"Uncovering the Missing Piece: Maximize Your Marketing and Sales Potential (Part Two)"

I asked this question in Part One of this series: Are you treating your customers with care?

In Part One of this two-part series, we focused on the missing delta for better marketing opportunities and maximizing your ROI. In this article we will focus on the missing delta regarding the dealership’s sales engagement process.  Let me share some similar issues I am seeing across multiple dealership CRM audits.

Too often managers want more opportunities at the expense of proper care of what is already in the CRM. What is the delta for missed opportunities and what could the potential increase in sales be if leaders apply the same focus on data as we addressed earlier regarding marketing.

A common conversation during these audits is, “We were selling “X” but now we are trending only “Y”. (Dealers fill in the blanks). We need more opportunities.” My initial answer is before any marketing increase happens or change in marketing strategy, let’s look at the engagement process itself and execution of the process.

Here are some things I look for and you should in your customer engagement process.

1.    Is your team responding quickly? As discussed, conversational commerce, being present when the consumer has a question is becoming more important for retention in the sales funnel. The key is to answer the consumer’s question in the same manner as if they were standing in the dealership showroom.

If the dealership website is still using forms, the sooner the sales team responds the better, using text, phone, and email until it is known which mode of communication the customer desires.

2.    Is your team really answering the consumer’s questions? Too often a templated response goes out and while it may be upbeat and cordial, it does not answer the customer’s question. I have seen, “Did you receive all the information you requested?” yet nothing was ever sent to the consumer. Or in this case, mentioning what information for which product. “Did you receive the information on the 2023 Acura RDX you requested…?”

Respond as specifically as possible and have a call to action such as, “give me a call” or “respond to this email” and let them know you will follow up since this information is important to them.

Why should the response mention, “this information is important to you”? These individuals have moved from the consideration funnel into the engagement funnel. They have moved beyond the research or consideration phase and have given their personal information because they have questions that need your team’s expertise.

The problem with a consumer having to wait for someone to respond to their form submission is the customer has moved on with their day. They may not be available to speak with your team when it is convenient to the salesperson. This is why moving towards conversational commerce with chat, answering the customer’s question in the moment keeps the consumer engaged, possibly moving them down into the path to purchase.

3.    Does your dealership have a communication plan mapped out for the first 5-7 days? Does it contain relevant questions each day to engage the consumer? Is your team leaving the same message on the consumer’s phone or in a text as they are in email? Or is the process just to ask the consumer when they are coming in to see the vehicle? 

Remember this phase is called engagement. It is a mistake to treat every customer as if they are ready to negotiate a purchase as you speak to them. Hence, only asking them if they want to come in today for a test drive or an appointment. Engaging questions move them towards the purchase so plan accordingly.

A good exercise is to ask your team what questions they would ask a customer who was in the actual dealership and pointed to a specific vehicle? I am sure the list would come quickly. Take the 5-7 most relevant and plot them out, one for each day, and use it to communicate with consumers for the first 5-7 days.

By doing so, your team is asking relevant questions to engage the consumer and most likely will get a response, thus creating the desired outcome. Once this is planned out, installed, and trained, the data will show you where the missing opportunities are.

Let’s walk through an example using a dealership that sells 100 vehicles in a month.

Let’s use the 50/50 ratio regarding appointments and sales. 50% of the appointments scheduled show up, and 50% of the appointments that show up results in a sale. In this example, to sell 100 vehicles, the dealership would need 200 consumers to come into the dealership. This means 100 individuals chose not to or could not finalize their purchase.

It must be understood that some of those 100 individuals were unable to purchase due to outside circumstances and the dealership could not find a way to complete the transaction. Keeping with the 50% rule, let’s assume half of these 100 customers could not purchase. That leaves 50 individuals who came into the dealership but chose not to purchase or decided to postpone the purchase. Let’s put those 50 to the side for a moment.

If there were 200 consumers who did show up for their appointment, based on the 50% rule, there would need to be 400 appointments scheduled. In our example, this means 200 consumers did not show up for their appointment.

Adding the two groups together there are 250 engaged consumers who were in the last two stages of the sales funnel. Does the dealership have a process to re-engage these consumers? If your team was able to encourage 10-15% of them to come back into the dealership (25-37) and if your team could sell half of them, that is an extra 12-18 vehicles.

What about the 100 vehicles that were sold each month. Does your dealership have a process for salespeople to ask each of their new customers for a referral? What if 10-20% of these happy customers give a referral (20) and half of these referrals came into the dealership to discuss a purchase. If your team followed their process and sold 50% of these new opportunities, this would result in an additional 5 vehicles. As you can see there were 17-23 more potential sales just maximizing the current opportunities this month alone. This puts the dealership back on pace. Let alone consistently staying connected to your customers throughout their ownership journey in order to retain them for future sales and service revenue.

Lastly, what if you challenged your salespeople to set one appointment on average a day outside of what marketing generates each month. If the dealership has 7 salespeople, that would be an additional 140 appointment a month (20 per salesperson) and at the 50% show/sold ratio from the earlier example, this will lead to an additional 35 vehicles sold. A potential addition of 50-55 vehicles without adding to the marketing budget.

As you can see, by understanding the data required to maximize your engagement process, better decisions can be made about when to increase marketing, adjust strategy and maximizing the engaged consumers the dealership has in their sales funnel. Accountability is key. But that is for another article, another day.

If I can be of service or if your dealership is looking for a CRM audit, please reach out to me. glenn@pcgcompanies.com

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Join me in Austin the May for the Digital Marketing Strategies Conference. This conference is going to help you upgrade your dealership’s customer experience focusing on personalizing the customer’s shopping experience, maximizing first party data, marketing automation, AI and much more. Don’t miss this exciting event. Tickets available here. https://bit.ly/3ZwLF03