its importance. Selling cars online without an ILM/CRM is the equivalent of walking barefoot in a Wal-Mart parking lot, at noon, in August, in Phoenix. You can do it, but it is going to hurt like hell! More pointedly, the same can be said for not utilizing a powerful and complete CRM. An ILM does much more than receive leads from dealership web sites, third party lead providers and OEM sites. The truly outstanding ILM/CRM has actually evolved into a strategic selling weapon. The euphonic blessings of a great ILMT/CRMT not only assist in selling vehicles online, but can sincerely move that prophetic sales needle that all dealers are straining their selling muscle to move. Furthermore, today’s truly effective ILM/CRM maintain the ability to track customers from every angle and provides dealers the necessary tools to create and maintain lasting relationships with their customers. Utilizing automated e-mail follow-up, integrated email, video email, HTML Library’s, and interactive media messaging are only a few of the new directional lasers used to effectively reach today’s sophisticated car buyer. More succinctly, the ILM has morphed more congruently into a true one stop shop CRM tool. In essence, it takes the car selling process from the lot, to floor, to the tower, to the box, to delivery and then to follow up. Moreover, the telephony hybrids / e-mail innovation is surfacing as an e-mail and phone broadcast marketing system, all incorporated into one tool! The resounding affect of this one piece solution will go on to further the e-revolution that began in the mid 1990’s. Gaining and maintaining contact with prospective customers is the back bone of what every ILM/CRM must do. Moreover, it also acts as the main battle planning apparatus in attacking e-sales and prospecting to a dealer’s owner base. Their processes are constructed and formatted by and with an ILM/CRM and it can nail their processes down. Consequently, unlike the floor processes, they are in force and in place, even if the sales manager blows out. The ILM fundamentals like taking your leads from all sources, parsing them correctly, tying them to the lead source, automated e-mail functionality, ROI calculating functionality, bulk e-mail capability, response time calculation, and a wide variety of reporting functions cannot be taken for granted. The dealership’s entire e-selling process is determined by your ILM and its capability. I have said this before in print, but a dealer’s success and or failure is based on how well their ILM/CRM functions and of course who utilizes it. Additionally, dealership personnel have to grasp the tools functionality immediately. Getting dealership management focused on this incredible selling tool is difficult. Dealership management focus on getting rides out today because that is how they get paid and that is how they keep their jobs. They don’t have time to mess with high tech gadgetry; they have to sell cars now! However, it is the cut your nose off to spite your face comparison. Instead of reinforcing failure they will enlighten themselves into a new realm of success by moving into a more modern sales theatre. The correlation between measured contacts and sales is a reality and not the hypothesized numbers that they get from their newspaper print rep or their advertising company. That is why this technology scares the stuffing out of classic media companies. Preaching to the choir is easy when professing the gloried uses of Internet Lead Management / Customer Relation Management. As a kid I could only see Star Trek’s communicator as a fantasized appliance. Today that communicator is an extension of my hand; they call it a "Crack Berry." The GPS device that I used to maneuver my company as a U.S. Army Infantry Company Commander, through the desert, fit into a large rucksack. Today, the same device, actually even better, would fit into the breast pocket of my BDU shirt. The reality is that with ever increasing fervor the car business is going interactive and even just using the term "Internet Sales" is becoming outmoded. The progression of cable technology will bring our Internet, our phone, our TV, all into one box in our living rooms. Palm sized and smaller remotes will go with us everywhere that have multiple times the technology they currently possess. In reality, that is today, tomorrow’s destiny can only be imagined.

Technorati Tags: CRM Tool, customer relationship manager, ILM tool, internet lead manager

Call centers using existing customer databases and customer relationship management (CRM) systems can bring in lots of extra business at a small cost if done correctly. A most important element of this process is finding a call center manager who can lead and train and who knows the CRM system inside and out. Fortunately, our dealership group had a receptionist who knew the system almost as well as the CRM company programmers. She became our call center manager and is a true leader. The system we currently use is on an all-in-one platform that allows dealers to drill into their dealership management systems (DMS) and pull out customer information in a logical report format. It allows the dealer to use imaginative marketing approaches. CRM is taking control of your own data and marketing to your most important assets, your customers. In Roswell, NM, we started a call center in a rented trailer with five personal computers, five phones, one full-time manager and five part-time employees who were students from the local high school business program. The standard calls are all common sense: sold customer surveys, unsold shopper surveys, service surveys, service recalls, appointment confirmations (sales, service, and parts), appointment no-shows, complaint resolution calls and special-event calls. Initially, we thought that 3,000 calls and 50 appointments would be a good start for our first month. Remarkably, we made 10,000 calls and 299 appointments in our first month. We revolutionized our service appointment process using our customer database. We quadrupled our service volume in a short time. Our parts orders are timely, and customers are coming in to get their parts installed on a timely basis. We love our sales personnel, but traditionally they fail to follow up. Now we do not depend on sales personnel for that. For the first time we are confident that our customer follow-ups are done consistently and with high standards. Customers in our database have enormous value. We have already sold to them, they have a relationship with us and we have their contact information. What more could a dealer want? CRM systems help leverage that great situation. Soon, we will be at more than 50,000 calls and 1,000 appointments a month. Our call center has become our own marketing arm doing our own mailers and generating our own letters. The letters cover all bases for sales, service and parts. For a small group like ours, these are significant numbers. The numbers for a multi-franchised metro dealer using this simple process would be huge. The data mining is only limited to your imagination. For example, we went back six months to see who had not been in our service department. We generated a "we-miss-you" letter and followed that up with a "we-miss-you" call scripted for the call center personnel to get customers into the service drive. Soon, our bays were full and our service writers were challenged to keep up with the volume. We also market to customers not in our database, but in someone else’s. For example, when new families move into a small town, they contact the water department to get their water turned on. We obtained this list and sent "Hello neighbor" letters with discount coupons for sales, service and parts. Five sales and 10 appointments were generated in our initial 100 mailings. Our return on a $100 investment was nearly $150 for every dollar spent. It wouldn’t have happened without a sharp service manager with a great idea and a way to make it work.

