#55 - MM - Inspect Your CRM

Hey, Luke, what's going on? Happy Monday to you. Hope you're geared up for a great week. Luke, tell us what's on your mind. What happened over the weekend? How you feeling?

So, you know, this past month, October was up and down and I just. Was just trying to push us through to get to the end. So I did something I should have been doing all the time, Jeff.

What's that?

You know what that was? What? Looking at my CRM, looking at my leads and seeing if my sales staff are working the leads properly. Yeah, but are they doing it properly?

Yeah. So you jumped into your CRM, you were looking at individual leads, like lost, you know, and seeing, hey, what are the notes on these things? What actually happened?

Well, exactly. So, you know, everybody's got a CRM. Everybody should have a CRM, but not everybody has a sales manager. And, you know, honestly, this is probably the sales manager's job, but, you know, I'm not big enough. I've got two salespeople. I don't need to pay someone else to be a sales manager. That should be part of my job, in my opinion. So I started digging through our leads that came in and the first place I went was to the lost section, you know, and go, why did we lose these customers? Did they buy somewhere else or what have you? Or did they just tell my staff they bought somewhere else? Yeah, so when I did that, I discovered two people right off the bat that, hey, they disqualified these people. And to me, they look like they qualified. So I asked the. Yeah, yeah, so I asked the salesperson to bring me their, you know, their credit apps. I started going over it and these people, both these people qualify and, you know, luckily enough we got both of those people back in and sold them cars. This is, yeah, this is going on in everybody's CRM. And if we're not being true managers of our business and working on our business like we talked about last week or a week or so ago, this is what's happening, the leads. We're thinking we need more leads. And honestly, we don't. We need to work our leads properly, man.

I think that's huge. It's something we all can learn. Everyone gets so caught up and, you know, where can I get more leads? Where can I get more leads? And we're not even looking at the ones we're currently getting. You know, are we taking second looks at everything? Is someone. Are the salesman even pre qualifying these people out on the lot, they're not even bringing them in because they don't Want to go through all the hassle or the pain or the headache of filling out a credit app and running it up the flag pole, you know, I mean, that probably happens more than not. And you say, hey, man, this guy said one thing to you on the lot that made you completely write him off. But what you didn't know is if you'd gone down the sales process, he had, you know, $5,000 in his back pocket or he had a paid off trade in or something that would have made this a great deal for us or for the bank.

You're exactly right, Jeff. And I'm, you know, I didn't even go, you know, did we burn people before we got to them? And that happens so often in everybody's dealership. And what I, what I encourage us as dealers to tell our staff during our meetings, our sales staff, that is, know how much it costs you to get each lead to your dealership, because you probably don't, you probably don't know that. I know to me, it costs almost $42 per lead that walks on our dealership, somewhere in that range, anywhere, you know, depending on the month. But if you explain that to your sales staff, they'll, they're less likely to broom someone because you can say, hey, I'm paying for that person to walk on my lot through advertising. And that comes out of everybody's pocket. So make sure that even if that customer doesn't, doesn't sound right to you or look right to you or what have you bring them in, fill out a credit application and let the banks decide, or let your finance manager inside your store decide what you're going to do with that lead.

Yeah. And that makes me think if the leads aren't getting worked or getting worked right. You know, like you said, Luke, look at training. But you almost so might want to look at, are you staffed right? You know, are you understaffed to the point where these people, they're just looking for the lay down sales because they can just kind of shoot through everything and pick up the easy ones because they don't got time to turn a bad deal into a good deal?

And you'll see a lot of your older salespeople. And I don't want to, I don't want to get all the older people in the business mad at me, but all of your older salespeople that have worked in new car stores get that bad habit of qualifying people before they bring them in. And just be aware of which one of your sales people is doing that.

Okay, awesome. Luke. Great, great thing for us to work on this week, everybody. Stay tuned. Thursday's episode's gonna be. Aw.

Sat.