CRM buying is a very personal experience.  In the introduction to this 5 part series I mentioned that making a decision on a CRM is massive, and I think we all know that.  However, it isn't all about just buying a CRM; there are some elements I covered that pertain to better utilizing your current CRM.  To conclude the series I will be covering the costs and expenses of CRM (after the page jump).

If you didn't read this entire series word-for-word, I understand as it is a lot to take-in.  I tried to cover it in such a way that didn't point any dirty fingers at your current system as my real intention was to get you thinking more about what CRM really is.  This is an educational series plain and simple.

With that said I know CRM is a tough topic as it is probably another 5 years away from being a fully-utilized technology.  Hopefully we can all look back at this series in 2016 and say "Alex - geeeez, that was some seriously basic stuff you were talking about back in the day."

It was also not my intent to give you an exact list of features to ask about in your CRM demos.  I have personally created quite a few lists of "CRM must haves" for my dealership and have seen a few from others.  The one thing that is constant amongst all my lists, and the others I've seen, is that they're all different.  This fact simply proves CRM buying is a personal experience.

The key takeaway from this entire series: CRM helps you play the numbers game through good process.

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With that said there are some, if I might say it without sounding cocky, strong factors I covered you should incorporate into your CRM approach.  As someone deciding on which CRM system to partner with, or someone who controls the output of CRM (CRM Architect) in your dealership, you should keep in mind that your audience is the person who speaks to customers regularly (the basic user).  I hate to say this but it is the basic user who is typically the least interested in your business (read:  Why we Suck).  This is the person who makes or breaks your business, and makes or breaks your CRM.  However, when looking at a CRM they should be considered above all others.  The beginning of the CRM Process article talks a bit about what to look for in regards to them, and I highly suggest that you at least read that one article thoroughly.

Managers are busy.  I'd love to talk about the things that make them so busy and whether those things actually help make better sales agents or merchandising, but that's a different set of articles (we'll call that one leadership qualities).  When it comes to CRM, you want your managers to interact with the system quickly and be able to make decisions on those seconds they can afford to glance at the system.  Don't let your sales manager create a CRM rebellion solely because the pencil tool doesn't push to the DMS or pull in rates.  The pencil tool, as great as it truly is when properly defined, is not CRM.  CRM is maintaining and organizing a database that allows good follow-up.  Your sales managers should be a major part of that.

Executives and Decision-Makers have mostly been left out of CRM's to date, unless they like to get deeply involved.  These are the people who usually decide which CRM system will be a part of the organization because of the costs.  I'll argue with any one of them that CRM should have the most consideration based on usability above costs because I believe CRM moves the needle more than any other technology.  If you'll spend up to 1 year considering which DMS provider is best to partner with (usually because of money) then CRM should be the second biggest decision; it is not a two hour demo decision.

CRM Rebellions

Chances are you thoroughly read this entire series because you and/or your people are upset with your current CRM provider.  Not to sound like too much of a CRM know-it-all, but I have definitely seen some CRM Rebellions.  I fully admit to being the Founding Fathers of a CRM revolution a few years ago (the CFO at Checkered Flag is probably loving me finally admitting that).  After instigating some I can say that CRM rebellions really are a sign of weakness.  This weakness is either on the part of the vendor or you; most of the time it is a combination of both.

All technologies solve some sort of problem, and that inherently makes each one good.  Where they are bad is when they don’t solve your particular problems, or they don’t innovate to keep up with your advancing abilities.

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In the case of my rebellions (hopefully yours too), the latter part of that quote is what fueled my dissension.  A CRM rebellion sucks.  It does no good for anyone.  It wouldn't be a true CRM series if this wasn't covered and defined, so make sure that any rebellions you encounter are for the right reasons.

Responsibilities of the CRM provider

CRM is a two-way road.  Because of the depth it covers your vendor is more of a partner than with any other technology you'll pay for.  Your CRM provider needs to:

• Provide support to every user
  
• Take your feature requests seriously, and provide reasoning when it isn't implemented
  
• Make the tool available for use at least while you're open (also called up-time)
  
• Don't make unnecessary enhancements and system updates at month end
  
• Provide training on how to use the CRM system

Those are basic items you should expect from any technology provider, but those are items that are exponentially important when the technology is a requirement of doing everyday business.  Your mileage may vary on that list depending on your individual needs.

Buy-in

Wow, whoever thought those two little words could equate to such an enormous issue?  Buy-in is a critical piece of anything and that goes way beyond technology.  Who's responsibility is buy-in when it comes to a CRM?  It is the dealership's.  As usual, buy-in starts at the top, but that buy-in rarely comes from the President's level.  The top, as it relates to CRM in this case, is really the Vice President or General Manager level depending on your dealership's organizational arrangement.  Sometimes buy-in is created by allowing users' input in the system.  What I mean by that is allowing anyone to have a voice and implementing the things that make the most sense from all the voices.

I've mentioned the CRM Architect a few times in this series and if you assign one of your employees to thoroughly own the CRM you'll put some very reliable miles on your system.

