A dealership's CRM is at the heart of its entire sales operation. Choosing the right CRM for your dealership is exceedingly important in its success. However, when the purchase of the new CRM has been completed, there are still a few key items that need to be covered before the dealership can get up and running. Acknowledging that this process takes time and energy, from all members of the dealerships sales staff, will help to build a long and fruitful relationship between the dealership personnel and the CRM provider. After all, the foundation of the CRM’s success in the dealership starts with a positive and successful on-boarding process. Following a few key steps will save time, staff complaints, and most importantly, funds. 

• Educating your staff in preparation for the new CRM is not only important, it’s a necessity.Everyone who will have access to the CRM in the dealership should be informed of what system they are being switched too, but also when it will occur. Once everyone has a schedule to abide by, it gives ample warning to salespeople to prepare for the new system. In many cases dealership staff will be apprehensive to switch to a new system, but it’s up to senior management to educate them on the “why” reason for the switch. Keeping a transparency to this aspect can give the sales staff a sense of pride given they were informed of top level decisions and how they were reached.

• Setting up a collaborative relationship with the CRM company provides constant and up to date education to the CRM and its abilities.CRM companies, proper automotive CRM companies, provide not only a new system for the dealership, but also an ongoing business relationship. This is not just software given to the dealership, instead it’s a partnership where if anything is needed or requested by the dealership, it is provided by the CRM provider. This is best handled when the CRM company provides the dealership with assigned staff for constant management of that specific dealership location. CRM providers such as CRMSuite, provide a personal on-boarding process, but also a dedicated Performance Manager. These PM’s are available not only in the beginning set up stages, but also throughout the entire tenure of the dealership’s relationship with CRMSuite. Whether it be email, phone call, text, chat, or in person, these PM’s are there for the lifetime of the relationship. Because having that personal relationship builds a better functioning day-to-day process, which prevents hiccups that other companies may allow to happen.

• Migrating dealership data to the CRM provider on schedule keeps the on boarding timeline intact.Lack of data transfer to the CRM provider is the largest delay in the setup process. At the beginning stage of purchase, a timeline calendar should always have been sent to the dealership. Keeping to this timeline will create an ease of use for the staff, with no delays holding up the training and start date. In addition, speak with your new CRM provider about the migration and your data transfer. All data should transfer over, however sometimes DMS data doesn’t match that of the CRM when the switch occurs. Speaking to the CRM vendor will hurdle and problems that can occur. Because you don’t want to lose one lead in switching, given the entire reason was to create more leads.

Talk with your CRM provider if these steps above never happened, or if these processes occurred and were just unhelpful. Because it may be time to start shopping. A new CRM may be one of the largest purchases a dealership will make, but there’s a reason for this. Having the right CRM will save time and money. Even more important however, a CRM that works in unison with the dealership will increase sales and provide less of an annoyance on the salespeople. Salespeople who don’t enjoy and/or work well with the CRM are much more detrimental that most think. If the CRM is found to be disliked by the staff, productivity will slow. Ask your salespeople what they think about your CRM; Their answers may surprise you.