The Key to More Sales - Clean, Unified, and Actionable Data
By Ethan Ott
I need help, and I’m looking your way.
My treasured yet antiquated first car is on its last legs. I’m ready to shop for a new vehicle, but I’ve never set foot in a dealership. What could your dealership possibly know about me?
You know that I started on the manufacturer website and was led to the dealership website. Your AI greeter collected my contact information and potential trade-in, you see the vehicles I viewed, and you even have the deal I started online. Shortly after I left your website, one of your salespeople, armed with consolidated info and personalized follow-up, was able to schedule a test drive with me. They greeted me like an old friend and picked up exactly where I left off online. Buying a car isn’t usually an easy task, but not having to repeat anything helps!
Start to finish, your digital retailing and CRM solutions were the model of efficiency, uniting with your sales team to ensure a smooth sales experience for the customer. It’s always that easy, right? …Right?
No, it’s never that easy. A prospective customer can provide valuable details spread across different lead sources that each make their way to your dealership at different times, which can get messy. You end up with more data than you can efficiently act on.
A customer may receive the same follow-up email twice or see calls from multiple salespeople. Maybe the customer already explained what they’re looking for, but it was lost amid information overload and your salesperson thought it was easier to just ask for it again.
You’re frustrated, your team is frustrated, and most importantly, your customers are frustrated. There are a few common pain points when it comes to managing data, and if your dealership can address these, you can activate your data and turn more leads into deals.
“Sounds like a problem on their end.”
Have you ever played the game “Whose Fault Is It Anyway?” Doesn’t have much in common with “Whose Line Is It Anyway,” and is nowhere near as humorous. Your various tools all advertised integration capabilities when they were installed, but it’s always going to be the other tool’s fault when something isn’t functioning properly.
Figuring out what will integrate and actually getting all of your solutions to integrate can be a headache, but it’s worth the time and effort finding the pieces that will fit together. Prioritizing integration leads to:
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Increased productivity - updating information in one application will update other applications, freeing up time to work with more clients and tasks.
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Better collaboration - different teams in your dealership may use different solutions, so integration is key in keeping everyone on the same page.
Any time you’re planning to utilize a new solution, you must weigh its benefits vs how easy it is to integrate into your existing systems.
“Thank you! But our data is in another silo.”
If I’m preparing to call a sales prospect, the last thing I want to do is search through multiple screens in multiple applications to gather all my info. Great, all your solutions are integrated, but where can you find the data you need?
The issue is the more solutions you have, the more data silos you’ll be looking through to find what you need. Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) promise to enhance your ability to act on your entire collection of information, making it easier to find relevant data points. However, it does this by adding another data silo to the mix, so it needs to be considered if the value it adds is worth the effort of a new solution for your team to manage.
“That data isn’t going to clean itself. Or will it?”
Your vehicle’s engine won’t run efficiently with dirty oil, and in a similar vein, your lead conversion engine won’t run efficiently with dirty data. Even with full integration among all your solutions, multiple information channels increase the chances of inaccuracies and duplicates.
With your collection of data growing by the day, it’s becoming necessary to utilize automated methods of cleaning and refining your data. This is another area where your dealership may look towards a CDP solution.
While we’ve already considered the pains of integration and adding another data silo to your system, will a CDP have the intelligence to automatically filter through and present the important data so your staff doesn’t suffer from information overload? If a tool can not only clean your data, but also curate a strategy to act on it, it’ll be even easier for your salespeople to bring customers into the dealership and close deals.
Clean, Unified, and Actionable Data
While the industry is constantly evolving, one thing is clear: dealerships must prioritize crafting the best customer experience both online and offline.
Successfully capturing client information and equipping your sales staff with the intelligence to act on your data makes this goal attainable. But it remains to be seen which tools and solutions can balance the promise of new features and capabilities while simplifying the process for you.
Hunt for a solution that keeps your data clean, unifies it across platforms, and makes it actionable. That will take you one step closer to providing the best customer experience which makes you happy, makes your team happy, and most importantly, makes your customers happy.