Knowing what you want

Because we suffer from supreme ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) due to our month-to-month mentalities we struggle with knowing what we want.  What we want changes after every month-end close out.  Unfortunately CRM setup and tweaking requires good vision.  It may be worth your time to hire a consultant who can help you figure this out.  Until I stepped out of the dealership I didn't realize just how ADD I was.

Since I stepped out of the dealership I've met a few people from some large dealer groups who have the funding to hire outside of the automotive industry.  These "outside" people bring vision beyond the 31st of the month even though they might not know how to fully communicate with every player in the store.  That vision they bring really helps these very smart groups plan future strategy.

If the budget doesn't allow you to place a help wanted ad in Palo Alto, then you're going to have to step outside yourself to look very deeply at yourself (you should probably reread that statement).  It is tough.  But this is the only way to understand who you are and how to accomplish who you want to become.  A consultant can help you see a clearer picture of yourself.

Paying on CRM - don't be afraid to fire people

Are your payplans still based around volume and gross, and only volume and gross?  Okay, maybe there is a CSI bonus in there but have your payplans fundamentally changed in the last 10 years?  If not, your money-driven employees are not going to see the true value of the CRM.  Change their payplans to focus on playing the numbers game.  Change the pay to garner appointments.  Change the pay to drive more phone calls and cleaner data entry.  Create a modern payplan.

If changing the payplan is too much to swallow, then fire someone.  Yeah, you read that right - I just said fire someone.

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Okay, okay that's a little harsh.  But I hope you can agree with me that anyone not taking your CRM investment seriously is negating that investment.  Sometimes an example must be made.

Costs and Monthly expense

A good CRM is expensive.  The old saying "you get what you pay for" definitely applies.  Most of the better CRM's start around $2,000 per store per month.

How much do you pay for your DMS and all the things that go into that animal?  How much do you pay for your advertising?  I bet those costs are enough to make you pay close attention to how well they're running.  I'm not going to tell you to bleed the bank account dry on CRM, but I just want to point-out that sometimes the best buy-in occurs where the costs are the greatest.  If you're teetering on a CRM system because of costs, strongly consider what a big CRM investment can bring to the table with full buy-in.  That includes devoting someone on your staff to its consistent utilization.

With the proper process that promotes playing the numbers game, some smart tweaking of payplans, and a CRM partner that fits what you want CRM is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

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Conclusion to the conclusion

I've written some things that should be tough for everyone to read in this series.  They're tough because CRM is a mirror that requires you to understand your own strengths and weaknesses.  We're all sales people and in order to be good sales people we have to have a bit of an ego with our competitive edge.  Looking into the mirror is hard to do for us.

With that said, most of us, who have been using CRM for a while, probably have not utilized it to its full potential.  We may or may not have realized that CRM is really here to help us play the numbers game better.  My main intention with this series is to help you understand this point.  When you get that simple fact, CRM becomes simpler and you can approach any demo with a cleaner picture of what you want from it.

I hope this series helped and continues to help.

How to buy a dealership CRM series:

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Process
Part 3: Marketing
Part 4: Decision-Making
Part 5: Conclusion(this article)

Even though I know and preach that CRM Process is the true core of a successful CRM system I must admit the reporting and decision-making portion is actually my favorite part.  I love playing with numbers and discovering new avenues to traverse.

One could argue that the reporting and decision-making portion of a CRM system is actually the most important part because it fuels the tweaking and accountability of the processes.....as long as someone is watching.  I believe the two compliment one another; especially when the two are done right.  Unfortunately things like faulty reports, lack of comprehension, and data corruption (duplicates, bad ad sources, etc) plague the accuracy of CRM reports.

Decision-Making also compliments the marketing end of the CRM and if you truly understand the reports you can use them as good indicators of how well your other marketing efforts are working.

Unfortunately, it seems, reporting is the last thing ever considered by some vendors and that has really ticked me off as a dealer because we rely on it so heavily.

Reporting

What to look for in Process Reports:

This is the toughest part to overview in a demo because it is really difficult to gauge how accurate things are without using your own data.  The best you can do is check to make sure the data points you want to measure are available in the reporting and then call a reference dealer to see if they've been happy with the reporting accuracy.  Speaking of calling references, I need to write an article about that.

We know we should be concentrating on making sure our people  are using the CRM to contact as many customers as possible, so the first basic things to look for inside the reporting suite are reports that cover utilization:

• How many phone calls are being made
  
• How many phone calls are being taken
  
• How many emails are being sent
  
• How many emails are being responded to
  
• How many appointments are being scheduled
  
• How many appointments are being confirmed
  
• How many appointments are showing

When looking at these kinds of process-driven statistics, you will need to apply some gut-logic and basic math in order to hold your people accountable.
For Example: look at a report that shows the number of customers entered into the CRM system within a certain date range (a good CRM system will have a report that shows this particular traffic break-down).  Internet leads are fairly straightforward, but phone calls and floor-ups aren't always logged.  So how do you apply a check and balance to your people's cherry-picking?

Assuming the system has traffic-tracking reports you can calculate some reverse math.  If you sold 200 cars and know that your typical closing rate is 20% on traffic in your showroom then, you should be showing 1,000 customers in your reporting as having touched the showroom.  Plug this into your calculator:  200 ÷ .20 = 1000.  If your CRM already computes this for you, fantastic.  If not, you can do some manual math to quickly make some discoveries.

