You have invested a great deal of time and money to make your dealership successful. You have hired the right people, implemented solid processes, and have the technology in place to help you run a smooth, profitable, and efficient business. Although today’s economic climate has created some challenges for those of us in the retail automotive industry, you can be confident that, with a little fine tuning of your existing tools and resources, your efforts will lead to increased profits and ensure that your dealership thrives during these difficult times.

By tapping into the powerful resources available within your CRM, your dealership can quickly increase profits and save money by leveraging your existing resources, without spending money on additional marketing efforts or staff. By focusing on the following four areas, you can see just how quickly your CRM can help your dealership leverage the tools and resources you already have available:

Marketing
Leverage your CRM to uncover a wealth of additional up-sell opportunities within your existing customer data.
Powerful data mining capabilities provide dealers with a detailed picture of up-sell opportunities with their current customers based on factors such as those that have equity in their vehicles and where a payment could be lowered or remain the same with a new vehicle purchase.
Dealers can choose from pre-defined queries or easily build their own. In just seconds, the list of viable and ready customers is returned. Dealers can then take those results and communicate immediately with the identified customers directly from their CRM through a variety of campaign options, including email, pre-recorded or custom call blasts, and call center or multi-step marketing campaigns.
Leverage your CRM to discover what marketing works, what doesn’t, and eliminate the excess.

Sales
Are you presenting each customer you touch with all of the options available to them from your dealership?
Recent market data shows that many customers are holding on to their current vehicle longer and that many are looking at used cars when shopping for a vehicle. Are you including used car options in your quotes? What about multiple purchase and lease options?

Service
Is your dealership leveraging your customers’ service visits to the fullest?
Treat each customer visit as a chance to further develop your relationship with that customer. While they are at your dealership, update customer information in your contact database; ask if they would like to receive emails for service specials; inform them of discounts to come in for additional services; offer new car buyers a discount to bring their vehicle in for service, etc.

CSI
The key is to address the issues that negatively impact your dealership’s CSI quickly.
To do that, you need to understand the customer experience immediately and respond with appropriate communications and actions. Your CRM enables the immediate capture of those customer experiences at the time of the sale or service and then drives the appropriate communication and follow up from the right person. This enables the person who is best suited to deal with the problem to do so immediately, before any manufacturer surveys are sent.
When it comes to leveraging existing resources and ensuring that your dealership is capitalizing on every available opportunity, your CRM is your starting point. By harnessing the power of your CRM solution, you’ll not only use your current resources and tools to their fullest, you’ll save money, increase your profits, and ensure that your dealership continues to thrive and grow during these difficult times.

Jonathan Ord is co-founder and CEO of DealerSocket. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or 949-900-0300.