Synergy is fast becoming the buzz word that everyone knows, but few can actually expand upon its meaning. Let’s take just a moment and clear our minds of any preconceived notions as to what synergy actually means. It’s very important to have a clean slate to build a new definition upon or affect a “paradigm shift.” The American Heritage Dictionary defines synergy as, “the interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects.” Now let’s break this down.
The first half of the definition, “the interaction of two or more agents or forces…” describes parts of a whole. The two parts that I’ll help you synergize through this article are your technological components and your processes. After having a feel for what is being synergized, let’s look at the second half of the definition, “…so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects.” In more succinct terms, this means for the components working together, the total outcome is greater than if the components were operating as separate components. For example, when your sales processes are closely aligned with your lead management software, you sell more vehicles – synergy or working together well toward a common goal. As this concept relates to people, in working with managers in my leadership workshops, it is always pointed out that the talents of a team working together as one unit always pale the summation of the individual people talents. Look at solid winning sports teams and this really rings true. The same applies to the dealership in working as a team.
Now that we have a good definition for synergy, let’s look at practical applications for how to synergize different process-technology combinations in your dealership. However, before we can dive into the practical, we need to make a CRM paradigm shift. For most dealers, the terms CRM, lead management, and owner-base management are used more or less interchangeably. This should not be the case. CRM (customer relationship management) is the entire concept of selling through developing, building, nurturing and maintaining customer relationships. Unfortunately, much like synergy, the definition of CRM has become diluted. With that said, the major paradigm shift needs to occur by looking at lead management and owner-base management (both are functions of CRM) as separate mechanisms. Below I’ve defined each for practical purposes:
• Lead management – The process of developing, investigating, building or renewing a relationship with prospects enabled by tracking every customer interaction or touch point to ensure the best chance of closing a given deal.
• Owner-base management – The process of identifying prospects from the pool of past customers, and then moving the “former customer turned prospect” into the lead management process in order to maintain those relationships in keeping them as a loyal customer, serve their needs and in doing so ultimately, earn the privilege to re-sell them and gain solid referrals.
For the rest of this article to have the greatest impact, it’s vitally important you have a grasp on the difference between owner-base management and lead management.
Synergizing lead management
When you woke up this morning and dressed, did the buttons on your dress shirt or blouse line up with the buttonholes? Barring any unforeseen change in fashion or poor tailoring, they did. You might even say that your shirt was synergized. If you chose a zippered sweater, you also had to align the two zipper elements to create one unit. Now, think about your dealership’s prospect management process. Does the process your salespeople use to convert prospects into completed deals operate in a similar manner over a given time? And it’s not important that you follow an industry standard approach, the goal should be to use what works best for you and your team. What is important, however, is that your salespeople adhere to the process that does work.
Your processes are much like the buttons on your dress shirt or the zipper on your sweater. The secret is to line up your lead management software application with your processes. The reason why it’s important to match your software to your processes comes down to the expense of changing or modifying your lead management software versus the total cost of changing processes that work. In the long run, it’s much easier and more cost effective to change your technology to match the strengths of your people than to change your people to fit your technology. Way too often dealerships have to fit into the technology that is shoved onto it and that is not the way to do it. The technology, if any good, should fit you and therefore facilitate your people and processes.
So how do you change your software? Start by mapping your prospect conversion process. Actually diagram all the different steps – including which steps can and cannot be skipped. For instance, if a customer has already test driven the car at three other dealerships, your sales process diagram should be flexible and allow for the demo to be skipped. Once you’ve constructed the diagram, you need to add the most important part, points of potential failure. Be liberal when assigning these PPFs as they allow your managerial reports to be synergized to the sales process.
The next step is to take your sales process and find a lead management piece of software that can be tailored to fit your processes. This is where it can get tricky because not all “CRM software” packages are created equally, and in most cases, you will have to build your sales process into the software. To help, here are a few questions to ask when evaluating lead management software. (If you still have any questions about this, feel free to e-mail my e-business director, Aaron Graham, aaron@impactgroupcrm.com and he can offer you some additional direction.)
1. Does the software allow your salespeople to see all customer history with date/time and notes for each interaction including next contact date?
2. Can I build my process into a central algorithm to automatically generate a default next contact date and time?
3. Is your software web-based so your staff can make calls even when they are not in the store?
4. Does your software have a calendar function to allow each salesperson to schedule calls and appointments for added efficiency?
5. Is e-mail functionality and integration included?
The first two are absolute must haves, and the latter three will help your salespeople be more effective as more and more sales move to the Internet. When you select and purchase CRM lead management software, the first step is to build your sales process into the algorithm. That will render for high salesperson adoption and simple integration and user friendliness.
Owner-base management
As I described above, your owner-base is a potential customer pool, and they are extremely valuable assets. But don’t get owner-base customer interaction confused with lead management. High functioning owner-base management will create numerous opportunities, i.e. referrals and leads, to be managed as prospects. When utilizing the owner-base mining functionality within your CRM software, the goal is to keep investing in your past customers so you just may have the privilege of considering them as a prospect again for their next vehicle consideration. If you’re interested in more information regarding owner-base management, send me an e-mail.
Managerial reports
Remember the points of potential failure or PPFs? Here is where they have tremendous value. When your lead management software is being configured, including the PPFs, they will let you see where your salespeople are excelling and where they are performing poorly. Then you can focus on additional training or grooming. You’ll be able to look at the aggregate performance of your salespeople to see where training can be applied dealership wide, and you’ll see where each particular salesperson could benefit from added coaching to become that champion who is begging to be born. The goal of managerial reports is to see where to make improvements, gain early warning signs of problems before they can manifest themselves and then provide the leadership to help your people get stronger. It’s no more complicated than that. It’s just easier said than done, but the reward will be superior gains!
In summary, work to embrace synergy throughout your sales process. Just always remember that your processes could be flawless and your technology superior, but it’s your people and your leadership that will actually make it all happen. Use the knowledge gained through synergizing your dealership to enhance your entire personnel team. Think you can and you will.
Chuck Barker’s experience ranges from an executive with a Fortune 200 computer corporation to the automobile business. He has held positions as business development manager, sales manager, acting GM, ADP executive regional manager specializing in CRM and his own current company, Impact Marketing & Consulting Group, LLC, located in Virginia. His firm delivers CRM process strategies, 21st century CRM sales training, CRM e-business deployment and CRM management leadership workshops. More information can be located at his web site: www.impactgroupcrm.com.
