I love to create experiments. I am a big nerd at heart.

Right now, we are conducting an experiment about sales lead follow up and effectiveness that I wanted to share it with you. We tested 100 dealerships and recorded exactly how they responded to an internet lead request. We documented all of the correspondence in a very elaborate excel spreadsheet with detailed attributes of every interaction. Yes, I totally geeked out!

Experiment Methodology

We selected all brands from across the country. We also decided to conduct this experiment on lower lead volume days not to disrupt the dealership’s peak selling times in hopes of reaching the highest level of engagement with each dealership. I will be posting the insights on our blog. We will not point out or post any specific dealer flaws; this is an aggregation and observation report. I hope this information will shed light on how to improve your dealership processes down to the words you use and when in the process you use them.

Our report is an in-depth look into the content and context of responses, and the chosen channels on how information is delivered back to The Shopper.

Lead automation needs an update

My first observation is the collision of automated messaging and human responses. Unfortunately, this creates enormous confusion because, in every case, the automated emails are sharing one messaging track, and the one coming directly from human beings are on an entirely different track. We see this as an opportunity to get started on the right foot yet is not being done in virtually any of the dealerships we tested.

Where should I focus my attention as a shopper?

Our next post will focus on how to solve this initial friction point in the sales lead process. We will cover exactly how to improve the autoresponse to become compelling and engaging. We will also cover the first human response and how to make it meaningful to the shopper. Please subscribe to our blog or check out our Linkedin page where we will also be posting our new updates covering every aspect of the follow-up process.

Another item we will be discussing is the almost always overlooked and never utilized SQUEEZE page that could really help keep shopper’s attention and drive them deeper into your sales funnel. Unfortunately again almost no dealerships are leveraging this incredible opportunity. We will share some ideas about that as well in our next post.