How to Create the Best Automotive Internet Sales Process Ever! – PART 9

How to Create the Best Automotive Internet Sales Process Ever! (PART 9)

Voicemail Best Practices and More!

TRANSCRIPT: I get this question a lot, Steve what’s more important with my processes and templates and things? Is it quantity of messages or is it quality of messages. Guess what? Start with quantity then focus on quality. I would rather have your team make nine bad phone calls, than one great phone call. Because one call gets us connected with about 48% of the prospects who are willing to reconnect, so start with quantity then focus on quality. Make the calls, leave the voicemails, then focus on making them better, okay? You want to measure which voicemails are actually returned. Which ones prompt the prospect to take your next call. Those are voicemails that are working. Now voicemails matter more than emails in our attempt to reconnect. In the traditional process, because in the traditional process we have a working number.

So let me give you five quick best practices for all of our voicemails. We need to be enthusiastic. This is a big deal for them. They’re trying to buy a car. We need to be prepared. That’s the second thing. You might, well Steve, I’m always prepared to leave a voicemail. No you’re not. I mystery shop a lot of stores and we hear this all the time, so we mystery shop a store and this is your sales person on the other end, right? Probably chatting with somebody in the room. Oh hello, hello? After about five seconds of no, no about nothing, they’ll hello, hello, oh, and then they’ll go into their voicemail because now they realize they got voicemail. They weren’t paying attention. Be prepared. You got to leave me a compelling reason to call you back. That’s the third best practice. The fourth one is we want one call to action. A single call to action in all of our voicemails and this is your call to action. Call me back at, and your number. That’s your call to action.

Don’t tell them your hours. Don’t tell them be sure and ask for me. Don’t tell them you’re off tomorrow but you’re back on Thursday. You tell them that, they’re coming your day off. All right? Finally, the fifth best practice is to highlight your persistence. Make sure that, where you can in your voicemails you tell them, if I don’t hear back from you I’m going to keep trying you. When you highlight your persistence, you’ll be amazed at how quickly they take your next call. All right, I’m going to do the day four voicemail. Don’t worry about. This is the day four new car voicemail, again, it’s free in our processes that you’ll get by going to that link, but here’s the day four new car voicemail in our traditional process. Hey, I’ll do it with a phone. I’ll do it with a desk phone.

Hello again Bob, this is Steve Stauning calling back with Steve’s Ford and I wanted to let you know that the current factory incentives on the Mustang expire soon. Now, I’m not sure what Ford’s going to do after that, as the inventories do appear to be coming down. Anyway Bob, please call me back so we can schedule a quick test drive on the Mustang and then look at how these incentives might make a difference. My number is 555-1212. Once again, that’s 555-1212, and don’t worry if you can’t reach me right away. I’ll you again later. Thanks and talk to you soon.

That’s our voicemail. Don’t overthink it. Our goal is a reconnection. Now some of you are saying, “Yeah Steve, but what about texts?” I’m going to be boring here, okay? Sorry, but the TCPA creates too big of a hurdle for dealers to try to cheat it. It’s a $1,500 fine for every offending text. I did the math once for a dealer group. If you have 10 sales people who send five offending texts today, in a week you could get, 10 sales people, five texts a day, in a week you could rack up $375,000 in fines. Okay? The TCPA, the telephone consumer protection act limits what you can text until you have express permission. This means we use what’s called a double opt out to be safe. So our lead form on our website might say, “Hey, by submitting this lead, you’re giving us permission to text.”

That’s only the first opt in. Some of you know, like we got in the question, that not everybody gives us their right phone number, right? If you start texting that person right away and it’s the wrong person, you’re violating the TCPA. This means we text from our CRM tool, when you text from your CRM tool, you have a better chance because they’ll help you stay compliant, you have a better chance of staying compliant, but I do have that texting tip that I do not recommend, remember. The, “Is this Bob?” Right? So you get a lead from Robert Smith and you run to your mobile device, right? You text back, “Is this Bob?” Because you think you’re slick. He sees the text from a number in market, he calls it or he texts back, “Yeah, it’s Bob. Who’s this?” Great.

Why don’t I recommend it? Because it violates the TCPA. He hasn’t opted in for this. Now, it generates a high connection rate? Yes. But the low show to connection rate. All right. So it passes the dure test that I reconnected, it fails the this test, because it’s basically dishonest. Let’s be clear. We don’t need to be dishonest. We don’t. They ordered the car from us. Okay? So let’s not be dishonest. Let’s just try to connect. All right, now let’s talk emails for just a minute. For all processes to non responsive customers, only the first email after the auto response is touched by human hands. Let me say that again. I’ve got 10 emails in the traditional process. Auto response, and then the second email that goes out is the first personal response. The other eight emails should all be automated. They should never be touched by human hands.