Changing CRM's

[Tordiway]

Now the positives:
- Pretty easy to see "the big picture." All your prospects and be pulled up on the screen and sorted by date, vehicle, name, etc. etc. Good for mass mailings.
- Wish List feature called "Matchmaker."
- Integration with the R & R back office system (of course). Easy to find cars in inventory (real time) and match to prospects. Easy to find customer histories.
- More reporting capability than even the most anal retentive Internet Director could want. (Or so I am told. Obviously this is important to mngmt and not salespeople).
- Fairly intuitive GUI. Did not take too long to get the hang of using it.
- Am told that system will do automated follow-up emails. Our mngmt has disabled that feature so I don't know.

These are the things that immediately came to mind.

 

[mattwatson81]

We switched to Rey Rey's CRM five months ago .

So Trace, which CRM would you prefer to be using?

 

[Tordiway]

So Trace, which CRM would you prefer to be using?

Heh, heh, not going there, Matt.

Sadly, have not used your product in a year and a half now. Would love to test drive it with all the new revisions and see how it has changed.

 

[sburges2]

Homer Skelton Auto Group is going with DealerSocket at the end of November. I know from experience at the prior dealerships I came from, the review you've gotten about ReyRey is correct, so I'm not going to beat them up anymore. I recommend interviewing these three:

a) Salesforce (especially if you're looking for the whole enchilada)
b) DealerSocket
c) VinSolutions

I would also suggest izmo (I believe this is iMagicLab), yet I've not sat in a presentation of that product in over two years, so I don't know what their product is up to today.

I've used WebControl/AVV as both an ILM and CRM in the past and I only recommend the ILM for small iNet departments for the ease of use.
I am excited about using DealerSocket, and I wish we could have gotten one of the three I recommended at the other stores. Here's your main points of interview:

1) Live push/poll with DMS-capabilities-solutions and what Murphy's Laws have they grown thru regarding those questions
2) Inventory abilities for reps & consumers- does it look the same? I can't stand being able to see one thing, yet not able to deliver that info to the consumer exactly the same way I've viewed it 3) Website and third party integration- do you use other companies to respond to your leads and what will that mean for your current process
4) Processes- do they have generic or do they have the ability to load what you know works at your store (without the line- "We can build that platform to match your needs" which equates to "We can, yet you'll have bugs to work out"
5) Ease of use- don't just sit thru the spectacular sales reps' show, demand they let you "play/use/try/live demo" the back end tools from adding new reps, updating info, and sending emails

Hope this helps and good luck! I'm glad you're one of the few dealers that gets to try change in these unpredictable financial times! Funny seeing another professional in the business double posting in the two info sharing sources...
Susan B.

 

[mattwatson81]

Homer Skelton Auto Group is going with DealerSocket at the end of November. I know from experience at the prior dealerships I came from, the review you've gotten about ReyRey is correct, so I'm not going to beat them up anymore. I recommend interviewing these three:
a) Salesforce (especially if you're looking for the whole enchilada)
b) DealerSocket
c) VinSolutions
I would also suggest izmo (I believe this is iMagicLab), yet I've not sat in a presentation of that product in over two years, so I don't know what their product is up to today.
I've used WebControl/AVV as both an ILM and CRM in the past and I only recommend the ILM for small iNet departments for the ease of use.
I am excited about using DealerSocket, and I wish we could have gotten one of the three I recommended at the other stores. Here's your main points of interview:
1) Live push/poll with DMS-capabilities-solutions and what Murphy's Laws have they grown thru regarding those questions
2) Inventory abilities for reps & consumers- does it look the same? I can't stand being able to see one thing, yet not able to deliver that info to the consumer exactly the same way I've viewed it 3) Website and third party integration- do you use other companies to respond to your leads and what will that mean for your current process
4) Processes- do they have generic or do they have the ability to load what you know works at your store (without the line- "We can build that platform to match your needs" which equates to "We can, yet you'll have bugs to work out"
5) Ease of use- don't just sit thru the spectacular sales reps' show, demand they let you "play/use/try/live demo" the back end tools from adding new reps, updating info, and sending emails

Hope this helps and good luck! I'm glad you're one of the few dealers that gets to try change in these unpredictable financial times! Funny seeing another professional in the business double posting in the two info sharing sources...
Susan B.

Salesforce doesn't have anything that would work for car dealers I don't think. It would also be more expensive that anything else available made for automotive. We use salesforce in the office. It is like $100 per user a month.

iMagicLab and izmo are different companies.

 

[sburges2]

iMagicLab and izmo are different companies.

Thank you, Matt. I wasn't sure- like I said, it's been a while since I've sat thru one of their presentations. The "shiny thing" was the "blow images into emails to counteract spam-blockers", yet I think VinSolutions has that same capability if I recall correctly (I think you should know...lol) and your product is good!

