Digital Dealer - June 2018 - 41

when the customers
arrive. They send the
same emails, templates,
and personalized quotes
that were a success for
me at the Ford store. The
response time is under a
minute with a lead dialing
service we use called
CallDrip. By all bird's
eye viewpoints, we were
doing a much better job
than my previous store.
I thought to myself, we
should be killing it!
I am embarrassed to
tell you what I found out
next.
A couple weeks ago, I
channeled all my wordsmith genius into an email
that I sent to a customer
on behalf of a salesman
that was off. It was a
work of art. You could
liken it to the scene in the
movie Castaway when
Tom Hanks stands back
to admire the fire he created on the lonely beach
after crash-landing in a
FedEx plane, and being
marooned to a deserted
island in the middle of the
Atlantic Ocean. Thankfully, this email made it to
the customer, and he now
responded to a phone call
from the BDC.
But what transpired
next was an eye-opener.
He said that he responded to the email, but we
did not see anything
come in. I looked in every
bucket I could think to
look, including the catchall. One problem - the
reply email address I
used did not work with
our CRM. This led me
to create the checklist

below, which increased
our closing percentage
by four percent in two
weeks!

1: ACCURATE AND
WORKING EMAILS
WITHIN YOUR CRM.

Every CRM has its good
and bad points. One
CRM that I've used in the
past was intuitive when I
wanted to send an email
on behalf of a salesperson. However, our current
CRM requires you to
hand-type the salesperson's email and name.
The problem is - our customer satisfaction manager creates the emails,
and he uses the first letter
of their given name, but
this doesn't always line
up with the name they

first month with us that
NEVER MADE IT TO
THE CUSTOMER! How
is this possible? Easy -
when someone else sets
up the backend side of
your CRM, and you don't
inspect what you expect,
that's what you get.
2: SETTINGS ALIGN
WITH THE INTENDED
EMAIL RESPONSE
STRATEGY PER CAMPAIGN). In my situation,

salespeople emails were
the tip of the iceberg. It
turns out, you could have
hundreds of campaigns
for follow-up running in
your CRM at the same
time. So, even if you
fix your internet lead
response campaign, what
about your fresh-up cam-

wonder how much business we lost as a result?

4: A PATH OF LEAST
RESISTANCE. Here is

an important question to
ask yourself: Is it hard for
customers to contact us?
I surveyed my chat leads,
third-party response
emails, and tried to look
at every angle of how a
customer could get ahold
of us. The question I kept
asking was, "Is this the
path of least resistance
to get a quote, inquire
about availability, answer
questions, and get people
in the door?" It's the
same idea I try to convey
to my staff - are we removing every barrier and
roadblock to the sale, or
are we creating our own

A DEEPER DIVE REVEALED AN EVEN BIGGER PROBLEM:
THREE SALESPEOPLE AND ONE BDC AGENT HAD
NON-WORKING, IN-ACTIVE EMAILS.
go by. Solution? Take the
time to create a real list
of salespeople's emails if
you are going to reply for
them. Otherwise, you're
going to be answering a
lot of questions for these
customers if the salesperson never sees their
replies.
A deeper dive revealed
an even bigger problem:
three salespeople and
one BDC agent had
non-working, in-active
emails. Their passwords
were input incorrectly
either on our server or
in the settings of our
CRM! That means my
BDC agent had sent
hundreds of emails in his

paign? Or your phone
pop follow-up? Previously
sold and service customers? We had reply emails
set to go to people who
had quit the dealership
five to six years ago!
3: A PROPER PHONE
RESPONSE ROUTE.

You have a person who
actually wants to buy a
car, but when they call, it
goes to service, fleet, or
the worst - a VM during
business hours. I took
several hours and tracked
down every number on
every website where we
advertise. I called every
single one. Thankfully
only three numbers were
routed incorrectly, but I

resistance?
It started with a customer who was upset
that we didn't receive the
email he sent to us. The
broken link in the reply
email because of one
wrong letter almost led
to a broken relationship.
After my D-review of
our dealership's CRM, I
wonder how many deals
we may have missed? I'm
pretty sure some of you
reading this will be pondering the same thing.
JESSE MILLER is the BDC/
used car manager for Courtesy
Chevrolet in San Diego, CA.

D I G I TA L D E A L E R . C O M

JUNE 2018

41
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Digital Dealer - June 2018
