CarChat24 Blog
CarChat24 Blog
Source: CarChat24
I once had a boss who liked to say “All leads are the same”. I adopted that phrase until I one day realized that it was completely wrong. The truth of the matter is that all car sales leads are not the same. Depending on the source and how they’re obtained, it can mean the difference between a great lead source provider and one that drains money from you for totally ineffective automotive sales leads.
What constitutes effective automotive sales leads? Ask any car dealer and they’ll say something like “if I sell a car”. While correct, it’s important to look at the big picture and the steps it takes to get to the point where Mr. and Mrs. Smith are buying a car and signing the paperwork in your office.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith started off as a couple considering the purchase of a vehicle. With Mr. Smith’s long hours at work and Mrs. Smith’s owning her own business, they don’t have the time to go into a dealership. They use a search engine to look for the kind of car that they’re interested in. They land on your website wanting to know some details about the specific vehicle they want. It’s 2AM, the first moment that Mr. Smith has had to himself in a week. He has questions. Who does he turn to?
This could go one of two ways: He could spend 5 minutes on your website searching for the answers to his multiple questions, and leave a message on your dealership’s voicemail hoping that he can answer the call the next day. Or, a dealer chat representative can greet Mr. Smith, wish him a good evening, and offer to be of assistance. With proven-effective scripts, a chat agent can walk Mr. Smith through the process, answer his questions, and get him setup to come into the dealership on his only day off: Saturday.
It’s also worth mentioning that 1 month ago, Mrs. Smith was filling out a survey online for something completely unrelated. She gave a false phone number, but a legitimate e-mail address and said she “might” be interested in buying sometime in the future. This was forwarded to you as an automotive sales lead. When a representative got through to her e-mail, Mrs. Smith wrote back that she wasn’t in the market nor would she be until next year. It was written off as a bad lead.
But here they are, 1 month later, in your office, signing paperwork for their new car. All of this from a quick hello via a dealer chat session at 2AM.
Although a fictional scenario, this dealer chat situation is common. With schedules the way they are, more and more people are turning to the internet to make their shopping more convenient. If Mr. Smith landed on your website at 2AM, would he have been greeted and helped? Would you have even known that he stopped by? Every single visitor is a potential automotive sales lead. Every automotive sales lead is a potential sale and customer for life. Dealer chat helps to capture these visitors and convert them into ultimate sales.