Digital Marketing

A dealership’s reputation is often determined by the customer’s last experience. If the customer had a positive experience, he or she most likely will be willing to share it with others. The same is true if the experience was negative. Thus, it’s important a dealership creates a positive experience for everyone who interacts with it. Any interaction customers have with your dealership is a reflection of your brand. Branding is not just a marketing responsibility, but also something that everyone at the dealership needs to be part of. That’s why hiring the right person, training them the right way, and having the right tools available are essential to not only giving your customers a great experience, but also helping build your brand and customer loyalty. One of the most influential tools that dealers can use to affect customer experience and branding is customer relationship management (CRM) software.

Relationships

The days are gone when dealers relied on CRM only to manage leads and customers. Today, the most progressive and successful dealers use CRM to manage their customer relationships. They use CRM to sell their “brand” by developing and managing long-lasting positive relationships and creating the ideal customer experience. This can only be accomplished by offering a positive customer experience through marketing, prospecting, the entire sales process, the sales follow-up, and service.

Data Vs. Leads

Dealers often neglect their customer database and spend too much time, money, and effort acquiring new leads through advertising and third-party lead providers. These leads usually offer very little information and are not dealer-exclusive. If dealers focus solely on attracting new customers and neglect their existing clientele, they run the serious risk of losing the loyal customers they worked so hard to acquire. A CRM captures a valuable database of information that a dealer can use to improve its customer interactions and increase retention.

Today, we know more about a customer than ever before. We know every call, email, letter, and text that we send them. We know where they live, their phone numbers, and their email addresses. We know every lead they have submitted and every vehicle they have ever looked at. We also know what vehicles they own or have previously owned. We know their service history and average repair order cost. We know the estimated mileage, trade value, and if the customer is in an equity position. We have all of this data, but are you using it? Do you have processes in place to know and understand your customers? A dealership needs to access this data to customize customer marketing and follow-up with relevant and timely messages through their preferred methods of communication. Are your marketing efforts aimed at the 2 percent of people who are in the market for a new car or the 98 percent that are not?

CRM and Your Brand

Customers are loyal to a company because of the quality of its product and/or the excellent customer service they receive. Because dealers do not have exclusivity on the products they sell, customers have many options when purchasing a new vehicle. With multiple dealerships selling the same cars, the distinguishing characteristic is how you treat your customers. CRM allows a dealer to distinguish itself by the service it provides.

Dealers talk about how dedicated they are to customer service, but delivering on it is an entirely different matter. As mentioned before, your brand is determined by your relationship with customers, which evolves from hundreds of small interactions (leads, phone calls, emails, visits, service). These interactions add up to build or destroy a brand. Since a majority of these interactions originate from CRM, it is important that it matches the image you want to portray.

A positive customer service experience should occur at every touch-point. To them, branding is about faith and trusting you when you say, “We care.” Ultimately, people don’t trust companies, they trust people. It is critical to build this trust. When a salesperson says he or she will call tomorrow, the CRM must prompt that salesperson to call. If a customer says he or she doesn’t want to receive calls at home, that should be respected. The customer expects the dealership to respond quickly when a lead is submitted. The customer expects to receive something of value in return for his or her email address, not a bunch of spam.

Today’s Customers

Today’s customers do not want to be sold to. By the time they contact a dealer, they have already done their due diligence. They need someone to engage with, to facilitate the sale, and to celebrate with when they make their decision. Customers are more likely to research the company’s brand, such as looking at online reviews or social media posts regarding past customer experiences.

Besides price, why should customers buy from you? It should be all about experience. With CRM, dealers can better serve their customers, speed up the sales process, and create a positive experience.

CRM Examples That Drive Positive Experiences

CRM desking multi-payments allows you to present customers with numbers, allowing them to choose their payment versus being pushed into a payment. This speeds up the negotiation process, improves CSI, and helps you hold gross.

When a customer comes looking for a used car you don’t have, instead of allowing them to leave, search your CRM with them for customers you sold that vehicle to three to four years ago. Offer the owner of the possible trade a free car wash or oil change for bringing his or her car in.

Create customized business campaigns to send the right message to the right person at the right time.

Introduce recently sold customers to the service department and your website to set their first oil change. Meet them in the service drive when they come in to follow up on the sale and ask for a referral.

