In 2018 dealerships have well and truly grasped the need to capture all their leads to a lead management system.  At AutoPlay we've seen the volume of leads captured by dealerships via the Sales Pipeline increase consistently every year.  With licence and business card scanning and integration with DMS systems it's incredibly easy to capture leads to the AutoPlay Sales Pipeline.  In addition, email or other electronic leads are captured automatically either from the website or via our API's - meaning the vast majority of leads are getting captured to your dashboard.

​One area that AutoPlay have never been able to confidently report on is the number of 'Phone' leads received by dealerships.  Capturing these details is entirely reliant on the salesperson being disciplined in their lead capture processes - something that is far easier said than done.  Looking at 5 of the major multi brand distributors AutoPlay works with, we can see that on average less than 7% of all leads are recorded using the Lead Type = Phone each month.

​Anecdotally we've heard in Aussie that the number of phone calls can outstrip the number of walk-in/email/other leads by 20-to-1.  According to ADP Digital in the U.S, call volumes outpace email leads by a more moderate 4-to-1 ratio, and approx. 19% of car buyers make first contact with dealerships via the phone (J.D Power U.S New Autoshopper Study, 2015).  Autotrader/Kelley Blue Book put this figure at 25% of all leads vs 14% emails.

The discrepancy between these figures is significant - which is most likely due to one dealers definition of what constitutes a 'Phone' lead.  This only serves to highlight the difficulty in accurately attributing phone leads, but the underlying fact is that the number of phone leads your dealership receives is almost definitely more than what your sales team is recording in the Sales Pipeline.

​AutoPlay partner with a company called Adtorque Edge - who offer call campaign tracking to AutoPlay customers.  Recently Adtorque began working with a mutual customer based in Auckland.  This dealer receives approx.  1200 leads each month and typically records about 7% of these as 'Phone' leads.   Through working with Adtorque Edge they have begun tracking Google and facebook campaigns across all channels - including attributing the number of phone calls to the dealership to specific marketing campaigns and channels.  What they discovered was that of the approx. 1200 leads, over 27% of the leads were actually phone calls - a fairly large discrepancy from the 7% that are manually being recorded within AutoPlay Sales Pipeline.  

Stats available from Adtorque Edge for the Australian market highlight this same concept.  Through improving the attribution of phone leads Adtorque were able to highlight the incomplete tracking that dealers were experiencing from their online marketing.  The table below highlights that for this customer they believed that Keyword #1 used in Google Adwords was the least effective - with just 17 website conversions recorded and costing AUS$75.47 per acquisition.  This ranked Keyword 1 as the worst ROI of all 6 keywords used at the dealership - comparing poorly with the average cost per acquisition for all marketing campaigns of AUS$59.42.  However this was based purely on website conversion and did not take into account any phone calls generated from those campaigns.  By setting up specific phone numbers for these campaigns Adtorque Edge was able to more accurately attribute how effective the campaign was, finding the Keyword #1 also generated 88 phone calls during the same period - taking the cost per acquisition down to $12.22 and meaning that it now ranked as the most effective keyword based on ROI.

Unfortunately at the present time AutoPlay are unable to automatically capture phone calls as leads within Sales Pipeline.  However despite these technical limitations we still believe there is enormous value for kiwi dealerships in gaining more transparency over their online marketing spend.  If you are interested in finding out more about call attribution from Adtorque Edge please contact sales@autoplay.co.nz and we'll organise them to contact you.

Similar to Test Drives, ‘Web – Dealer’ was the most common source generating Test Drives in April 2018.  Test Drives generated via the ‘Brand’ increased by 4.6%, however dropped to third - being leapfrogged by Test Drives generated from the ‘Direct’ source (up 5.3% from March 2018)

March 2018 is now in the books and as expected we saw a reasonable  bounce back in the number of Leads, Test Drives and Sales recorded by the approx. 80% of franchise dealers that use AutoPlay Sales Pipeline to manage their leads.

Overall there was a 10.5% increase in the number of leads generated in March vs February.  Some of this can be attributed to February being a shorter month, however such an increase still reflects more leads being created each day in March compared to February.  Despite fewer leads generated in February, there were still 16.1% more Test Drives generated in March – highlighting that a significant portion of leads are test driven within the same month as being created.  In addition, Sales increased by 11.9% overall, making March a successful month for franchise dealers.

One of the biggest drivers for the increased number of leads was a significant increase in the amount of leads being generated from Dealer Websites (up 62.4%).  Over the last 6 months we’ve seen a sustained positive trend with lead, test drive and sales activity that can be directly attributed to dealer websites.  This latest increase indicates that ‘Web – Dealer’ is really firming as the best place to get your leads from.  Offsetting the increase in ‘Web – Dealer’ leads was a decrease 22.1% in ‘Brand’ leads and 4.1% in ‘Web – Classified’ leads. 

In March the ‘Web – Dealer’ source was again the number one source of Test Drives – up 9.5% from February 2018.  After decreasing 11.3% in February, the ‘Brand’ source bounced back with 33.9% more Test Drives recorded against the ‘Brand’ source in March than we saw in February.  The ‘Web – Classified’ source also performed well – jumping into the third position with 16.3% more Test Drives from this source in March than February.