The main goal is to be sure the CRM has reporting that gives you the numbers you need to figure things like this out.

Many more things can be said about CRM Utilization Reports, but that could be a whole book.  My suggestion is to come up with 3 utilization points you are going to turn into gospel and make sure your CRM is capable of keeping you informed as to whether your people are living up to those points.

3 points of responsibility is about all the average person can handle per technology.

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If you haven't thought about this yet, here are 3 starter things you can hold your sales people accountable to in the CRM:

1. Number of customers entered (check their work with the closing ratio equation in the indented example 2 paragraphs back)
   
2. Capturing of specific data points like email address, cell phone, and an advertising source other than Drive-By
   
3. Number of calls they're making per day (should be at least 8 calls per day) ....this should eventually work in conjunction with number of appointments created per day.

What to look for in Marketing reports:

From the CRM Marketing article we know that marketing in a CRM can cover a lot of bases.  Obviously we want to make sure we have tracking on the marketing elements that are being sent from the CRM, but we also want to be able to monitor traffic changes based on external campaigns as well.  With that said, you cannot expect to hold your CRM system accountable for your marketing efforts outside the CRM, but you should be paying attention to your traffic reports within the CRM around those campaigns.....and holding your people accountable for making sure they're logging all those customers into the system.

It isn't all about floor traffic anymore, so be sure the CRM can at least track Phone-ups and Internet Leads along with the floor traffic.  Another fantastic tracking benefit is being able to view the service traffic, so you're also able to gauge the effects of your Fixed Operations marketing.  I would love to dive into service much deeper, but that seems to be an area that most dealers don't want to put the effort/money into.....that's a shame.....

....but I'm going to say a few things about it anyway.

Service is a used car department's biggest vendor (ever think about it that way?).  Through reconditioning and PDI's a lot of money is paid to Fixed Operations.

In retrospect, Sales is Service's biggest customer.  On top of that service has most of sales' old customers and a heavy influence as to whether those customers use the sales department again.  There sure are a lot of potential trades in those service lanes.  Does your CRM help you capitalize on those?  If it does, how does the CRM help the service department keep those lanes filled so you have more trades to choose from?  See where I'm going with this..... and that's my quickie tangent on service.

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Tracking the traffic sources is a basic reporting feature of a CRM.  You need to see where your customers are coming from to better lay a finger on which advertising sources are fueling your traffic counts.  Yes, your sales agents typically have a tendency to ruin these reports by selecting Drive By as the ad source (please explain to me why that is an ad source again?).

You want to be able to see:

1. Name of the advertising or lead source
   
2. How many customers were entered into the system coming from that source
   
3. How many customers bought cars from those sources

Like I said, these are basic stats and they're stats that are usually corrupted by anyone manually entering customers into the CRM.  As a leader, you can put an end to this by holding these people accountable and diluting the number of ad sources your CRM probably gives them as choices.  Have you checked to see if you have more than 10 ad sources as choices in your CRM when people are manually adding customers?

As you are probably doing some email marketing out of your CRM you should be looking for a minimum of these items to be reported on:

1. Number of customers receiving an email blast
   
2. Number of times the email was opened

There are many, many more things that can be reported on around email marketing, but I would call these 2 items good starting metrics if you haven't been paying much attention to this area yet.

Reporting is an absolutely essential piece of a good CRM.  As the basic point of a CRM is to be a place for customer entry and follow-up by anyone who regularly speaks to customers, the most important aspects of reporting are going to revolve around how well your people are doing their jobs.  Sophisticated CRM's can take you very deep into these areas.

When in the demo be cognizant of the point in which the CRM sales representative talks about reporting:  if it isn't brought-up or he just says "what reporting do you want to see?" be leery.

I will finish on reporting by saying it can be a very personal preference as to what reporting items you want to see beyond what I listed here.  It is best to know your needs before diving deeply into a reporting demo, so I strongly advise you get a good list of your needs together before hopping into any CRM demo.

More Decision-Making tools

Pencil Tool

I've seen quite a few different flavors of pencil tools.  Some have been baked-in calculators and others have been full-on DMS pushing, APR pulling, gross reporting beasts.  A lot of them have been over-engineered nightmares.

At the end of the day a pencil tool just needs to put printed numbers on paper.

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I say this because we sometimes have a tendency to believe we can't get the job done without seeing all the rates or sacrificing the 10 extra minutes it takes to manually put a deal into the DMS.  I'm not saying this stuff is unimportant; I'm just saying the main purpose of a pencil tool is to create a psychological effect with the customer by killing the green Sharpie.  The old handwritten worksheet we used to negotiate off of promoted negotiation; a printed worksheet looks more official.  The difference between presenting a four square vs. a payment matrix and saying "choose one please Mr. Customer" can equate to some massive gross differences per copy.

I know there are a lot of sales managers who won't agree with my equating a pencil tool to simply being a worksheet printer, but let's face it - what is it REALLY supposed to do?  Well, if they didn't agree with that last statement they're absolutely going to hate my next.  A pencil tool should also track and measure the differences in write-backs.  If it has a reporting area, that reporting area should be utilized by the GSM or GM to measure how well the sales managers are handling the negotiations.  I haven't known too many sales managers who like to be held accountable.

