The right CRM partner should make life easier on your sales team. If you’re not moving more vehicles and reaching the right buyers, it may be time to reevaluate your partnership. When Tynan’s Auto Group, in Aurora, CO, partnered with VinSolutions CRM and VinSolutions Automotive Marketing Platform (AMP), they were quick to notice the workload shift from busywork to an increase in both sales and repair orders for the group. Here’s how VinSolutions CRM and VinSolutions AMP made life easier for the staff at Tynan’s Auto Group.
Straight-forward vs. Task-overload
According to recent research, most automotive salespeople only stay at their job between one and two years. Super-fast turnover can become an issue for both service managers and sales managers trying to get teams up-to-speed on marketing initiatives as well as appointment-setting and basic technology training.
For Tynan’s Auto Group, working with VinSolutions CRM help to streamline the workflows for their employees, keeping task-management to a more reasonable, straight-forward level. “VinSolutions helps our salespeople sell more cars via the automation with the customer base as well as the customized follow-up to be able to tailor the customer to where they’re at in the sales funnel,” explained KateLynn Bregar, Sales Manager and Internet Sales Director.
By not overwhelming the professionals working on lead follow-up and outreach, VinSolutions CRM better prioritized their workload. The result was a whopping 36% boost in year-over-year vehicle sales. On the service side, they saw a 50% jump in repair orders.* Read the Tynan’s case study.
Let Automation Take on the Busywork
When it comes right down to it, your employees may become less engaged and less satisfied with their job roles when burdened with too much busywork. The key is focusing salespeople on personal outreach to in-market customers while automating outreach to former and prospective customers.
Fortunately, when Tynan’s Auto Group partnered with VinSolutions Automotive Marketing Platform, they utilized Automated targeting and outreach to remove some of the workload from the sales team. “It doesn’t inundate the salesperson with a ton of tasks that make it challenging to get through their day,” explained Bregar. “We want them to come in and find the “hot list” – we want them to know their customers are ready to buy and the customers that are in their database are customers that actually want to be reached out to.”
Conclusion
According to the 2023 State of Automotive Hiring Report, sales professionals felt most loyal to their dealership when their work was considered fulfilling. (And this goes above and beyond salary.)
The right CRM partner can deliver a better experience for your staff. It can help them systematically sell more cars while reducing the tedious work that often leads to turnover and a poor experience for your customers.
Learn how VinSolutions CRM and VinSolutions Automotive Marketing Platform made life easier for the sales and service staff at Tynan’s Auto Group.
* Based on the experiences of one dealership, Tynan’s Auto Group, Automotive Marketing Platform data showed a year over year improvement in these key performance indicators when comparing Q4 2022 (Oct. 1–Dec. 31) and Q4 2023 (Oct. 1–Dec. 31).
Everything hinges on delivering a better customer experience, especially in a competitive market. Your dealership may have amassed a huge customer database, developed key marketing messages and strategies, and hired the top professionals you could find. Yet, 88% of consumers say their experience matters as much as your products or services.
Tynan’s Auto Group, based in Aurora, CO had worked hard to build a bigger customer database. But when engagement began to dwindle in their marketing campaigns, they knew they needed a flexible CRM partner who was willing to help them fine-tune the experience.
“Let’s be real: CRMs do basically the same thing, but what VinSolutions is able to do is customize to the Tynan’s way.” – KateLynn Bregar, Sales Manager and Internet Sales Director, Tynan’s Auto Group
Reach Your Database with VinSolutions CRM
Tynan Auto Group’s Sales Manager, KateLynn Bregar, needed a partner who could help their team navigate the changes and challenges they faced. She sought not only robust CRM technology but deep automotive expertise to help the team develop more targeted campaigns. With VinSolutions CRM and Automotive Marketing Platform, Tynan’s Auto Group was able to better address their customers’ unique vehicle needs. Tynan’s Marketing Account Manager provided data-driven insights to guide the Tynan’s communication strategy.
The New Reality: A Diverse and Dynamic Approach to Sales and Service
According to Bregar, one of the biggest shifts in recent years is the behavior of consumers who are either hesitant or unwilling to engage in person with the dealership. “People do not want to come into the dealership – they want to be emailed or texted or called,” explains Bregar. Knowing your customers’ specific preferences and being able to offer a more custom experience that addresses their vehicle and financing needs helps your sales and service professionals communicate more effectively. Rather than overcommunicating, VinSolutions helped her team send timely, targeted messages that addressed specific needs. “VinSolutions offers a diverse and dynamic way of doing that to provide information effectively and efficiently.”
