GM Double and Triple Dumping Leads into Funnel?

[rapidchevrolet.com]

Hi-Everyone,

Has anyone seen a plethora of leads come in just today that are duplicates and are sweekpstakes (which come in threes) I have this feeling GM is just trying to justify our program we have to get leads....Does anyone know? 75% of my leads today were useless, plus I recieved considerably more than normal..... Any help would be great!!!

Thanks,

Matt

 

[rapidchevrolet.com]

Update, total GM-HandRaiser web leads 17 in one day... Up from the usual 2 per day.. Any thoughts...

 

[CAORYAN]

About a year ago they were on a kick trying to force dealers to follow up by resubmitting old leads to dealers as new leads. I had a close friend of mine at a GM dealer and he said it was horrible. His sales people were calling them and the shoppers stated it was months ago. I thought that was a bit dirty but i guess some dealers deserve it being that they hardly respond to email leads anyway.

 

[DrewAment]

Most handraiser leads are from a local promotion or event that General Motors was sponsoring or attending in your local market. Events can include concerts, raceways, mall giveaways, golf tournaments, etc. Most people fill out that little card at the event to enter/win/reply to something.

Invalids on these are due to either the customer giving false data or the data input person not being able to read the handwriting.

While not all these leads are valid, and most are not "immediate" purchase intent customers, it is a great way to build your database of marketable customers - at the expense of GM. Just filter out the bad ones. Think of a HUGE top of mind awareness campaign - promoting YOUR dealership. Create a plan to market to these people, add them to your newsletter, etc.

And, FYI - last I heard GM does not count the "handraiser" leads as part the the digital response bonus calculation.

 

[Marc McGurren]

Yup - we got the double and triple handraisers. Many times we know what the hand raisers are for, but most of the time we do not. I have let me GM reps know we really need to know where these are coming from in order to first market them.

The good news with the HR's is that they don't count against out SFE bonus...

m

 

[emersonhr]

I've been hit hard with them this week too. Its funny and sad when we call because when we actually get a hold of a real person they think we are calling because they won something!

We used to get over 100 different Handraisers after SeaFair in August, but now GM is not sponsoring it anymore so I won't have to worry about that again.

 

[mikeelmore]

Update, total GM-HandRaiser web leads 17 in one day... Up from the usual 2 per day.. Any thoughts...

The GM 1 Source tool went down early Monday afternoon, when it came back up for us Tuesday afternoon, the proverbial flood gates opened with GM Handraiser leads (47 +/-), most were duplicates, triplicates and fifth's from as far back as October 2009. We've not had much success with Handraiser leads, in fact, I don't recall ever having a "hot prospect" GM Handraiser lead do business with us. In my opinion, it's best for your sanity, to not consider them as "in market shopper's", but names to add our data base in the hopes that one day they will be in the market, and with proper follow up and marketing of our special sales and service event's, maybe one day, earn their business. Persistence is key, RIGHT?

However, what gets me, is their qualified 3rd party lead program. They highly promote these leads as being scrubbed, valid and ready to rock! But, in reality, they are anything but....

So we do what we can to build rapport and keep on working them, 'cuz one day they will be in the market, and we want them to buy from us, don't we? That's the fun part :thumbup:

 

[emersonhr]

Mike,

You're not the only one that is having problems with GM's 3rd Party Lead Program. I spent a great deal of time in Jan/Feb this year going through all of the leads and doing a little research. You've probably noticed that the bulk of them come in after hours (usually between 9pm and 3am PST) and that the customers are either fake or extremely difficult to get a hold of.

While GM, OneSource, and Torque will deny that they hold the leads and send them out in groups the data suggests otherwise. Unless you have an overnight BDC to handle these leads they can/will affect your Average Lead Response time and therefore your bonus. Given the times the leads come in and quality of the leads I cancelled our enrollment in the program. I cut 120 GM 3rd Party leads, didn't replace them with another source, and sold an additional 22 units the next month because of the increased productivity.

You could try calling OneSource, but they would not divulge when they actually received the lead or even when it was sent to your CRM provider.

Over several calls the following questions were never answered by OneSource:
1. What is my lead radius?
2. Why are the few customers that I am speaking with telling me that they requested information anywhere between 12 and 36 hours before I call them?
3. How are the leads being verified?
4. How do I dispute a bad lead?

The simple answer...the support staff does not know, or they can't tell you.

1. When I cancelled the TPL program the form clearly stated that the next closest GM dealer that participates in the program would begin to receive the leads that we were getting. So it seems like there is no "lead radius" and you could potentially have leads from customers several hundred miles away. At least this was the case with some of my leads (there is a mountain range between us and some of the customers).

2 & 3. None of the support staff at OneSource could explain why customers were telling me that submitted their information a day or so before we received their information. Also, they could not explain how the customer information was being verified either.


4. After 3 phone calls I was told I could fax in the lead and then wait at least 2 weeks before I knew if we were going to receive a credit.... No option to email or call anyone because "we are too busy with all of the potential bad leads that it is taking several weeks in some cases to respond to dealers."

Why would GM fix something that is poorly designed, has poor quality, allows the 3rd party sites to sell the same leads to dealers and other vendors, and works in their favor because it impacts your bonus?

I shot off an email about all of this to our zone rep and SFE Facilitator and they shot it up the chain. I received a few calls from people at GM and OneSource about my email but they never left a message or returned an email about these questions.

If anyone has any questions about this or would like more infor let me know and I'll be happy to share.

 

[DrewAment]

1. What is my lead radius?
2. Why are the few customers that I am speaking with telling me that they requested information anywhere between 12 and 36 hours before I call them?
3. How are the leads being verified?
4. How do I dispute a bad lead?

1. Your lead radius is your PMA - not really a radius, but your assigned market territory from GM.

2. Don't have an answer for you other than - do a test in your market and see how long it takes a lead to get to you. My "thinking" is that these may be the 3rd party ones that are taking a little longer. Might also be the hand raiser type leads. BTW, have you ever asked a customer "what site did you submit a lead on?".

3. From my understanding, not by GM. They are leaving it up to the provider or aggregater to validate.

4. Send the "bad leads" to your DSM.

 

[emersonhr]

Drew,

Thanks for the reply, but my PMA does not include parts of Eastern Washington, our dealership is located just south of Seattle.

I've sent several "test leads" through a few of the 3rd Party sites that GM has been purchasing leads from while we were part of the program.....send them at 8:30 am and receive them at 11:44 pm. In fact I received replies from other dealerships that were purchasing the leads directly from the sites during the day before I received the lead myself. My biggest pet peeve about the whole program is that GM wants an immediate response to their leads, but they wait several hours before passing the information along to a dealerships CRM vendor.....

I wish it was as easy as sending the bad lead to my DSM. I guess some dealers have good ones and others have the ones that barely know how to turn on a computer.