The global COVID-19 situation impacts all industries and dealerships are no exception. The sale of parts, vehicles and services is suffering a significant decline, and we will all need to reverse this trend as quickly as possible when the situation begins to improve.
This is a time we can use to refine our sales tools, implement best practices and think about future strategies. In this article we suggest a few strategies that you can start to adopt with your CRM.
Be Original With Tags
We have already discussed the importance of using tags to categorize customers with strategic information to carry out focused campaigns. This is a good time to resume this activity that usually is time-consuming but can generate important benefits.
| Case 1 Search for all opportunities or discarded leads and tag them as “lost sales”. This will be useful for running a campaign offering special promotions to those customers. In Tracker CRM you can filter all leads and opportunities by status, making it easy to find and tag them. | Case 2 Do you analyze where leads come from? This information is ideal to understand customer habits. If they arrive via Whatsapp, your website or social networks, they probably belong to an age group for which sustained social media campaigns are most effective; these customers also may have an interest in certain models and vehicles. |
Increase Customer Contact and Offer Virtual Experiences
This is a moment where it is essential to continue to stay in contact with customers despite the situation. You can create marketing campaigns using different means:
- Emails
- Whatsapp messages
- Social networks
- Website
When thinking about the content for these communications, consider offering virtual experiences to be in contact with potential stakeholders. A good option is Skype, Hangout or Whatsapp video calls.
Design Campaigns Based on Dates
Tracker CRM lets you create campaigns based on different customer criteria. For each campaign, tasks will be generated automatically and assigned to salespeople. A good practice is to plan campaigns based on specific temporal data:
1. Vehicle registration date: How often do your customers change their vehicle? This data can be provided by your DMS and is key to generating campaigns for customers who may be thinking of buying a new vehicle.
Cars | Agricultural equipment |
|---|---|
| Year 2020 Customers change their car every 3-4 years.Create a campaign for customers who bought a car (from you or other dealers) between 2016 and 2017. | Year 2020 A combine harvester has a useful life of 9 years.Create a campaign for customers who bought between 2010 and 2011. |
2. Last service date: Anticipate the needs of your customers; mine the data and see which ones will require a maintenance service soon. Contact them to make sure they visit your workshop and not another.
Work on Missed Opportunities
This is a good time to do detailed analysis on the reasons for lost sales at the dealership. In Tracker CRM you can generate a list of lost sales along with their reasons, which will serve as a basis to know:
- At what stages are sales most lost? For example, if they are lost in the proposal stage, it could be due to time delays, unclear information, lack of communication, etc.
- Why are they lost? If most choose the competition, it is important to know what they are doing that you are not. Small changes in attitude and communication can make a difference.
Take advantage of these moments to adjust how you work, to keep your valuable people busy, and to prepare for when customers begin to revisit the dealership and the flow of industry picks up.
