How well does your dealership use Sales Pipeline?
Within AutoPlay there are numerous ways managers can measure how their team are performing.  From their success against targets for Leads, Test Drives and Sales through to their conversion performance against industry benchmarks.  But how do you currently measure your dealerships usage of the Sales Pipeline?  We have reports for this as well but with all the data available at your fingertips how do you weight one metric against another?  You need to take a holistic view of the key metrics to really see the full picture.

Why measure usage metrics?
In a sales-centric environment like car sales, it’s tempting to focus solely on performance metrics like leads, test drives, sales, conversion figures and performance against targets.  After all why do you care about how well a user is using the software so long as they are pushing tin – surely that’s AutoPlays problem?
 
And you would be right, one of the main priorities for AutoPlay is ensuring that our customers are using the software to get all the advantages that come with this, rather than just ticking boxes because they have to.  However it should also be driven from the dealership side for many reasons.  When the good times come to an end the diligence shown around lead management will set up sales people to maintain their levels of success.
 
Moreover, a rogue salesperson who sells well but doesn’t manage their leads will inevitably create a wake around them.  It creates more work for Managers and if they leave the business it’s impossible to handover to a new staff member.
 
Most importantly even the best performing sales person can always do better.  Unless your conversion to sales is at 100% there should always be room to focus on improving performance – and one of the easiest ways to improve performance is to drive the key metrics that underpin success.
 
How do I measure usage?
The first step is to determine what the key metrics are for usage.  It is about more than just the number of logins, leads, test drives or sales loaded.  The following 5 metrics are key to establishing good habits and maximising lead management.

1.  Lead Source %
How effective is your dealership at capturing the details of where your leads are coming from?  Tracking the lead source is one of the easiest things to achieve, yet is commonly an area where even good salespeople let themselves down.  Part of this can be attributed to not seeing how capturing this info can have a direct effect on their own personal bottom line – the obvious answer being that understanding the most profitable marketing channels will help the dealership make decisions to generate the most leads, for the least cost.  More leads equal more sales opportunities which can only be a good thing.
 
How to weight:  Score/20
(% of leads with Lead Source x 20 points)
 
2.  Overdue + Stalled Leads #
Is your dealership letting leads fall through the cracks, or are you keeping up to date?  If nothing else, the key focus for any salespeople is to keep their leads in the Now or Future date ranges.  If leads are falling into Overdue or Stalled then they are not being managed well.  The goal should be to have zero leads in Overdue or Stalled.
 
How to weight:  Score/20
(20 points for zero Overdue/Stalled.  – 0.5 points for any lead at Overdue or Stalled)
 
3.  Awaiting Action #
If you don’t respond to leads quickly and efficiently then no amount of good lead management practices will win you these customers back.  It’s vital your salespeople move leads through the road-to-a-sale and don’t leave them languishing at ‘Awaiting Action’. 
 
How to weight: Score/20
(20 points for zero Awaiting Action.  – 0.5 points for any lead still at Awaiting Action)
 
4.  Average Data Capture %
Is your sales team making sure to capture the customer info required to follow-up?  For most dealerships they are not converting 70% to 80% of the leads the dealership receives.  If you don’t capture customer details it makes it hard for the dealership to remarket to these contacts who have not resulted in a sale.  Score at Meet & Qualify stage to account for throwaway web enquiries that never progress beyond an initial reply.
 
How to weight:  Score/20
(% of data captured for contacts at Meet & Qualify stage and beyond x 20 points)
 
5.  Close Reason %
When closing leads as lost is your sales team recording a reason for the lost lead?  Creating a discipline around qualifying “lost” leads not only helps isolate the reasons customers are not buying, but also forces salespeople to pay attention to how they close leads in order to open up more remarketing opportunities down the line.
 
How to weight:  Score/20
(% of leads closed lost with reason x 20 points)
 
Using this process to gauge your performance out of 100 will help dealerships attribute their overall usage of AutoPlay to one easy to digest single score.  From AutoPlays side we are in the very early stages of planning out a Dealership Score for our AutoPlay reporting suite.  If you have any questions about these metrics or feedback on how you measure usage please hit us up at matt@autoplay.co.nz

The rebuild of our Desktop Studio has now been going 4 weeks and we've made some great progress towards getting the structure and skeleton of the new system built out.  Over the coming months we'll continue to update you all with our progress.  For the moment check out the highlights from the first month of development.

1.  NEW LOGIN SCREEN & PASSWORD CONTROL
The first step for this project was to create the basic structure that will allow our users to login.  We've rebuilt the login page on the new application to work with a wider range of browsers and devices.  That means that when the new application is released users will be able to login using IE11+, Edge, Chrome, Firefox, Safari (Mac &  iOS), Opera browsers instead of just Internet Explorer.  They would also be able to login using Android tablets and smartphones and not just Desktop and iOS.

2.  PASSWORD RESET EMAIL
We've restyled the password reset email to match all AutoPlay branding, as well as cleaned up the email design and content to help users who have multiple accounts know which password they are resetting.

3.  RESET PASSWORD WEB PAGE
Like the password reset email we've rebranded the Reset Password web page to bring it in line with the look and feel of all the other AutoPlay applications.  The new page also features a count of the number of characters entered, as well as a rating on the strength of your new password - all designed to make it more user friendly for users resetting their passwords.

4.  RED APPLICATION HEADER MENU
We've restyled the header menu to work on all devices.  We've also created a new 'Profile' menu located at the top right corner of the screen.  The 'Profile' menu features some commonly used screens such as My Details and the Logout button.  We've made these changes to make these screens more accessible to our customers.

5.  MAIN LHS NAVIGATION MENU
We've also rebuilt our main navigation menu as part of this project.  If using a smartphone or tablet the menu will automatically snap shut to give users the maximum screen space, whilst on Desktop screen sizes the navigation menu will remain open to take advantage of the extra screen real estate available.  Additionally when each section is opened (i.e Emails, Contacts or Sales Pipeline) it will automatically collapse the other sections - saving a lot of scrolling from top to bottom of the screen.

The first month of the year is done and dusted, and with it brought a return to normalcy in the volume of leads, test drives and sales captured by AutoPlay customers (approx. 80% of the franchise market by volume).  Where December saw a lull in the number of leads captured, January has returned to normal levels which have resulted in big increase across the board - leads increased by 17.3%, test drives by 15.7% and sales by 16.5% December 2017 to January 2018. 

Leads captured increased across all sources with the ‘Web – Dealer’ source increasing by 22.4% from December to January and regaining the top spot as the most common source of leads for kiwi dealers.  ‘Web – Classified’ slipped from first to second but still increased by 13.6%.  After a 33% decrease in December, brands rebounded and the number of ‘Brand’ leads increased by 41.9%.

In January ‘Web – Dealer’ increased by 20.9%, ‘Direct’ increased by 21.9% and ‘Brand’ increased by 21% - knocking ‘Web – Classified’ off the number 3 spot.  As leads decreased in December there likely wasn’t a huge number of December created leads waiting to be converted in January to test drives – showing that many of the leads generated in January are being closed the same month.

In December 2018 the ‘Brand’ source was the only lead source to buck the trend and experience an increase in sales from November to December.  In January big increases in sales generated from ‘Web – Dealer’ (up 41.2%), ‘Web – Classified’ (up 19.6%) and ‘Repeat’ (up 23.4%) saw the ‘Brand’ source disappear from the top 3 sources of sales.  In particular sales from classified sites jumped back into the top 3 – helped by the fact that in December 6.8% more test drives were captured from sites like Driven, Autotrader and Trade Me.