Use the CRM data-mining tool to find customers in an equity position that qualify for a lower payment by getting a new vehicle

Make your salespeople 24-hour salespeople with a mobile CRM. They’ll be able to enter and follow up with customers from anywhere at any time.

Negative Experiences

We can’t control every interaction, and they’re bound to happen. You can, however, control how you react to negative experiences. Make sure you uncover negative experiences through surveys. If you receive a negative survey result, quickly enroll that customer into a campaign that notifies those that can correct it to immediately reach out to resolve the issue.

Communication is key to great customer service. Surprisingly, these customers often become your best customers after you have spent time listening to them and resolving their issues. Learning from your mistakes is another important aspect of good customer service. Document heated issues into your CRM notes to ensure the same mistakes aren’t repeated.

Reward Loyal Customers

Do you know your most loyal and long-standing customers, those who have bought more than four vehicles or spent over $100,000 at your dealership? Your CRM can identify and segment these customers to notify you when they visit your store. Create a customer appreciation campaign to thank and reward them for their repeat business. Offer sales and service discounts to incentivize them to continue doing business with you. Offer them rewards for their referrals. Invite them to special VIP events, such as new model introductions or a customer appreciation party.

A CRM can keep you proactively maintaining positive relationships, not just responding when something goes awry. Your CRM is even more effective when combined with marketing, branding, and customer satisfaction. Your dealers will become much more efficient when they use CRM for more than just contact information. Manage customer relationships, create better customer experiences, increase your CSI, and grow your brand today by fully utilizing your CRM.

My first job out of high school was selling cars. At that time, I remember my sales manager telling me and the other salespeople to make our daily follow-up calls. Some salespeople would say they completed their calls, even when they hadn’t. It became a constant battle. Apart from not making the calls, these particular salespeople were notorious at finding ways to cut corners and cheat the system. While this may not be the norm, how do we hold our salespeople accountable for their daily, weekly and monthly activities?

CRM Ensures Accountability

In today’s dealership, 80% of the leads received come through the phone and/or Internet. That means that 80% of their business is dependent on the salesperson’s ability to schedule appointments that drive people into the showroom. CRM utilization becomes critical when managing these processes. CRM allows salespeople to achieve new levels of production with unsold and repeat customers, thereby increasing their personal incomes. CRM enables salespeople to work more efficiently, be better organized, and better manage time and relationships. Managers now have access to reports that enable them to monitor all activities, and can help coach and motivate each salesperson.

Accountability was low at that dealership because the managers were not monitoring the daily actions of the salespeople at the dealership. What they thought was being done in the dealership, often wasn’t. They had no concrete way to show that it was or was not happening.

Tracking Opportunities

In order to improve accountability, utilize reports to track the number of new opportunities that your salespeople are entering into the CRM. Nothing is worse than seeing someone take multiple customers without entering those customers into the CRM. One common rule from dealers is: “If it isn’t in the CRM, it didn’t happen.” If data is not entered into your CRM, it throws off your marketing and ROI reports.

Tracking Phone Calls

The second key metric is phone calls. It is important that your CRM is integrated with your phone system in order to track outbound phone calls. Having salespeople mark all of their calls completed is one thing, but it’s even better to have proof that the call was made, and how long they were on the call. The top salespeople are constantly those who take the time to make the most calls. If your state allows it, record your calls. This is great for managing quality and training.

Make sure to monitor inbound calls as well. Most customers are calling multiple companies, and this is often the first contact the customer has with your business. If your salespeople don’t handle inbound and outbound calls correctly, it will ultimately affect your conversion rate.

Email and web lead tracking is also important. You need to know how many emails the salespeople are receiving and sending out, as well as how long it is taking them to respond to their web leads. Salespeople love people that come in and buy, but what about those that don’t buy, or those who are hard to get in touch with afterward? Make sure you are looking at reports that reflect this data.

Pipeline Management

Pipeline management is key for success. When salespeople get busy, the first item taken off their plate is prospecting. When salespeople stop prospecting, the pipeline eventually runs dry. Make sure that as part of tracking calls, you know the type of calls the salespeople are making. Ensure there is always a focus on prospecting. Salespeople also have a tendency to move people to “lost”. This is a way to get the CRM follow-up to stop or to hide those customers that didn’t work out. Do you have a review process in place for a manager to look at each “lost deal” and try to “save a deal”?

