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Vendors & Sales Processes

ChrisR

Boss
Oct 12, 2015
467
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Awards
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First Name
Christian
There is an odd dichotomy that I see in automotive.

Guests submit inquiries, and expect/require immediate response. If we do not get back to them within moments of their submission, someone else will, and we lose the opportunity.

Vendors receive inquiries, and maybe they get back to you. Why is it so difficult to give people opportunities to take my money, sometimes?

Especially at end of month, if they're trying to make numbers, wouldn't they want to respond to someone?

Maybe it is because they know there are fewer options, and we are a captive audience? Maybe I should re-write the "Why it is time to stop ignoring vendors" post & email it to each of the vendors that I can't get a response from, just for laughs?
 
Guests submit inquiries, and expect/require immediate response. If we do not get back to them within moments of their submission, someone else will, and we lose the opportunity.

Weeeeeeell... more than 1/3rd of leads into dealerships are not answered. Industry average.

As for the vendors... I don't know why they're not responding. Comfort? Accountability issues?
 
There is an odd dichotomy that I see in automotive.

Guests submit inquiries, and expect/require immediate response. If we do not get back to them within moments of their submission, someone else will, and we lose the opportunity.

Vendors receive inquiries, and maybe they get back to you. Why is it so difficult to give people opportunities to take my money, sometimes?

Especially at end of month, if they're trying to make numbers, wouldn't they want to respond to someone?

Maybe it is because they know there are fewer options, and we are a captive audience? Maybe I should re-write the "Why it is time to stop ignoring i vendors" post & email it to each of the vendors that I can't get a response from, just for laughs?
I have now been on both sides of this situation. Spent multiple years inside a car dealership, and now I am an automotive vendor. I try my absolute best to respond to customers in a timely manner. Do some people slip through the cracks? Absolutely, but not often. I check my emails, text, and call log hourly HOPING someone has responded.

Here is a funny example-not related to automotive but relevant nonetheless. I had some dental work done last week and realized over the weekend my bite was uneven and would need to go back. I was having a lot of discomfort, so I called the dentist hotline to report the issue on Sunday. I make it to Monday afternoon and realize I had not heard from my dentist. As I am about to call the dentist and give them a piece of my mind, I see I have a voicemail from a number that was not saved in my phone. Low and behold, my dentist called me at 8am Monday morning and told me to come in at 11am. Somehow I missed the call AND the voicemail. Sometimes, even when it is important we miss the mark.

With automotive vendors, customer service and support are paramount. I think some vendors scale too quickly and don't hire enough help, leaving vendor reps with too many accounts to be of any real help. Then there are the OEM partnerships. A lot of vendors are secure knowing that they are pretty much the only game in town. Co-op keeps the dealers chained to "approved vendors" that most dealers love to hate.

Your "why it's time to stop ignoring vendors" thread was super helpful!! Keep up the good work
 
It was something we saw in my former life (you know, the one where we had 14,000 dealerships as clients), but I doubted the data too. Then I got to look at Driven Data's data to see it more clearly. And yeah, shocking!
How are they tracking a response? If they are relying on signals out of CRMs, that wouldn't be entirely accurate because if a call goes out but isn't logged or a text via personal device (which I know both are face-in-palm scenarios) or a response comes out of out of 3rd party portal it would be blind, like OEMs, relying on that same signal.
 
How many internet leads does an average dealer receive a month? And how many of those customers even know they are a lead (ie: junk OEM leads)?

How many internet leads does an average automotive vendor receive a month?

B2B and B2C sales and lead follow-up are very different beasts.
 
How are they tracking a response? If they are relying on signals out of CRMs, that wouldn't be entirely accurate because if a call goes out but isn't logged or a text via personal device (which I know both are face-in-palm scenarios) or a response comes out of out of 3rd party portal it would be blind, like OEMs, relying on that same signal.

Do you think your dealer group would be as on-the-ball with lead response if you left?
 
Maybe I've just spent all of my time at smaller start-up vendors, but the rare time in which we actually received an inbound request from a dealer was cause for celebration. Inbound leads were treated like gold - followed up with immediately and nurtured to the death. I can only imagine the forunate place you need to be in as a vendor in this space to simply ignore an inbound request.