At Car Wars, we refer to these KPIs as the CRISP metrics. To learn more about how Car Wars is helping thousands of dealerships sharpen their CRISP metrics, visit our website.
Effective phone lead management is crucial for sales department success. Customers consistently rely on the phone to inquire about vehicles, schedule test drives and negotiate deals. However, many dealers face challenges in converting phone leads into sales due to unclear expectations, resource constraints and evolving customer expectations.
The lack of a structured phone handling approach and clear KPIs makes it difficult for dealerships to track phone performance and optimize processes, leading to missed opportunities and customer dissatisfaction. Dial into these four key KPIs – connection rate, request and invite rate, appointment set rate, and pursue rate – to significantly improve your dealership’s phone lead management, streamline operations, enhance customer interactions and drive higher conversions.
Connection Rate
The first crucial KPI in automotive phone lead management is the connection rate. This metric measures the percentage of inbound phone calls that are successfully answered and addressed by your sales team, not just answered by a receptionist. A high connection rate indicates efficient communication and responsiveness, which are essential for engaging potential new or returning customers. By focusing on improving your team’s ability to connect with phone leads immediately, you can maximize opportunities and create positive first impressions that drive conversions. This can be improved by implementing fallback options, multi-rings, warm transfers and phone bridges and by reducing hold times.
Request and Invite Rate
Once connected with a phone lead, the next important KPI is the request and invite rate. This metric evaluates how often your sales team successfully offers leads to schedule appointments, test drives, or showroom visits. Effective communication skills, vehicle knowledge and a personalized approach play key roles in encouraging leads to take the next step in the sales process. When dealers ask for the appointment, 9 out of 10 customers give some form of a yes. Monitoring and optimizing the request and invite rate can help identify areas for improvement and enable your team to convert more phone leads into buying customers.
Set Rate
The third critical KPI is the appointment set rate, which measures the percentage of scheduled appointments with a firm time and date. A high appointment set rate indicates effective scheduling techniques and persuasive communication strategies. Converting a customer’s call into a booked firm appointment can be a difficult task. When a potential buyer is having a tough time picking a firm time and date, utilize the “whittle and shepherd” technique. This technique entails sales agents asking A/B questions to narrow down a firm appointment. By focusing on increasing this metric, you can streamline the sales process, reduce lead leakage and ensure that qualified prospects progress through the sales funnel efficiently.
Pursue Rate
The final KPI to prioritize is the pursue rate. This metric evaluates how consistently your sales team follows up with leads. This may include customers who hung up on hold, went to voicemail, scheduled a soft appointment, no-showed, etc. Timely and persistent follow-up is crucial for maintaining engagement, addressing concerns and guiding leads towards a purchase decision. By tracking and setting expectations for the pursue rate, you can enhance customer satisfaction, build trust and increase the likelihood of closing deals.
Mastering these four KPIs can significantly improve your automotive phone lead management efforts. By focusing on each step of the customer purchasing journey, starting from the initial phone call, you can maximize sales opportunities, boost customer satisfaction and drive business growth in the competitive automotive industry.
