Sometimes people need to be babysat. It happens. Inevitably someone will prioritize something (from attending a wedding to socializing on the showroom floor) over the basic duties asked of them at work. Or assigned to them in their CRM.
Your CRM is there for a purpose. For the longest time we allowed our sales teams to carry a notepad in their back pocket to keep track of their customers. We would trust that they would pull it out once a day, flip through the past few pages, review what needs to take place, and have the necessary notes stored in able to then follow up with the store’s customers. If not this way, then you had them log all of their opportunities onto an Up Sheet that you would hope they visit once a day to complete some follow-up. Obviously, these methods fall slightly short of being an “exact science”.
So CRMs (a good CRM anyway) has allowed us to determine the time intervals that are best to follow up with our clients. They let us choose what method of communication (phone, email, text, etc) to trigger the sales team to utilize. A CRM gives us the ability to alert our team when a new lead arrives or action actions that must be taken. We can build out intricate follow-up processes that continue long-term, based on several variables, even when different events occur in the customer’s lifecycle, consistently, on-going, every time. Well that is all well and good, but it still takes someone to perform a little “dealership day care” to keep the sales and Internet teams using the system to its fullest.
There are two things that salespeople are known for:
Working their pay plans and
Not following up with customers the way they should (or at all)
It’s not their fault. Our industry seems to magnetically pull in those with self-diagnosed ADHD and lets them run wild in between our walls. Your sales team loses focus, stops dedicating their energy to the task at hand within the CRM and goes off on a tear about something else. It requires your Sales Managers to wrangle them up and get them back on point. This is where your CRM’s dashboard comes in handy.
I often ask dealers, “How do your Sales Managers manage your sales team?” Let me tell you, nowadays there are no right answers to this question without the words “ensure” “utilizing” and “CRM” in them. Your managers should be keeping a watchful eye on the CRM dashboard throughout the day to ensure your team is utilizing the CRM to its fullest and actually completing the tasks scheduled for them. Then your dealership must make it financially rewarding (or punishable) to do so. If it is 2pm and you see Jimmy drinking his Red Bull and laughing on the showroom floor, take a look at how many of the day’s tasks he completed. You will see only one of two scenarios.
a) He’s made only 2 of the 33 scheduled follow-up calls for the day (yet he has time to ham it up with the folks on the floor) or
b) He made ALL 33 of his day’s calls, somehow miraculously between the times of 9:05am to 9:09am. Oh yeah, and he left messages on every call.
Your managers must begin “managing” their teams and holding them accountable. Whether utilization is tracked, measured, and spiffed upon, or simply browbeat into the team, they must start making the calls and emails required of them. If you want to sell more cars, get your teams to honestly make the calls prescribed for them. Simple as that.
While your Internet team can fall off the wagon too, it is likely because they can get overwhelmed if they lose any time for the day. A few leads are missed, an alert isn’t received, a customer comes in that takes more of their time than expected, and there is no catching up. Unlike the sales floor where the salesperson can just not take a customer for the day and get through all of their overdue tasks, the Internet team has opportunities that pour in…. and never stop pouring in.
The reason our Virtual Dealer Training program was created in the first place is because dealers don’t have the staff or the time to track what their Internet teams are missing. You need someone to perform Dealership Day Care for your Internet teams. Your Internet Director/eCommerce Director/BD Manager often doesn’t have the time to monitor all email correspondence, but, believe me, it is necessary. Do you know what your staff is emailing to your customers? Are they answering their questions? Are they NOT calling and NOT following up with them? The CRM allows you to catch these things, but only if you are looking. While our teams are much more mature than children, they need constant guidance (and positive reinforcement through training) to keep ahead of the class.
It is time dealers do a little Dealership Day Care on behalf of their sales and Internet teams. You need to maximize the opportunities you are receiving and the only way to do that is to monitor, police, measure, and motivate your teams… through the utilization of your CRM and through consistent training and management.
