Key CRM Actions to Maximize Current Leads

With all of the unique challenges your dealership might be facing today, from reduced staff, to selling by appointment only, to being without a cleanup department, it can be really difficult to manage each day in the dealership and prioritize what is most important. 

With a few ideas, reports, and best practices gathered from the VinSolutions team and dealerships across the country, however, you can quickly identify and act upon your top opportunities. By prioritizing customers, responding appropriately, and optimizing your data for future success, you can spend time taking action that actually matters to your business – now and in the near future.  

Who are the #1 customers right now?  

One of the most productive tasks you can do for your sales team is to identify which leads are top priority right now. While fresh internet leads and those customers who have visited the showroom are certainly important, consider prioritizing a different group of customers: those who are responding to you.  

Customers who are actively engaging with you are much more likely to be ready to buy, so you must make sure you’re not letting these customers slip through the cracks. But if you’re working with a reduced staff, you might be missing valuable text messages and emails being sent to salespeople that aren’t working right now. It is important that you have a plan to monitor for these easy-to-miss messages.  

In VinSolutions Connect CRM, there is a report that will enable you to quickly and easily do just that. The Unanswered Email and Text Replies report automatically delivers you a list of unanswered communications, which you can prioritize based on the date the communication was received. In this report, you’ll also be able to see the age of the lead, which can help you quickly sort out who is most likely to be ready to buy based on how long ago they made their last purchase.  

Your goal should be to keep this report clean – to get this list to zero every day or maybe multiple times a day. If your customers are contacting you, they are likely contacting your competitors as well, so it is critical that you get back to them quickly. Set times for yourself to review this report daily, whether in the morning, in the evening before you go home or multiples times throughout the day. You can also schedule the report to be automatically delivered to staff you designate at times you designate. If you need help getting that set up, contact your Performance Manager.   

How should I respond to shoppers?  

With more and more of your customers shopping online, complimentary coffee and popcorn in your showroom are no longer the best ways to show your appreciation. That means that the way you respond to inquiries from customers is more important than ever.  

Even so, many dealers still default to cookie cutter responses to leads, such as, “Hi, my name is Kevin. When can you come in?” If your customer asked you if a vehicle had heated seats and remote start, they probably aren’t going to be very satisfied with that reply.  

You still need to win the race to respond to customers; speed is critical. But you can’t sacrifice speed for quality. Always take the time to read the lead and answer customers’ questions. Ignoring your customer’s questions doesn’t exactly send the message that you care. And on top of that, you’re wasting the precious advertising dollars you spent bringing those leads if you’re not going to respond in a way that a customer expects.  

What can I do now to set my dealership up for future success?  

Understandably, many customers want to wait to make a purchase until they can come into your dealership for a more traditional buying experience. It is important to give those customers confidence they are priority.  

You can do this by creating a special list of customers to contact when the dust settles. In the Customer Notes section of the Customer Dashboard in Connect CRM, you can label customers with tags (such as #priority) that you can quickly search. You can also make these notes using the Connect Mobile app.  

To get to your list of labeled customers, simply type the phrase you’re using to label customers in the Customer Notes field of the Advanced Search in the Customers menu. From there, you can select all the customers you’ve tagged as a priority and create tasks for a phone call or email right in the CRM – all with just a few clicks.  

You can then title the tasks in a way that lets your staff know the word track to use. You can even build a phone template, that includes a full script specific to the tag you’ve applied – whether it includes messaging about incentives, new delivery options or new hours. This is something else your Performance Manager can help you with if you need more ideas.  

For more information and to learn more about a new report, Urgent Active Leads, watch our on-demand webinar, Key CRM Actions to Maximize Current Leads.