It's that time of year again when we all resolve to lose weight/be kinder/spend less/eat better.  In the spirit of "new year, new you" here are 5 AutoPlay resolutions you can make to get the most out of the AutoPlay suite of products.

1.  I will respond to leads faster than ever before
I'm not going to define for you a suitable time to reply to customer enquiries as every dealer and region is different, with different expectations and different resources (though 2 hours could be used as a good benchmark).  Your first resolution is simply to work out firstly how long you are taking to reply to customer enquiries - check out the Email Reply & Allocation Report.  Once you know how long you are currently taking, knock 20% off and make this your new target.  It doesn't have to become part of your salesperson kpi's, but the addition of a documented goal to respond to all new leads will help all the salespeople understand the expectations on them.

2.  I will re-market to my existing leads...using the tools I already have available to me!
Many of our customers would have heard various members of the AutoPlay team bleating on and on about the fact that on average dealerships only convert 50% of their leads to Test Drives, and 20% to Sales.  We really hammer this point home because if you do the math it shows that 80% of the leads you've generated will not actually result in a sale.  Clearly this represents a huge opportunity for sales people to really work their lead database.  The Dashboard makes it super easy to identify the progress stage each lead is at, and built in tools such as Live Leads, In Market Leads and the Email Response Tool make it easy to target these customers for no additional spend.  Get someone responsible for sending Live Leads out each month and make the most out of every cent you spend.

3.  Personalise your customer comms
As detailed in make-2019-the-year-you-personalise-your-comms.html the internet continues to be an impersonal space, and building rapport with prospective customers is key to enage with them.  AutoPlay's suite of products offers ample opportunities to inject personality into the online space with Virtual Demo Videos and Video Email Response Tool.  Depending on your package these tools will not cost any additional and can be a great way to drive engagement with your dealership.

4.  Start using In Market Leads & Wishlists to connect your deals
The benefit of using digital tools to manage your leads is that everything gets captured.  The weakness of many digital lead capture systems is they don't help salespeople connect deals together.  At AutoPlay we've worked hard to provide tools that help sales people digest all the overwhelming volumes of information they have access to.  The Wishlist is used when your sales team cannot pin a customer down to a particular vehicle in stock.  It will automatically alert the salesperson when a matching vehicle comes into stock, or is appraised on another deal.  In Market Leads serves a similar purpose - when a new vehicle comes into stock or the price of an existing vehicles is dropped the system will look at all of the leads that have been captured (based on customisable criteria), and alert the manager to those customers that might be interested in the price dropped or new listing.  These tools are built into the standard Sales Pipeline so will not cost any additional money - use them!

5.  Understand Reporting
It's hard to make decisions if you don't understand what is happening - so understanding reporting is critical to your success with AutoPlay Sales Pipeline.  Reporting can be more than just tracking the past - it can also identify opportunities for the future and now.  If you know you convert 50% of your Test Drives to Sales via the Lead Conversion Report, and you know you've got 40 leads sitting at Test Drive Progress via the Sales Pipeline Report then it's easy to connect the dots and work out a plan to convert 20 of those leads into Test Drives.  AutoPlay has a wealth of reports from raw data extracts in the form of the Lead Audit, to the 15+ reports in reporting.autoplay.co.nz.  If you are a Sales Manager it's critically important that you understand what the reports are showing you.

If you want to talk to someone about any of these functions contact support@autoplay.co.nz and one of our Account Managers will get in touch.

Recently I stumbled across one of the ubiquitous “top digital trends for 2019” articles that you see at this time of the year, every year.  One of the key trends I’ve seen identified repeatedly is the need to personalise your communications with your potential customers.

Video is one way you can easily personalise your communication, with the added benefit of being one of the more effective ways to engage with potential customers.  As you can see from the images above, according to Google 56% of shoppers could be convinced to buy a car from a 360-degree video without having to test drive the vehicle.  In addition, 40% of shoppers who watched a video about cars or trucks visited a dealer as a result.