Technorati Tags: call centers, CRM, customer realtionship management

Do you want to make gross and sell cars online? You have 13 days to do it. Last spring I had the privilege of attending a summit with the best automotive CRM and online retailing experts in the country. One of the first questions asked was, What is the true buying cycle of an Internet lead? This is a very controversial topic and can cause heated debate. There are several schools of thought on what the true buying cycle of an Internet purchase request is. In the car business, we work the Buy or Die technique. However, there is a time when a lead is really hot and the target of opportunity rests in the cross hairs for only a certain amount of time. I have always held the opinion that a lead is never dead, and I continue to market to the customer until they tell me to stop calling and emailing them. But hitting the lead fast and furious the second it comes into your inbox is a no-brainer. A lead that is not responded to immediately cannot be saved by even the best follow up procedures. Over a 15-month period, I conducted an exhaustive analysis of leads - from the top third party lead generators, from a multi-franchised dealer website, and from four OEM/factory sites. Statistics from my research show that the average person who buys a car after submitting a purchase request does so within 13 days of the submission. Having a fast response time and knowing that the average Internet lead is hot for 13 days will help you sell more cars. Buying Cycles Vary by Month While the overall average lead buying cycle is 13 days, there are variations depending on the time of year. One thing in my research that I found surprising is that the typical months considered to be the height of the buying season - June, July, and August - did not have shorter average buying cycles than I originally hypothesized. Looking at lead buying cycles from dealer websites, which historically have higher closing ratios, the average time it took for a customer to buy after submitting a lead was 10.9 days. December leads had the longest closing period of 22 days; and October had the shortest with 7.7 days. Further analysis could determine why there is such a huge disparity from month to month. October had the shortest buying cycle at 7.7 days - so this is your month! Here is the break down for buying cycle times in days, for each month: January - 11.2 February - 11.1 March - 14.5 April -10.9 May -13.4 June - 10.2 July - 8.5 August -14.3 September -11.7 October - 7.7 November - 13.8 December - 22 Never Forget - It’s Always a Matter of Return on Investment I have also found that leads from different lead sources and providers will yield different buying cycle times. Does this mean you should simply disqualify a lead source because it has a longer buying cycle on average? ABSOLUTELY NOT! Why? Because it’s your ROI that matters with a lead source, not necessarily the buying cycle time. Getting a good return on your investment from that lead source is what you should count on. Some colleagues and I developed a 5-to-1 ROI Analysis, which means that we want to earn five dollars back for every dollar we spend with a lead source. I take my total gross generated in sales from each lead source and divide that by what I spent for leads with that source that month. And, I break it down per store if there are multiple franchises. The 5-to-1 ROI Analysis For example, in one month at one dealership we spent $576 on Dealix leads. We earned $11,079 dollars in total gross for that month, achieving a gross ROI score of 19.2. Thus, we made back $19.20 for every $1 we spent on a Dealix lead. Furthermore, it is a more effective analysis to calculate the ROI than it is to calculate your closing ratio. It is important to do both; however, knowing what you put in the bank is more important than knowing a closing ratio. It is more effective to calculate ROI than it is to calculate your closing ratio. While it is important to do both, knowing what you actually put in the bank is the most important. Don’t Fall into Analysis Paralysis - Measure the Right Numbers Some dealers are infamous for crunching numbers. However, they can get into analysis paralysis or get overzealous in crunching all the wrong numbers. Moreover, dealers tend to under analyze their Internet department numbers. Consequently, they do not know if their Internet department is under performing or shooting the lights out. Internet sales should be scrutinized as closely as any department in the dealership or dealer group. In a monthly analysis, measure:

• Number of sales for new and used
• Front and back end gross
• Return on investment for all third party lead vendors
• Buying cycle times for all lead sources
• Monitor all ISMs’ emails with their customers through your lead management tool. (Get one if you do not have one.)
• Also, measure what email leads were sold by the sales floor to see what your penetration is with those leads.
• Furthermore, count those sales in your ROI analysis. If people who sent leads in are buying on the floor, most likely your ISM got them to come in. The majority of those sales are made because of the initial quotes made by the ISM.
• Numbers to Track in Your Internet Sales Report

Develop a comprehensive Internet sales report that covers all aspects of monthly Internet sales. This report must include, but should not be limited to:

• Departmental totals
• Sold comparisons
• Total gross comparisons
• All third party lead services and their gross totals
• Year to date ROI
• Buying cycle times
• A break down of store total sales, including year-over-year comparisons
• A break down of individual ISM’s numbers, including: sales; response times in minutes; CSI averages; gross analysis for front gross; back gross and total gross average; commission analysis; and a graphs comparison page

Hold monthly Internet sales meetings to cover team topics only. This meeting should cover team goals, incentives, bonuses, etc. On a daily basis, either speak with or Instant Message each team member. Review their sales numbers with them at that time. At the monthly meeting, review team performance, sales numbers and other metrics, lead management tool questions, deal problems, vehicle specials to be placed, and any other issues or problems. Always remember to keep the Internet lead in the cross hairs and fire away!

Technorati Tags: buying cycle, internet leads, sell cars online