Conclusion
The customer’s expectations of the automotive experience may already be biased. The good news? This experience is on the upswing—69% of consumers have reported being highly satisfied with the overall vehicle shopping and buying process. Even better is the fact that partnering with the right CRM provider can help dealers deliver more targeted, timely messages that reach consumers and overcome common deliverability challenges.
Learn how Tynan’s Auto Group fine-tuned the customer experience when they partnered with VinSolutions CRM by watching their story here.
Managing your retail automotive sales professionals is a role that takes leadership, experience, and especially in today’s shifting environment, fast, flexible, and pinpoint accurate data from your CRM. When it comes right down to it, the simple formula for selling more cars and being a profitable sales team is simple: leverage the data within your CRM; sell more cars.
VinSolutions is backed by Cox Automotive’s powerful first-party data insights which help dealers reach more leads and set more appointments—which translates to more sales for you and your sales team. The data within your CRM can help you monitor specific KPIs and measure the metrics that lead to higher sales. So, we sat down with three of our top experts, Mario Scampoli, Sr. Performance Manager, Angie Miletich, Client Performance Manager, and Kevin Schmitt, Client Performance Manager for an in-depth, four-part round-table discussion to uncover the Metrics that Matter.
Read below to explore our experts’ shared tips, best practices, and the top four VinSolutions reports that help ensure your sales professionals are meeting targeted benchmarks and getting the coaching needed to thrive in today’s post-pandemic landscape.
Tip: Accountability without a plan is just wishing that things will get better. Put it in writing, whether it’s for your salesperson team, leadership, or BDC. And make sure everyone signs it.
The New Retail Automotive Mindset
The past several years presented unique and unexpected challenges with low inventory and a rapid shift to online digitization, with a silver lining of record profits. But the market is shifting yet again, and more inventory and incentives means a more competitive environment. And, as a leader, you will be expected to help your sales team keep up! According to the most recent Car Buyer Journey Study from Cox Automotive, both car-buyers and inventory are back. When surveyed, a whopping 71% of respondents suggested they would be shopping with an omnichannel approach, which combines both online and in-person activity. 1 It’s more important than ever to take a look at the data from within your CRM and ensure your sales team is actively engaging leads, completing tasks, and communicating with customers before your competitors beat you to it.
“It’s the math and science of the car business. Productivity equals contact equals appointments equals car deals.” – Mario Scampoli, Sr. Client Performance Manager
Opt-In: Consistent and Diligent Data Capture Equal Success in Any Market
In the PM Review: Metrics that Matter Round-table, our team of experts identified Contact Info Capture as one of four crucial VinSolutions reports to assess and improve dealership performance. Simply put, if your sales professionals aren’t opting customers in, you can’t communicate with them.
To combat this potential loss, Client Performance Manager Angie Miletich recommends setting a benchmark for collecting crucial information such as email address and phone number. “I want to see 90% or above,” she explains. “I want to know that you are getting that customer contact information.” With lower capture of customer information, dealerships are selling less cars. Working one-on-one with your Performance Manager, you can customize this report to help identify and then coach underperforming team members. “I can promise you this, If the dealer has more emails and more texting opt-ins… they will sell more cars than they did previously,” explains Mario Scampoli, Sr. Client Performance Manager. “It’s the math and science of the car business. Productivity equals contact equals appointments equals car deals.”
Tip: Set a Contact Info Capture Benchmark for email addresses, phone numbers and text opt ins. Without a benchmark, you simply can’t measure performance.
It Starts with Connection
Competition will ramp up as car buyers begin to return to the market again, this time incentivized with more options and greater availability. It’s up to you to coach your sales team on fundamentals like communications, appointment-setting, overcoming objections, etc. They need to know how to use timely, professional and effective communications to build connections with their customers. As Client Performance Manager Kevin Schmitt explains, “If you’re there as a manager, the owner has entrusted you as a manager to take his business and move it along the right path to manage your store. And it starts with connecting with the customer.” Whether you’re a sales manager or a Dealer Principal,the Enterprise Performance Report is a great way to check the overall health score of how your store is performing. It offers core metrics on your communications, appointments, visits, sales, and more. With over 150 data points available to add to this report, your Performance Manager can work with your dealership to get the information needed to identify the metrics you need. “This is one of the best reports that we have in our tool that is very versatile for any manager…” explains Kevin. “This report helps you put (everything) back on track.”
