©2016 By John Fuhrman, Director of Training OptionSoft Technologies

     Everyone’s talking about the cost of health care these days.  What does that have to do with an article in a magazine for successful dealers?  Bear with me for a moment.  Most dealers are of an age where it would benefit them to get an annual checkup.  Suppose you wanted only the best and most accurate information and bypassed your regular doctor.

     You visited an orthopedist to have all of your joints checked for any issues.  Then you went to a cardiac specialist to make certain that your ticker was not on the way out.  After which you trucked on over to a circulatory expert to make sure the blood flow was at maximum.  A quick run with an ear, nose and throat specialist let you know that from the neck up you’re doing okay.  What would something like that cost compared to a full physical from the family doc?

     The short answer, it would cost a small fortune.  The second question, would it be worth it?  That’s a bit more difficult to answer.  If your peace of mind is of utmost importance to you, and you have unlimited funds available, who am I to stand in your way?  However, if everything checks out as being perfectly healthy, what did you gain?  You could have gotten the same results from your physician at a small fraction of the cost and had it done in one single visit.

     It’s no different with software.  There are good providers out there who do a good job making one piece of software.  It might be a menu.  There are some companies with CRM’s, others with desking tools.  For the most part, these are tech companies who build product and often ask the dealer to make changes in the way they operate in order to fit their technology.

https://youtu.be/50PLlw4dHfw

     The real opportunity to get maximum benefit from today’s technology and have the results dealers should be entitled to is to work with a provider offering it all.  Companies that can take a dealer and equip them from the DMS out (meaning CRM, Sales Desking, Menu, etc.) offer several specific advantages.  First of which is they seamlessly communicate with each other.  No modification is needed.

     Second, and equally as important, any issues or changes necessary, can be made with one phone call and virtually zero down time.  If there is a glitch in the software, you take on a new lender, add a new franchise, or even take on new products for your F&I department, you avoid unnecessary delays due to integration, product rating and/or setting up each software for the new changes. (For a free no obligations software analysis, email your complete contact information to jfuhrman@otiservices.com and we’ll send you the analysis form)

     And finally, cost.  This one is a killer and I am still amazed at how much dealers spend on technology because of the lack of information or real hands on experience.  But, here are a couple of actual examples we’ve handled at OptionSoft in the last 30 days.

     Dealer #1 was perfectly satisfied with his current technology situation.  But, because of a long-term relationship agreed to sit through a demo and see what we had.  Not only were we able to add software solutions he didn’t have, we did so while still saving him money.  He was currently spending $9,600 per month on what he had.  We replaced that suite of products and added a CSI report for delivery, software to sell products in service, a full DMS reporting system and our exclusive BEACON program.  All of that at a total cost of $4,692.  Over 50% savings.

     Dealer #2 was a mess.  They had a CRM that was slow but functioning.  When they added a new desking tool, they were informed that it did not integrate with their current CRM.  They added another CRM to make it work.  To make matters worse, for the customer to be entered into the system and to use the desking tool, the sales person had to enter the customer information into both CRM’s BEFORE they could even approach the desk.  This not only slowed down their sales process costing deals and CSI, but the dealer was overpaying for services that didn’t benefit them.  Our suite of software solved both issues which resulted in raising gross as well as CSI.

     There are others like this and even worse, but I hope now you can see the point.  The fewer companies involved in your day to day sales and F&I operations, the better.