Choosing the right Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is important for any business. In the car dealership market, it can be game-changing.
As a car showroom owner, you want to make sure you can quickly assess a customer’s needs as soon as they walk through the door. And follow up in the most efficient way. To do these things, you need a system that will track your customer engagements and follow up with potential leads. A CRM system can do just that.
The Hybrid Car market is especially ideal for having a CRM system manage customer interactions. Your target customer for hybrid cars is educated and conscious of earth-friendly practices. They want others to be aware of their efforts to preserve the environment. Being able to manage their preferences and remembering to follow up is key to generating leads and making sales.
Let’s learn five easy steps you can take when choosing a CRM system for your hybrid car dealership.
1. Shortlist Your Requirements
What exactly do you need the CRM system for? In other words, how do you want the CRM tool to make your business more efficient and profitable?
This will depend on what your requirements are and your everyday tasks. Keep the following in mind when choosing.
Do you need it to:
- Obtain better customer insights?
- Increase conversions?
- Create a better customer experience?
- Ensure accountability of team members?
Different systems will focus on different aspects of the customer relationship. As a dealership owner, you need to reflect on your sales process and how a CRM can make it better.
If you can take a survey from team members before you invest in a CRM, you will get insight into what aspects your business needs support in the most.
The last thing you want to do is invest in a system or tool that makes your sales process more time-consuming and complicated. If you are spending too much time putting in information to a system that is not giving you results, then it is not worth it. That is why before investing in a CRM tool, you must take a preliminary survey of what you want to achieve from the tool.
Answering the questions listed above is the first step to deciding what kind of CRM you want. After that, you need to look at what is available for your industry. You may find a CRM tool that specializes in car sales. For example, the real estate market has specialized CRM tools like The Real Estate CRM. In the same way, some CRM tools that specialize in car sales include DealerSocket CRM, VinSolutions MotoSnap Automotive CRM, and Dominion Sales Center CRM.
2. Plan Out the Implementation
After choosing a suitable CRM for your Hybrid car dealership, you want to make sure that everyone on your team is on board. One of the biggest pitfalls of implementing a new CRM tool is when your employees do not feel included in selecting the tool and you will have trouble implementing it then.
Make them feel invested in the new CRM tool. To do that, you want to include them in step 1. It will be affecting them directly as it will mean changing the way they work every day.
Your salespeople will want to know why you are investing in a new tool, how it will make their lives easier and what will be expected of them once your business adopts the new tool.
It might be a good idea to get a third party to help you implement the system in your business. Having an objective individual train and explain how the CRM tool will change their workday will make it easier to roll out. Providing hard evidence that this tool will increase sales will also make the buy-in by staff easier.
Tips for implementing smoothly:
- Pre-messaging to the staff, so they know a change is about to take place
- Involve staff in the selection of the CRM tool
- Survey staff to determine how the CRM tool will be best serve your business
- Hire a third party to train staff
- Plan for downtime or the period when the CRM tool will be implemented on the ground
- Provide rewards and incentives to staff for using the CRM tool
- Keep lines of communication open, so staff can easily ask questions when needed
The cost of implementation is that there will be a time period where you have to work out the bugs and issues of the system. You will need to train staff and may have some downtime for your business. All these things should be accounted for and planned when choosing a CRM tool for your business.
3. Mobile Adaptability
One of the most important aspects of choosing a CRM tool that works for your business is making sure that it has mobile adaptability. Digital marketing has changed the way we do business. And having tools that are mobile responsive is essential, especially in a car dealership.
Why?
You will have salespeople walking the floors and taking customers on test drives.Make sure that you have a CRM that can support them on the go. You do not want your salespeople wasting time going back to the dealership to input important customer information on a desktop.
Efficiency will increase if the CRM tool you choose is a mobile interface that allows your sales staff to put in information on the spot right when they need to. The more platforms that your CRM tool can be used on, the better. Having iPad’s, smartphones, and desktop usage is essential when having staff working in different departments.
Top five CRM tools that have mobile adaptability:
- Zendesk Sell Software on both Android and iOS
- ZynBit. Available on both Android and iOS
- HubSpot. Available on both Android and iOS
- Salesforce. Available on both Android and iOS
- Salesflare. Available on both Android and iOS (mobile & tablet size)
4. Adapt to Your Sales Processes
You have a way of doing things in your Hybrid car dealership. You probably have a sales process established that your sales staff have down pat.
Having a CRM tool that is flexible enough to adapt to your existing sales process is important. You want to be able to customize it enough so that your salespeople become comfortable with it.
What you don’t want: is for your salespeople to feel that the CRM tool is just another task they have to deal with on top of everything else they have to do. It should make their job easier, not harder.
Steps you can take to adapt the CRM tool to for your sales staff include:
- Create a sales pipeline and folders that are structured to meet your sales needs
- Add fields for each client record that you think you will need
- Personalize your view and add users to the workspace
- Migrate any existing data
Having a readily available customer rep on call at all times is also important in this phase of the implementation. You want to make sure you have support from the creators of the CRM to help you make it the best fit for your business.
5. Reporting Analytics
Being able to see reports and insights of how your CRM is working for you is another important feature to think about when choosing a CRM tool.
You want to be able to have a comprehensive dashboard easily available that you can reference whenever you need to. You want to be able to try strategies and look at what works and what does not.
When choosing a CRM tool for your Hybrid car business, you want to make sure that the tool can customize reports. You should also ensure that it gives you different views on the dashboard that are easy to understand and user-friendly.
You do not want to have to waste time explaining to sales staff how to create a specific sales report. It should be self-explanatory and simple. This way, even your sales staff will want to look at insights and analytics, and it won’t seem like a drain to them.
Reports will also let you know early on if there is a problem with one of your strategies and what you can do to fix those issues.
Important reports that your CRM tool should generate:
- CRM Pipeline Report
- Sales Performance Report
- Forecasted Sales Report
- Sales Activity Report
- Lead Source Analysis Report
- Profitability Report
- Call Report
Choose the Best CRM
When investing in a CRM tool for your business, you want to make sure it is worth your money and your employee’s time. If you keep in mind, why you want the CRM tool and how it will increase the efficiency of your business you are heading in the right direction.
The most important thing to remember is that any CRM tool should enhance your sales process and not hinder it. You should see results from adopting the new system. Your employees will become more efficient and sales savvy and feel accountable for every customer that walks through your door.
Author Bio:
Dur-e-Sabih provides ghostwriting and copywriting services. Her educational background in Accountancy helps her in tackling topics ranging from career and business productivity to web development, finance, and digital marketing. She writes blog articles for Real Estate CRM
