The Power of Managing the Now

You have plenty of tools and processes to manage before the sale. Your ad budget is robust, your website showcases your inventory, you capture leads, and you send emails and place phone calls to pull traffic into your showroom.  You track this activity to make sure it gets done and can see what works and what doesn’t.

You also have plenty of tools and processes to follow up after a customer visits your showroom. You have an email and phone call schedule to bring them back if they didn’t buy, and a schedule to prep them for the CSI survey and bring them back for their first service appointment.

But, what do you have for managing the sales process as it’s happening; what do you have to manage the now?

The Sales Process Today

Traditional CRM tools do a fantastic job assisting in the before and after sales processes mentioned before. But historically, these tools are not effective in solving challenges that happen during the sale.

Consider the following scenarios, so common they’re not really seen as problems:

• When on the lot or the floor with customers, your salesperson has limited access to customer information.
• Salespeople don’t always go on the test drive allowing the customer to dictate the route and key vehicle features are missed.
• Management cannot enforce the sales process because they have no interaction with the salesperson while they are with customers.

The in-store interaction is the time you have to get a customer to make a purchase, yet it’s the only interaction with the customer that isn’t actively managed.

If your sales team can manage the sale as it happens, they can ensure the process is efficient, informative, and tailored to each customer’s unique set of needs.

By giving your team tools to “manage the now,” you’ll proactively better the sales process and improve the customer and employee experience.

Managing the Now with Mobile Technology

Your team needs a mobile way to walk through each step to ensure customer needs are met and the sale is managed in the now.

With an on-the-go tool, those problem scenarios are eliminated. Imagine:

• Your salesperson greets the customer using their mobile phone that has instant access to the customer’s information. Your salesperson knows their recent interactions, buying history, and personal information.
• The salesperson’s mobile tool offers dealer-defined test drive routes unique to specific vehicles to showcase features. Going on the test drive with the customer, the salesperson directs them to the highway to demonstrate lane assist technology and stops in a parking lot to feature the 360 degree camera system.
• You’ve set up a predetermined sales process every salesperson must follow. Those steps and talking points are in your mobile application, and salespeople must complete each step with every customer. You evaluate how salespeople handle prospects and their closing ratios.

This is what managing the “now” looks like: having full knowledge of everything happening in your department so you can control, motivate, and empower salespeople to deliver the efficient, simple experience customers want.

Are you ready to make a change and manage the now?

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