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Walk In Customers who leave and do their " Homework "

Alex Magnan

Just Get'm In
Jul 2, 2012
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Alex
I'm looking for some input on how to deal with Walk In customers who come in and leave with figures i.e Monthly Payments, Selling Price, Trade In figures, etc. and then go home and send in an Internet Lead. The customer will get the internet price that is more than likely lower than the price they got in the showroom. I in return contact the customer only to find out they've been to our store and worked numbers with one of my floor guys. So I guess what I'm getting at is how do you guys handle it as far as Floor Guys, internet guys, and split deals? I know everyone has different views with this. I look forward to any input you guys can give.
 
Your dealership should procure a state of the art CRM system that is capable of identifying customers who were previously logged in the system. Most CRM systems look for a match by e-mail, phone number or name and address. Thus as the floor rep, it would be wise for you to log your walk-in traffic as to not have to fight the chicken or egg battle with the Internet peeps. Make sure you collect the e-mail address since this is normally the first match criteria. Then when your customer submits a lead, the CRM system will identify you as the appropriate rep to assign the lead.

Have to love technology!
 
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Your dealership should procure a state of the art CRM system that is capable of identifying customers who were previously logged in the system. Most CRM systems look for a match by e-mail, phone number or name and address. Thus as the floor rep, it would be wise for you to log your walk-in traffic as to not have to fight the chicken or egg battle with the Internet peeps. Make sure you collect the e-mail address since this is normally the first match criteria. Then when your customer submits a lead, the CRM system will identify you as the appropriate rep to assign the lead.

Have to love technology!

Jerry, you assume that the floor salesperson actually logged the customer.

This customer obviously wants the car or he wouldn't have submitted the lead, after leaving the store. They should have shut them down while they were at the store. If you are going to give a customer all of the numbers, you never let a customer leave on high figures!
 
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@Ddavis I think what prompted this was " what if " numbers the customer got and went home and shopped me. I bring this topic up because unfortunately to say we don't use a CRM tool at our store. And my department is the only ones using software which is AVV. To most we are way behind the times and I've been saying it for awhile that we need to implement it into this store. Because this has been a problem since I've started here.
 
@Ddavis I think what prompted this was " what if " numbers the customer got and went home and shopped me. I bring this topic up because unfortunately to say we don't use a CRM tool at our store. And my department is the only ones using software which is AVV. To most we are way behind the times and I've been saying it for awhile that we need to implement it into this store. Because this has been a problem since I've started here.


Alex, I'm sure you know this but you have the tools in AVV to solve your problem. Please give me a shout back when you get a moment.
 
Jerry, having a CRM isn't the issue, using it is the problem.
The fact also remains, that a motivated buyer wasn't closed while he was at the store. I'm all in favor of technology but it doesn't replace salesmanship. I'm starting to believe, this isn't a topic that many want to discuss on DealerRefresh.
 
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Now that we have a CRM; when a lead comes in it's my just to check all their contact info to see if it's a floor lead or not. If there's nothing flagging them or showing contact in 4 months-it's all Internet-well that's the rule at least. If there's a paper trail the sales manager has to make the call, but he hands out the prices so he usually catches the few not in the system. The others, typically couples, if they come in on another appt to the Internet people by name 3/4 of the time it's all internet because no one knows the connection, if there's an issue it's a split and tally to the Internet team. Before CRM it was just the wild west - whoever they came in to see by name got the deal. For me, here under the rock, the key to everything is to remember nothing in sales is black & white! -hope that helps