You've Got Leads, Now What?

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July 25, 2005
By Peter Cameron-Inglis

Before we get started I need you to be aware of something. Reading this information will not be of any value to you if you're not already getting leads from your own web site. You should also be receiving leads from your manufacturer's web site and third party portals such as autohunter.ca, autosearchcanada.com, autotrader.ca and the many other third-party providers out there.

If you're not getting leads from your site, you should start evaluating the reasons why. If you're not getting them, then your competition definitely is! But I guess that's another topic altogether for a future column.

Let's assume for the moment that you've got leads.

What's your closing ratio? If it's not over 50%, then you have some work to do. Yes, you read that right. It's not a typo. At the very least you should be closing fifty percent of the leads you're getting.

It doesn't matter if you are the biggest dealer in Vancouver, British Columbia or the smallest dealer in Antigonish, Nova Scotia (or any size - anywhere in between). A lead is a lead! It's a customer plain and simple! If it's not going to be your customer then it will be your competition's customer.

So what are you going to do?

If you're like most sales managers you're too busy to keep checking your email every hour so you won't pick up the lead(s) until the customers' requests are at least a few hours old.

The next day you forward a copy of a lead over to one of your sales representatives (let's call him Sam) and you ask Sam to do the follow-up.

One problem. It's Sam's turn to get the next "walk-in up" from the sales floor and he doesn't want to miss it. Sam puts the lead aside until he has some more time.

Later that afternoon (almost 24 hours after the initial request) Sam the salesman reads the details about the lead. "This is garbage! No telephone number, just an email address. This is a load of... " Now Sam gripes that he has to write an email back to the customer. Sam thinks that doing sales this way is a waste of time! "This isn't what I signed up for! This is too much like work! Show me the EASY money."

This is the scene in almost 90 percent of the auto dealers we've spoken to in Canada. In case you're wondering, that's a lot. My company speaks with about 20 to 30 dealership managers and dealer principles every business day and we've been doing it for over 3 years.

So, is it true? Are Internet leads a waste of time? Or is there a huge opportunity here to take some market share away from your competitors? YES, there is a very big opportunity here! That is, if you're one of the 10% out there that is doing it right.

In a recent study we conducted for one of our dealership customers we spent nearly three weeks interviewing over 100 people by phone and email. Every one of these people had visited the dealership's web site in the previous month and submitted a request. Or should I say each one had submitted a LEAD!

Each person was told that we were doing an Internet Customer Service Report Card for the dealership. The Dealer Principle was confident that they were going to get an A+ on this report card because his sales managers had told him that the leads were all being followed-up properly and they only wished that there were more leads. The sales managers were confident because the sales people had told them they had done everything possible with each lead.

Not only did this dealership not get an A+ they didn't even get a passing grade. Here's what we found...

Over 20% of the leads had not been followed up on at all; or it took over 7 days for the customer to receive any reply back from the dealership. Needless to say the customers were not very impressed. When it comes to an Internet lead from a customer the average decision to purchase is made within a few days of them starting to request information from dealerships, not within a few weeks!

According to Time Inc and CNW marketing research in their study titled "The Purchase Process - Wave VIII", published in February 2005, customers usually don't start using the Internet to contact a dealership until their 'final purchase stage' in the last 1-2 weeks. This was a study of over 130,000 respondents in Canada, USA, Australia and New Zealand.

Okay so now we go back to the report card. In addition to the 20% of people who got a late response or no response at all, a further 20% found the dealership's response to be very unprofessional. That's over 40% of their leads who are no longer going to be their customers!

After saying the dealership was unprofessional, customers elaborated and told us that they received emails with serious spelling and grammar errors and a complete lack of willingness to answer the customers' questions. In the case of telephone calls several customers told us stories of sales representatives unwilling to help them unless he or she first came down to the dealership to speak with the salesperson directly.

I could go on with many other interesting results of this study but I think you get the picture.

Last year the University of Ottawa contacted 180 automotive dealerships in Canada for a research paper. They found that in almost every case where dealerships were succeeding with Internet related sales it was because they had a dedicated Internet sales specialist and in some cases an entire department devoted to the endeavor.

So, what's the formula for successfully closing those Internet leads and increasing your sales? Here's the start, in no particular order...

Hire dedicated Internet Sales Specialists that do their own deliveries for new and used and watch your sales rise dramatically.
Follow up quickly with your Internet leads, before your competitors do. You only get one chance to make that first impression. Many of the dealerships that we coach for Internet sales have invested in text messaging cell phones and Blackberries so that they can follow-up with the customer within a few seconds of the request and not a few hours.
Go the extra mile to make a positive impression and help the customer as if they were a personal friend. Who knows you may actually make a few friends in the process and earn the right to ask for referrals. Yes, price is a consideration BUT the customer has to like you first. Liking is the single most powerful element in a sales relationship. Like leads to trust. Trust leads to buying.
Do not be too quick to pre-judge. In the case of the dealership with the not-so-great report card... one of the customers was told that their credit wasn't good enough to get financed and they were turned away. It turns out that the credit application was never even shown to the business office manager to see what he could do. The salesman just thought it looked too bad. Guess what happened? Another dealership of the same franchise in the same city financed the customer. The customer was so impressed with the service at the other dealership they referred TWO other sales to them within a week.
Check your work for errors. Use a spell-checking program on all of your communications to customers BUT don't stop there! Proofread it yourself. You should even read it back to yourself out loud to reduce the chances of making a mistake in spelling or grammar (or in any other way) and end up losing the sale. Remember our report card dealer? Two separate customers who reported spelling/grammar errors were in the teaching profession. What are the chances of that?! Pretty high apparently! Internet customers are looking for someone to trust. Mistakes not only show poor education, they also show apathy and sloppiness. I can't think of a better way to discourage the customer from trusting you.
Don't ask lazy Sam to follow up on your leads! Have someone with some 'spit and polish' get the job done. You need someone who is literate, articulate, smart and has some drive to succeed. Don't let him put it off. Internet sales success requires a lot of hard work, there's no doubt about it. But, the rewards for the 10% of us that are willing to do the work are huge!

If you would like a copy of the research material I have quoted please send us the request and we will be happy to send copies of the published material to you for free by email.

We would love to hear what you think of this article. And of course, if you have any suggestions for future articles that you'd like to share with us, please send those, too!

Need some fresh, free content for your web site or e-zine? You are welcome to reprint this article on your web site or in your e-zine. We simply ask that you let us know where the article will be appearing, and include our byline with a link to the ASLInternet.com website.

Peter Cameron-Inglis is a co-founder and the Vice-President of Marketing & Operations at ASL (Aged Stock Ltd), a company that provides Internet and sales systems for automotive dealers to increase traffic, increase leads and increase the sales closing ratio.

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