When it comes to the pencil tool, I just wanted to point these items out so we don't get hung-up solely looking at features that don't add or control gross.

Social Media

If you've read the CRM Marketing piece in this series then you might think I didn't pay social media its due respect.  Here it is!  Social media can be used as a detective piece for your employees.  With a social media look-up feature anyone can check the public sites to learn a little about a customer.  If you're unfamiliar with this, let me give you an example:  once a customer's email address is attained you can search the social media channels (twitter, LinkedIn, facebook, etc) to see if there are any accounts tied to that email address.  Some of the more sophisticated CRM tools have this functionality at the customer details screen.
For Example: If your customer was Alex Snyder you could find out that I am into photography, surfing, snowboarding, and sporty cars.  With the last bit of information you'd know to tailor your approach towards performance as I probably could care less about how many airbags a car has.  That's a nice bit of information to have if you're responding to my Internet Lead request.

The problem with this is some customers might view your "big brothering" as an invasion on their privacy.  If your CRM has this feature, you need to be very careful on how you train your employees to use it.

The other problem is that the success rate of a social media look-up is far from 100%.  In fact, it is low enough to actually deter some sales agents from ever using it.  This is why I will classify this feature as a "nice to have"; not a need.

Inventory


Most CRM's integrate with your inventory in some shape or form.  Some integrate so far as to be your actual inventory tool.  While looking at what the inventory portion of the CRM offers you should be looking for reporting on:

• How many customers looked at specific vehicles
  
• How many customers looked at certain vehicle types (bodystyles and what not)
  
• Which ad sources spurred interest on which vehicles (I think I just gave a new idea to some CRM companies reading this...you're welcome )

Unfortunately this is another area of reporting that can be skewed by your staff.  A lot of sales agents and employees taking phone calls only enter one vehicle of interest per customer.  In the case of sales agents, this is typically the car the customer is going to start negotiations on or the car they're actually going to buy.  You will rarely find out what other vehicles were looked at or test driven.  But you will at least have a good picture of what is selling.....or most likely to.

Appraisals:

There is a CRM system I used in the late 90s and early 2000s that had the ability to show which vehicles were entered as trade-ins to the entire staff.  Most importantly, it showed which vehicles were offered as trades that we didn't actually trade in.  I was a sales agent then and absolutely loved that feature because it was like having a virtual used car factory.  Back then, the Internet wasn't widely used so we had a lot of people walking-in asking for specific used cars we didn't have in stock.  Being able to pull that list up, with the customer in tow, created a lot more sales that I wouldn't have gotten.  This is certainly a "nice to have" feature, but a great one.

Being able to look at a list of potential trade-ins can also aid a wholesale department.  Today there are inventory merchandising tools like vAuto that have the ability to send an appraisal notification to a used car buyer, so wholesalers don't have a need to watch the appraisal sheets anymore.  However, there is a movement in CRM tools to integrate more with inventory so be sure to get a thorough look at what your next CRM can do for you in the stocking department.

Like the pencil tool, an appraisal tool also helps maintain a level of accountability.  Of course, we always want to steal a trade, but if you low ball every customer you won't make as many sales.  If sales managers are paid on gross (including wholesale loss) it can sometimes be in their best interest to ACV trades low.  If the appraisal tool tracks the appraisal values, a GSM or GM can compare those values to book values to make sure full trade value optimization is happening.

Conclusion

I could write a book on this portion of the CRM because it is my favorite part, so I'm going to cut it short.  I'm already on the fifth page of a standard college paper (congratulations to you for reading all that).

No, this article does not cover everything.  But I hope it gets you thinking about some more pieces to talk about in your next CRM demo.

The main takeaway from this article is that CRM utilization, by your people, is still the key aspect of any CRM.  When it comes to reporting you should mostly concentrate on the reports that show your staff's utilization.

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First and foremost you should be concentrating on the reports that revolve around how your staff interacts with the CRM.  CRM decision-making transcends technology.  It requires understanding the reports in order to make better things happen in real life....A.K.A. more cars over the curb.

On a side note, if you have a PHD (Pappa Has Dealership) or are trying to get your heir better acquainted with your business, CRM is where the most can be learned.  Nothing made me more in-tune with the dealerships than owning the CRM system.  It was my best career move to date.

How to buy a dealership CRM series:

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Process
Part 3: Marketing
Part 4: Decision-Making (this article)
Part 5: Conclusion

If you read through the Introduction and CRM Process articles of this series you already know that automotive CRM is a little bit different than traditional CRM systems and good process is the real magic behind it all.  Marketing can play a big part in the CRM though.

Every email you send, voicemail left, and phone call connected can be viewed as a marketing impression.  Hopefully these one-to-one impressions leave a big impression on your customer.

A good CRM will have a history of communications your dealership has made with a customer and a really good CRM will also archive the marketing materials you've directly sent to each individual customer from within the system.

Basic CRM Marketing items to look for:

I think it is safe to say that email broadcasting has become a standard feature of the larger-named CRM solutions available to car dealers.

