The Importance of Sales Call Tracking

Speaking of sales, there’s a lot of loss if you don’t manage your phones properly. Are dealers tracking sales calls? And how are they doing it? That can have a huge impact on the level of engagement and interaction with customers, as well as the overall close rate on sales calls.

The phone was the first real “sales tool” for many dealers and salespeople. It’s the oldest tool dealers have in the store and it’s one that’s still regularly used. And yet, besides PSX Digital, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a CRM that integrates phone calls. Despite their best efforts, other developers have either decided to stay away from this integration or simply don’t have the means to offer it.

What good is a CRM if it can’t be integrated with one of your oldest, most-used tools?

The phone is the one we get the most opportunities from and somehow dealers are okay with it all happening outside the CRM.

How can that be?

You need to learn better and when you know better, you need to do better.

When your calls aren’t going through your CRM and you’re not getting all the data and insights, you’re missing almost half of your opportunities (or sometimes more). And it’s all in the hopes that the sales staff will go through and enter each phone call into the CRM manually—that’s not a strategy. That’s hope, and it’s not likely.

If your CRM doesn’t work for your team, it usually creates work. You don’t want that.

Now, let’s discuss the two types of missed calls.

 

Completely Missed Calls

These are the ones that come in when everyone was busy, it rang and rang and rang, and then it was gone. Without call tracking, you have no way to track these calls and follow up or return those calls that you missed. And on average, that happens about five times a day in a dealership. That’s 35 missed opportunities a week. You can’t track them down, follow up, or anything. They’re just gone.

When the calls are attached to the CRM, it will at least capture the number when it comes in, and it’s there for someone to call back. It sits on the dashboard and very clearly shows as a missed call. I’ve seen some dealer dashboards with missed call lists as high as 60—and it’s as simple as bringing up that list, making a phone call, and connecting with these people.

That’s how you maximize your opportunities. Without call integration in your CRM, you can’t do that, and you’ll never find a better way. We’re not saying that PSX Digital is the only solution, but the fact is that it’s currently the only dedicated CRM that includes call integration. That’s worth knowing because it can change your business.

People so often don’t get called back. Imagine what an impact it would make if they did get that call from your dealership because you were able to track the call in your CRM. Your customers will see that you’re going the extra mile and that you want to deliver a higher caliber of service. And they’ll respond in kind.

Inbound calls increased 215% in the past five years—that’s unheard of and it points toward a new trend in consumer behavior. This is data from dealers, including both powersports and the automotive industry, by the way. Technology has continued to improve and become available, but there are still some misses.

It’s 2022- why are we still talking about missing calls? Why haven’t dealerships, by this point, mastered the phone and how to integrate it with all their solutions, including their tech stack? We have sales managers sitting at desks and they’re rarely desking a deal. They’re just sitting there, waiting to be “needed” or whatever else it is that they do. These sales managers should be on the phone. They should be returning those calls, even if just a few at a time. They’ve certainly got the time. And if they happen to be needed along the way, they can pause and take care of the things in the store before going back to follow-up calls.

For some reason, it’s become accepted that there’s this “leak” in communications, and it’s just okay, but it’s not. 67% of the calls that come into your dealership are unknown. You have no idea who they are or why they called. The information doesn’t go into the CRM, the call doesn’t get answered, or nothing comes out of it, and you have no follow-up.

With PSX Digital, you can record every inbound phone call. Plus, you can tag calls as to who took them and what transpired so that you can touch base with your sales team to see how those calls went. You should be able to collect the name of the person, their contact information, etc., and store it in the CRM so that everyone knows what every call entails.

Remember, the purpose of the call is not to sell the unit, but to get information from the customer to help them. You cannot sell them something over the phone. You can help them buy something by giving them more information, trade details, or whatever other insight they need on the call.

Too many salespeople get wrapped up in the train of thought that if I can’t complete it today, it’s not valuable. They want to push and force the deal, and that’s not how it works. You’re not here to sell people anything. You’re here to help them buy what they need (or in this case, what they want).

The second type of missed call is the one that doesn’t get entered in the CRM. Sure, sometimes things get hectic, but dealerships and salespeople need to have discipline that involves strict management and tracking of phone calls. The phone is tied to tons of revenue. If you don’t handle it right, you lose opportunities to coach your people to get better. Worse, if you allow calls to get completely missed, you should look at the potential revenue lost by missing all those calls.

The dealers that are successful with calls and phone business are usually the ones who have a strict discipline surrounding the use of the phone in their business. PSX Digital provides the tools to enable these disciplines and makes something like sales call management and tracking easier for everyone.

The CRM integration allows sales managers and staff to manage calls better, make smarter decisions, and encourage use of the CRM to help improve the customer experience. An interesting thing happens when managers start telling salespeople that they can listen to calls and messages, find information in the CRM, and call back the lead themselves to see what they needed.

When this happens, the reasons that salespeople give for missing calls or leads change, and eventually they just stop missing the opportunities because they have no more reasons to give. They get better about following up with calls, asking for help from managers, and so forth.

 

It May Be a Technology Problem First

Some dealers have all the will and desire, but they can’t afford the technology or implementing the tools and systems, or they simply can’t find the solution that works for them. If that’s the case, feel free to reach out to PSX Digital and see what kind of solutions we can come up with to ensure that your dealership isn’t missing valuable calls and losing opportunities to the competition.

Technology isn’t readily available to every dealership and some dealers aren’t sure what they’re looking for. The good news is that PSX Digital can help you along the way. Think about it—the one thing that gives you the most engagement with customers is the one element that is not integrated into the average CRM. Why not? Whether it’s tech, training, or anything else, you must figure it out, and as mentioned earlier, build it better.

If it’s not an issue of having the right tools, it needs to be addressed and resolved if you are going to survive, let alone thrive, as a dealership.