How to set more appointments with just an email address

Leads are flooding into your dealership every day from multiple industry providers with minimal shopper information, which is causing chaos. I have seen most dealerships Internet or BDCs operated like a trauma center. You first email the shopper (to stay OEM compliant), then call or text everyone with the same velocity hoping to set an appointment to come into the dealership and purchase a car because if they put in a lead, then they are ready to buy right NOW, right?

Unfortunately, not everyone is at the same stage in the vehicle purchasing cycle, nor are all customers the same. Yet, salespeople send almost identical information or set off to have a similar text or call with only slight variations in approach and messaging to every lead. This potential mismatching is causing salesperson fatigue as well as shopping disappointment. Let's leave Digital Retailing leads out of this conversation because that adds another complete layer of mismatched communication. So how do you break this cycle to help you categorizes your leads more efficiently into opportunity buckets? The first thing is to look at the efficient and ruthless lead development is being done in the B2B world.

We begin by understanding your shopper more deeply than just a name, email, and maybe a phone number. To accomplish this understanding, you have to invest in time-consuming research, which is challenging to do with the product automotive dealerships are using today. First, you have to research each lead to uncover the insights and a greater understanding of your shopper, including his/her buying motivation, timing, social, demographic, and lifestyle information. Where can you get this type of information? Big data can play a pivotal role in helping peel back and uncover the persona of your shoppers so you can find the most effective way to connect and style to communicate with them. It is more important than ever to quickly develop trust and deliver a message that resonates with your shoppers. The email is the center point of expanding data on each of your leads. It is actually more important than a phone number to create a comprehensive profile of your shopper.

Current automotive CRMs providers haven't met the needs of sale lead enrichment or pipeline management very well. Yet other industries have dialed this in so precisely that the results are exponentially better than anything I have ever seen in automotive. We seem to still be on an old rusty lead treadmill chasing shoppers like it is 1995 using outdated XML/ADF for limited data transmission and stuffing everything else in the notes field.

The automotive dealership marketplace needs sales lead enrichment on every opportunity to start. This will enable salespeople and BDC reps to quickly gain shopper context and increase connection rates with leads by having more data about each shopper to fine-tune their first conversation. Alternative available data could include additional phone numbers, email addresses, social media handles, home addresses, current vehicles, and more to have a better understanding of the shopper's motivation while increasing the connect rate with every lead. The higher the connection rate, the more dealership leads turn into a test drive appointment, the more test drives, the more dealership sales.

In conclusion, now is the time to use data to gain the additional insights you need to sell more vehicles faster while delivering a more satisfied shopper during the experience.