WHEN IT COMES TO ONLINE LEAD MANAGEMENT, SPEED AND QUALITY RULE THE DAY
When car shoppers submit an online inquiry, they expect to get a satisfactory answer within a short period of time. That means that salespeople at dealerships need to be ready to respond quickly and professionally to turn that lead into a customer.
Luckily, there are a suite of resources that dealerships can use to keep their lead management process efficient when leads do come rolling in.
One of which is SCI MarketView of Markham Ont., the self-proclaimed “pioneer of lead-management tools,” according to President and Chief Executive Leader, Alan Bird.
Established in 1994, the award-winning company includes 10 per cent of North America’s new car dealers among clients who use their DRIVEtrain platform to find, collect and organize digital leads, and ResponseDRIVER’s suite of templates to respond to online sales leads within 60 minutes.
SCI MarketView also offers training to ensure that salespeople are up to speed with using the technology.
“Every lead is a hot one,” said Bird. “A dealership cannot afford to ignore leads. You’ve worked hard for those opportunities, they’ve cost you money, you need to respond to every lead as if they want to buy a car.”
Therefore, it’s absolutely crucial for the dealer to have a website that’s not only well-designed, but also is properly managed.
When customers research a vehicle they’re serious about buying, they’ll send their queries or enter their contact information into a box, which generates a lead.
The website has done it’s job. After that, it’s up to the salespeople to respond.
QUICK RESPONSE
That’s where Winnipeg’s DMT Development Systems Group Inc. comes in. The company specializes in building manufacturer and dealer websites.
More than 600 auto dealers across Canada are clients of DMT, a company founded by owner Glen Demetrioff in 1999.
Demetrioff began his career on the sales floor of a Lexus/Toyota dealership, where he came up with a program that automatically determined leasing and financing payments — saving countless hours traditionally spent with calculators and spreadsheets.
Now employing more than 100 people, DMT designed a lead management software tool called RAPID! Response, guaranteed to respond to any queries in 30 minutes — compared to a typical response time of up to two hours, by which time the customer may have moved on.
“Everybody uses the same terminology,” said Demetrioff, “but we’re the only ones that can show them hard results.”
One such customer is the Finch Auto Group, which owns Mercedes-Benz, GM, Hyundai and Ford dealerships in western Ontario.
“Previously the leads would come into a store, they filter through a sales manager who would then print them out and forward them to a sales person, hoping that they’d get back to them,” said Shannon Maloley, Finch Auto’s vice-president of Business Development.
“But there was no follow up, did they call them back? What happened? Did someone get back to them in a timely manner? Or were they interrupted (by a customer) and no one actually got back to them?”
“When we started using RAPID! Response, one of the things we loved about it, was that it was very ‘plug-and-play,’” said Maloley.
All the different leads the company gets, whether it be from third-parties such as autoTRADER, or from their website — all lead sources are aggregated and put into a sales funnel.
Then the leads get distributed to all salespeople at the dealership.
The quickest salesperson locks the lead and has 20 minutes to then respond — there is a template but they add their own “flavour” with their picture on it, with customer testimonial, and information about the dealership.
“But the very best thing about it is when they respond, it cc’s the manager on the response. So we know, real-time, how long it took to get back to them, and we know what they said,” said Maloley.
Unanswered questions, or unsatisfactory responses, can then be dealt with as a “coachable moment” by the dealership’s management.
“No system should ever advertise — and we don’t — that by having this product, you’re going to have ‘x’ number of sales,” said Demetrioff.
“Our philosophy is that we empower your people by increasing the opportunities to get someone into the dealership. At that point, it’s up to the management and sales team,” said Demetrioff.
Online leads can present a myriad of opportunities for salespeople, and will do so if they are managed well and are handled quickly.
