Lead Scoring has been a frequent topic of discussion across many of the industry forums and blogs. Just yesterday a long time DealerRefresh community member, Edward Shaffer, asked the question “Lead Scoring” – anybody using it??.
This is the same question many dealers and ISM’s have wondered over the last several years when “Lead Scoring” was introduced to our industry with Polk being one (if not the first) of the pioneers behind the technology.
Polk’s Lead Scoring uses information from the lead, geography, and demographics to identify the best prospective customers. It identifies the leads with the highest buy potential and those most likely to be in market. As with any scoring system based on a complex algorithm, you’re never going to get results that are 100% accurate. However, I can tell you from 4+ years of working with Polk and their lead scoring service, bouncing thousands and thousands of leads up against their algorithm (then later matched up against registration data to determine the effectiveness), the sh!t works.
If Lead Scoring is so great, why don’t we hear more about dealers using it? Simple – we (dealers) aren’t sure what to do with it.
One can have access to great data but unless you can take action on it, what good is it?
Follow me here – the average dealers long term follow-up extends out to about what….2-5 days!? After that, follow-up drops off. And NO, your “are you still in the market?” automated email templates are NOT long term follow-up. They’re ineffective at best.
Why do we stop following up after such a short time? One reason is we’ve received more leads over the last few days that has enabled us to cherry pick through enough to obtain a few appointments for the week to close and deliver.
Cherry pick? Yes – we all cherry pick. It’s human nature. So if we’re going to cherry pick, lets pick the right leads.
If we know our long term follow-up drops off after only a few days and we’re missing opportunities, can we use great data with lead analytics (scoring) to help determine a process around follow-up that encourages your sales team to place more effort in long term follow-up?
Yes we can. No we can’t.
Tomorrow (Friday), March 16, 2012 at 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. EDT, Polk and HookLogic is offering a Free advanced series webinar on how YOU CAN leverage lead analytics to determine high intent buyers, while incentivizing them to show up at your dealership.
