At the PCG Bootcamp, Jeff Collins requested we bring the Blueprint Series back.  He was especially adamant that we cover CRM.

We last posted a Blueprint Series article on CRM in February of 2008.  A lot has changed in the last three years and we felt this was a good one to revisit.  The biggest change has been the overall acceptance of CRM by the dealership community.  Many have realized the power of this tool and quite a few of the systems available to us have matured.  So let’s ask our vendors for even more maturity in this technology.

Use the comments to post your thoughts and wants.  Many of the comments from the old thread are still valid today, but it is certainly okay to revisit those again….in fact, we encourage it!

Redefining the rules of the Blueprint Series:

Vendors, do not come in here with comments saying “we do that” or “I am the solution for you”, etc.  WE WILL NOT ALLOW VENDOR SPAMMING IN THIS THREAD.  If you have a selling message, contact us and we will point you in the right direction.

Let’s get our thoughts out!

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CRM buying is a very personal experience.  In the introduction to this 5 part series I mentioned that making a decision on a CRM is massive, and I think we all know that.  However, it isn’t all about just buying a CRM; there are some elements I covered that pertain to better utilizing your current CRM.  To conclude the series I will be covering the costs and expenses of CRM (after the page jump).

If you didn’t read this entire series word-for-word, I understand as it is a lot to take-in.  I tried to cover it in such a way that didn’t point any dirty fingers at your current system as my real intention was to get you thinking more about what CRM really is.  This is an educational series plain and simple.

With that said I know CRM is a tough topic as it is probably another 5 years away from being a fully-utilized technology.  Hopefully we can all look back at this series in 2016 and say “Alex – geeeez, that was some seriously basic stuff you were talking about back in the day.”

It was also not my intent to give you an exact list of features to ask about in your CRM demos.  I have personally created quite a few lists of “CRM must haves” for my dealership and have seen a few from others.  The one thing that is constant amongst all my lists, and the others I’ve seen, is that they’re all different.  This fact simply proves CRM buying is a personal experience.

The key takeaway from this entire series: CRM helps you play the numbers game through good process.

With that said there are some, if I might say it without sounding cocky, strong factors I covered you should incorporate into your CRM approach. 

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Even though I know and preach that CRM Process is the true core of a successful CRM system I must admit the reporting and decision-making portion is actually my favorite part.  I love playing with numbers and discovering new avenues to traverse.

One could argue that the reporting and decision-making portion of a CRM system is actually the most important part because it fuels the tweaking and accountability of the processes…..as long as someone is watching.  I believe the two compliment one another; especially when the two are done right.  Unfortunately things like faulty reports, lack of comprehension, and data corruption (duplicates, bad ad sources, etc) plague the accuracy of CRM reports.

Decision-Making also compliments the marketing end of the CRM and if you truly understand the reports you can use them as good indicators of how well your other marketing efforts are working.

Unfortunately, it seems, reporting is the last thing ever considered by some vendors and that has really ticked me off as a dealer because we rely on it so heavily.

Reporting

What to look for in Process Reports:

This is the toughest part to overview in a demo because it is really difficult to gauge how accurate things are without using your own data.  The best you can do is check to make sure the data points you want to measure are available in the reporting and then call a reference dealer to see if they’ve been happy with the reporting accuracy.  Speaking of calling references, I need to write an article about that.

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If you read through the Introduction and CRM Process articles of this series you already know that automotive CRM is a little bit different than traditional CRM systems and good process is the real magic behind it all.  Marketing can play a big part in the CRM though.

Every email you send, voicemail left, and phone call connected can be viewed as a marketing impression.  Hopefully these one-to-one impressions leave a big impression on your customer.

A good CRM will have a history of communications your dealership has made with a customer and a really good CRM will also archive the marketing materials you’ve directly sent to each individual customer from within the system.

Basic CRM Marketing items to look for:

I think it is safe to say that email broadcasting has become a standard feature of the larger-named CRM solutions available to car dealers.

Email marketing is a very effective channel.  It is easy to abuse though – don’t become an email spammer.

Does the CRM have the ability to send an email broadcast? If yes…

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Hopefully you read through the Introduction to this CRM series, but if you didn’t that’s okay because you’ve landed on the most important part of the series:  CRM Process. In order to sell more cars, get more service appointments, and just get more customers using your dealership in general it all boils down to good follow-up.  This is where the needle is moved and this is where you change the gap with your competitors because this is where CRM makes the difference.  Don’t let anyone tell you different.

Process management is not an easy silver bullet (do those actually exist?); it does require quite a bit of work.  You can’t simply write a check for this one, and no vendor, consultant, or trainer can maintain the consistency you need in this area.  If you want to own your market and make your customers happy then this is where the right-fitting CRM can help you get that done.

It is all about the basic user (anyone speaking to customers as their primary job function).  I know your basic users aren’t the ones making the decisions on which CRM you should buy, and they probably shouldn’t.  I can imagine quite a bit of chaos with too many cooks in the kitchen.  However, you are the decision maker and you should be thinking about them before thinking about how you will use the system and how much it costs.  CRM is priceless by the way.

On a side note, if you ever have any CRM questions, the DealerRefresh community can help in the CRM and ILM forum 24/7.

What to look for in the demo:

There are only a few screens needed for a basic user:

1. Customer Entry Screen
2. Customer Details Screen
3. Forms
4. To-Do Screen

Start with these.  You need to get a very good idea of what your basic user will be doing multiple times a day everyday.  If it is tedious, ugly to look at (subjective I know), and unintuitive then your people will hate it.  I’ve seen some CRM rebellions by basic users and they do nothing but waste everyone’s money.

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