Sales is the lifeblood to the success of your dealership. However, it can be a challenge to turn those prospects into sales. The most effective way to guide your customers from the prospect phase to the sale is to use a sales funnel.
Here is a look at how you can streamline your sales funnel that will allow you to get more information, identify bottlenecks, convert more prospects, boost your dealership’s conversion rates, and increase overall sales.
How to Ensure the Success of your Business?
The key to having any type of successful business is to have a comprehensive sales funnel that is able to capture prospects and turn many of them into customers.
In fact, most successful businesses have advanced sales funnels that use the latest sales tools to get the maximum return on investment.
Sadly, many small businesses don’t realize the value of sales funnels and cannot take their business to the next level.
Whether you have a small dealership or a big network operation, you can see some actual results by creating an efficient sales funnel.
What is a Sales Funnel?
A sales funnel is a process that uses tools to help set targets, measure success, and maintain a steady flow of sales.
The sales funnel starts when a prospect has first contact with your brand until the final sale or dropout.
The good news is that a sales funnel is easy to start.
In fact, you probably have some process outlined at your dealership. You can usually find this information in the Dealer Management Systems (DMS) or Customer Relationship Management (CRM).
The one issue is that your DMS or CRM may not be using the latest sales funnel tools to help maximize your sales while keeping your costs down.
The good news is that there is a sales solution that makes it easy to create, manage, and make the most out of your sales funnel.
The Advanced Sales Funnel System Designed for Car Dealerships
Modera Salesfront is an advanced and easy to manage CRM and sales solution that will give you the sales funnel that makes life easier. You and your sales team can easily manage the sales process and get the data that you need to boost sales. Read a case study about how car dealership CRM helped to improve the sales process.
Modera Salesfront will help set up your car sales funnel based on the needs and history of your business. From there, you can customize the sales funnel to help your dealership get the results that you are looking for. Check out a car dealer CRM case study.
The Importance of a Sales Funnel
Think of the sales funnel, like the dashboard of your car or SUV. The dashboard shows you the speed, fuel, navigation information, error messages and more.
A sales funnel can give you all the sales information you need to fast. This can help you understand where the sales are coming from and where your bottlenecks are located.
For example, let’s say you are getting 10,000 visitors a month on your dealership site. Of those 10,000 visitors, you get 200 e-mail inquiries that turn into 20 test drives and 7 sales.
A sales funnel can help you identify the following:
- Which keyword brought the best traffic to your site?
- Which landing page led to the most e-mail inquiries?
- Which type of offers (purchase, short-term lease, long-term lease ect.) led to the most sales?
- Which sales consultant had the best percentage of test drives to sales?
Measure to Manage
Data can be your best friend when it comes to sales.
Most sales managers simply give their team monthly sales objectives, schedule appointments with clients, and hope for the best. A top sales manager can analyze the data and deploy resources in the smart way to maximize sales.
With a sales funnel, you can see where you are getting the best results and what you can improve. This will take out the “guessing game” in figuring out how to improve sales.
Here’s an example:
Let’s say that you know that 15% of your test drives turn into sales. Do you know which vehicle has the best conversion rate? Do you know what type of incentive is most likely to generate a sale?
With this information, you can refine your sales process and offer the right incentives that can lead to more sales.
Building a Dream Team
A sales funnel can also do much more than analyze market data, it can also help you find out what’s working with your sales team.
In seconds, you can find out which sales consultant can get the most test drives. You can also find out who can convert the most test drives into sales. You can even find out which salesperson can generate the most revenue for your dealership.
For example:
Two sales consultants – sales consultant A and sales consultant B – have about the same sales per month.
With detailed sales funnel data, you may discover that sales consultant A has a high conversion rate with lower priced vehicles, but can’t sell higher priced models.
On the other hand, sales consultant B has a lower conversion rate of test drive to sales, but she can sell your higher end vehicles.
This valuable data can help you and your sales consultants identify strengths and weaknesses to make the needed adjustments to boost sales.
Using a Sales Funnel To Get the Most Out of Your Sales Team
Your sales funnel will make it easier for you to find the strengths and the weaknesses in each of your sales consultants. This will allow you to get the most out of each member of the team.
Over the long term, this will help you reduce staff turnover and increase sales.
Sadly, over ⅔ of dealerships across the country don’t even have a sales process in place. This can make it hard for dealerships to realize the full potential of their sales team.
Turning Leads into Customers
Over 80% of leads don’t turn into sales. That means there’s lots of potential revenue going down the drain.
When you have exact data on what’s working – and what’s not working – in your sales funnel, you will be able to capture some of those previously lost sales.
The great thing about a properly working sales funnel is that it gets better and better over time. The more data you get, the more sales you get. The data you get from the sale helps you improve even further.
Here’s an example:
Let’s say that you find out that many of your sales are coming from short-term lease offers. You can then deploy more ads that offer short-term leases. This will bring more interest to your dealership, which will lead to more sales at a lower cost.
Making a Great Sales Funnel
Some sales managers and dealership owners balk at the idea of a sales funnel because they think the process will be too hard and time-consuming.
However, a sales dashboard like Modera Salesfront makes it easy. It automates many of the most difficult components of the sales funnel and it’s easy to track.
