Buying Center CRM?

[Bill Hoerr]

Howdy!

To preface: Our group uses VinSolutions.

Our group has a buying center and we have been sending these leads to our VinSolutions CRM. It's a bit tricky to label these leads and process as VinSolutions doesn't inheritantly have a "Buying" process in the CRM, just Sales and Service. This makes communication, and reporting difficult.

Does anyone have any tips or tricks when it comes to using VinSolutions as a buying CRM or do you use another CRM with better buying process capabilities?

Thank you!
Bill

 

[Dan Sayer]

Howdy!

To preface: Our group uses VinSolutions.

Our group has a buying center and we have been sending these leads to our VinSolutions CRM. It's a bit tricky to label these leads and process as VinSolutions doesn't inheritantly have a "Buying" process in the CRM, just Sales and Service. This makes communication, and reporting difficult.

Does anyone have any tips or tricks when it comes to using VinSolutions as a buying CRM or do you use another CRM with better buying process capabilities?

Thank you!
Bill

Oh man. This hits close to home. I've been asking for a "sold, kinda, but didn't 'sell' anything, we bought their car" status for years from Vin. We moved to DriveCentric late last year. The only thing that is closer but still misses the mark in Drive is the Dead Lead label in DriveCentric for "Dealer Purchase". All this really does is kills the Lead and removes it from counting in any metrics like Visits or Delivered %, etc. They did create a report for us in order to track them all but unless a store is using it correctly, it doesn't give any conversion or performance metrics. We still manually track volume of purchases and in a couple of stores that have KBB ICO tools, we can track easier but then you're relying on another tool outside of the CRM. Sorry, I don't have any answer for you. Someday a CRM will figure out the value that brings to a dealer and put some attention towards it. Maybe others have? My scope is just limited to those two... We are launching VinCue this month with the Buying Center so maybe that has something better?

 

[BillKVMotorCo]

Oh man. This hits close to home. I've been asking for a "sold, kinda, but didn't 'sell' anything, we bought their car" status for years from Vin. We moved to DriveCentric late last year. The only thing that is closer but still misses the mark in Drive is the Dead Lead label in DriveCentric for "Dealer Purchase". All this really does is kills the Lead and removes it from counting in any metrics like Visits or Delivered %, etc. They did create a report for us in order to track them all but unless a store is using it correctly, it doesn't give any conversion or performance metrics. We still manually track volume of purchases and in a couple of stores that have KBB ICO tools, we can track easier but then you're relying on another tool outside of the CRM. Sorry, I don't have any answer for you. Someday a CRM will figure out the value that brings to a dealer and put some attention towards it. Maybe others have? My scope is just limited to those two... We are launching VinCue this month with the Buying Center so maybe that has something better?

We have DriveCentric and we do the same thing. Mark the lead bad with a designation and then run a report. I wish there was a good answer, but right now there are only workarounds. I never saw anything in VinSolutions that would do it either. Wish I had a better answer for you, @Bill Hoerr.

 

[Alex Snyder]

Speaking from a vendor perspective, it was VERY recent that a larger population of dealers have gotten into the acquiring-from-consumers game. Solutions are hitting the market to address this, but it will take a little time to get it all sorted. Vendors will follow the money.

 

[BillKVMotorCo]

Speaking from a vendor perspective, it was VERY recent that a larger population of dealers have gotten into the acquiring-from-consumers game. Solutions are hitting the market to address this, but it will take a little time to get it all sorted. Vendors will follow the money.

This was my exact thought. This was always there, but it was such a small piece that few were serious about it. So why build it?

 

[Bill Hoerr]

Oh man. This hits close to home. I've been asking for a "sold, kinda, but didn't 'sell' anything, we bought their car" status for years from Vin. We moved to DriveCentric late last year. The only thing that is closer but still misses the mark in Drive is the Dead Lead label in DriveCentric for "Dealer Purchase". All this really does is kills the Lead and removes it from counting in any metrics like Visits or Delivered %, etc. They did create a report for us in order to track them all but unless a store is using it correctly, it doesn't give any conversion or performance metrics. We still manually track volume of purchases and in a couple of stores that have KBB ICO tools, we can track easier but then you're relying on another tool outside of the CRM. Sorry, I don't have any answer for you. Someday a CRM will figure out the value that brings to a dealer and put some attention towards it. Maybe others have? My scope is just limited to those two... We are launching VinCue this month with the Buying Center so maybe that has something better?

Haha yes, the "sold kinda" status is what we are currently labeling these purchased vehicles. Taking the results out and manually creating reports afterward.

I appreciate your insight! I'm looking into some open-source CRMs that can provide these types of custom properties associated with the buying process. As you said, unfortunately, it would require an additional tool until vendors can add this functionality. Hopefully can put something together to share here.

 

[Bill Hoerr]

We have DriveCentric and we do the same thing. Mark the lead bad with a designation and then run a report. I wish there was a good answer, but right now there are only workarounds. I never saw anything in VinSolutions that would do it either. Wish I had a better answer for you, @Bill Hoerr.

It's all good! Thank you for the reply! I figured there would be a few out there struggling with this process as well. We have created somewhat of a "custom" label as "purchased" but it's a bit hard to link the post-sale information after the acquisition.

 

[Bill Hoerr]

Speaking from a vendor perspective, it was VERY recent that a larger population of dealers have gotten into the acquiring-from-consumers game. Solutions are hitting the market to address this, but it will take a little time to get it all sorted. Vendors will follow the money.

Makes total sense, looking forward to see what solutions come through for this.

 

[peppermccormick]

Question for this group - would you need this buying center CRM functionality to live within your 'selling' CRM or would you be open to having it live outside/ in a different platform or vendor for just your 'buying' team to work out of?

 

[Dan Sayer]

Question for this group - would you need this buying center CRM functionality to live within your 'selling' CRM or would you be open to having it live outside/ in a different platform or vendor for just your 'buying' team to work out of?

Why, what is CarGurus working on
I think everyone would prefer a single tool BUT since most CRMs haven't put that on their roadmap, I think many would take an outside tool to show all pure acquisition results from their efforts in all acquisition channels. IMO