Email marketing is a very effective channel.  It is easy to abuse though - don't become an email spammer.

Does the CRM have the ability to send an email broadcast? If yes...

• How do you build one?
  
• Does it give you some sort of spam score or a "likelihood of deliverability" score?
  
• How deep can you target?  Make > Model > Email address type > bought car within x months, years > Service R.O. closed within x time period
  
• Can you exclude customers who already received one within the last x days?

We should all be well aware that targeted marketing is the key to a successful email blast or mailer, so you want to be sure you have that capability within your CRM.  What do I mean by that?  The ability to target a customer in the CRM is simply a drill-down that is typically done through some sort of advanced search feature.  A few CRM's try to do this automatically for you, which is great (if it works), but you want to pay more attention to your own ability to create a list of customers to drill-down to during your demo.  There is no way to tell if the automatic list creation features being demonstrated to you actually work for you until you've got your own database in the system.

You can apply these same questions/approach to letter printing.

I'm getting a little ahead in the series, as this next statement pertains to Decision-Making, but you want to take a close look at the reporting your CRM offers on email broadcasting.

Does the CRM have the ability to export a list of customers? If yes...

• How do you create this list?
  
• Will the CRM show that a particular customer was included in a list export within the customer's history?
  
• Can you title or create a description for the list so you remember what it was when looking at the customer's history?

Why do you want the capability to export a list of customers?  There are times when you will want to send a targeted mailer or maybe include a call center for various things.

You should keep in mind that the ability to export a list of customers from your database should not be something all of your users are capable of doing.  As we all know, a dealership has a rotating door on the front and you don't want a disgruntled employee walking through that rotating door with a list of your hard-earned customers (not to mention the legal issues this creates).

Does the CRM have the ability to search for a group of customers for your agents to call? If yes...

• How does the search functionality work?
  
• Will the returned searches stay on the screen while calls are being made?

If you've sold cars or been a manager in a dealership you've probably been instructed to make some last minute end-of-the-month calls because you're a hair short of your objective.  A CRM can help you quickly identify the customers you need to speak to in order to make sure you're turning every rock over to make that objective.  I admit that calling customers to push a marketing message straddles the line of process/marketing.

Tomorrow's Targeted Marketing items to ask about


Now we're going to step into some CRM marketing sophistication.  There is a lot of cool marketing stuff you can do when working with only one customer at a time....or making your customer believe your advertisement is only for him/her.

I predict the future of CRM will share a lot of synergy with dealership websites.  Some of this has already started, and will continue to get better with time.  Just for starters, imagine being able to classify a demographic of IP addresses based on what we know about a group of people in the CRM.  When those IP addresses hit your website the message on the website can be modified to cater to that demographic.....or maybe just target specific individuals.  I'm sure you've heard of behavioral targeting and this is where you begin to include this kind of targeting on your own properties (it is pretty expensive outside of your own website).

Targeting is the future of marketing.  If you're blasting your entire database with the same email or newsletter, stop!  You should be asking your current or next CRM provider how to better target specific parts of your database.

I received a call from my Honda GM asking for ways to find more used Odyssey's as the stock was getting low and demand was rising.

Using the CRM, I created a list of current Odyssey owners who had bought one from us between 28-36 months prior that were not in a loan.  I came up with a list of 35 who were still opted-in for email marketing with us.  I sent a very simple email stating we wanted their Odyssey back and we wouldn't only give them extra for their trade, but we'd give them extra pricing assistance on their next car no matter what it was (of course, this was all worded in non-car-speak-English so the customer could understand it).

Out of 35 people we had over half respond and we were able to put deals together on roughly 11 of them.  That's a 31% return on a cost of roughly 30 minutes of my labor.

Sure beats the crap out of the last mailer's ROI doesn't it?

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Tomorrow, targeting traverses all mediums, and your CRM should be the hub.  Today it is available by email, letters, and serving phone calls for your staff to make (which is the most effective when done properly).  Ask your CRM provider what is planned for tomorrow to aid you in your targeted marketing efforts.

Inventory Merchandising

With the vAuto's, FirstLooks, and AAX's leading the charge on better inventory merchandising I also see more synergy between inventory and CRM down the road.  A stand-alone inventory management system typically does not show how many customers viewed or touched a specific car.  Without this data it is hard to know whether you're stocking the right cars, pricing them right, or setting them up appropriately to compete on the Internet.  I know this item traverses decision-making, but it is something that helps with your marketing efforts.  I wouldn't call this a critical piece for your CRM, but it is definitely another "nice-to-have."

Social Media

I'm sure I would be castrated if I didn't talk about facebook or social media in general in this part of the CRM series.  Social Media can be considered a marketing channel, but it is really a communication channel. It is best used for individual targeted marketing when and if a customer has granted you permission to do so.  If you want some good perspectives, read about social media strategy on the forums.

I know social media is still young, but today it looks like less than 1% of a dealer's customer base are agreeing to communicate with a dealership through social media.  Numbers sure have a wicked way of turning sexy into ugly don't they?

If you are very good at social media, and have the proper permissions from your customer, then you don't abuse that by marketing on these channels.  You can do that on your own dealership pages/properties, but I'd be surprised if you have a whole lot of followers after doing that.  If you have permission to speak to a customer through the social media channels then social media is a communication media to be utilized in the same method as an email or phone call.