It is said that some industries are already seeing up to a 30% increase in close rates (Adpearance).  At AutoPlay we’ve run our own surveys about the AutoPlay Video Email Response tool and have had dealers report back increases of 60% when replying to customer enquiry with video, as opposed to tradition text-based emails.  There’s clear evidence that personalising your customer comms will drive higher engagement from potential customers.
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So how can you utilise the AutoPlay suite of products to personalise your customer communication?  

Personalising your customers web experience is difficult, however steps can be taken to inject personality into the online space via AutoPlay Virtual Demo videos.  These videos let dealerships customise their own recording scripts, and record their own unique voiceovers on listing videos – a great way to introduce the dealerships personality into the online space.

If you have an AutoPlay Vehicle Display Page you will be able to embed a Youtube video into the VIDEO LINK field in the AutoPlay Studio.  This allows dealerships to embed any video they have rights to use, within their AutoPlay vehicle stock page.

​The AutoPlay Video Email Response Tool was one of the first digital communication tools that AutoPlay built and is still going strong to this date.  The Email Response Tool allows salespeople to inject their personality into the online space, and has proven to be an effective way of building rapport with prospective customers.  Although we are a tech company, we have an old school mentality when it comes to emails – you are not likely to sell a car directly from an email, but how you reply to email enquiries will directly affect your prospective customers decision to visit the dealership.  The default mode for the email tool is to stitch the audio onto the existing images – making it extremely easy to build straight from the app.

​If you are using the iOS App you can utilise the camera on your iphone/ipad to film a true video walk around of the car – hopping in and out, opening the boot and engine bay and even starting the engine.  Filming a true video definitely takes more skill and confidence than recording a voice-over, but can really help to personalise the experience for potential customers.

As 2018 winds to a close we wanted to share with our customers an update on our progress with rebuilding our Desktop Studio as an HTML5 application.  We've been working hard as this project for a number of months and it's starting to come together.

At this stage our goal is to have the new Sales Pipeline in the hands of a select few dealers for a BETA trial around March/April 2019.  Once we have run this trial for a month or two we will look to roll-out to the rest of our dealers in a staggered approach to ensure we can support our customers with the new software.

As we are getting to the pointy end of the project we'll keep the updates coming as regularly as possible.

If you have any questions about the HTML5 project, or would like to put your hand up to get early access please contact matt@autoplay.co.nz 

LIVE LEADS
AutoPlay Sales Pipeline includes the built-in functionality to send video eDM’s to your captured leads.  Sending Live Leads is integrated with the Sales Pipeline Dashboard and allows dealerships to target specific types of leads that they have already captured in the past.
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1.       Capture your leads as per business-as-usual
2.       At the end of the month review your leads and decide on who you want to target
3.       Click on LIVE LEADS then click on the + CREATE NEW LIVE LEADS EMAIL button on Desktop or iOS
4.       Choose whether you want to manually set follow up, or use your default follow up settings (i.e create a calendar follow up automatically if a recipient watches X videos)
5.       Select your Live Leads template and who you want to send the email from
6.       Write a Subject Line and an intro message if required, and click SAVE
7.       Select your Listings.  Only listings with videos are included so if your desired listing does not have a listing go into the Listings screen and build a video via the burger menu>Listing>Rebuild MP4
8.       Click on BUILD RECPIENT LIST to build a list of recipients for your email.  You can select from any combination of leads including targeting only those that enquired on certain make/models, or those that only made it to Test Drive
9.       Once you have built your list click SAVE and you can VIEW RECORDS to see who your email will be sent to.  Your recipient list will be built from the leads you have previously captured.
10.    PREVIEW and SEND your email
11.    Once sent, wait a couple of hours and then you can click on RESULTS to view which recipients have opened the email, and watched videos.  You can click on the VIEWED column to see which individual vehicles they viewed within the email
12.    If you have your follow up set to automatic, AutoPlay will automatically create follow up calendar events against anyone that meets your follow up threshold – i.e. they watched at least 3 videos.
13.    If you prefer to manually control your follow up you can select the leads you want to follow up with and click on the CREATE NEW LEAD button.  This will create a new lead if your lead is closed, or add a calendar event if your lead is still open
14.    Follow up your hot leads via the Dashboard
15.    Next month, rinse and repeat.  It is recommended that you don’t contact the same recipient more than once a month.  Practically it is easier to create smaller, target groups that give your sales team a better chance of actually following up individually with recipients who interact with your email
 
