With the volume of leads coming into dealerships these days, using a typical CRM to follow up with prospects on a long-term basis is nearly difficult. Most dealers place leads into a long-term email follow-up after they’ve been on the market for seven days. Is it possible that we’re squandering perfectly good opportunities?

Customers are shopping for their next vehicle online earlier than ever before. Some consumers begin the procedure six to twelve months before they are ready to buy a car. “I’m simply looking,” a consumer has said how many times to you?

Customers are getting quotes on their vehicles utilizing platforms like KBB ICO. The customer’s information is subsequently sold to local vehicle dealerships without their knowledge. In the meantime, they are given a valuation for their vehicle and discover that they have too much negative equity to trade it in at this time. “I’m just looking,” the customer tells the dealership when they call.

A strong salesperson might be able to use a great sales pitch to move a consumer along the funnel, but many of these customers are just not ready to buy. They are just getting started on their adventure, therefore it will take some time for them to make the transition. Extended Follow Up is a garbage bin in your CRM for these types of leads, or your team simply marks the lead as dead.

Email was a good tool to stay in front of consumers who were further down the sales funnel. Sadly, email open rates have been progressively declining over the years. Most clients have hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of unopened emails. With email rates below 20%, it’s becoming more difficult to rely on email as a viable method of mass follow-up.

Text message open rates are considerably superior to email open rates, according to studies. With a text message open rate of 90% or greater, you can be sure that the higher funnel opportunities will receive your follow-up messages.

Text messaging is a more intimate mode of communication. Most people assume the SMS message was delivered by a real person and don’t expect it to be sent in bulk or by a robot. This increases the response rate by making the communication feel more personal. According to our internal data, more than 70% of clients respond to text messages delivered to them.

You may utilize automation to follow up with leads for a much longer period of time if you have a better open rate and a more personal touch. Opportunities are never thrown away by our clientele. They never stop following up. The customer is unaware that the follow-up is automated, and the dealership can follow up in bulk.

SIMPSOCIAL believes that no opportunity should be discarded. Every customer should be treated equally, and our software assists dealerships in doing so with minimal labor. Dealerships can cut the number of people needed to follow up on leads by half or more by using our software.

Work hard, but remember to work smart! When done correctly, text message follow-up can assist you in doing this. For a free demonstration of how we can help your dealership stop squandering opportunities, click the Text Us button.

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