I need your brains, DealerRefresh

[Matt McCormick]

Hello DealerRefresh,

This is my first post on the forums and I am a new user. I apologize if this thread exists somewhere else on your forum. I searched, but I did not find.

My Chevrolet store is a long time Reynolds customer and we are locked into a long term contract with them. I have no issue with Reynolds except in 1 capacity - internet lead handling. It is clunky and slow and seems to fight me when I am flying around at 100 mph trying to keep up with this and that.

So, we went out and purchased another tool to handle our leads at eLeads. I am the only person in our store that uses eLeads in any capacity - being the ISM. Im very happy with eLeads thus far except for the following issue which I will pose to you all as a question:

Is it possible for a GM OneSource lead to exist in both tools?

Our new car leads all come from GM OnseSource and are sent to eLeads to "stop the clock". We need the lead to also be "sent" to Reynolds to maintain our dealership-wide CRM database.

The following is quoted from an email written by me to my salesperson at eLeads regarding this issue:

"Just wanted to touch base with you this morning regarding the forwarding of our leads to Reynolds / parsing of these leads within Reynolds. As you know, all of our new car leads come from GM One Source who will not allow the lead to go to more than one place.

For us it is important for the lead to be in two places. My sales management wants to maintain 1 database of prospects for our marketing purposes. Unless we are able to parse these leads into our dealership CRM tool then we will have two databases and no option but to manually merge them when we need to run a campaign and to manually enter each hot lead into our CRM when I want to T.O. to the sales staff.

If there is a solution that exists outside of the boundaries of "lead forwarding" then I'd love to hear anyone's input on this. I will be taking these questions to the Dealerrefresh and KainAutomotive forums today to look for help.

Hope this helps you understand our needs. We look forward to hearing from you."

As of today I have an official response of "We cant forward a lead" from both Reynolds and eLeads, and "We can only send a lead to one place" from GM OnseSource.

Perhaps I am looking at this from the wrong angle. Maybe there is a solution out there that some of you are aware of. I look forward to hearing any and all input.

THANK YOU

 

[Djackson]

Hello Matt,

Don't fret, you're in the same boat as many dealers I'm sure, and depending on the tool you're using it can be tricky. Here's a few ideas that I've seen used.

First: "The Flow"

To address the "consolidated database" in Reynolds Vs. Leads in eLeads Vs. OneSource sending to only 1 location, your eLeads tool will need to be the first stop along the way.

OneSource --> ILM Tool --> CRM Tool


Second: "The Forward"

Now it's easy to just say, "I hope eLeads can forward the leads" but if for some reason they don't have some type of forwarding allowance though lead routing, here are some other ideas to consider:

Idea #1 - New Lead Notifications: Does eLeads have any type of notifications for new leads? We call them "activity alerts" but we send in email/ text format, the idea would be you could send these to yourself, and your R&R CRM leads address, you could stop the clock with a reply from your phone, and simultaneously hand-off the lead to your CRM.

Possible drawbacks - Most ILM's that support these kinds of alerts, they will be sent in plain text (not XML ADF or STAR) so it's easier for human-eyes to read. This would mean, we'd rely on your CRM to parse a plain text lead, which I am to understand, not all of them do.


Idea #2 - Automation: Will your eLeads automation setup, allow you to send email alerts outside of the system (e.g. an autoresponder to a specific address, like your R&R leads address)? In this way, you could format and email template, using [AUTO FILL VALUES] for lead information, and have eLeads simply "autorespond" to R&R after the lead arrives. This is especially nice, because the template can be formating in XML ADF specifically, if your CRM requires that format for incoming leads.

Possible drawbacks - Some system don't allow "autoresponders" to be sent as "alerts" out of the tool, so this would limit you. Also, with the limitation of [AUTO FILL VALUES] you may not be able to properly bring over all of the original lead information.


Idea #3 - Lead Provider Kickback: Some ILM's allow you to kick-back bad leads to the lead provider. Will eLeads allow you to kick-back leads you mark as "bad" in their tool, but send them to R&R instead of OneSource?

Possible drawbacks - Formatting could be an issue here, see Idea #1 drawbacks.