The usual suspects occupied the top three sources of Sales in March with ‘Web – Dealer’, ‘Repeat’ and ‘Web – Classified’ occupying the top 3 spots.  However, after a down February where all 3 experienced a drop from the month prior, Sales increased across the board.  ‘Web – Dealer’ experienced a small increase of 1.6%, whilst ‘Repeat’ (up 12.2%) and ‘Web – Classified’ (up 9.5%) experienced larger increases.

Make sure to read the next issue of Autotalk to see what sources of leads were popular in April amongst kiwi dealerships.

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 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.

Make sure to check back next month to see the most frequent sources of Leads, Test Drives and Sales in January 2018.

Make sure to check back in next month’s issue of Autotalk to see how kiwi dealerships fared in November 2017. 
​
Matt Darby works for AutoPlay who specialise in pre-sale lead management tools.  To find out more about AutoPlay services email sales@autoplay.co.nz or visit www.autoplay.co.nz

There are only 3 ways that a customer can communicate with a dealership – face-to-face (walk in), email or by phone (some may argue SMS but that’s a discussion for another article).  AutoPlay Sales Pipeline has a number of in-dealership tools that make capturing data face to face easy including Drivers Licence/Business Card scanning, Test Drive Forms and Appraisal Forms.  Similarly Email leads are captured automatically from dealer and third-party websites via our lead capture mechanisms or our API’s.  That leaves Phone leads as one of the main areas where there is still massive potential for leads to fall through the cracks.

Face-to-face may never go out of style in NZ, but in an increasingly digital landscape it’s easy to focus on email activity over phone leads – after all it’s much more transparent to managers, and this makes it far easier and less expensive to track.  Despite this, phone calls both in and out still play a significant part in the sales process.  If you are not tracking phone activity it’s akin to driving with one hand over one of your eyes – you are just not seeing the whole picture.

Tracking phone leads will improve your lead quality as it will give salespeople a better idea of how “warm” their leads are.  It will help you convert more leads as it’s very likely phone leads are not getting the same love and attention as email or walk-in leads – although initially your conversion figures may actually look worse.  Most importantly you’ll be seeing a clear picture of real activity – allowing better tracking of marketing success and better analysis of performance.

There are two types of phone sales activity that should be tracked alongside your walk-in and email leads.

1.  Inbound New Sales Phone Leads
Currently AutoPlay don’t automatically capture phone leads (though it’s something we are exploring – read more below).  This means the onus is on dealerships to record Phone leads to the Sales Pipeline to ensure a clear picture of real activity.  You can easily do this by selecting the Lead Type as ‘PHONE’.  Some dealerships have taken this a step further and had reception load the lead upon receiving the call – ensuring the lead was logged and streamlining the process for the salesperson that ultimately handles the call.  If tracking phone leads is something that is important to you (and it should be!), then the best dealers find a way to incorporate this into their process.

In AutoPlay Reporting the Lead Summary Report provides a clear picture of the number of ‘Phone’ leads.  The pie graph at the top shows the proportion of your leads by ‘Walk-In’, ‘Email’, ‘Other’ (sent from Brand/DMS etc) or ‘Phone’.  In the table below, you can view the count of Phone leads for the period, as well as conversion of Phone leads to Test Drive and Sales.  Interestingly for many dealers their conversion figures will mirror those below – with conversion on ‘Phone’ leads having far more in common with ‘Walk-In’ leads than with ‘Email’ leads.

AutoPlay can also provide a Prospect & CRM Follow Up screen which enables tracking of phone activity for actions that don’t yet qualify as leads – for example 12 Month Follow Up, 24 Month Follow Up or 36 Month Follow Up with existing customers who previously purchased a vehicle from your dealership.

2.  Inbound & Outbound Phone Activity On Existing Leads
It’s also important to track the phone calls your sales team make & receive in the course of following up existing sales leads.  There are a couple of methods to achieve this within AutoPlay Sales Pipeline.  At its most simple you can simply update the Lead Progress as you move the lead through the road-to-a-sale.  Using the iOS Apps or the Desktop you can click on PROGRESS and select ‘PHONE CALL MADE’ to record that you have had the first interaction with the customer.  The current progress of the lead can be seen on the Dashboard, or the Sales Pipeline Report (pictured below).

The Lead Progress gives you a simplistic measure that a Phone Call has been made, however to get a truer picture of activity you need to be tracking ongoing follow up on each lead.  After updating the Progress, the Sales Pipeline will automatically prompt users to schedule follow up – our philosophy is “tell us what you have done, and tell us what you are gonna do”.  When creating a calendar event, it’s as simple as selecting Phone Inbound or Outbound as the Event Type.

AutoPlay Reporting allows managers to keep on top of this activity.  The Morning Meeting Report allows you to drill down to individual salespeople and view the phone activity – both completed and to be completed – by using the Refine Search option.  You can also view this information in the Overdue Lead Report. 

At AutoPlay we are always exploring options to improve our product further.  Recently we’ve been talking to other providers who have the capability of capturing phone leads digitally.  Working with a provider of these types of services would enable these leads to be automatically fed into the Sales Pipeline – saving the effort of manually loading Phone leads.
 
This would involve additional costs from the other vendor and AutoPlay in order to facilitate this service.  At present we are exploring options but if the automatic capture of phone leads is something you would be interested in please flick an email to matt@autoplay.co.nz so we know this is a service worth pursuing.