In dealerships, a lot of emphasis is placed on salesperson performance. And for good reason. If salespeople aren’t performing up to certain standards, the entire operation suffers. But when sales performance dips, instead of automatically pointing fingers at personnel, it can be helpful to dig a little deeper to find the root causes of the problem. You might discover that an underperforming or underutilized CRM is really to blame. Here are a few signs that your CRM is failing to deliver for your dealership.
Poor email communication
Failing to respond to customer emails is a bad look for any dealership. When a customer reaches out to request information or follow up, they expect to be acknowledged and to receive an answer. Missed emails result in mad customers and lost sales and service opportunities. CRM tools can help manage inboxes and time by prioritizing emails and sending reminders to follow up to your sales staff, resulting in more effective communications and happier customers. If poor email communication is an issue at your dealership, your CRM might not be doing its job.
Poor lead management
Customer leads come from multiple places, including the internet, over the phone, and in person at the dealership. Keeping track of every contact, organizing their specific questions, and following up with each individual customer can be a lot for salespeople to manually maintain. If your internet-to-appointment ratio feels low or lead response time seems too lengthy, you may not be using your CRM to full capacity. CRM tools can help sales employees manage leads and provide better responses.
Wondering if it might be time for a new CRM? Download our guide for key next steps and questions to ask your team.
Download the GuidePoor campaign management
Sometimes poor sales performance is a direct result of poor marketing. When marketing messages are not personally tailored to each individual customer’s interests, they get filtered out as part of the noise. Your CRM should empower your salespeople with email marketing customization and segmentation tools that capture your customers’ attention. By using your existing customer data to create targeted, highly individualized marketing messages, your CRM can help your dealership deliver the right information to the right people, and your sales staff can close more sales.
You evaluate your sales team based on their performance. It seems only fair that you should do the same for your CRM. Take our quick CRM assessment quiz to measure the effectiveness of your CRM and see whether it is delivering for your dealership.
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