Carpe Diem Dealer Marketing Magazine | August 2008
Now is an excellent time for dealerships
to save money and gain market share.
Take a look at these three simple steps and
discover how easily you can use
your CRM
to save money and run your dealership more
efficiently:
1) Consolidate tools and staff. Make better
use of your existing resources.
With an effective
CRM tool, dealerships can consolidate
different positions,
such as the Internet
department and the BDC.
2)Reduce employee churn. Utilize the
employee snapshot and reporting functions
of your CRM’s Manager’s Dashboard to
quickly assess employee performance. Identify
and reward top performers and retrain (or
eliminate) non-performers.
3) Know what marketing works. Eliminate
unproductive marketing spend and refocus
those dollars on what works. “We save
$30,000 per month in marketing expenses
because of our CRM,” explains Ron Young of
Connell Nissan. “Knowing what works and
what doesn’t enables us to strategically
target both our marketing efforts and dollars
to achieve maximum ROI.”
Brian Crane is executive manager at Ken
Garff Automotive, a busy dealership in
Ogden, Utah. After using their current CRM
solution for approximately two years,
Crane reports that it has made big difference
in their business.
“I estimate that I save about $4,000 in
media spend every weekend by leveraging
our CRM,” notes Crane. “Often the OEM
incentives arrive too late in the week to make
it into our TV, radio, and print ads, but with
our CRM, I can still get those promotions out
to my customers through email. I don’t have
to run a special ad either, which in itself saves
me thousands of dollars and I still drive traffic
to my lot.”
Mr. Crane identifies overhead as an additional
area where CRM consistently saves
his dealership money. “Another great thing is
that it allows me to consolidate my staff and
reduce overhead,” explains Crane. “Using a
single CRM solution, one person can easily
manage both Internet and BDC and another
can handle advertising, CSI surveys, and
inbound leads. Consolidation in these two
areas saves me over $7500 per month in personnel
costs.”
Crane also credits their CRM for a 10 percent
increase in sales over the previous year and
a 40 point increase in CSI scores. “We went
from an average of 60 percent CSI two years
ago to 100 percent in the past few months,”
Crane explains. “I attribute this directly to our
ability to follow up with unhappy customers
more quickly and immediately resolve their
issues before they receive the factory survey.
Saving thousands and turning around our
CSI—those are real benefits,” adds Crane. “I
love it.”
Our industry is evolving rapidly and we need
to evolve with it. As Horace so famously proclaimed,
“Carpe Diem!” The time is now to
seize the day!
