Customers in any industry, want a better experience. Yet all we do is email, email, email. Engagement rates (responses from the customer) are only around 10% on a good day. Engagement with text is 3 times as great as email, hovering around 30% greater on average. Texting initiatives totally make sense for dealerships, but how do we change the dealership mentality of email as the default form of communication?

Texting is Quick and Effective

Ask your sales team if they had a party, and wanted to invite their friends, how would they contact them? By email? Probably not these days. One person doesn’t make a very good party. Let’s talk to customers the way most people communicate today. Texting is quick, short, personal, and can be effective in getting people on the phone.

Achieve Your Goals

If we know texting creates higher engagement, how can we measure it to ensure salespeople are texting their customers? Below is a chart of several stores showing their texting and email activity in one month. Challenge your team to be at a 1 text to 1 email ratio (1:1). Meaning, if your store sends out 5000 emails, you should also have 5000 texts. Once this metric is practiced, it won’t be hard to achieve your goals. In the case studies below, you can see that some very successful stores are at a 2:1 ratio (twice as many texts as emails).

Effective Communication

As managers, engagement is the key to your success. We need to ensure that all salespeople are using the most effective forms of communication. Remember, the simple question to ask your team is “what is your text to email ratio?” The results will speak for themselves. It’s the 21st century and texting is the new dominant form of communication between tech adaptive people. Embrace it, and use it to your advantage!

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A little over two years ago I wrote an article entitled, “The CRM Evolution is Coming…” highlighting how many of the CRM’s out there are still stuck in the technology of yesteryear, and if they do no evolve, they will in fact be the automotive equivalent of Blockbuster, Radio Shack, Sears, and Toys ‘R Us.

They will think back in the years to come on why they didn’t pivot, innovate, and keep up with the demands of their customers. They will wonder why they rested on their laurels, why they did not spend the money to update their once great technology, and why they chose to be satisfied with their monthly revenue and customer retention.

The CRM Evolution did not come as fast I once thought, but trust me, it is still coming. In my article I highlighted three CRM companies that I thought would shake up the industry, Drive360 CRM out of Texas, Avendas by NCC, and DriveCentric out of Indianapolis.

At this moment in time, there is only one of those CRM’s still standing, DriveCentric, and they are picking off the big guys one dealership at a time with their current suite of products. Creating a CRM, building a business, and then having the capital and patience to do what they are doing is not for the faint of heart.

That is why I am still extremely excited to see where Drive will be in next few years. Not only am I excited about what I am seeing with DriveCentric, I am just as excited to see how Dominion’s Vision CRM will shake out into the market. I have had first hand experience at looking and seeing both of these CRM’s out in the market, and I will be honest, not one other single CRM holds a candle to what these two CRM’s can do in functionality, speed, UI, customization, reporting, and list goes on.

Yes, some of the legacy CRM’s have tweaked and updated what they can do, but they are still built on technology and coding from 10 years ago or more. Think about that, do you want to be using the original iPhone (which was changed the way we literally live, as many of these CRM’s changed how we follow up with customers), or do you want the brand new iPhone XS Max that is bigger, faster, stronger, and better in every way? I know my answer.

For me, I loved my original iPhone, but I would never want to go back to it. I appreciated the technology it put in my hands 10 years ago, but in today’s age, I want the speed along with the latest features and technology that is available today.

The same could be said the companies I mentioned above. Blockbuster, Radio Shack, Sears, and Toys ‘R Us were my once go to places for my Friday night video rental, anything electronics, my one stop shop department store, and the best place to buy toys and games. But guess what, none of those companies adapted, innovated, and kept up with what their respective industry demanded from them. They were disrupted, yet, they still chose to not adapt.

I hope nothing but the best of any company in my beloved industry, but I am afraid if they do not keep up with what DriveCentric and Dominion’s Vision are doing, they will be saying farewell, just at Geoffrey the Giraffe did just a few short months ago.

Sorry to see you go Geoffery…

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