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How are your CRM's routing leads to a salesperson?

Mike Lauf

Lot Lizard
Feb 14, 2017
8
3
First Name
Mike
Hi all - I'm hoping you can help me with a bit of a research project. I'm trying to better understand how all the various CRM's out there assign a lead to the right salesperson based on the ADF email that's sent to the CRM.

The latest standardized ADF format hasn't been updated since May, 2000, which I'm sure predates any vendors who allow a user to select a salesperson to work with at the time of submitting the lead. There have been talks of an ADF version 2.0, though nothing has become "official" yet. However, I've also seen some CRM's start to accept some of the proposed new fields that version 2 would include. One of these fields is an <agentID> tag.

I know eLead leverages this tag. If an ADF email contains this Agent ID, the lead will automatically be assigned to that sales rep when the lead is submitted.

What other CRM's utilize that tag? Or, does your CRM use something else (other than relying on someone in the BDC to manually route the lead)?

Would love to hear your thoughts.
 
Hey Marc. So, DealerRater allows consumers to select a salesperson at the time of submitting a lead for the dealership. Whether the person is submitting a lead on the dealership profile or on a specific VDP, we include information on the top rated employees on the lead for so if the customer finds someone they'd like to work with, they can specify that in the lead.

Problem is, after the lead gets sent to the CRM, if the CRM isn't able to recognize that salesperson selection, then it might get assigned to someone else unknowingly. This, in turn, creates a confusing and potentially negative experience for the customer. They specified in the lead that they want to work with Bob, but now someone named Dave is calling them back.

So if we can figure out how each CRM routes the leads to a specific employee - or more specifically, what field(s) in the ADF email it looks for that will cause it to automatically assign the lead to someone - we can not only make it a more comfortable process for the customer, but also quicker and easier process for the dealership. On DealerRater, when a salesperson is selected at the time of submitting the lead, we've seen the lead-to-close rate increase by over 80%.
 
Hey Marc. So, DealerRater allows consumers to select a salesperson at the time of submitting a lead for the dealership. Whether the person is submitting a lead on the dealership profile or on a specific VDP, we include information on the top rated employees on the lead for so if the customer finds someone they'd like to work with, they can specify that in the lead.

Problem is, after the lead gets sent to the CRM, if the CRM isn't able to recognize that salesperson selection, then it might get assigned to someone else unknowingly. This, in turn, creates a confusing and potentially negative experience for the customer. They specified in the lead that they want to work with Bob, but now someone named Dave is calling them back.

So if we can figure out how each CRM routes the leads to a specific employee - or more specifically, what field(s) in the ADF email it looks for that will cause it to automatically assign the lead to someone - we can not only make it a more comfortable process for the customer, but also quicker and easier process for the dealership. On DealerRater, when a salesperson is selected at the time of submitting the lead, we've seen the lead-to-close rate increase by over 80%.
@Mike Lauf Couldn't your form selection (by salesperson) script generate an ADF file with a unique vendor/source for each salesperson? If each salesperson selection generated its own source/vendor tag like "DealerRater - Dan Sayer" then rules are easy to assign directly to a specific person by source. Only issue then is you have multiple Dealer Rater source leads so ROI on a single source becomes a little messy (although tracking individuals would be easy). But, the leads would go to the right person every time (at least with Vin).
 
We are interested in adding the <agentID> capability to our back end's lead processing. My developers are asking where DealerRater gets the ID's from if you have that information. Currently (besides manual assignment by the BDC Manager) we can deliver specific lead sources to a specific salesperson or a group (with round robin processing to it's members). If we know how to map the <agentID> we can easily add the capability.

David J
Traffic Control CRM
 
@Mike Lauf Couldn't your form selection (by salesperson) script generate an ADF file with a unique vendor/source for each salesperson? If each salesperson selection generated its own source/vendor tag like "DealerRater - Dan Sayer" then rules are easy to assign directly to a specific person by source. Only issue then is you have multiple Dealer Rater source leads so ROI on a single source becomes a little messy (although tracking individuals would be easy). But, the leads would go to the right person every time (at least with Vin).
Hi Dan - adding a unique lead source for each salesperson when selected in a lead is certainly an option (and potentially one that fits the general mold of most CRM's). As you mentioned though, there are a few downsides to that. Still a viable option though, but I'm trying to explore every option first and would love to learn how each of the more well-known CRMs handles this. I'm assuming Vin Solutions assigns an ID to each dealer employee loaded into the CRM - do you know if they look for that ID anywhere in the ADF email?
 
We are interested in adding the <agentID> capability to our back end's lead processing. My developers are asking where DealerRater gets the ID's from if you have that information. Currently (besides manual assignment by the BDC Manager) we can deliver specific lead sources to a specific salesperson or a group (with round robin processing to it's members). If we know how to map the <agentID> we can easily add the capability.

David J
Traffic Control CRM
David, as of now, we've only tested this with a dealer group (using eLead) who was willing to send us a list of their salespeople and corresponding Agent ID's. So we hardcoded them into our database for the purposes of the test. The good news is it's working like a charm. But now we have to figure out a more reliable method for adding and maintaining those ID's. Without any sort of true integration, the easiest option may be to add that as a text input field in our back end tool where dealers create employee profiles on DealerRater. This way, dealers can just add it themselves at the time of creating the profile on DealerRater (it would also be able to be uploaded in bulk via spreadsheet). From there, the CRM just needs to know to look for that ID in the ADF email, and if found, assign the lead to that person (same as you would with a unique lead source).

Let me know if you have any other thoughts around that.