Tip: Schedule time with your Performance Manager to identify the data points specific and unique to your dealership to customize your dashboard.
“Managers manage things and keep things in order. Leaders Change things.” – Kevin Schmitt, Client Performance Manager
Minimum effort, minimum reward
As a people leader, it’s up to you to inspect what you expect. It not only leads to higher profitability, as Angie Miletich explains, it can make or break the experience for potential customers. Most dealerships’ teams struggle with task completion. But good leaders will know that you don’t need to wait for a task to remind you to complete an action. As Angie points out, “Why are we (dealers) waiting until a ‘task’ pops up to talk to our active leads with engagement? Because if they’re talking to you, they’re talking to ABC Motors down the street.”
The Team Performance Dashboardshows how well your team is addressing the responsibilities of sales: lead follow-up, effective communications, appointments, visits, demos, deals, and tasks. It makes it easy to understand your business, by the numbers.
While displaying high-level dealership KPIs, this report lets you click into detail to understand what’s going on behind the data points. If it’s blue, it’s clickable to you. You can even click into the views of each salesperson and coach them on where to focus.
Another helpful feature, the hot lead icon helps flags the most likely buyers, identified by your sales team.
This dashboard helps you understand the output of your team and whether your headcount is enough to meet your business objectives. For example, it’s prudent to consider how many tasks are realistic to assign to salespeople, and where you want them to prioritize.
“’Tasks’ are the minimum amount of effort a dealer should expect a salesperson to put into following up with a customer,” explains Mario.
Dashboards and data insights like these grant managers the ability to step away from constant micromanaging and task-management and instead focus on coaching, training, and empowering teams to do better and level-up. “Managers manage things and keep things in order. Leaders Change things,” Kevin Schmitt, Client Performance Manager offers.
Tip: Once per week have your sales team provide their ‘Top Ten List’ of with their best opportunities. The hot icon will flag customers to highlight the best opportunities for your sales team.
“’Tasks’ are the minimum amount of effort a dealer should expect a salesperson to put into following up with a customer,” Mario
Incentivize the Behavior You Wish to See
Mario Scampoli and other Performance Managers developed the 10-Day Review Report, a custom VinSolutions report featured in the round-table to give managers an at-a-glance view of the status of your most current active sales opportunities.
“Time kills car deals, right?” explains Mario. “So, this report gives you a one-stop shop to see everything that basically needs your attention.”
Color coding (red-yellow-green) highlights who on your team is engaged with customers and who might be falling behind. This report serves as an important management tool to keep everyone on track before it’s too late. It can also be used to create an incentive structure that promotes customer follow-up. Some dealerships have a policy where any leads that fall out of ‘green’ status are up for grabs for the next salesperson that contacts them.
Tip: Schedule time every day to stop working, stop managing and just walk the floor. Use this time to listen to how your sales professionals talk to customers.
Mastering Your New Mindset
The market conditions that existed during Covid produced abnormal sales dynamics. The demand for vehicles dramatically outpaced available inventory. Buyers waited months for vehicles. There was no need for the art and practice of selling. But conditions are very different now. As the panel in the Performance Manager Round-table explains, overcoming these issues today will take a new mindset to address them. Your contact percentage and your appointment percentage are clear indicators of how you’re communicating with your customers. It’s your job to come up with some way to change the culture from the Covid-mindset. Are you coaching your team on how to set appointments? Are they answering customer questions or just continuously asking for the customer to come in? Are they asking the right questions to get that customer into a test-drive? Do they know how to overcome objections? The average tenure of automotive sales professional is only one to two years, according to a recent survey.2Based on this fact, you’re looking at an industry staffed by individuals who don’t remember (or who’ve never known) what the car-buying process looked like pre-Covid. “The salesperson who grew up in Covid doesn’t ask those questions,” explains Mario Scampoli. Your expertise, experience, and skills are more valuable than you know. It’s up to you to identify the areas of growth and potential for your sales team and coach them.
Tip: If training is important to your dealership, make sure it becomes part of your onboarding process.
