Today, it’s common to see people facedown in their phones, texting instead of making a call. Nearly 40 percent of U.S. households don’t even have a landline anymore. When it comes to customer service in particular, people dread calling a company because they know a less-than-enjoyable experience stuck in an automated IVR system awaits.
Given these observations, and with Generation Z fast approaching the vehicle-purchasing age, you might think talking on the phone soon will be completely extinct in the modern dealership. Here’s a surprise: According to recent data, that’s not the case at all.
According to data from DealerSocket’s Dealership Action Report, dealership phones are actually ringing off the hook. Phone appointments continue to be a top lead source for dealerships, and these calls have become even more valuable sales and service opportunities (“hot leads”) than ever before. Why?
Consumers have moved use of the phone from the beginning of the sales process to the end. Consumers today are doing their research online and shopping around, meaning by the time they do pick up the phone, they’ve usually already made a decision about what car they’re interested in or what service they need.
Despite this trend, dealerships still lack proper processes and phone management, including limited accountability, limited data insight, and limited support overall. Sales opportunities are knocking (or in this case, calling), and no one is answering!
One possible solution for dealerships is Car Wars, a premier call tracking solution that integrates with DealerSocket’s CRM. Dealers turn to Car Wars when they struggle with limited insight into phone performance from their CRM, want to convert more calls to appointments or service visits, and want to create a culture of phone accountability.
Here are four easy ways to use technology to boost productivity and profitability through better phone management and make every call count.
- Don’t just track your calls – analyze them, too. Tracking and analyzing phone calls helps dealers determine which phone leads are “hot,” requiring quick follow-up, and which are “cold,” or lower priority. Without this kind of automatic tracking, you may miss out on countless sales and service opportunities to competition or waste precious time on unpromising leads.
DealerSocket’s partner technology, Car Wars, integrates with your CRM to not only track calls, but also help boost productivity through a competition-based platform. Car Wars gives dealers a scoreboard-based platform that helps them physically see their success rate and motivates them to perform better on the phone.
- Create accountability. How do you currently hold salespeople accountable when they’re on (or off) the phone? By number of calls made in a given day? By number of calls converted to sales? Do you keep track at all?
Some technologies only track simple stats, like length and number of calls, which often doesn’t give dealers the whole picture. Car Wars features Call Claim, which require sales agents to identify themselves by entering their unique four-digit code into the platform. This not only boosts the number of calls claimed by salespeople, but also increases accountability by putting the salesperson’s name and picture next to every logged phone call. Their phone calls are monitored and scored live by a Car Wars team to increase visibility and competition, helping sales take ownership of its performance.
- Create a solid lead-management process. How do you currently determine whether phone leads are hot or cold, and how do you manage them? Without the necessary tracking and analysis tool and with so much data available from numerous calls, it can be a complicated process or a guessing game .
With the proper tools, tracking phone leads becomes strategic and purposeful. With Car Wars, managers save time by not having to review and assign calls or calculate each team member’s performance separately. Also, CRM to-do lists are automatically created for salespeople when they enter their phone code, making their lives much easier and their calls more streamlined.
- Measure your success. With the right tools and processes in place to measure your sales team’s performance side by side on a common platform, you can ensure fewer calls go to voicemail, fewer calls go unanswered, and fewer callers hang up. This puts more sales leads in your salespeople’s hands, enriching their careers and your dealership’s success.
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Don’t forget service.Your fixed ops provides enormous opportunity for profitability. By carefully monitoring customers that are due for service and having a representative make proactive calls to schedule appointments, dealerships have a real opportunity to boost their bottom line.
With phone appointments continuing to be a top source of both sales and service opportunities, they are becoming an even more valuable lead source than ever before. Smart dealers will use all the tools available to them to optimize call leads to generate revenue and increase profitability.
Learn more by visiting dealersocket.com/call-management.