There are some other ways to take advantage of social media that I will discuss in the Decision-Making part of this series.

Conclusion

To date, marketing has taken a bit of a backseat within most automotive CRM systems.  I definitely see it becoming a much bigger force in the CRM feature-set as broad marketing becomes more of a branding/impression solution and targeted marketing is where conversion happens.

CRM Process, as discussed in the last article, is still the number 1 priority of a CRM system.  You need to have the processes in place in order to close on what the marketing brings.  If you're smart, and your CRM system allows for it, you can build marketing pieces into your processes.....but that's a very in-depth and personal discussion for your business.

CRM plays a bigger marketing role in the Decision-Making section.  But if there is one thing I hope you take away from this article:

CRM is your vehicle into targeted marketing and targeted marketing is the future.

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How to buy a dealership CRM series:

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Process
Part 3: Marketing (this article)
Part 4: Decision-Making
Part 5: Conclusion

Hopefully you read through the Introduction to this CRM series, but if you didn't that's okay because you've landed on the most important part of the series:  CRM Process. In order to sell more cars, get more service appointments, and just get more customers using your dealership in general it all boils down to good follow-up.  This is where the needle is moved and this is where you change the gap with your competitors because this is where CRM makes the difference.  Don't let anyone tell you different.

Process management is not an easy silver bullet (do those actually exist?); it does require quite a bit of work.  You can't simply write a check for this one, and no vendor, consultant, or trainer can maintain the consistency you need in this area.  If you want to own your market and make your customers happy then this is where the right-fitting CRM can help you get that done.

It is all about the basic user (anyone speaking to customers as their primary job function).  I know your basic users aren't the ones making the decisions on which CRM you should buy, and they probably shouldn't.  I can imagine quite a bit of chaos with too many cooks in the kitchen.  However, you are the decision maker and you should be thinking about them before thinking about how you will use the system and how much it costs.  CRM is priceless by the way.

On a side note, if you ever have any CRM questions, the DealerRefresh community can help in the CRM and ILM forum 24/7.

What to look for in the demo:

There are only a few screens needed for a basic user:

1. Customer Entry Screen
   
2. Customer Details Screen
   
3. Forms
   
4. To-Do Screen

Start with these.  You need to get a very good idea of what your basic user will be doing multiple times a day everyday.  If it is tedious, ugly to look at (subjective I know), and unintuitive then your people will hate it.  I've seen some CRM rebellions by basic users and they do nothing but waste everyone's money.

Customer Entry Screen:

• How many screens does it take to enter a customer?  Are they all pop-ups or new browser windows?
  
• What are the required fields and can you control what those are (can you make adding an email address a required field?)?
  
• How easy is it to attach a vehicle of interest?
  
• How easy is it to add a trade-in?
  
• After adding basic five-liner stuff is it simple to get into the area where you add financial information for a credit application?
  
• Does the screen promote the addition of an ad source?  If so, does it have things like Walk-in, Drive-by, Internet Lead, Phone-up, or Manual Entry?  If those are present ask why because those things are unnecessary.  Those are channels; not ad sources.

Spend a lot of time here.

When it comes to the license scanner, is it a windows-based system that has to be reinstalled every time the scanner is disconnected?  Do you really need a license scanner or are you simply looking for a way to upload a picture of the customer for a future reminder of who he or she is?  How important is a license scanner to you?....really think hard about that question because most of them are crap.

Customer Details Screen:

• How easy is it to view the history of communications?
  
• Can emails and phone calls be completed from this screen?
  
• Can forms be printed from this screen?
  
• How easy is it to edit the fields in this screen?

Forms:

• Is it just a print-out of data from the customer details screen?
  
• Can you actually edit the form before it is printed?
  
• Are the forms large PDF's that take forever to load?
  
• Can you add customized forms?

To-Do Screen:

• Can basic users override the process by delaying calls or changing process triggers?
  
• Does sending an email or making a phone call require doing so from a different screen or pop-up?
  
• Can you prioritize which calls are most important to make?  This helps to tone-back sales agents cherry-picking their calls.
  
• Is enough information about the customer shown for an agent to only use this screen?

The To-Do screen is where you want your people to spend most of their time in the CRM.  This is an extremely important screen.  Spend some time with this one and imagine what it is like to interact with it everyday - could you use this screen every time you step into the office? It may look cool today, but will this screen continue to be affective a year from now?

The To-Do screen should also play to the numbers game.  What do I mean by that?  Sales is a numbers game right?  The goal of any salesperson should be to speak to as many customers as possible.  Talent is simply a measure of how many customers one needs to work with to hit a number of sales.  If this screen promotes time spent digging through the customer history or doing anything other than just calling it might not be the best screen for getting the job done; you be the judge of that.

