Connected Podcast Episode 4: Taking Advantage of Your CRM

Greg Uland: Hello, I'm Greg Uland, marketing director at Reynolds and Reynolds, and this is Connected - the podcast with best practices and ideas to help navigate what is happening in the automotive retail industry and the world today. As the COVID-19 virus continues to change our world and how we live and work daily, this podcast discusses ways to continue operating in this unprecedented social environment. On this episode, we have with us Ed Pontis, director of product planning for variable operations at Reynolds at Reynolds. Ed, thanks so much for joining.

Ed Pontis: No problem. Thanks for having me, Greg.

GU: Absolutely. So Ed, in this really unique time we're in, a proactive sales outreach from sales folks can seem in many ways insensitive and can honestly be a turnoff to consumers. So I'm curious from your perspective and maybe what you've heard from dealers, what are some ways that the dealerships are adjusting to that and are still communicating with customers, but doing it in a sensitive way?

EP: Sure. I think there's a few things that everybody should look at and try and incorporate if they can. I think number one is if you've got salespeople, whether they're in the store, or you've got some people that are working from home, or you're taking maybe your BDC and moving them out of the dealership so that they can work from home. I think a key factor is really making sure they stay within the CRM, right? They're talking to customers. We want to make sure we record that activity, especially at a time where people may not be thinking the most clear on the other end of the phone and things like that. We want to make sure that we've captured everything we can and can track that activity for the future.

I think a second thing, and maybe really it's number one, and that is, really what is your overall communication strategy with your customer base? Really shifting from a sales-focused communication to a support and education type, "We're here for you," type model. Things like, did you change your store hours? Did you change procedures for pickup and delivery, or remote appraisals, or remote delivery of vehicles? I know that a couple episodes ago, Jason Sideris talked a little bit about, you know, processes and how you can change in the service drive, whether it's touchless payment and things like that. Those are all great things to communicate out ahead of time so that consumers, as they interact with your dealership, know what's going on.

I think another key factor is really kind of what's going on with your community? You know, we all live in a community where some are getting hit worse than others. What are you doing for your community and making sure that gets articulated out? And is there something that your customers can help, or that you can help them, and what their needs are? And then we all get all of the emails professionally on how you're handling cleanliness and things like that, whether it's kiosks in your dealership or it's payment terminals, things like that. What are you doing to make sure that everything is clean?

Another thing I think is key, especially in this time, is you're probably still getting some internet leads in. And internet response time at this point is super important. I mean, we stress it all the time. But if I've got somebody at home and they really are interested in buying a new car, we need to make sure that we are on top of it and interact with them as quickly as possible. They're not going to have a whole lot of patience to wait for you to respond. They'll move on to the next dealer. So, you know, whether there's people that are home working or people in dealership, internet response time needs to be a key factor.

Another thing I think we, you and I talked about before, Greg, that I think is key is there are that people that we know are coming off a lease right now, so that lease turn-in process... How do you want to handle that? Are you going to go out to the dealer-consumer? Are you going to have them come to the dealership? And really kind of educate them on how that process might have changed. And it's also a great opportunity, you know, you've got somebody who's coming up on a lease and it's a new sales opportunity for you.

GU: Yeah, absolutely. And those folks, those are truly folks that in a lot of instances probably don't know what to do. I mean, they need help and they need educated more now than they ever have. I mean, their lease is coming up and, you know, can I take it back in? Is it safe to go back in? How do I even do this? So communicating makes complete sense there.

EP: And they may not be getting great communication from their bank at this time. You know, at the same point. So it's a great opportunity for you to kind of takeover that communication and really be a source of information for them.

GU: Yeah. Very good point. And another thing I'm interested in, specifically from a CRM perspective, kind of in your wheelhouse. Are there opportunities to leverage the CRM in the back end of the store too? In the service department right now? Or how are dealerships, are they shifting at all? What's that look like from a CRM perspective?