Conclusion
Ready to learn more? Catch all four episodes of the PM Review: Metrics that Matter and discover best practices, practical tips and a greater deep dive into the top four VinSolutions reports that help ensure your sales professionals are meeting targeted benchmarks and getting the coaching needed to thrive in today’s post-pandemic landscape. Unlock My Insights >>
Tynan’s Auto Group has served the Aurora, Colorado community for more than 60 years, with Nissan and Volkswagen dealerships as well as their Pre-Owned Superstore. Changes in customer preferences and technology meant that communicating with their customer base had become increasingly challenging.
Within a year of implementing VinSolutions CRM and Automotive Marketing Platform, Tynan’s saw significant increases in both vehicle sales and repair orders. Improved targeting led to substantial increases in engagement with marketing messages and created warmer leads for the sales team.
Download this case study to learn how Tynan’s uses VinSolutions to reach its customers and grow its auto sales and service business.
Car buyers are willing to share more personal information than ever, but the 2023 Cox Automotive Digitization of Car Buying Study finds that most dealers don’t trust the data customers are providing online.
This ebook from VinSolutions provides research-backed guidance to help you learn:
• What information car buyers are willing to share with dealers and why
• Ways to close the trust gap and help your dealership become more efficient
• How a hybrid approach to retailing can increase profitability at your dealership.
The Retail Automotive landscape is changing, again. The sales team you manage today needs proper coaching and leadership to go beyond the mindset of the low-inventory, pandemic-era experience.
But where should you begin? (For an in-depth discussion of how to use reports in VinSolutions CRM to improve performance, watch our Performance Review.) We’ve summarized the top five strategies you can implement immediately to focus your team on the Metrics that Matter. Drive these behaviors to improve your bottom line.
Brand loyalty often translates to unique needs and preferences for car-buyers. When and how they shop. The precise specs, features and trim level. The lifecycle of their vehicles.
Laura Schiffer is Sales Manager for Clay Subaru in Norwood, Mass, about 15 miles southwest of Boston. Clay Subaru’s customer base includes local and in-state buyers, ranging from lifetime Subaru drivers to shoppers assessing the brand for the first time. She has a deep and data-driven understanding of her customers’ needs.
“Subaru customers are a rare breed,” says Laura. “They know the exact measurements of their desired vehicle. They know the safety features they want, and they arrive at the dealership understanding the inventory supply and what they can expect to spend.”
Laura estimates that up to 90% of Subaru buyers are customers for life. “Once they’re in the Subaru brand, they tend to stay with the Subaru brand,” she says. It’s easy enough to sell them a car, but they are likely to keep that car for a long time and then just pass it on to a family member when they buy a new one. That’s one reason it’s important to be transparent with pricing & trades.”
Earning Customer Loyalty Through Transparency
Understanding the vehicle lifecycle with those customers has helped inform Clay Subaru’s strategy toward incentives. In many cases, competitive dealerships advertise price discounts but in the fine print require the customer to trade in a vehicle, and to have previously owned a Subaru. Clay Subaru, in contrast, will offer discounts on a case-by-case basis, without requiring a trade-in.
“We really pride ourselves on being an upfront and honest Subaru dealer,” says Laura. “We don’t have those requirements. We get a lot of returning and referral customers because people know we aren’t hiding anything from them.”
Clay Subaru’s philosophy of transparency comes from the top down. “Our General Manager believes we should strive to be the best people around, to build that reputation. He would rather negotiate on price and earn a customer for life, than maximize profit on a car and then hope they come back to us.”
Post-COVID production increases mean that inventory levels are gradually increasing month over month – i.e., more available vehicles. However, high interest rates can be a limiting factor for some prospective buyers – increasing competition for those in-market buyers. This creates a direct and profitable incentive to anticipate when existing customers will be in-market and get them back to the dealership.
Clay Subaru’s focus on the lifetime value of the customer, combined with their deep experience serving Subaru customers, informs their outreach. Laura and her team rely on the data in VinSolutions CRM to target the right customers with the right messages at the right time.
With the help of their Performance Manager Kristen DiPietro, Laura has honed their insights so she can understand how long customers have owned their Subarus. She links drivers in the same household for a better understanding of what that household needs and their buying cycle. She tracks customers approaching end of lease. She extends special financing offers to buyers who would benefit.
“Maybe I have a customer who replaces their vehicle every five years. The Insights help me drill down and find that customer, and get them the new car that they want,” notes Laura.
Giving back is a key part of Clay Subaru’s community involvement. Since 2013, Clay Subaru has donated more than $313,000 to hometown and national charities!