You can read more about Live Leads here https://www.theplaybook.co.nz/playbook/coming-soon-integrated-live-leads​

IN MARKET LEADS
As well as using Live Leads to qualify who to follow up with, you can also use In Market Leads to identify potential customers that might be interested when you lower the price of a vehicle, or a new vehicle comes into stock.

1.       Capture your leads as per business-as-usual – making sure to qualify them to a vehicle
2.       Every week check your IN MARKET LEADS screen.  The In Market Leads screen is set up to show listings that have been recently added, or listings that have had a recent price decrease.  There is a default setting for your dealership, but you can create your own preference using the PREFERENCES button
3.       The In Market Leads screen will automatically return the Leads that have enquiries on similar cars to your new/price dropped listings.  A Lead is identified as being similar based on the In Market Leads settings you have in PREFERENCES
4.       It is recommended that you play with these settings to ensure you get a good balance between returning enough leads to follow up with, and returning too many leads to reasonably do anything with.  A good starting point is match on Make, Model, Year (-1 to + 1) or Price (- $2500 to +$2500).  Alternatively swap out make and model for Body Type if your customers are flexible on models
5.       If you find a matching lead that you feel might be interested in the new/price dropped listing you can click on the record to view the lead, and + to schedule follow up.  In Market Leads creates the perfect opportunity to communicate with leads that might have gone cold, with the introduction of a similar car that may tickle their fancy
 
You can read more about In Market Leads here https://www.theplaybook.co.nz/playbook/introducing-in-market-leads-making-buyer-matching-easy

​Did you know you can use your iPad or iPhones built in dictation feature to record what you want to say, and the iPad/iPhone will automatically convert your words into text.  For those of us that are slow typists, this feature can be quite useful as it makes compiling emails within the Sales Pipeline even easier than it already is with Standard Responses and our built in video tool.

Dictation won't work on every field within the Sales Pipeline - for example Customer Email and Customer Mobile.  You'll know if you can dictate if when you open the keyboard to type you see a microphone icon - as pictured above.  The function is available in the Notes fields on leads, and on the Messages field when crafting a Email Response.  Simply hit the microphone icon and start talking.  You will notice that your words begin to appear on screen as iOS converts them to text.  From our experiments we've found this feature to be quite accurate across a range of diverse kiwi and aussie accents, however remember to speak slowly and clearly for best results.

If you are not seeing the microphone icon on your keyboard then you will need to activate this function.  To do so;

1.  Open SETTINGS on your iPad or iPhone Home screen.
2. Tap GENERAL.​
3.  Tap KEYBOARD.
4. Tap on the On/Off toggle next to ENABLE DICTATION.  Green means Dictation is on, grey mean it is off.

If you want to find out more about the AutoPlay Email Response Tool contact support@autoplay.co.nz with any questions or to arrange training.

​Over the past 12 months you might have noticed our Dealer Solutions Manager Jackie Hingston in your dealership as we’ve made a concerted effort to get around and visit all our customers.  As part of Jackie’s visit she was conducting a review of each dealerships strengths and weaknesses.  However, the good news is that you don’t need to wait until AutoPlay visits you in order to conduct your own self review.
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LEVEL 1:
If you feel like your dealership is below average at utilising the AutoPlay Sales Pipeline then the areas to focus on that will provide you with the most improvement are;

·         Tell us what you did (i.e load leads and update the Progress)
·         Tell us what you are going to do (i.e use the Calendar)

You can measure the number of leads loaded by each salesperson by using the Lead Summary and Conversion or Daily Activity Reports.  Simply open the report, select your date range and open the salesperson section to have the report display by salesperson.

