5 Star Reputation – Digital Experts for Independent Dealers

How to Keep Your Dealership’s Leads from Slipping Through the Net

64 per cent of customer enquiries slip through the net as a result of a lack of contact or stock not being available, according to research conducted by Click Dealer, which means that your dealership could be missing a lot of valuable opportunities. To rectify this situation, you should seriously consider refining your lead management processes.

Without a clear-cut process, the decision of how to manage enquiries is left to the discretion of each individual sales member, which could lead to inconsistency and make it difficult to stay on top of leads, increasing the chances of them becoming lost.

Tracking Leads

Your lead management process should be comprehensive, incorporating stages which prompt you to take action from the point of first contact to the point of sale, or the point at which the lead is conclusively not worth pursuing any longer.

Tracking is an important part of lead management. As soon as an enquiry is made, it should be logged in a CRM system or a spreadsheet or database dedicated to lead tracking, along with the date of arrival and the lead source. You should update your records with thorough notes from every interaction with the customer thereafter.

Responding to Leads

On average, it takes car dealers six hours to respond to a query, whereas consumers will typically only wait an hour after making an enquiry before they start searching for another vehicle. Responding efficiently is vital and you may want to establish a time frame in which your sales team must answer a query.

One major issue that dealers face is that a number of enquiries come through after hours. While some customers will understand that you cannot be on hand to answer calls and emails 24/7, others will not be as patient. Setup an automatic message which informs enquirers that you will be in touch when you re-open and make responding to last night’s queries a priority for the day.

Following Up

As you will know, many leads are not straightforward and some will need that extra bit of nurturing to transform them into a sale. A good way to keep customers engaged is to send follow-up emails. Make sure that your emails are persuasive and also responsive, because if they do not work on every screen size, and customers have to scroll left and right to read them, they may simply be disregarded.

Pulling the Plug

After the lead arrival, response and follow up stages, the final point in your lead management process should be determining the fate of a lead. Committing your efforts to a lead that is not going to result in a sale is a waste of your time which could be better spent focusing on warm leads, so you need to know when to make the call. You may want to establish a time limit or a maximum amount of follow-up emails before a lead should be considered lost.

Having a solid process in place should help to ensure that all enquiries receive the same treatment and few slip through the net.

Lead Management Software

If leads are still getting lost or you want to refine your process, you may want to consider implementing lead management software. With ClickEngage™ , any portal or website enquiries will automatically be responded to via SMS or email 24/7. The message that customers receive will include a link to the online retailing platform on which they can create a personalised deal.

If they want to arrange a part exchange or a finance plan, they will receive an instant valuation or quote according to your pre-set parameters and their deal can be saved so if they leave the site, they can come back to their offer and pick up from where they left off. Not only will leads be managed from arrival to reservation for you with ClickEngage™, but your enquiries will be taken care of after hours, meaning that your customers will never have to wait.

For further information about ClickEngage™, get in touch today by emailing marketing@clickdealer.co.uk, calling us on 01782 478220 or via our contact page.



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