 

[Karen Ann]

- Cannot merge duplicated prospects into one viable prospect. This drives me nuts!
- No ability to put your "hot" or "warm" prospects into a special area on the screen so you can easily remember to tend to them. Real easy to forget about a prospect until days later, then it is too late.
- Email program sucks at attachments, both outgoing and incoming. If you have to send or receive an attachment better use Outlook.
- Overall the tool is sluggish. It hangs a lot, and we get Javascript Error warnings all the time. It happens to everyone here, at the office or on our home PCs.
- Weak customer support. I've sent in 2 comments/questions and never got a reply.

Hopefully this will help?

-You can merge (well maybe not you-but someone in the building) multiple entries using 0567 in "the blue screen" EraLink. It combines over night using Q0567
-under "my clients" you can choose to list "all open" and it will list all your prospects that have an open status (not declined, bought elsewhere, dead, inactive etc). These should be all your 'currently working on' prospects.
-email sucks for attachements. yes.
-to fix all the errors, change your internet options. You'll need to add ReyRey to your trusted sites and change all the options to enable, enable, enable.
-I've always had great customer service (except for one person) but that may be because I phone the Canadian help center?

I don't always love CM but I do enjoy the schedules! I can make the system do anything...

We can change our prospect follow up routine depending on sales person, department or even the age of vehicle they're looking at, we can modify our lease follow up working from eol, we can make our fleets get maintenance email reminders for specific units at different intervals (3 or 6 months), we can do anything we want.

Well, almost, service followup is tricky because CM wants to create follow up for each separate pay, so someone with warranty work and an oil change would have 2 follow ups from one RO - this may have been fixed it's been a couple years since we tried.

I also like campaign tracking!

and Desk Log.

 

[Karen Ann]

1) Ease of use for the sales staff
2) Handling of Internet Leads
3) Email Blasts
4) Service Marketing.

I guess the original questions I can try to help with too.
1) Once your processes are set up it's fairly intuitive, the system does what you tell it. Get help from ReyRey to set up the right processes for your dealership, for different sales sections (lease vs sub prime?), and internet prospects.
2)I've heard that the Internet Leads are parsed automatically from whatever source they get sent from, but we have been manually inputting.
3)Easy easy easy, campaigns are trackable too.
4)Once set up it works really well.

 

[Mitchell Brenner]

We made our CRM Choice

After three months of research we have decided on Vin Solutions as our next CRM. The other three choices I'm convinced are excellent solutions but we just felt, based on many recommendations and talk on these sites, that Vin Solutions was the choice for us. In reality I think two things stood out for me when making the choice. First, after being with Higher Gear on and off for about 9 years I needed a CRM that would be constantly improving and updating their software as Higher Gear hasn't in 9 years. Vin Solutions does that every two weeks. The other reason, and I wish people say this about us, is that Cliff Jackson, the Regional Sales Manager at Vin Solutions, was always available and helped me throughout the process, never once got impatient even with my ever growing phone calls and emails. He answered all my concerns and really listened to my needs. I have also read some great things about Matt Watson so I just knew we were in the right hands.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Mitchell, we sure appreciate your enthusiasm for finding a new CRM. It's never an easy task considering the options and all the different features that one needs to fit their dealers process. I've been there several times and when you finally make that decision it's a huge weight off of you shoulders.Congratulations to you!

I hope you don't mind but I took the liberty to merge your new thread that you just posted here in the dealerrefresh dealer forums labeled "We Made Our CRM Choice" with this original thread "Changing CRM's" that you started back on October 21st.

It's obvious that you have been on a mission since you posted this same question on a few other forums...

ADM - Changing CRM's - Automotive Digital Marketing Professional Community (ADM)

Kain - Sign In to KainAutomotive.com Idea Exchange 2.0 - KainAutomotive.com Idea Exchange 2.0

It's also obvious that you are very happy with your decision in moving forward with VIN Solutions, so much so you again posted this exciting news in the same forums...

Kain - Sign In to KainAutomotive.com Idea Exchange 2.0 - KainAutomotive.com Idea Exchange 2.0

ADM - We made our CRM choice! - Automotive Digital Marketing Professional Community (ADM)

And of course here on the dealerrefresh dealer forums. Again... I hope you don't mind, but in order cut down on the confusion and noise for the community here I have merged your new post with this current older post.

I also hope you don't mind me sharing, and please..this is nothing more than my personal opinion but your post here comes off a little like a sales pitch. Just my opinion...I hope my vision is blurred between your true excitement and a short promo/plug.

Either way..it reads like a pitch and if I was VIN Solutions I'd be a little concerned. Matt already pushes the limits with his contributory sales tactics.