Idea #4 - The Stick-Shift: Not ideal as it would require you to perform this operation manually everytime, but I'm sure there's a place in eLeads to view the original lead format. You could copy this text and manually forward it to your R&R CRM tool.

Possible drawbacks - Well if you ever want a vacation ... good luck.


Idea #5 - Export: Day, Week or Month, you could export a excel/ .csv file from your eLeads tool and import it into R&R CRM.

Possible drawbacks - This unfortunately introduces a delay in the speed of your follow-up, as the records in R&R will not exist until the import is done, and if you're tracking Internet Activity and RoI, this can a huge problem.



I hope at least one of these ideas will help your current situation, ideally #1 or #2 would work best if no true "lead forward" is possible. If you'd like to talk through any of these, let me know, I'm a glutton for tech-issues.

 

[Matt McCormick]

Idea #2 - Automation: Will your eLeads automation setup, allow you to send email alerts outside of the system (e.g. an autoresponder to a specific address, like your R&R leads address)? In this way, you could format and email template, using [AUTO FILL VALUES] for lead information, and have eLeads simply "autorespond" to R&R after the lead arrives. This is especially nice, because the template can be formating in XML ADF specifically, if your CRM requires that format for incoming leads.

Possible drawbacks - Some system don't allow "autoresponders" to be sent as "alerts" out of the tool, so this would limit you. Also, with the limitation of [AUTO FILL VALUES] you may not be able to properly bring over all of the original lead information.


Thank you! This is genius, but I really have no idea if it would work. Can you sort of break down what you mean by "alerts" and why it is important for an email to be seen as such? I thought that on the receiving end, the tool sees an email in the proper format and parses it. What makes an email an alert? If this is a separate problem from the formatting problem then I am unsure if this could work, otherwise I think this solution seems straightforward and perfect. Solution #1 is currently being "discussed" and I can only assume that it means that it is being willfully ignored and everyone is hoping another solution emerges. I am trying to motivate both companies to work this out but I have little reason to expect results. Solutions #3,4,5 all are legitimate but require manual interaction and in my opinion would create the same sort of "click here and there and there" to get a task done problem that I already have with Reynolds CM.

Thanks again. Im impressed you were able to come up with that so fast.

 

[Djackson]

Solution #1 is currently being "discussed" and I can only assume that it means that it is being willfully ignored and everyone is hoping another solution emerges.

I'm hopeful they can accomplish this, as it would provide the simplest solution (if lead forwarding is not available).

But I apologize, as I realized reading your response my verbiage may not have been particularly clear.

I was calling the email message an "alert" as to mean it was a message outside of the CRM/ ILM tool. I think in terms of alerts being personalized messages to a Manager, or Sales Rep for example, whether they be in email or SMS formats. The "alert" could just as easily be classified as a notification, or Out-of-ILM auto-responder as the correspondence isn't being sent in reply to the customer, but rather somewhere else.

So ideally it would work something like this:

1) OneSource sends the lead to eLead

2) Per eLead's Lead Receipt Automation, upon receiving the lead an "alert" email gets queued to the Manager (but for the manager's email where he'd receive the alert, use your R&R Lead address)

3) (I'm assuming here, because I'm not familiar with eLead specifically) but email sends the manager an email template that would be in XML ADF format (unless R&R can parse plain text in which case that'd be much easier). So it would start something like this, but with eLead's [AUTO FILL VALUES] instead of the placeholder ones I used.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?adf version="1.0"?>
<adf>
<prospect status="new">
<vehicle interest="buy" status="used">
<year>[VEHICLE YEAR]</year>
<make>[VEHICLE MAKE]</make>
<model>VEHICLE MODEL]</model>
<vin>[VEHICLE VIN]</vin>
<stock>[VEHICLE STOCK]</stock>
</vehicle>
<customer>
<contact>
<name part="first">[CUSTOMER FIRST NAME]</name>
<name part="last">[CUSTOMER LAST NAME]</name>
<email preferredcontact="0">[CUSTOMER EMAIL]</email>


4) Then from there, R&R should be able to parse it.


I hope this helps clarify what I meant for idea #2, if you have any other questions, let me know