Here's an example of what I've seen:

I used to watch the time a sales agent or BDC agent interacted with each to-do item.  I'd stand somewhere where they didn't know I was watching and I would time them.  I found that most agents pulled-up a to-do item and immediately dove into the customer history.  They'd mentally formulate where the call was going to go and maybe call some of their coworkers who had worked with that customer before - this is time wasting at its finest.  I found that, on average, it was taking my people roughly 10 minutes to get their head straight before picking up the phone (ridiculous - I know).  I had to train people to just dial and go.  What they found was the customer would tell them what was important or they could rely on our phone guide/scripts to help get them through the call.  3-5 minutes is optimal for completing a to-do which includes the time spent on the phone with the customer.  If you need phone training help, I recommend looking at Phone-Up Ninjas or Traver.....there are many others too.

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For a Manager:

You want to be sure your managers have easy access to everything that is transpiring throughout the day.  Typically they do this through a dashboard.  What should a manager dashboard have?

1. Ability to see all agents completing their follow-up
   
2. All traffic that came into the dealership (floor, phone, Internet, and maybe even Service depending on your own needs)
   
3. Month to Date sales
   
4. Appointments generated for the day with the appointments that are scheduled to show up

There are many other things that can be on a manager dashboard, but these are bare minimums.  The dashboard is important and should be able to help managers hold their people accountable for a day's CRM work at a glance.  You should spend a lot of time looking at this screen as it is where sales managers should live.

If your managers are not confirming appointments, then I suggest you get them started on this practice immediately.  A proper manager confirmation call almost doubles the likelihood a customer will actually show-up for that appointment, and it helps to make sure your agents aren't gaming the system.

There are a number of ways to handle this call, but here's a very basic example:

Hello [Mr. Customer], I am [John Doe] from [ABC Motors].  I am [Sally Smith's] manager and I just wanted to say thank you for taking time out of your day to work with [Sally this Thursday at 11:48].  I am looking forward to meeting you.  I will be the one helping [Sally] make sure your experience is fantastic.  I have set aside some time to sit down with you, so please let [Sally] know if you're going to be early or late.  Do you have her phone number?.....

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If the CRM has a way to track confirmation calls, that is a big bonus!

You should also look at how easy it is for managers to dive into reporting and generate lists of customers quickly.  I'll talk more about reporting under the Decision-Making portion of this series, but Searching capabilities are ways to help managers task their staff with more stuff to do if they ever catch someone standing on the point waiting for the Up Bus.  Be sure you thoroughly test the search capabilities - your entire staff will be using it daily.

A manager should also have To-Do's, so be sure that To-Do screen is just as good for them as it is for your basic users.

Building the processes:

Hopefully your CRM company will give you a default set of processes based on best practices they've seen in their own system.  Anytime someone gives you a list of processes, grab that opportunity, even if you feel like your own are dialed in because there may be a step or two you will want to use in the future.

The first thing you want to consider when looking at the process building section of the CRM is whether it is easily understandable.  If it isn't easily understandable, or you aren't assigning someone to own the CRM, you're going to hate tweaking those processes.  Tweaking those processes is a key element to CRM utilization.  You should always be looking for ways to make the processes better, and should seriously consider hiring an expert in this area that is part of your full-time staff.  I like to think of this person as the CRM Architect and that person should be able to translate technology into real world usage.  I have not met many people who can do that, so treasure that person if you ever find him/her.

Aside from looking for simple understanding of how to set and tweak processes you should first get a list of all the triggers in the CRM.  These may be referred to as "if" items:  If Customer Entered into system.  Look through the list and see if it covers everything you want it to and maybe even gives you some new ideas.

After digesting the triggers look at the actions.  Actions are the "then" items:  Send automatic email.  Think of the combination of the triggers and actions:  If Customer Entered into system - then - send automatic email.  Just as you digested the triggers, do the same with the actions.  Do they cover everything you want them to and do these give you some new ideas?

Beyond triggers and actions you have the basic when's and who performs the action stuff.  Make sure actions can happen at least by the minute.  If you have to wait for an action to happen at midnight, then that should be unacceptable to you.  Also make sure you have the ability to assign actions to different people.  A sales agent isn't the only person working in the dealership, so you should be able to include other people in your follow-up process.

Can notifications be built into the process?  It is unrealistic to think the dealership staff is going to sit in the CRM all day.  There are action items that will come up from time to time that you're going to want someone to act on quickly, so they're going to need a notification by email or text message to let them know to get back to the CRM.

There are more sophisticated CRM systems that add even more functionality here such as adding phone scripts, email templates, and the reasons why a customer is showing on a To-Do screen.  I am a big advocate of these things, but it is possible to get the job done without them.

Conclusion:

Sales is a numbers game.  You speak to enough customers you'll sell enough cars.  Talent is simply a ratio changer.  I have not met a sales professional who has ever argued this.  CRM fuels the numbers game.  Sure, you can throw an incredible amount of money at your marketing, but you'll close more with proper follow-up through good process.  This is why the items outlined in this part of this CRM series is the most important.

Things like social media look-ups, inventory integration, and DMS integrations don't fuel the numbers game.  They're "nice to haves."  I will cover some of these items in the reporting and decision-making parts of the series.

If you want to move the needle in your dealership, through CRM, concentrate on playing the numbers game better.  It is priority number 1.