The Sales Pipeline Report will give you a breakdown of whether your dealership is progressing the leads being loaded.  The goal is to ensure that there is not a disproportionate amount of leads sitting at Awaiting Action, and also allows the dealership to identify areas where the leads are stalling through the road-to-a-sale.

The Morning Meeting Report can be used in order to report back on how well the sales team are using the calendar.  It will give managers an instant view of how many calendar events each salesperson has created for the day, and how many are complete.

LEVEL 2:
Once you’ve mastered Level 1, it’s time to advance to Level 2.  Whilst Level 1 focuses on simply what you’ve done and what you are going to do, Level 2 ups the game.  If you can achieve mastery of Level 2 you will be a competent user of AutoPlay Sales Pipeline;

·         Are you using the Test Drive Forms AND making sure to mark your Test Drives as DONE when the customer finishes the Test Drive?
·         Are you using the Appraisal Form and benefitting from the MotorWeb/MotorCentral/CarJam integration?
·         Are you using the Calendar effectively to minimise the amount of leads falling into Overdue or Stalled?
·         Are you using the Morning Meeting Report to help with your daily one-on-ones with the sales team?
·         Are you using the Sales Pipeline Report to identify the areas in the road to a sale where your leads are stalling?
·         Are you using the Lead Summary and Conversion Report to determine your conversion to Test Drive and Sales?

LEVEL 3:
If you can answer yes to all the questions in Level 1 & Level 2 then congrats – you are more than likely using the Sales Pipeline effectively.  That said, it’s time to take it to the next level;

·         Do you enter salesperson Lead, Test Drive and Sales targets and measure against this month and last month using the Daily Activity Performance Report?
·         Do you enter Lead Source and Lead Campaign costs to measure ROI in the Lead Source and Marketing ROI reports within AutoPlay reporting?
·         Have you compared the number of leads at Awaiting Action to your normal Test Drive and Sales conversion figures to determine how much money is sitting in your captured data?
·         Do you take advantage of Live Leads to target the captured leads you have yet to sell to?  Live Leads allows you to build an audience based on your previously captured leads, and automatically schedule follow up based on their interaction with your email.
·         Have you got into In Market Leads yet?  In Market Leads is a great way to immediately link potential interested buyers when the dealership loads new listings or lowers the price of existing listings.

We’ve worked hard to make sure the AutoPlay Sales Pipeline is easy to use and intuitive, and we’re proud that many users can pick up the software and with a minimum of assistance start managing their leads via the Dashboard.  That said we understand that the primary job of a salesperson is to sell cars, not learn software.  From time-to-time it can be beneficial for sales people to have a refresher on AutoPlay.  We offer a number of options for new staff or refreshers

​AutoPlay Academy (Free of charge to AutoPlay customers)
The AutoPlay Academy is AutoPlay’s e-learning module and covers use of the Sales Pipeline on Desktop, iPad and iPhone. Each series is made up of a range of courses designed to help you get the most out of the Sales Pipeline.  Click on the link below to find out more and get started with AutoPlay Academy
http://autoplay.co.nz/Academy.aspx

Face-to-face Training ($1,000 + GST for full days training in dealership + expenses/flights/accommodation if applicable)
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For those that prefer face-to-face training AutoPlay can spend the day at your dealership (exact hours dependent on availability of flights).  Typically, it’s a good idea to divide the day into 2 sessions to ensure there are always salespeople available on the sales floor.  This also ensures smaller sessions which result in more hands-on attention, and more willingness to get involved.  AutoPlay Sales Pipeline training is hands on and is perfect for both new salespeople and as refreshers for existing salespeople.  As with Skype training, dealerships can tailor their own specialised training or let AutoPlay’s experienced trainers recommend best practice.