EP: Well, sure, especially since a lot of dealerships we're seeing out there, you know, they may only have their service department open right now or the parts department open right now. So, again, some of the things we talked about before, communicating that you are open, right? Simple things, like you are open, what your hours are, how you've changed that process and really focus on, can you maintain a revenue stream from service and how that impacts that relationship with that consumer. And how you interact, whether you're doing pickups for them, loaner cars, all kinds of things, and what that cleanliness and environment looks like in your dealership.

GU: Good, good. And thinking about, in that same vein of communication and in the CRM, obviously dealers have a lot of automated communications and schedules set up to send communications to customers. Going through and looking at that stuff, is that important right now? Is it better to let kind of your current schedules fly? Is this a good opportunity to maybe evaluate some things? I don't know, what are you seeing?

EP: I think it's a great time to kind of reevaluate some of that. We set up a lot of automated schedules because it's easy. Let's be honest. You've got, you know, birthday messages, anniversary messages, automated content that's going out all the time. And kind of going back to that whole idea of making sure that we've got appropriate communication and nothing is kind of insensitive in the process, right. Some of it may be perfectly fine. And you make the decision that having it go out automated is great. Others, it may make perfect sense in your CRM to uncheck the box, to turn it from automate it, to generate it, but it requires someone to actually hit send before it goes out.

And that kind of drives another factor is if you make that decision, you know, your system administrator goes through and changes things. We've got to make sure that everybody in the dealership knows that, right. They always assumed that those were just going to go out on their own. Now they want to go out and you need to look at that content, personalize it, and make it appropriate to the person you're sending it out, and add some of that other context of, "Yes, we're still open. This is what we're doing," and going through that process.

GU: Yeah, and Ed with, you know, looking at each one of those things and customizing it a little bit, it's likely right now that there's probably some downtime in sales departments. What are some other things that are maybe routine maintenance that should be done consistently, but oftentimes there's just not time to get them done? What are some of those maintenance things that could be looked at today while there is a little down time?

EP: Sure. I mean we kind of put together a high level list here of things we think that, especially if you've got somebody sitting at home, they could really be looking at. A BDC person, a marketing person, a system administrator, really starting to look at what documents do you have out there? What do those e-mail templates look like? What do those text templates look like? Do they need to be updated? Do you just need to get rid of some? Right. So going through kind of a document cleanup.

The other thing that's important right now is really looking at those clients or customers you have out there that aren't assigned to a salesperson. We always kind of refer to them as, you know, orphan clients, right. They came in, they were Greg's customer for years. Greg left my dealership and now he's floating out there. So kind of going through and making sure all of your customers in the database have a salesperson associated to them. It also gives that new salesperson an opportunity to kind of reach out to them and articulate some of those messages that we want to craft around how we're here for you and how we can help.

At the same point, as I'm going through and looking at that, another great opportunity is to kind of clean up some duplicates, duplicate prospects, duplicate clients. Whether it's in the CRM or the DMS, kind of going through that process. Looking at user access, does everybody have the right access capabilities? You know, especially with the turnover we see in the dealership, making sure roles are set up and that that process is good.

And then I think another key factor is if you do have people in the dealership or at home, let's be frank, they're probably not as busy as they were a few weeks ago. It's a great opportunity to go through some training, whether it's CRM training, product training, other sales tools, to really make sure that they're leveraging their time as best they can to be a better salesperson, a better BDC agent. You know, a month from now when we're on the other side of the curve.

GU: Great stuff Ed. Definitely, definitely appreciate it. Thank you so much for taking sometime today to hop on here. While we have the audience and before we hop off, is there anything else that you want to talk about or that you want to share?

EP: I just think, you know, like you kind of said at the beginning. It's such a fluid situation and it changes every day. It's important for you to listen to your customers. We can't tell you what to say because it's all unique in everyone's hometown. But continue to communicate with them. Let them know that you're there to help them if they need help, whether it's service on their vehicle or just being kind of the pillar of the community that you already are. So, you know, listen to the customer, listen to the community, and keep that communication and that contact flowing with your customer base.

GU: All right. Thank you again Ed. Really appreciate your time and have a good one today, OK?

EP: You too. Stay safe, Greg. Thanks.

GU: All right. Thank you. This is Connected. Stay safe and we'll see you on the next episode.