From there, you have one simple snapshot of every part of the sales funnel from lead generation to conversions. For the busy sales manager or dealership owner, an efficient sales funnel is the ultimate time saver and profit enhancer.
The First Stages in a Sales Funnel
Every business is going to have their own unique sales challenges. That means that every sales funnel is going to be unique. However, there are similar stages in all sales funnels. Here is a look at the various stages of the sales process.
The first stage in the pipeline are the leads. This includes everything from identifying new customers to getting inquiries for test drives. Read about the lead generation ideas.
Leaders are generated by marketing activities, reactivating existing customers, showroom walk-ins, etc.
The next stage is to track the prospects. Once a customer has confirmed his interest in your product or service, it’s time to qualify them as a customer. A qualified customer has the confirmed budget or purchase value.
In this stage, your team does lots of analyzing, presenting, test driving, negotiating, and more. To make the most of your prospects, follow-up and build trust with them. Simply taking your customers on sunset drives will not close the sale.
During this step, monitor demonstrations, quotations and proposals. Don’t let any opportunities slip away!
Go for the Top Apples!
Sales teams focus on their monthly performance goals. That means you see the most effort and panic during the last week of the month.
With a well-designed sales channel, you can give your sales team more than just a simple monthly target. With up-to-date information, you can give your team weekly goals for generating leads and closing sales. This will allow your sales team to have something to aim for each week of the month.
Here are some areas for improvement the sales team can target:
- More new leads to start the sales journey
- Staying on top of inquires
- Follow up on new car offers, trade-in offers and leasing offers
- Reactivating existing customers
As you can see, with a detailed sales funnel, you can give each member of your sales team daily actions that can lead to more sales.
Finally, a sales funnel dashboard will allow the sales manager to properly forecast where sales will be at the end of the month.
Hot or Cold Lead?
Prospects are different in their readiness to sign the deal. You don’t want to jump the gun and scare off any potential seal. It is important to estimate when the customer will be ready for their purchase.
A cold customer is someone who may make a decision in six months. This includes customers who make an inquiry via email to your website.
A warm customer is someone who may make a decision in one to three months. This prospect could find a car at your dealership. However, this person is not ready to buy right now or may require a trade-in solution.
A hot customer is ready to make a decision within a month. This prospect will pull the trigger and make a purchase with the right offer (new car, trade-in, payment details, etc.).
The most populated group tends to be in the warm area. You simply need to add the heat. A good sales funnel will help you identify those warm customers.
Qualifying leads
To approach each customer’s individual needs, a customer qualification form will come in handy. The form will help sales consultants analyze and understand each customer. This form should have all the information needed for a potential deal.
You can use a printed spreadsheet for the qualifications documents. However, a better alternative will be in digital form from a DMS or CRM system like Modera Salesfront. You can fill in the information so the salesperson can easily save and access it.
Here is a look at the process and the most important areas to cover:
The Role of a Sales Manager
The sales manager is there to provide support to help each member of the team meet or exceed sales targets and get the desired results.
For the sales manager, a sales funnel will be his most important tool. The sales funnel will track successful conversions, deals, cross-selling and delays in the sales process. Analyzing this data helps the sales manager understand, manage, and steer the direction of the sales process.
Here is a recommendation for the process of a sales funnel:
How Can Automotive Retail CRM Software Help You?
Sales processes can be lengthy and hard to follow. Give your brain a break and get support managing everything.
Modera Salesfront all-in-one mobile automotive sales software makes your sales more agile and mobile. It also helps improve customer experience. Your sales consultants will be happy to have all the necessary data in one place.
Modera Salesfront includes the following elements for managing sales and your sales funnel:
- CRM Dashboard
- Lead Management
- Offers
- Sales Contracts
- Test Drives
- Used Car Sales
- Automatic Reports
- Consolidated Sales Report
Find out more: https://uusmodera.salesdom.ee/salesfront
Measuring the Sales Pipeline
To create a sales funnel, set up the criteria for the pipeline. These are the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). You must be able to measure how many customers move through the pipeline and their conversion rates.
KPIs are:
- Qualitative – conversion in-between different levels within sales funnel
- Quantitative – comparing actual sales results with target(-s) (sales volume)
Some sales KPI’s/ areas to follow in new car sales:
- Quick closing: monthly new offers vs sales contracts
- Overall closing A: new leads vs retail sales
- Overall closing B: new leads vs sales contracts
- Target achievement: retail sales vs sales target
- New prospects target achievement: new prospects vs prospects target
- Test drive target achievement: leads vs test drive
- Trade-in ratio: trade-in offers vs new car offers
- Share of sales: retail sales vs sales of finance
The pipeline measurements will help us follow increased advertising or sales activities. If you know the road to success, it’ll be easier to reach your destination.
A Sales Funnel to Success
The car business model is changing. It should be clear what a digital sales funnel can do for your business. The only thing left is to get started!
Start by examining the process that you already have. Next, prepare your sales funnel report. This is where the software based solution like Modera Salesfront becomes helpful in setting up your sales funnel.
Finally, get your sales team on board with the sales funnel system.
Over time, you see that sales funnel solutions like Modera Salesfront will not only help each member of your sales team, it will also make life easier for the sales manager and truly transform the dealership’s profits.
