"What is your close rate?" is a popular thread on DR and there may be some face-palming that I'm bringing this up, again, but this is different. Hear me out on my conundrum.
Years ago, when we had eLead, I started to break out our Internet and Phone leads into a "front half" and "back half" measurement. Lead-to-Visit and Visit-to-Sold. We moved away from overall close rate in how we measured in order to find if we had a pursuit problem or a desk problem. I was reminded in my last 20Group, with the most-wise moderator David Kain, that the separation was still a relevant KPI.
Here is my issue. This is a manual calculation as eLead, and now currently VinSolutions, don't offer a calculation within reporting to show these numbers accurately. "But Dan, there is a 'Appt Shown', 'Appt Sold', and 'Visit Sold', etc so use those." The issue with all those calculations in our CRM is each of those counts, Appointments and Visits, are not a unique count. For example:
I have 4 customers come in the store.
2 of those customers visited one time. One with a scheduled Appointment and one just popped in. The Appointment buys on that fist visit.
1 customer was at the store yesterday, on an Appointment, but has returned on another scheduled Appointment.
and the last customer, customer #4, is here for the 3rd time but the 3rd time was a pop in with no Appointment (prior 2 visits were Appointments). This customer also ends up buying on that 3rd visit.
I have 4 unique customers and 2 bought. What is our showroom close rate? If you said 50%, you're wrong according to all reporting within the CRM.
The CRM will say:
28.5% is your Visit Close Rate. Why? It sees 7 Visits and 2 Sales.
and
20% is your Appt Close Rate. Why? It sees 5 Appointments and 1 Sale from an Appointment.
There is also no reporting that shows "Unique Customers in your showroom during timeframe" and all data is geared to Visits and Appointments which allow for multiples per customer. Another issue is that all Appointments are Visits but not all Visits are Appointments. They do split out Initial Visits and Be-Backs but their report for "Initial Visits Sold" is purely what % bought on first visit (which is nice to know but doesn't give the needed overall rate)
Luckily, though, that Initial Visit count is a count of Unique customers. A customer can only have one Initial Visit so I can be sure there is no duplication.
So back to Lead-to-Visit and Visit-to-Sold. I can take "Sold in Timeframe" count, "Initial Visit" count, and "Good Leads" to come up with my two KPI's. Initial Visit divided by Good Lead is my Lead-to-Visit % (our goal is 26% for Internet and 52% for Phone) and Sold in Timeframe divided by Initial Visits is my Visit-to-Sold % (our goal is 60% for both)
Is that an issue for anyone else? Am I missing something? There are still holes in my process if I start running smaller timeframes because I may have a customer buy last week Monday that was actually an Initial Visit two months ago which would then have a count on Sold in Timeframe but not on Initial Visits in that timeframe.
On a side note most all our stores are running in the 60%+ showroom close range (in a minimum 30-day rolling timeframe) when counting unique customers and vehicles sold for both Internet and Phone derived Leads (Walk-In are in the 35% range). We are struggling with the front half, that pursuit to a showroom visit (or home visit we also count).
Years ago, when we had eLead, I started to break out our Internet and Phone leads into a "front half" and "back half" measurement. Lead-to-Visit and Visit-to-Sold. We moved away from overall close rate in how we measured in order to find if we had a pursuit problem or a desk problem. I was reminded in my last 20Group, with the most-wise moderator David Kain, that the separation was still a relevant KPI.
Here is my issue. This is a manual calculation as eLead, and now currently VinSolutions, don't offer a calculation within reporting to show these numbers accurately. "But Dan, there is a 'Appt Shown', 'Appt Sold', and 'Visit Sold', etc so use those." The issue with all those calculations in our CRM is each of those counts, Appointments and Visits, are not a unique count. For example:
I have 4 customers come in the store.
2 of those customers visited one time. One with a scheduled Appointment and one just popped in. The Appointment buys on that fist visit.
1 customer was at the store yesterday, on an Appointment, but has returned on another scheduled Appointment.
and the last customer, customer #4, is here for the 3rd time but the 3rd time was a pop in with no Appointment (prior 2 visits were Appointments). This customer also ends up buying on that 3rd visit.
I have 4 unique customers and 2 bought. What is our showroom close rate? If you said 50%, you're wrong according to all reporting within the CRM.
The CRM will say:
28.5% is your Visit Close Rate. Why? It sees 7 Visits and 2 Sales.
and
20% is your Appt Close Rate. Why? It sees 5 Appointments and 1 Sale from an Appointment.
There is also no reporting that shows "Unique Customers in your showroom during timeframe" and all data is geared to Visits and Appointments which allow for multiples per customer. Another issue is that all Appointments are Visits but not all Visits are Appointments. They do split out Initial Visits and Be-Backs but their report for "Initial Visits Sold" is purely what % bought on first visit (which is nice to know but doesn't give the needed overall rate)
Luckily, though, that Initial Visit count is a count of Unique customers. A customer can only have one Initial Visit so I can be sure there is no duplication.
So back to Lead-to-Visit and Visit-to-Sold. I can take "Sold in Timeframe" count, "Initial Visit" count, and "Good Leads" to come up with my two KPI's. Initial Visit divided by Good Lead is my Lead-to-Visit % (our goal is 26% for Internet and 52% for Phone) and Sold in Timeframe divided by Initial Visits is my Visit-to-Sold % (our goal is 60% for both)
Is that an issue for anyone else? Am I missing something? There are still holes in my process if I start running smaller timeframes because I may have a customer buy last week Monday that was actually an Initial Visit two months ago which would then have a count on Sold in Timeframe but not on Initial Visits in that timeframe.
On a side note most all our stores are running in the 60%+ showroom close range (in a minimum 30-day rolling timeframe) when counting unique customers and vehicles sold for both Internet and Phone derived Leads (Walk-In are in the 35% range). We are struggling with the front half, that pursuit to a showroom visit (or home visit we also count).