Activity Reports

Some CRM tools have a daily activity report or check out report that shows everything the salesperson has done for the day (opportunities, appointments, calls, talk time, emails, etc.). When I worked at one dealership, I noticed they had a problem with accountability, so they instituted a new process. Before a salesperson left for the day, they would print out a report and give it to their manager to check out. The report told the manager everything they had done as well as all of the calls they didn’t complete. Quickly, managers were able to see what had been done and what had not been done. Often, the manager would send the salesperson back to make more calls before they left. Salespeople began to feel ashamed when they handed in their sheet that showed low call volume. It motivated them to make more calls. The dealership drastically improved their follow up process and began to see an immediate increase in their sales.

Have a Plan and Set Goals

Having a plan and setting goals are essential parts of improving accountability. It is crucial for salespeople to establish a set of daily, weekly and monthly benchmarks that help them measure and manage their ultimate goal. If the goal of each salesperson is to sell “X”, don’t focus on the end goal. Monitor the activities that will help them reach that goal. It also helps if the salespeople are included in setting the goals. If you do this, they should have a personal stake in the outcome. Without inclusion, salespeople will figure out the best excuses in the world about why they can’t meet their goals.

If you have a salesperson who isn’t taking responsibility, then you may need to mentor them individually. Focus on their behavior and the issues at hand. They need to be held accountable for their actions, which can include low prospecting activity, not meeting sales targets, or low margin sales. As accountability grows, your salespeople will form a good habit of doing the things they must do on a regular basis. With a few changes, you’ll help them get on their way to becoming a top producing salesperson.

I recently visited a dealership and I talked to the general manager and asked how the store was doing. He mentioned that their sales weren’t where he wanted them to be. As I discussed with him more, he gave me his reasons that leads and traffic were down, and that they weren’t selling as much. As I listened to him, it didn’t sound like he had a defined solution yet. I felt more that he was just planning to wait until things changed. This got me thinking about what I would recommend and this is what I came up with.

Get Desirable Pre-Owned Inventory

If you don’t have the right inventory it will not bring people into the dealership and it will sit on your lot. Don’t wait for people to trade their vehicles in. Find which vehicles you have had success selling in the past (High Gross + Low Days to Sell), and acquire more of those. Look to people that you sold those vehicles to, and get those owners in to get their trade that you know you can sell. Those people will need vehicles too. This increases your serviceable customers as well. If someone comes in looking for a car you don’t have, don’t tell them you will call them if you get one and let them leave. Look through your sold database and try to find someone you sold that car to and get them to come in because you have a buyer.

Reach Out to Anyone in an Equity Position

Find people who own the previous body style, getting towards the end of their warranty and that you can get into a new car for $0 down while keeping their payment relatively the same. Look at your service drive. If anyone is bringing in a car that is out of warranty, they will most likely have a costly customer-pay RO. Let them keep that money and use their car as a trade to get into a new one. Call people who are in an equity position on their birthday and offer them a Birthday Special. This will also help you acquire more inventory.

Your Database is Gold

Quit focusing just on acquiring new customers. Your DMS and CRM are loaded with customers and prospects. Use your own data and proactively reach out to people before they start shopping. If they have submitted a lead, they have probably submitted leads to other dealers as well and the only way to win that deal is by lowering the price and your gross UNLESS you provided (and have continued to provide) a great customer experience and have created a loyal customer.

Reduce Your Response Time

Make sure that you are quick to respond. Customers are still experiencing 45 min to 2-hour+ response times at some dealerships because the lead goes to the wrong person. Make sure the leads are going to the right people who are working and available. Try and respond while they are still on your website. If a lead goes untouched for 15 minutes, every rep and manager should be notified and someone should jump on it.

Incorporate Text Messaging

Make sure your customers know they can communicate with you via text messaging. They might be in a meeting when you call them and more likely to respond. Make sure you are using a compliant opt-in and opt-out texting tool. Otherwise you are putting your dealership at risk of a costly lawsuit. Using the right texting solution allows you to track what is being communicated to the customer and will attach to the customer’s file in your CRM so that communication is preserved.

