Digital Dealer Internet Sales
Contributed Article: Digital Response Management (DRM) - By Tom Mohr, CEO of ResponseLogix

Nothing matters if a lead isn’t properly answered.

No SEO or SEM, no mobile apps, no 360 degree views of the car on your website, no amount of third party lead-buying matters if you can’t get back to a customer right away with a quote. Too often, dealers underestimate this vital “blocking and tackling” step, pursuing all kinds of sexy strategies to gin up lead volume. They fail to recognize that if a lead isn’t properly answered, lead volume is meaningless.

The arrival of an incoming lead represents “the moment of truth”. The point of lead arrival signifies the moment when a customer has decided to put 3 to 4 dealers on trial. Who has a fair price? Who has what I want in stock? Who will give me the best service? Who can I trust? How the dealer responds in the minutes or hours after the lead arrives shapes the customer’s view of that dealership.

The simple fact is, according to Cobalt, that 25% of all leads don’t get answered at all. And the average response time on leads that do receive a response is over 5 hours. For the consumer sitting at her computer waiting for a quote, these facts stagger. Why, she thinks, should it be so difficult to find a dealer who wants my $25,000?

Creating an optimal end-to-end customer experience that optimizes a dealer’s selling potential involves:

• A customer sending in a lead
• An immediate, personalized email response back to the customer, showing price quotes on multiple new and pre-owned alternatives surrounding her request.
• A phone connection within 1 hour, confirming the customer’s receipt of the quote and probing for areas of interest, confusion or concern—followed by the invitation to visit the dealership for a test drive.
• Follow-up emails and phone messages over the ensuing five days if the customer doesn’t immediately come in.
• Confirmation of a test drive date and time.
• Once the customer comes into the dealership, a hearty welcome, discussion of product requirements, “lot walk”, test drive and sale if possible.
• And if not, an ongoing email follow-up campaign that encourages the customer to respond when she is back in the market and ready to buy.

The problem, of course, is that life in a dealership is complicated. Many conflicting demands draw upon the time and attentions of every Internet salesperson, ISM, ISD and GSM. Leads come in at the worst possible time—when everyone is engaged with other customers, for instance—and languish in ILM / CRM in-boxes. Too often, a salesperson with time to answer just one lead but with 4 in the queue will just answer the freshest lead; the others go stale and eventually unanswered.

To address the monumental challenge of an effective and rapid price quote response, a new category of technology solutions has emerged: Digital Response Management (DRM). DRM vendors deliver solutions that ensure the dealer can execute very rapid price quote responses on incoming leads.

A comprehensive DRM solution delivers at least the following:

• A very rapid price quote response to a customer inquiry
• Personalization of the message
• Tools to support dealer pricing
• A brand-strengthening consumer message
• New and used vehicles presented
• High message deliverability (avoids spam filters, etc.)

DRM providers attack a problem that has bedeviled dealers for 15 years: the ability to send a price quote response back to a customer right away. Increasingly, progressive dealers will ask their partners in Dealer 20 Groups “What is your DRM system?” It won’t be long before all effective dealers will have at least one.