Featured Guest: Chris Kerr – Chief Revenue Officer, Clarivoy shares examples of how dealers can develop a measurement and value strategy in their marketing efforts to deliver insights that will drive actions to help dealers sell more cars and maximize ROI.
Featured Guests: Micah Tindor, Senior Director of Strategy KBB ICO and Noah Lee, Director of Multi-Solution Product at Cox Automotive give their take on the F.I.E.R.C.E strategy from an Ops and overall Dealer Marketing and Business strategy.
Maintaining seamless communication with customers is paramount in the automotive industry. Enter the game-changer: automotive sales CRM mobile texting technology. Dealerships can foster stronger connections with clients while also significantly improving the customer experience and deftly navigating major compliance risks. This VinSolutions Performance Management discussion on Texting Best Practices explains why utilizing mobile text messaging in your sales CRM strategy is a must for modern dealerships. When used correctly, text messaging enhances customer interactions, and helps your business avoid major risks ensuring compliance and success.
Enhancements and Benefits of Mobile Texting Technology
Preferred Communication Channel: Mobile texting technology allows your dealership to communicate with customers in real time, through a channel many prefer. When your salespeople follow up on leads, appointments, and dealership visits directly from the CRM via texting app, this communication is instant, compliant & recorded in your dealership’s CRM database.
Access to Critical Information: Using a CRM texting app provides quick access to essential data, including inventory details, customer records, and conversation histories. Sales representatives have instant access to information that enables a more personalized, and authentic, conversation.
Opt-In/Opt-Out Compliance: To receive texts, customers must first opt in – and customers who opt-out can no longer be contacted by text. Using a trusted and official CRM texting technology will ensure compliance by automatically managing opt-ins and opt-outs.
Photos and Videos: Salespeople can easily send images of vehicles and features via your texting solution, enhancing customer engagement and providing a visual context.
Text Opt-In and License Scanning: By using a CRM mobile app for texting customers and license scanning, dealerships can verify compliance while streamlining processes.
Major Risks and Pitfalls of Unsanctioned Texting
Legal Vulnerability: Customers who opt-in to receive texts are technically agreeing only to receive texts from a specific third party (your dealership). When employees use their personal cell phones for texting, they become the “4th party” rather than the intended third party. This puts both your automotive dealership and the employee at risk of lawsuits. Federal regulations, such as the CAN-SPAM Act tend to be strict, and privacy laws vary across states.
CRM Effectiveness: If salespeople communicate outside your CRM, it becomes challenging to manage opportunities effectively. Your dealership’s automotive CRM is designed to track interactions and create additional sales opportunities. Without proper tracking, these opportunities may slip through the cracks.
Unauthorized Use of Customer Data: Allowing your salespeople to conduct business via their personal phones means they carry the dealership’s book of business in their pockets. Assigning unique numbers within the system ensures better tracking and prevents unauthorized use of customer information.
Activity Breakdown: Managers can review activity breakdown reports to ensure that salespeople are utilizing your texting technology effectively. This helps track follow-ups and maintain compliance. Moreover, these interactions can become part of your performance KPIs.
Integrating mobile texting technology with your dealership’s CRM not only improves communications, creating a more personalized shopping experience for your customers. It has the potential to maintain compliance for your business. Watch the video with VinSolutions’ Performance Managers as they share the Texting Best Practices.
Ready to learn more? VinSolutions CRM with automotive text messaging makes texting customers as easy as texting friends. VinSolutions Texting has full MMS messaging capabilities and a full conversation history stored in the CRM so dealers can keep track of conversations in a single view. Learn More.
Featured Guests: Elizabeth Stegall, Sales Director at Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book and Matt Holling, Senior Director of Ecommerce Excellence at Cox Automotive give their take on the F.I.E.R.C.E strategy from a Dealer Sales and overall Ecommerce strategy.
Summary
New opportunities for fixed ops professionals to achieve rapid growth though digital technology, transparency, and convenience.
As a fixed operations professional, it’s crucial to understand your challenges and opportunities so you can implement strategies that keep profits growing and customers satisfied. Here are some tips to tackle the takeaways from the latest Cox Automotive Service Industry Study.
Prepare for Influx
Rapid growth creates a big opportunity for you. Consumer spend for automotive care is expected to surpass $400 billion in 2025. We’ve already seen a 50 percent hike in service sold from 2021 to 2023.
Tip! To service more cars faster, embrace digital transformation and leverage technology solutions that get ASRs sent by your team and approved by the customer with the tap of a phone to improve efficiencies.
Battle for Share of Service Visits
Dealer market share is now 30 percent, which represents a significant decline from a 35 percent share in 2021. You may be losing ground to the chain retailers and quick lube.
Tip! Stand out from the competition and increase share of service visits by prioritizing transparency and personalization.
Fight Rising Costs
We’re all feeling the pinch of rising costs right now. Compound that with the perception dealership service is less affordable than its competitors, and you have a challenge you can’t afford to sleep on.
Four out of five reasons your customers may not return are cost related:
Tip! Offer service financing to create convenience for your customers and show you care about their day to day need while ensuring cash flow for your dealership.
Overcome Frustrations
Nearly half of dealer customers were frustrated with their service experience according to the recent service study. Convenience was a common theme as one of the top drivers of the dissatisfaction, manifested through difficulty scheduling an appointment and the time investment for maintenance repair or completion.
Tip! You guessed it, go digital. Utilize your service technology to make the service process easy – and fast – from scheduling online to approvals and payment with a tap of a phone.
You’re a fixed operations professional taking the time to understand what’s crucial to your customers and drives efficiency for your team. We’d love to partner with you to help you navigate challenges and smash your goals.
VinSolutions CRM turns customer data into insights, and insights into sales. It’s an invaluable sales tool that your team should be using everyday—but are you always using it correctly?
This webinar will teach managers about the most important things they should do – and not do – to get the most from VinSolutions. Host Joe Webb of DealerKnows Consulting will take you through the high-powered features in VinSolutions and show you how to set up your sales team for success.
You’ll learn:
Chris Benvie, Director of Marketing and Pre-Owned Operations for McGovern Automotive gives his take on the F.I.E.R.C.E strategy from a new and pre-owned dealership’s perspective on how to grow and scale your business in today’s times.
VinSolutions Automotive Marketing Platform lets you engage customers with personalized, relevant marketing and target the customers who are most likely to buy – before they even submit a lead.
Learn how successful dealers use Automotive Marketing Platform to boost sales and maximize ROI in this live webinar.
Learn How To:
Our expert panel includes diverse perspectives on Automotive Marketing Platform best practices and optimizations. We’ll offer two live broadcasts so you can pick the date and time that work best for you.
Our Panelists
Laura Beckley
Lead Performance Manager, VinSolutions
Mike Shean
Director, 1-1 Marketing, VinSolutions
Inventory is back—and so is your competition. With sales once again
returning to normal, the car buying journey is also seeing a shift as shoppers
change the way they shop, research, and purchase their next car.
With new insights from the Cox Automotive Car Buyer Journey Study, which
surveyed nearly 3,000 respondents, we’ve gathered the top five takeaways
you need to know to make the best decisions for your business.
Download the infographic to stay on top of changing consumer buying
trends
Salespeople often change roles or rooftops. It’s simple to reassign customers in VinSolutions CRM, with just a few clicks. Watch this short video to learn how to reassign customers – and roll back these changes if the salesperson returns. You can also remove users from select or all stores in your group.