Keep Your Salespeople Accountable

Make sure people who are visiting the store get put into your CRM. Have the receptionist keep track of how many people they see pull up, walk the lot, walk through the showroom, and even visit for service. Often salespeople only put customers into the CRM when they think there is a chance to sell them. But the simple fact that they came in presents an opportunity right in front of you. Make sure you capture the customer’s data so that your reporting will be more accurate and accurately tell you what is bringing people in. If there is something that is working but the customer is not being put into the CRM, you may stop doing it. Also make sure that your salespeople ask, “What brought you in?” or “How did you hear about us?” You want to do more of what is working and you will only know if they are asking – and recording – those answers. Make sure they are making their calls. Listen to their calls. They should be asking for an appointment and not just to come by whenever. If they are not with a customer, they should be trying to get people to come in. Salespeople love the easy walk-in versus working to get someone in.

Get Managers Involved

Have managers confirm appointments. This makes sure that the salespeople are setting quality (and real) appointments and introduces customers to the manager earlier in the process rather than at the end when tensions are high and patience is low and the manager comes in to close the deal. Hold your managers accountable to manage their employees, talk to every customer and do their one-on-ones.

Speed up the Sales Process

The biggest frustration consumers have with the car buying process is that it takes too much time. Look for areas in which you can shorten the time that the customer is at the dealership. Keep the time away from the customer to a minimum. When the salesperson goes to the desk, this is when they either start talking amongst themselves and getting cold feet or shopping your competitors while sitting inside your dealership.

Create the Ideal Customer Experience

With so many dealers nearby that sell the same vehicle for the same price, why should someone buy from your dealership? It should be about the experience. What are you doing to make it the experience the customer wants? What do they want? Do you know? Something quick, easy, transparent, helpful, and without stress is a pretty good start. For most, buying a car is the 2nd most expensive thing that they will ever buy and comes with a lot of emotions. Understand their concerns and issues and proactively deal with them. Bad reviews and surveys are OK. They tell you what you need to fix. Often dealers are more concerned with the manufacturer’s CSI survey then they are of actual customer satisfaction. Reach out to customers who give positive feedback and surveys to go rate you on Google, Yelp and Facebook. But listen to the unhappy customers so that you can learn an outside perspective.

Reduce Employee Turnover

Our industry has always been plagued with turnover. Most people leave because they are not happy and/or successful. Often, we hire anyone, even someone with no experience and have them watch some training (maybe) and then throw them on the floor to sink or swim. Have your managers take time to train them on how to succeed. Give these new salespeople the tools that will help them to do their job. Managers need to make sure that they are setting goals with the salespeople, going over their metrics, coaching them, and helping them realize the tools management has in place is not to be “Big Brother,” but to help them be successful.

Automate as Much as you Can

Let your software do as much work for you as possible. Most processes get set up and forgotten. Let your software keep you organized, in contact with everyone and ensure that nothing falls through the cracks. Run lots of campaigns that are very targeted and specific with both the audience and the message.

Reward Loyal Customers

Do you know who your most loyal and long-standing customers are? Use your CRM to identify and segment these customers to receive notifications when they call or visit your business. Create a customer appreciation campaign to thank your loyal customers and reward them for their repeat business. Send them birthday, anniversary and special occasion cards in the mail. Offer discounts to entice them to continue to do business with you. Offer incentives for their referrals. Invite them to special VIP events, such as new product introductions or a customer appreciation party.

At Dealer World, part of our overall strategy is to help a dealer, or any business, SELL MORE NOW. In order to achieve this, we look at the business’ reviews and ratings. We often speak to businesses about their online presence and ratings and how they connect to the efficiency of all their advertising. It strikes me as funny that sometimes that connection does not really “click.”

In this day and age, if I am hungry for breakfast, I may turn to Google and search “restaurants near me.” Once I see the results, I guarantee you that if there is a 3.5 star restaurant really close to me, I will drive a mile past it to get to the place with a 4.8 star rating. Even if the business with 3.5 stars had an ad that was so good I could smell the bagel, I would still visit the store with 4.8 stars.

Here is the chain of events in this scenario:

• I Google what I want.
• I see an ad or a business listing.
• I read the reviews

If I am shown an ad that does not have reviews, I check the business for reviews prior to stepping into my car at all. If the rating starts with a 3 — a 3-point-anything — I will keep looking until I find a place that inspires me to get in my car and head that way, even if it is for a $4.00 breakfast bagel.

