5 Best Practices of Lead Follow-Up for Car Dealers
03 April 2019
One of the biggest objectives of any auto dealership’s online marketing team is to bring in as many leads as possible and add them to the dealership’s CRM system. However, there is a lot more to do if you want your leads to give you their business.
The most important aspect of it is following-up, figuring out what they desire, and making it available for them.
In this article, we’ll share some of the best practices that your vehicle dealership can put to use when performing lead follow-ups, in order to increase the efficiency of your dealership’s business development department and the valuable time of your sales team.
Don’t Waste Time
Follow up with a lead who enters your car dealership CRM system as soon as you possibly can, regardless of whether you do it via phone call, email, text message or any other route. Every lead should be given to a sales staff within the first 5 minutes of receiving them, and the salesperson must follow up with the lead within that time as well.
This is quite important, since a prompt follow-up signals to the lead that your dealership is eager to do business with them.
Calling a lead within 5 minutes of receiving the request gives your auto dealership a much higher chance of booking an appointment and subsequently closing a deal.
In case you can’t connect with them the first time around, don’t give up yet. Send along reminder mails or call them back, but do so in a way that appears to be subtle. Filling up their email inbox or voicemail with spam will repel potential customers.
Understand Your Leads
Before attempting to reach out to a particular lead, ensure that the sales or marketing staff of your car dealership is familiar with all the information that is stored about that lead in the dealership CRM system.
Be thorough with details such as their behavior on your auto dealer website, which car or trim level they’ve shown interest in, any specific doubts or questions they have raised, and so on.
This enables your dealership sales staff to be relevant and to the point when dealing with these prospective customers, and not waste their time by asking questions that have already been answered by them.
Never Automate Your Initial Responses
Automated emails in general do not provide satisfactory answers to customer queries, making them unhelpful for moving the purchasing process forward. Even if it is a tough ask to respond manually to all your leads, segment your leads and respond to the most lucrative ones with a human touch.
This will go a long way in making potential customers feel valued, thereby increasing the chances of them doing business with your auto dealership.
As we mentioned earlier in this article, make sure your car dealership sales staff reach out to your leads within the first 5 minutes. Another important point is to always set an appointment. Don’t be shy of using multiple channels, including phone, text messaging, email, etc., to connect with your leads, as long as your lead aren’t flooded with communication from your dealership.
Qualify Your Leads Every Time
This is probably one of the most important aspects of lead follow-up. It’s perfectly possible to get a ton of leads to your auto dealership website. However, despite the fact that your dealership’s leads may be pre-qualified, your sales staff will still be required to take them through the sales process in order to close the sale.
If your car dealership sales and marketing staff skip over this part, you might be throwing away your hard earned money on fruitless schemes.
Offer Different Value Each Time
It’s of very high importance for a car dealer to offer its customers and leads something of value every single time they reach out to them. This could be an offer for a test drive, an over the phone financing option, a special offer or promotion specifically for them, and so on.
Auto dealers need to use their experience and expertise in order to anticipate what a particular lead will be interested in, depending on their location in the sales funnel. Being repetitive will never work. Always provide them with offers that are appropriate for their stage in the purchasing process.
For more information about lead follow-up methods, Contact Us.
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