• Stop being a LURKER - join our dealer community and get involved. Sign up and start a conversation.

I need your help with a product

todd.smith

CSI Bandit
Apr 11, 2009
53
23
Awards
4
First Name
Todd
I have been building a product over the last few months but I really would like to get some feedback. Here is a 5-minute overview video of the product's capabilities. What am I missing? How can I make this better and more useful from your perspective? My goal has always been to develop technology that helps people do what they are already trying to do each day and to make it easy to do it. Please any feedback is appreciated

 
@todd.smith Great idea...BUT. I think most CRM's provide some aspect of "creepy" data within their CRM in the form of social media insight or data append services. Even so, pursuing the customer via any other means than what they provided is a questionable practice. If someone only provides an email, how does having their phone number help us? I can assume that if the customer wanted a call, or even a text, they would've provided their phone number. Thoughts on how that should be handled?

I heard it this morning reviewing lead handing from Saturday. Customer provided an email only on a lead from Saturday BUT had submitted email and phone on a shopping lead in 2017 so the CRM plugged in that full data. On the recording of the outbound call from Saturday the customer's first statement was "how'd you get my number? I only gave my email." Luckily, the sales person recognized the lead from 2017 and remembered our training and confidently replied, blaming our "system", "looks like you had shopped with us in 2017 so the system added your phone number". The customer reply was basically acceptance. If I don't have a previous record, will a customer today accept "our system plugged your information in"?

Secondly, the other underlying issue is "paralysis by analysis" that we give our sales teams if we aren't careful. Sometimes too much information forms an opinion based on assumptions. Having sales teams dig into social profiles may form a mental block that prevents someone from reaching out to a lead with a positive outlook. I recall when Ford Direct started including market data like household average income, etc, on leads. I would get guys that wouldn't pursue the leads on new cars because the data FD sent reported "average household income $48,000" and the lead was on a Lariat F-150. They would form an opinion and then half-ass the pursuit. I would see the same thing happening if we add social review to our internet process. We have, however, when a lead's contact information proves to be bad, have used FB Messenger to reach out but then are very clear of who we are and why we are messaging them. "Hey Bob, Dan with Anderson Ford, just checking to see if you had submitted a request on a 2017 Toyota RAV4. Your name was sent to us but we couldn't get the phone or email to work. If that wasn't you, nothing needed on your end, if it was you, can you reply with the best phone for a quick call or text? Thanks and have a great day!"

Lastly, if I figure out that someone is friends with my sister or works for a company that my buddy is at, what is the word track to arrive to that information with the customer? "Hey Bob, was just doing some digging and see that you are friends with my sister"? I would rather arrive at that information naturally. Do you see dealerships doing well with sharing this information in a way that isn't creepy?
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Tallcool1
Hi Dan,

First I want to say thank you so much for the thoughtful reply it was super helpful gaining some additional insight and a greater understanding of the potential concerns. I am aware that some CRMs provide additional data but at low match rates. We are running about 70% on our ability to match lead data with identity so that would be a piece of differentiation I believe right from the start.

The contact using this information is super subjective but I believe as you pointed out the data was in our system as a solid acceptable response to overcome the challenge. Asking for forgiveness is better than not getting ahold of an opportunity that costs the dealership $50 on average to generate. I wrote a quick user guide that outlines some of these strategies and we have been getting input from other industry professionals to refine it which we believe will continue to evolve as we gain more feedback from our dealership partners.

I totally understand the issue of the judgment of prospects which has been going on long before the Internet. I started selling cars in 1989 and I remember it happening all the time on the lot based on how someone was dressed, the vehicle they drove in with, credit, and even how they spoke when they were greeted. That being said I still believe having information about a potential opportunity can be useful if applied in a way that helps.

The question is are salespeople better off with more information or less. Will salespeople be able to work information into the conversation that creates trust and value? Those are the unseen aspects but I have to say if we are hiring and training professionals we should be able to accomplish this through coaching and feedback. You can easily incorporate information into conversations naturally with a little training. An example would be the data shows we went to the same high school and you are connected to my sister as you expressed in your comment. The question would be are you local? Did you go to school here? Really so did I. What year did you graduate? I think that is the same year as my sister (insert name) do you know here? I believe great salespeople do this naturally but having data on their side could give them an edge.

Again I really appreciate that you shared your thoughts. I would love to talk with you more about it.

Todd
321-662-7800
 
Those are the unseen aspects but I have to say if we are hiring and training professionals we should be able to accomplish this through coaching and feedback.
And there ^^^ is the answer to all our ailments. People are at the core of any successful implementation, I agree.

The dataset that you are using, does it happen to have IP data? About a year ago we looked at a product that matched up unconverted visitors on our site to a data set by visitor IP. We found out who the reseller was using and bought a license to use on our own ($300 single license vs $2,300 retail product). It would produce a list of shopper data based on those visitor IPs. Great in theory, and once we turned it on within our sites, the customer data (address, email, kids, mortgage, pets, credit cards, vehicles, phone, etc) poured in. Our intent was to create custom email campaigns based on shopper vehicle interest on the sites. The catch was that some of the visitors convert and fill out forms. None, and I'll emphasize none, of those matched the reported data from the licensed set. If you had the ability, within your data set to provide a tool or report like that, that actually works, I'd be interested.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Tallcool1