The fact that some major businesses think anything less than this is happening for their business is insane. Let’s say you are shopping for a car that costs $25,000 or more. Would you drive ten miles past a dealership to get to one with a rating that’s one whole star higher? If all other things were equal, and they normally are in franchised businesses such as the automotive business, where would you rather go: 3.5-star Charlie’s or 4.8-star Bob’s?

That said, if you show your customer an inspiring ad that makes them want to shop for the deal, the service, the personality of the store, and then serve them up 4.8 stars, that is where the magic happens.

Now let’s suppose you have gotten the customer’s attention with a great ad and they’re considering visiting your store. Before they do, however, they go into trust and verify mode. If they have to say to their spouse, “Ummm, well honey the deal sounds good, and I know Jack and Diane got a good deal there, but they only have 3.3-star rating and a bunch of 1 stars,” there is a great chance this customer moves on.

The moral of the story is this: great ads with great reviews go together like milk and Cheerios. If you want to get the best ROI from your ads, or if you think they are not working as well as they used to, maybe it is time to check your reviews before you just ditch the ads.

Take a look at all your reviews on Google, Yelp, Facebook etc. and ask yourself the bagel question: If I sold bagels, would people eat here for $4.00 or drive past me? If they are shopping for a product that costs hundreds or thousands of dollars, you can expect the same answer.

Reviews matter and affect the performance of your overall marketing strategy and spend. Let’s face it: they are not going away, so working on the quantity and quality of your reviews has to be a part of your business plan from now on.

Statistically speaking, if a runner is on third base, they have a much better chance of scoring in a baseball game than if they are on first base. However, isn’t this concept a matter of common sense? No matter how many outs there are, if you are on third base, you don’t need a chart to tell you it’s more likely you will score than if you are on first, or even second base.

“Nothing worse than a guy who is standing on third base and thinks he is the one who hit the triple.” I broke down the bases into a simple analogy for automotive sales:

• First Base – building value with a walk around. Second Base – doing a demo of the product, which, in this case, is a demo drive. Third Base – showing the service department and talking warranties.

I have preached this over 1000 times in my life. “Just like a 12 year old kid who missed touching second base in a little league game, if you did not do the demo drive, your chances of scoring go way down. Period.”

In that little league game example, as you are rounding third and heading home to score, the umpire will tell you to run back and touch second base because you missed it. In most cases, you will be thrown out and not score at all. In sales, if you rounded third and tried to close a deal without doing a great demo, the customer will ask you to back track and actually do the demo. They want to understand and fall in love with the product a little more, so again, you will probably get thrown out. Skipping second base (the demo) is not the natural progression of a sale and going back to it gives the customer time to feel the pressure of you trying to steal home. Bottom line: your chances of scoring go down. This is indisputable.

As an agency that drives traffic and opportunities to businesses, we follow the rules of sales. We want you on third base with a customer. We do not want you on third base without first hitting the other bases. We want you in a position to score more easily and more often. How does this translate into advertising? First, we have to establish what third base is in this case. We have to determine which level of the advertising and sales funnel equates to being on third base with no outs in terms of raising your chances of scoring with a customer.

I will tell you how we gauge this. To us, a lead is third base. As a Google Certified partner and a full-service agency that handles both traditional and digital media, we do things a bit differently. It’s easy for many companies like us to get caught up in the metrics and analytics game. If your agency is talking to you about your web sessions, tell them to get off first base. If they move on to conversions and a low bounce rate, tell them to get off second base. You can’t sell a car to a guy who visited your website if you never had his name, number and email to follow up with. Your chances of scoring are horrific and worse than being on first. That’s like striking out and never even getting on base.

“LEADS ARE THE EQUIVALENT OF A TRIPLE IN BASEBALL!” Once you have a customer’s name and contact information, you can take control and set the score. No, you won’t score every time, but you will score more often, and that is the name of the game. At Dealer World, my team concentrates on putting our customers on third base as often as possible. We are the lead off hitter, if you will.

Here are the only ways to count leads that are the equivalent of third base:

• A walk in
• A phone call
• A lead form filled out and submitted
• A text lead
• A web platform chat

These are your only plays. These are where you can score from. Take the time to evaluate all your marketing—from your ads, both offline and online, to your website and whether or not it is set up to convert. Be sure that all of your efforts are centered around earning the right to be on third base, i.e., getting a lead. I promise, you will sell more, score more and make more money by being the best player on the field.

