As any good internet manager will tell you, gaining more leads and converting more leads are two separate metrics. Great merchandising and pricing can help your dealership create more leads, but if these leads are not converting into sales, it can feel like a wasted effort.
Our digital world has created a customer base that expects instant responses and precise information. At Surfwrench, it’s our experience that lead conversion comes down to two factors: speed and accuracy. Buckle up and channel your inner John Wick, because we’re diving into the strategies that will transform your lead conversion game and make sure you don’t miss out on potential sales!
More Screens at Your Workstations:
When we see a sales staff that is operating off of single screens for their desktops or laptops, we see a staff that is operating at a fraction of their true efficiency. This is true of sales people on the floor, but also your sales people in fixed operations. As more and more of the process gets digitized, the more tasks can be done and informed quickly by using multiple screens. This isn’t a plug for Samsung, this is actual science!
Having your sales staff be able to have a vehicle detail page open while talking to a customer, while also having the backend information or CRM active at the same time and being able to get there with a simple TAB or scroll to the other screen saves invaluable time in the sales process. Multiple Screens also allows for sales reps to engage chat or text customers with all of the relevant information on one unit, or a longer list of potential units of inventory that they might be interested in. For some Sales and F&I managers a third screen could be strongly recommended.
Push Notifications: On
Push notifications are integral to the speed portion of the response. By sending your phone a link to a conversation that is happening with a customer online, you have the ability to jump in and answer questions that they might have on a specific unit, or broader questions in general. How accurately you answer these questions is key, and one of the most common ones that we have seen since the pandemic is asking for availability. Having accurate information on this is key, and easily attainable through the use of the Surfwrench Digital Inventory Pipeline.
Better Lead Qualification
Not all leads are created equal. Some are your competition straight up trolling you. Some are ready to buy at that very moment, but can’t afford it. There are always going to be these outliers, but most of the leads that come through your paid channels and website are probably legit. How you measure this data against the larger subset can factor out a lot of the bad from the good, and it is important when considering conversion rates as a whole. Facebook Advertising campaigns have a 10:1 bad to good lead ratio, but that doesn’t necessarily rule them out.
Overnight/Off Hour Coverage
One of the dealerships that we work with has seen, over the course of 6 months a consistent 50% of their leads coming in when their business is closed. This provides both interesting opportunity and challenges for any sales staff, but lines up with border search patterns on vehicle purchases in general. Let me explain.
For some strange reason, at least in the WNY: Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse NY markets – the majority of specific vehicle searches happen at night. While people are more likely to research makes, models, and trims in a border sense during the daytime – a good chunk of the actual looking at specific cars is happening after hours. Sometimes, way after hours!
If you have a BDC handling the leads, this should not be a huge issue. Throw in a small third shift with decent bonuses on quick responses and getting people into the dealership for these after hours leads. If your leads are going right to the sales staff, this gets more complicated. In some cases the response time will be very poor, with leads going to people who are asleep or have their push notifications turned off. Either way, integrating things like AI or Appointment Bookings for responses can massively improve the overall conversion rate of your online leads because it provides a solid next point of contact and next step in the sales process.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
I once had a data engineer describe conversational AI as, “your dumbest employee”. However, over the course of a conversation we discussed how you make it “less dumb” and it essentially all comes down to the inputs that you have and the data that the conversational AI is referencing. Datapoints such as the Surfwrench Inventory Pipeline, SEO Enhanced Vehicle Detail Pages, and well managed websites can turn this dumbest employee into the one with all of the answers instantly, as long as your data is correct! With Surfwrench, it is always correct. That is the inherent disconnect between AI and car dealerships as it exists right now, and we are working with both AI vendors and dealerships to bridge this gap and make them as accurate as humanly possible.
Ready to Convert More Leads? Surfwrench’s Got Your Back
In short, the tools that you give your sales staff to make the conversions are just as important as the leads themselves. Look at individual sales people’s channel conversion rates and come up with something smarter than round robin, while integrating all of the technology that you need to make these conversions faster and more accurate, to buy more often on the first pencil.
For more information regarding how Surfwrench can help you increase your conversion rates and take your dealership’s sales to the next level, please reach out to us at 877-653-5828 or [email protected].
