RickMcLey
sales & training solution
THE EVOLUTION OF AUTOMOTIVE CRM
Although marketing campaigns and strategies go back a long way, most dealerships used to rely on generic means to attract potential customers and gain loyal ones. Before the dawn of CRM, most dealerships were not ingenious when it came to having personalized customer relationships. The Dawn of CRM
CRM emerged in the 1990s and this early version was called “database marketing.” Not as intricate as today’s CRM, it comprised of tools to print letters and basic reminders for users to complete specific tasks. Although helpful, it wasn’t a seamless process and information in the database tended to be unorganized and hard to track, update and retrieve real-time activities. The Rise of CRM
The 1990s saw great improvements in CRMs, and dealerships began to see the benefits of using a tool that offers a method of sales force automation (SFA). Dealerships began to regard customer service as a continuously evolving skill, rather than something to be used whenever necessary.
Today’s CRM
Today, CRM allows dealerships to maximize their own data and achieve maximum customer retention. More advanced tools are available, and managers now enjoy benefits including desking tools, service MPI, “save a deal,” finance menu, data mining marketing tools, owner loyalty rewards, Up systems, portfolio management tools and many other systems. With the CRM’s online capabilities, storage issues for huge databases can now be resolved, which is especially critical for large dealer groups. Most dealerships have adopted the Internet as a source of channeling data back and forth. The next challenge for CRM providers was to make all systems and software work together. CRM/ DMS companies began to purchase companies that have specific functionality and integrate them together with their legacy software. This fulfilled the need of an all-inclusive system that set on top of their DMS system.
The Next Generation of Sales and Service Management System
In the last four years, we have seen a dramatic increase in tablet and smartphone utilization from both consumers and dealership staff. The number of people in the U.S. using smartphones/tablet in 2010 was 62.6 million users. According to Statista, it is expected to grow to 220 million by 2018. Your customers and staff are using the smartphone and tablet on an average of 150 times a day to look at emails, social media and other tools. Now, bring in the idea of the Internet of Things (IoT), which ties all devices into one data source or application. IoT is expected to generate large amounts of data from diverse locations that is both aggregated and high velocity, thereby increasing the need to better index, store and process such data. Some CRM and DMS companies are trying to adapt their solutions to be mobile- and tablet-friendly by designing a responsive version of their Web-version tool or building a dumbed-down version of their software to work as a native application. The problem here is the speed in which their data is retrieved within their native application. The answer would be to rebuild their data structure or build a responsive page that will access the same data as their online Web tool. The drawback here is that Web browsers update their code weekly; a software company would need to update code just as often. With the movement to smartphones and tablets, a staff member is more likely to use a tool that is optimized similarly to the Web version. Let’s look at a couple of scenarios of the old software system. A CRM has an average data entry efficiency of 55 percent, primarily because a sales or service person must stop their process to input or look up customer information. Employees, on average, utilize only 10 percent of the software’s features in a system. With the use of smartphones and tablets, this should not even be an issue; the mobility of software allows for real-time, on-the-spot data input and access. The question is: Does the software allow for this? Today’s systems should allow inventory management from anywhere, lead management from the lot, desking from a tablet, lease negotiation from the customer’s home with an instant response from dealership, daily work plans from a mobile phone, service shop loading from a tablet and service estimates on the service drive. The key to speeding up processes is finding a solution that is allencompassing to the transparency the customer is demanding. AutoNation and Sonic have announced they are trimming the buying cycle down dramatically to improve customer experience. Although customer experience is important, let’s look at logic. We have grown up in the industry learning that, if I turn my parts inventory more times in a year, I have fewer obsolete parts and my profit goes up. If I turn my new or used car inventory faster, my profit goes up. If I write more hours per RO and keep my effective labor rate in line, my profit goes up. Despite knowing all this, the time it takes a customer to purchase a car has been flat for the 30 years I have been in the industry: four hours. What would it look like if we could incorporate a transparent sales process that would allow the salesperson to have figures available after the demo drive on their PC, tablet or smartphone to show the customer? To be able to make an offer from their desk and know if the manager accepts the offer without leaving their desk? With the average profit per deal staying steady, what would it look like if a salesperson could cycle a customer through the “meet and greet” to the finance process in half of the time? Dealerships need to recognize that the more customers a staff member can process, the more profit they’ll make. By providing a CRM that can help them shorten the buying process, you’re helping the customer, the salesperson and your bottom line. For your free copy of “Getting From a Four-Hour Delivery to Under Two,” please email me at the address below. Rick McLey is the founder and CEO of Interactive 360, Inc. He can be contacted at 866.438.9808, or by email at rmcley@autosuccessonline.com.
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