Just for fun, take a look and you will see it’s all about the percentages of scoring. Everything you do should be positioning to score.

As a full-service agency, one of the hardest things we do is explain why something is down, or, in other words, why there are red arrows in the analytics report. Working in the highly competitive automotive space, many of our clients simply do not want to see red arrows. Most of them are very busy and run non-stop to be an effective leader of a fast-paced business. This means they make quick judgements all day, every day.

Therefore, when they see a red arrow or a downturn in the analytics of any kind, flares go off in their minds and they think about cutting something out of the budget or even changing agencies. The reality of the situation is this: digital is always changing. It is nearly impossible to always have green arrows for everything you track in Adwords, Analytics and other media. If it were easy to get all the arrows to be green, businesses would live in a utopia (which is something we chase daily). Again, the reality is this: the online world is a deep, dark abyss of never-ending branches that make it impossible for metrics to always be in the green.

Inside our company, Dealer World, we chase truth, not color. I thought it worthwhile to write about this topic because of the sheer black and white nature that red and green have become. Sometimes red is good and sometimes green is bad, which, in the end, only makes the digital universe harder to understand. This is especially true when it comes to a client who just wants to see green and forward movement.

Let me illustrate this with a simple example. When it comes to bounce rate, the general rule of thumb is that you want it to be low. For clarity, bounce rate is the percentage of people who land on your site and take no further action, e.g. clicking to another page. I have seen instances of websites that don’t put their phone number on the landing page and, instead, put it on a secondary page in order to force people to interact with the site. This lowers the bounce rate, but it also makes the landing page less relevant.

This practice is equivalent to putting the bread and milk in the back of the grocery store so people have to walk around more, even though they want to simply grab their groceries and “bounce” out. If you’ve noticed, the bread and milk is now front and center at many very successful stores, allowing you to “buy and bounce.” The bread and milk example is applicable to the online worlds’ user experience best practices. Google is all about relevance, and Facebook just announced that it will revise its algorithms to be more relevant in 2018. The concept of giving people what they want, thus allowing them to leave if they want, is catching on, both online and in brick and mortar stores.

Getting back to bounce rate, if we as an agency land a customer on a very relevant page that allows them to get the information they want quickly and easily, they are likely to get that information and bounce. Now on the agency’s report card, the bounce rate has gone up, i.e., there is a red arrow. I argue that customer satisfaction, trust, and the likelihood of a return visit has gone up too. I will speak very freely here and say that many agencies manipulate the platform so the arrow is green. They might land a customer a page away from what they’re looking for so the bounce rate, pages per session, and time on site all go up, yielding green arrows across the board on the analytics report.

So where is the lie? If we manipulated the truth to show green arrows to keep a client happy, that is a lie. If we truly believe that the landing page is relevant and will draw a customer in, then clicks to new pages, time on site, and all the other metrics we focus on will increase organically. That’s great digital marketing. Working the system to trick people is inefficient; they are smart and will see through it like the store that stocks their bread and milk in the back. Soon they’ll start doing all their shopping at the store they’re comfortable with, which is the store that gives them what they want up front.

Without going too deep into the lies green arrows can tell, I challenge you to look at the cause and effect of the red and green arrows when looking at your reports. Let me show you what I mean by that with an example. Let’s say your sessions are down because you did an email blast last month but didn’t do one this month. The email blast drove 4,000 hits to your website, leaving your web traffic with a positive, green arrow for that month. However, in that same month, the bounce rate climbed higher, and pages per session and time on site decreased. These were all red arrows. So which month was better? The month with 9000 visits that had a higher bounce rate and lower time on site and pages per session (red arrows), or the month with only 5000 visits but green arrows for bounce rate, time on site, and pages per session?

My answer is look at the most important metrics and let the truth come out: how many cars did you sell and what was your return on investment? These are the KPIs I write a lot about since volume of products sold and net profits are most important. The green and red arrows will always fluctuate and drive the uninformed manager/owner nuts. But if you keep units sold and net profits moving in the right direction, I think you won’t care about the lies green arrows can tell.