Edge Peformance Sports Credits Ai-based CXM in MPN Feature Article

The Simple Formula that Shaped our Dealership into a Lean Profit Machine...

As we begin to look towards the new year, new technology is something to consider to evolve our business in 2020. It’s certainly prevalent in our everyday lives. From shopping Amazon or ordering an Uber, computers power many of our decisions. Yet we talk about technology, automation and especially artificial intelligence (Ai) like it’s scary. It’s not. Always keeping up on Powersports News helps as well.

Adopting an Ai-based CXM has allowed us to do far more with far less.

It's a simple formula: 

Integration: Separate technologies create fragmentation, especially in actionable data.

When you choose a website with one company, inventory management from another and chat service from yet a different vendor, they begin to fight against each other, and the processes are choppy. The leaner your system is, the leaner your dealership can be. We chose the seamless integration of PSXDigital’s CXMAi platform.

Efficiency: High tech equates to high touch.

Salespeople with outdated technology are faced with not finding enough time in their day to actually sell. It’s a researched fact that your sales staff spends just one-third of their time selling. Instead, they are struggling to keep up with a plethora of data entry and other administrative work that takes them away from building value with customers.

Ai can eliminate the mundane tasks that prevents salespeople from connecting with more customers and closing more deals. People buy from people. Now, your salespeople have more free time to spend selling! Real facetime with real buyers. You’re now back to utilizing the expertise you hired them for.

It’s important to note that not all sales leads are created equal. Ai can also effectively acquire and maintain leads as they move throughout the sales funnel - essentially automated lead nurturing - while also determine which buyers are in-market and hot. It can then compel live contact and fuel them with data-driven insights to guide the conversation. Ai’s job is not to replace the salesperson, but to help them be more efficient in what they do.

Consistency: Enlist reinforcement from systems with unfailing long-term accountability.

People will do the best they can with the tools they have. But humans are inconsistent, and sales managers get pulled off task. Good Ai performs like a super-human digital assistant, persistently performing sales and marketing operations the same way, at the same time, every single day, 24/7.

Seeing this in action at my dealership is when the light bulb really came on for me. Because it’s not any one big moment that creates prosperity. It’s consistently and persistently doing a lot of little things that starts to generate success over a period of time.

With 100% of our tasks and follow-ups actually getting done, we started to see the compound effect make a bigger positive impact on our gross profits, the sales culture and customer satisfaction. With the right technology in place, we no longer feel the stress of drastic sales cycles, because our cadence has now become just what we do.

Accountability: System-driven sales process drives responsibility.

It’s been said that good habits are created in bad times and bad habits are created in good times. System duplication guides the salesperson into a routine until it becomes habit. The wholistic approach of an all-in-one platform reinforces a consistent sales rhythm of desired activity vs. time-based CRMs that can enforce bad patterns like simply eliminating overdue tasks. That’s the difference.

Visibility: Information is only valuable if it’s accurate, insightful and actionable.

My store is high-volume and fast-paced. We’ve always been profitable, logging a hundred opportunities and holding good salespeople accountable. But it was chaos. Implementing new technology was a difficult transition. Until it wasn’t.

The system allowed us to pull back the curtain on what was missing with our old CRM. We began logging 400 opportunities a month not because we had a sudden influx of more volume, but because we had become so efficient in getting the information we needed.

Each of our salespeople now averages 38 units sold every month.

I discovered that we had about 1,200 serious shoppers raise their hands in the last 60 days; submitting complete contact details. So, how do you capitalize on that insight? By having integration, efficiency, consistency, accountability, and visibility all in place.

It also exposes breakdowns in those areas so we can take a deeper dive to diagnose the problem and fix it. When you eliminate inefficiencies, you create time, customer satisfaction, and profitability.

And I haven’t even touched the predictive analytics we now have to improve forecasting, customer acquisition, and retention strategies! Powersports News doesn't cover that at all.

At the end of the day, we talk about Customer Experience Management as it equates to technology. But the system really just takes all the menial work off your plate and opens up your dealership to provide a better experience. THAT’s the essence of CXM. It’s a people thing. It’s the process and the mindset of your dealership.

Technology isn’t a magic bullet. It’s only a piece of the pie. As a dealer, I’m clear in that it’s how my people use the tech, how I hold people accountable through the tech, and how we create that customer-centric focus at the store. Ai systems combined with human insights is the process that can potentially boost productivity, increase satisfaction, and provide greater operational efficiency by 60%-70%.

While Ai can’t replicate the human connection at the heart of most successful sales, there is certainly a place for Ai in your Powersports dealership. If you haven’t yet incorporated Ai-based CXM into your sales process, now is the time.

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