Automotive Storytellers
Wednesday, October 6th, 2010So you’ve been assigned the responsibility to write the vehicle comments on behalf of your store. While this may be Internet Sales 101, it is more than apparent that dealers can use a refresher course now and again. As I research dealership after dealership and do comparison studies between my own clients and their competition, I find it disheartening that so many dealers overlook the basics.
It is not that dealerships today don’t recognize the importance of unique vehicle comments on each inventory listing. It is that there is a time investment that some don’t feel willing to give for a basic best practice. Or maybe it is that no one spelled out for them how to write quality vehicle comments in the first place.
While some use the valuable, time-saving technology that auto-generates unique comments on their behalf from the vAutos, VinSolutions, and Homenets of the world, others have to do it the old-fashioned way…. By actually writing it themselves.
Unfortunately, even when dealership staff take it upon themselves to write this ad copy for their inventory, it usually turns out limp. Majority of dealer-written descriptions include the customary smattering of lines such as
Looking for a family sedan?
This vehicle is still under factory warranty.
Just Reduced!
This is a nice one!
CarFax available.
Traction Control. Front wheel drive.
Must ask for Internet Sales Manager if you want Internet price.
As with all pre-owned vehicles normal wear and tear should be expected.
All of our pre-owned vehicles are sold “as-is”.
Now I ask you, are those statements important to some customers? Absolutely, yes. However these exact statements are far too often jam-packed together in the same description. We need to connect with people searching for our inventory on a personal level, not just educate them. There are several keys to writing engaging inventory description. Below, I’ve broken down the more important aspects.
1) Paint a picture. Create a visual by exploring the five senses. Put them in the driver’s seat. “When you sit back comfortably in your…” “As you drive, you won’t hear any engine/road noise…” “Within a second of putting your head inside this sparkling clean…. you will realize that no smoker has ever lit up anywhere near it.” And always remember to write words like “You” and “Your family”.
2) Appeal to their competitiveness. “Your neighbors/coworkers will be envious when you drive home in…” “Your family will flip head over heels…” And then, if you have the ability to research, discuss other awards/recognition the vehicle may have received. For instance, if there is a MotorTrend truck/car of the year in your inventory, make sure you mention it.
3) Descriptive words. Go buy a thesaurus (or go to thesaurus.com). It is NOT a black car with leather interior. It is a jet-black/black onyx/diamond black clearcoat flawless paint exterior filled to the brim with soft buttery tan cream leather throughout. It doesn’t have AC. It has nip-at-your-nose ice cold air conditioning. It doesn’t have am/fm/cd, it has a “crystal clear sound thumping out of its premium sound system.” Get creative. Oversell it. The more fun the better.
4) Only talk options. There is no need to mention the standard features of a vehicle in the unique description. Power, maybe, but most customers researching a vehicle don’t care about intermittent windshield wipers, power steering, rear defrost, vanity mirror, etc. Only talk about what makes the vehicle exceptional. (You’ll never see anything with a sunroof that has hand-crank windows). So only mention things such as chrome alloys like looking in a mirror, sunroof that lets you feel the cool breeze, soft as skin leather, etc…
5) Get Creative. Speak to the Consumer. Call them out. “You cannot miss the opportunity to see this one-of-a-kind, well-cared-for beast of a mud-flinging 4×4 pick-up. And as you can tell, our dealership is the home of hyphenated words.” As I mentioned, HAVE FUN.
Don’t think of it as a chore. Think of it as writing a story, telling a tale, or singing a song. Make it sound different than the rest. Overemphasize. It will help tremendously. Learning how to write the descriptions will make you that much stronger when you have to verbally describe the vehicle to a customer over the phone as well so the benefits of this skill do not just stop at more eyeballs on your merchandised inventory.
From someone with a journalistic background who fashions himself a storyteller, allow me to say that it does take practice and quite a little bit of creativity. So get inventive and try to truly create some unique comments. By including the variables above, you too can be a master of automotive storytelling.
Tags: ad copy, advertising, auto, automotive, best practices, dealers, inventory, joe Webb, management, merchandising, online, unique comments, vehicles, writing vehicle descriptions
Posted in Blog, Merchandising | No Comments »