Share This Article
There are a couple of golden rules to why we sell cars for a living – 1. We love cars (I mean, really, really, love cars) and 2. Profit. Connecting these pillars is our ability to look at a person and know immediately what kind of car they need or may want. We are, in other words, people persons, and our success depends on this.
How do you match people to cars, and the cars to people? In other words, how do you manage your leads?
Ensuring that your leads are managed with equal love and attention can make or break the success of your team. Here are three ways you can use to make sure that your customer service vision shines at your dealership.
1. Never Lose a Lead
Picture this – just when you have enough time to pick up the phone to call Phil back about the 2019 Subaru, Candice suddenly blows up your phone about paperwork. Topping it off is a test drive appointment with John in 30 minutes! Several hours fly by and now you’re stumped on what it is you meant to do earlier in the day.
It’s challenging to find the time and opportunity to follow up on every single lead. This is where a good system comes into play. Establishing a detailed follow-up system for your sales team powers up your lead communication as it ensures no single sales opportunity is forgotten in the daily chaos of dealership life.
2. Retire the Sticky Notes
Do you or any member of your team keep customer data, dates, and car information on sticky notes? We’ve all seen this – who knows, maybe that’s your current experience and there’s a certain logic to the chaos.
Perhaps you’re not a sticky notes person, but instead someone who uses a CRM that doesn’t communicate with your DMS or inventory management system. Less chaotic than the sticky notes, but it still leaves the window wide-open for human error.
These various channels can overlap, create blindspots, and possibly paralyze the success of sealing a deal.
Organizing all of your inbound and outbound communication in one place boosts the productivity of your sales team and enables you to monitor and manage all customer leads.
3. Later Lead-Skater
How does that old Shakespearean proverb go? “To keep your salespeople plump and happy, feed them more sales.” Something like that, probably.
Feeding a steady stream of leads to your sales team enables their success as well as the dealership’s. But who gets the leads and what does this process look like?
Clip the Klepto’s wings through prevention. Put a process in place that allows you to divvy up the leads in any way you see fit, such as a round robin format. This gives you the power to control the flow of leads and the happiness of your sales team.
In other words, how you manage your leads expresses how you care about your customers and your sales team. Optimizing your lead management will produce happier customers and also a happier sales team.