How to buy a dealership CRM series:

Part 1:  Introduction
Part 2:  Process (this article)
Part 3:  Marketing
Part 4:  Decision-Making
Part 5:  Conclusion

This will be a series of articles because buying a CRM is a massive undertaking.  It requires a lot of research and it requires knowing exactly what you want.  This series is not intended to help bolster anyone's sales or to paint something in a good or bad light.  I wrote these articles to help dealers know what a CRM is supposed to do and how to pick one.

There are a lot of opinions surrounding CRM and how it should be approached; this is just mine.  There are also a few good resources you can turn to for help in either getting back to using your current CRM better or finding a new CRM.  Autobase has a book called Seven Months to CRM Greatness that I hope they'd send to you if you reached out to them (it is a bit dated and 101, but it is something to get started with).  Consultants like David Kain, Jennifer Suzuki, and Joe Webb are fantastic resources when it comes to CRM.  These people work with a bunch of different systems and usually know a great deal about each one.  Your current provider's support and account management/training staff is also a great resource for redeploying or advancing your current CRM solution.

I hate to say this, but I have been through a lot of CRM sales pitches and in 90% of the experiences I've had the sales representative was not working in my best interest.  If this series does its job you will know what to look for the next time you are sitting down with a CRM sales representative.

Let's get this introduction really started.

What is a CRM system?

A Customer Relationship Management system helps to keep you focused on your customers by enforcing process.  In a basic nutshell it is a system that tells you "who to call when."  Stepping outside those boundaries is where CRM systems begin to get more sophisticated.  It is also a database of your customers that organizes their information in ways that aid in your marketing and decision making efforts.

Three parts to a CRM system:

You should understand that there are three parts to a CRM.

1. Process enhancement.  I would argue this is the most important part of a CRM.  You move the needle in your store by working one-to-one communication based on employees following process guidelines.
   
2. Marketing abilities.  A CRM can be used to send bulk emails, push advertising phone calls for your staff to make, and export a list of customers for mailers or for external call centers to call customers.  Some get a bit more fancy in this area.
   
3. Decision making capabilities.  This mostly boils down to reports and dashboards, but it is simply the system providing data that allows you to make better decisions.

Why are most CRM options from automotive-specific vendors?

There are many CRM companies supplying the rest of the world with solutions like Sugar and SalesForce being examples of the bigger ones.  I bet a few of the automotive CRM companies use a non-automotive-specific CRM within their own sales departments.  Many of these non-automotive CRM's focus on Business to Business (B2B) stuff while dealerships are Business to Consumer (B2C) organizations.  The models for each are quite a bit different.  That's not to say there aren't B2C solutions outside automotive; there are tons!  Automotive is a tough nut to crack and almost a fraternity.  But that still isn't good enough reason why.

What makes automotive CRM so different?

One major thing is that it is so difficult to transact with dealership DMS systems.  Outside of automotive these are commonly referred to as ERP systems, but there isn't a stranglehold on them like there is in automotive.  There are also things like manufacturer certifications and what not, but they're much easier to work with.

Outside of integrations and certifications, we have different process demands as the level of communication between a dealership and a consumer vs. something like Best Buy and a consumer are vastly different.  Also within our process we have what the outside world would call two different quote tools.  One is a quote tool that may be used for email communication once an Internet Lead comes through and another quote tool is something we call a "pencil tool."

Then we've got that complex monster that is constantly shifting, and usually late to be updated when new models come around, called inventory.

Then our language comes in.  In order to build software you should start and finish with something called an object model and that requires a precise vocabulary.  I won't get into the details of an object model, but I can tell you our vocabulary is all over the place.  What we call a lead, a client, a customer, a phone-up, a floor-up, etc can all mean the same thing to us; these are completely different things in software definitions.

Oh yeah, one of the biggest problems in automotive is that we don't take CRM as seriously as we should.  Sorry to end on such a downer, but read Why We Suck.

We might think of ourselves as an industry that isn't very technologically savvy, but that's probably because we're an industry the technologically savvy struggle to understand.

Where does a CRM system break down?

You.  Most of the time you are the destroyer of your CRM.  For additional reading on this topic check out Why hasn't CRM sold me more cars? All technologies solve some sort of problem and that inherently makes each one good.  Where they are bad is when they don't solve your particular problems (we're going to try to fix that with this series), or they don't innovate to keep up with your advancing abilities.  However, when it comes to CRM, it is more about providing your basic users (Sales Agents, BDC, Call Center, Service Writers, etc) with a schedule of things to do and a place to add to your database.  If your basic users are not inputting customers and/or not calling customers then it isn't the CRM that's broken, it is you.

There are many times when I've thought simply replacing a technology will give me a fresh start and the ability to fix the problems I was currently having.....but all it really did was sweep the problems under the carpet for a few months.  When those problems reappeared they were worse than ever.  Good CRM utilization requires work and maybe a lot of time looking in the mirror.  I just wanted to point that out before we dive into the next steps in this series.  I promise the rest of the series will be more positive.  I had to point out our shortcomings up front so we can all have them in the back of our head while we're discerning what is most important to each of us in a CRM system.

How to buy a dealership CRM series:

Part 1:  Introduction (this article)
Part 2:  Process
Part 3:  Marketing
Part 4:  Decision-Making
Part 5:  Conclusion