VinSolutions Insights to Reach Sales Goals
Laura recalls a recent time when the rich Insights in VinSolutions CRM helped them exceed their monthly sales objectives.
“I wanted to sell 100 new cars by month’s end, and we were short by 15 going into the last week. So I drilled down into my Insights, found out who recently was looking at new cars on my lot… and we ended up exceeding our goal by 5!”
Laura continues: “We sold 20, which was great. We sold some of those cars to customers that I identified using Insights and then created tasks for the salespeople to follow up. We definitely utilize VinSolutions to reach our goals every month!”
In addition to mining sales opportunities, Clay Subaru also uses VinSolutions CRM to support its own evolving business processes and team. The dealership recently shifted away from a BDC model, which meant that different team members assumed responsibility for core tasks such as lead follow-up and cleanup. VinSolutions CRM provided streamlined processes and time-saving automations to ensure a smooth adoption for the team.
“Once I showed them the tasks are right there, it just fell right into place. It tells you where to start and where to finish,” says Laura. “It’s pretty self-explanatory, they definitely have no complaints. We distribute the leads to our salespeople, and they understand the priority.”
“I really think that the salespeople taking ownership of the customer right from the beginning helps them build a better rapport with them,” says Laura. “We set goals in VinSolutions CRM: response times, contact information capture, appointments set, etc. We have to be at or above the average for the goals.”
Adds Laura: “You want to make sure that the CRM you’re using is creating the right tasks and events so that you’re selling cars.”
Clay Subaru relies on its Performance Manager Kristen DiPietro to fine-tune the tasks and processes in VinSolutions CRM so they are aligned to the dealership’s goals and sales philosophy.
“We have a standing 9:00 AM call on Monday mornings. Kristen knows the issues that matter to our GM. He wants to make sure that we’re not creating unnecessary tasks for the salespeople and the salespeople are actually performing their tasks. He wants them use what VinSolutions offers to help them to sell cars.”
Laura continues: “So in order for us to sell cars, we know our response time is really important along with follow-up. How fast are you getting back to the customer that sent a lead in for you? How many of those people are you actually getting in touch with, whether by phone, text or email? Are you making appointments with these people, and are you following up with the appointments?”
Laura recalls a recent example where Kristen fine-tuned a lead process:
“Last week we changed our whole KBB lead system. We have an outside agency that manages these KBB leads and handles the beginning of our lead process. Once those KBB leads are in the CRM, it just doesn’t make sense for them to follow the standard path we use for other types of leads. So Kristen and I went through and just changed it all. Now when a KBB lead comes in, it’s got a whole new process that picks up where the agency left off.”
Laura deeply appreciates the experience and guidance Kristen DiPietro brings to the table.
“I couldn’t speak enough about Kristen, she’s taught me so much. This woman actually was a BDC Manager and Finance Director. Almost every Monday she comes up with something new to teach me in the CRM. I am not the most tech-savvy person, but I’m able to use VinSolutions very effectively by working with Kristen. I told her, ‘You’re the biggest asset in VinSolutions!’”
Assess the overall performance of your team, then click on any team member to drill down into their opportunities and activities.
The Team Performance Dashboard provides many key business insights, including leads, appointments, visits & sales for the groups in your dealership.
This dashboard also shows you the activities and key performance indicators for each member of your sales team. Click on a salesperson to open their Coaching Dashboard, with helpful data that salesperson can also access. Use this data to identify and prioritize leads for follow-up.
Your Guide to Turning CRM Frustrations into Opportunities
Dealership workflows don’t always get the credit they deserve, but behind the scenes your CRM workflows are working hard to increase revenue and improve staff productivity and customer lifetime value. Our new eBook offers insights to help you overcome common workflow frustrations, so that you can make your CRM systems work better for you.
You’ll learn:
Processes for streamlining your customers’ experience to increase lifetime value
Solutions for sales, marketing, and service workflow frustrations
How the right technology partner can improve the efficiency of your CRM workflows
In less than 2 minutes, learn how to identify and reach out to all customers within six months of lease maturity.
Customers on lease represent a strong source of return business. Early lease-end offers will often entice lessees to lease a new vehicle or purchase a new one.
A default process VinSolutions CRM automatically begins emailing these customers 6 months before lease matures and personal outreach from your sales team will likely be even more impactful. You can update this process to tailor it to your store and/or customer needs