Spending time with AutoPlay staff members can yield great results.  At AutoPlay we don’t just want you to pay for our product.  We want to help dealerships connect buyers and sellers and we firmly believe that if your dealership takes advantage of the functionality available within the Sales Pipeline, you’ll improve accuracy, efficiency and transparency throughout the dealership.

To book training with AutoPlay or enrol in the AutoPlay Academy contact support@autoplay.co.nz with your request.

At AutoPlay we've always been all about integration.  Wherever possible we've looked to integrate our AutoPlay Sales Pipeline with other 3rd Party systems such as DMS and CRM  systems, through to vehicle checks via MotorWeb, CarJam and Motorcentral.

Provident Insurance are 100% kiwi owned and driven - just like AutoPlay.  So when the opportunity came up for AutoPlay to integrate with Provident Insurance it proved to be a no brainer.  For mutual customers that use Provident Insurance as their insurance provider, salespeople are able to tap a button to easily push info across to the Provident Insurance system - jump starting the Insurance Application process.  

Once complete, salespeople can jump into the Provident Insurance system without having to retype all the customer or vehicle information already captured in AutoPlay.  From there, it's a simple case of completing any information required by Provident that is not able to be supplied via AutoPlay in order to finish the insurance application.

1.  If you are already a customer and want to take advantage of this feature then the first step is to contact AutoPlay via support@autoplay.co.nz to request set up.  The purpose of this email is to give AutoPlay written permission to send customer and lead data to Provident Insurance. 

2.  Once we have permission, AutoPlay will contact Provident Insurance and request your unique Provident ID Number.

3.  Once supplied by Provident, AutoPlay will set up API access using your unique ID as the key to send data from AutoPlay Sales Pipeline to Provident Insurance.

4.  Once the export record is set up as per (3), the Provident Insurance option will be visible within the FINANCE & INSURANCE button.

5.  Once the button is visible when you wish to start a new Insurance application with Provident Insurance just open the lead with the customer who wishes to apply and click Finance & Insurance>Provident Insurance.

VIEW SAMPLE FILE

The weather may have taken a turn for the worse recently, but Lead, Test Drive and Sales activity remains buoyant.  Following a strong May, June 2018 saw the number of Leads generated increase by 6.2%, Test Drives increase by 5.9% and Sales by 1.2%.

For the second consecutive month the number of leads from the ‘Web – Dealer’ source decreased – by 1.2% from May to June.  As expected with Fieldays activity we experienced a 30.8% increase in the number of leads generated to dealers by their ‘Brand’.  After a significant increase in leads from ‘Web Classified’ sources last month, this source again accounted for the 3rd most leads and increased by 5.7% from May to June 2018.

After the volume of Test Drives from the ‘Web – Dealer’ source decreased in May, the source rebounded to increase by 17.3% from month to month.  Test Drives attributed to the ‘Direct’ source again occupied second spot and increased by 7.8% from May to June.  Test Drives from ‘Brand’ generated leads did increase – by 4.9% - but perhaps less than expected from the higher volume of Fieldays leads.  This potentially means that Fieldays activity has been a bit slow to translate to Test Drives, and potentially means we may see a proportionate increase in Test Drives from the ‘Brand’ source in future months.

In June 2018 there was a change in the status quo for Sales tracking.  Whilst ‘Web – Dealer’ retained the top spot and increased by 8.9% from May to June 2018.  However, whilst in May ‘Repeat’ and ‘Direct’ accounted for the 2nd and 3rd most Sales by source, these sources were overtaken by ‘Web Classified’ (up 27.4% from May 2018) and ‘Brand’ (up 32.9%) respectively. 

