Lead generation is hugely important for auto dealerships, so we recently covered the topic in a two-part series that looked at 6 Online Lead Generation Strategies and then 5 Offline Lead Generation Strategies. As vital as lead generation is, what you do next will make all the difference. Knowing how to manage leads and nurture them into paying customers is how you grow an auto dealership. And according to the 2022 Automotive Benchmarks Report by Foureyes, there are some major lead management problems that auto dealers have to sort out.
This article will look at the recent statistics and discuss four lead management problems auto dealers must solve if they want to grow and thrive. Let’s dig into the data!
4 Lead Management Problems
The 2022 Automotive Benchmarks Report is the fourth consecutive annual report from Foureyes, a sales and lead intelligence software company. The data come from an analysis of dealership websites and other data from December 2020 through November 2021. The report indicates some major lead management problems in automotive dealerships. In fact, they found that altogether, 41.2 percent of qualified leads are being “mishandled.” We’ll explore what that means below.
1. Missed Calls
According to the data, 6.5% of calls from qualified leads are missed. That’s qualified leads, not leads in general. Qualified leads are those who are confirmed to be in the market to purchase a vehicle, with service and other non-sales leads filtered out.
Missing calls – especially from highly qualified leads – is a problem because some auto dealerships are missing out on the potential sales they could have gotten from these leads. When a call goes unanswered, the lead could make a second phone call to another dealership that gets their business.
Even if these qualified leads wait and call back, your reputation may have taken a hit from their first experience. Missed calls can make you look unprofessional and give a negative impression of your business. For example, the lead may conclude that your business is not well-staffed or the employees don’t care about customers.
2. Hold Times
The 2022 Automotive Benchmarks Report also found that the qualified sales calls that were answered experienced a 74-second median hold time. That’s median, meaning that half of the hold times were less than 74 seconds, and half were greater than 74 seconds.
How long is too long of a hold time? The severity of this lead management problem will depend on your customers. Research shows that most people are willing to wait 2-3 minutes on hold before getting upset, but individual customers may set a higher or lower bar and hang up when they are not answered in a reasonable time.
Further, 57% of customers find long hold times frustrating to the customer service experience. So, starting a sales call with a frustrated lead who just had to sit on hold may prove difficult for your sales team.
3. Delayed Follow-Up
The Automotive Benchmarks Report found that, on average, 65.4% of returning qualified leads experienced delayed follow-up. Specifically, they were looking at qualified leads who had visited a dealer website at least once, then returned and had to wait for at least 24-hours for the dealerships to follow up with them. Of this group, people experienced between a 1-day to 1-week follow-up (or even longer):
- 15.5% received follow-up 1-2 days later
- 23.6% received follow-up 2-7 days later
- 60.9% didn’t receive any follow-up after one week (if at all)
Once again, this lead management problem may cause qualified leads to slip out of your hands if they go elsewhere and become customers of a rival automotive dealership that followed up in a more timely manner.
4. Not Logging Leads
A final lead management problem identified by the 2022 Automotive Benchmarks Report is that, on average, 11.7% of leads went unlogged by auto dealerships. This means that the lead inquiry and information about the lead were not captured and logged into a CRM.
The researchers analyzed unlogged leads by lead type and found that calls were most likely to go unlogged:
- 27.5% of calls were unlogged
- 7.6% of forms were unlogged
- 3.4% of chats were unlogged
Not logging leads is a big lead management problem because it prevents you from properly following up with the caller or website visitor. To continue the conversation, you need to know their name and contact details (phone and/or email). It’s also helpful to log details about your interactions with each lead, so you know more about them and have notes that anyone on your team can refer to in the future.
Lead Management Problems in Your Auto Dealership?
Auto dealerships have four common lead management problems: missed calls, wait times, delayed follow-ups, and not logging leads. So now is the time to ask – are any of these issues happening in your dealership?
You can’t solve a problem until you know if (and the extent to which) it is happening. So, the first step is to look at the data to see:
- What percentage of calls do you miss?
- How long is your average wait time?
- What is the call abandon rate?
- What is your average follow-up time?
- How often (and where) are leads going unlogged?
Once you have the data, you can make calculated decisions on how to solve any lead management problems you discover.
Interestingly enough, you can solve all of these lead management problems by switching to a cloud phone service like DealerPhones. With call analytics and recording, unlimited lines, call routing, on-hold messaging, and our T2-Momentum CRM integration, you’ll find solutions to whatever challenge you face. The right phone system will help you properly service leads and convert them to buyers.
The main thing to remember is that while these are common lead management problems, they don’t have to happen in your auto dealership! Fixing the holes in your lead management system will help you rise above the competition and grow your automotive business.