Make sure to check in next month to find out the top sources of Leads, Test Drives and Sales for kiwi dealers in July.  Lead Source reports are just one of the reports available to dealerships and OEM’s who use AutoPlay Sales Pipeline.  To find out more about the range of reports available via AutoPlay contact us on sales@autoplay.co.nz or +64 9 361 1505.

Events play an important role for many marketers.  According to Lead Liaison (another overseas company in this space), 58% of marketers have used an event lead management solution or lead capture tool at a live event.  Despite this only 34% of marketers use new referrals, quality of leads and sales closure to measure event ROI (Marketing Charts 2013).
 
In addition, over 80% of marketers cannot quantify the data they collect during events, yet 46% of marketers view generating leads as the main reason to attend events and trade shows.  Most damningly of all, some sources suggest 75% of all leads are never followed up with after an exhibition.
 
When you consider that some exhibitors are using paper forms to capture their potential leads at events these figures start to make sense.  Inevitably it’s a lot of work to type out all the details on the form into a spreadsheet, and then distribute that spreadsheet out to their dealer network – not to mention chase up individual dealers and salespeople to see where they got to following up their leads.
 
In the last few years AutoPlay has been working with a number of brands to improve the efficiency of their lead capture at various events, and more importantly making their follow up considerably easier.  There are several approaches on how AutoPlay can be utilised at events to help capture more leads;
 
1.  “Cold walk ins, light touch approach”
WHAT?
Collect leads via a very simple web form that feeds leads into your Sales Pipeline Dashboard
PROS
+ Can design your own custom form especially for this event – making it as simple as you need it to be
+ Web form is a one-way push to Sales Pipeline and as such can work much better when internet is patchy
+ Don’t need the Sales Pipeline on-site.  Can access the web form on any device that has an internet connection
CONS
-  Doesn’t allow for any customer lookup – meaning there is no opportunity to prequalify event attendees
- Cannot link a database to pre-event marketing activity
 

2.  “Pre-qualified, integrated marketing approach”
WHAT?
In conjunction with marketing activity prior to the event you can pre-qualify leads that are likely to attend the event.  These leads can be sent from a CRM to AutoPlay Sales Pipeline – allowing salespeople to lookup pre-qualified leads during the event.
PROS
+  Ties in with pre-event marketing to ensure ROI tracking is linked from start to finish
+  Pre-qualified customers are further down the decision channel and this streamlines the experience during the event
+  Minimises chances of duplicate customers or duplicate leads
+  Enables salespeople to use built in tools such as database lookups, business card and drivers licence scanning
CONS
-  Looking up a database of thousands of leads can require a reliable internet connection – something that is not always guaranteed at events and trade shows
-  More pre-event work required to pre-qualify leads
-  No ability to provide customers with a simplified lead capture form – leads entered manually at the event must be manually entered to the Sales Pipeline
 
Why capture leads with AutoPlay during events?
The most obvious answer is in order to track ROI of how many potential leads are generated during the event.  However, it goes much further than this.  By capturing leads via AutoPlay dealerships and OEM’s benefit greatly in the weeks and months following;

• Distribution of leads post event to dealerships/salespeople is made easy as all data already exists within AutoPlay
• Follow up of leads is made easier for salespeople as the lead is immediately visible within their own Sales Pipeline Dashboard
• Event leads are mixed right in with their normal day-to-day leads – making ongoing follow up over the coming weeks and months part of their natural day-today routine
• Users don’t need to double handle data – meaning less duplicate leads and customers
• OEMS and managers gain a fuller picture of success from events as they are not just able to see Sales and Test Drives from the event, but also Appraisals or just a measure of activity via Progress or Calendar Events
• Many leads that would likely fall through the cracks are all recorded – further increasing the pool of leads the dealerships have to remarket to

 
If you are interested in using AutoPlay for events talk to matt@autoplay.co.nz about the approach that would be suitable for your dealership/brand.