Customers in the Landscape, Construction, or Agricultural industries are increasingly turning to online tools like Google search, Facebook, and other social media platforms to research equipment and equipment dealerships. To stay competitive, dealers need a robust CRM for equipment dealerships to compete in today's digital marketplace.
However, many equipment dealers are still running dealer management systems (DMS) developed when the internet was in its infancy and email was cutting edge. So what steps can a dealer take to investigate transitioning to a more modern, cloud-based DMS, and what features should they be looking for in their CRM?
In this blog, we will highlight the features and functionality that are most important when considering transitioning to a modern DMS and CRM, such as:
Regardless of whether you decide to move forward with a CRM, there is a set of critical data and reports that you, as a dealer, need to understand to gauge your performance with customers and prospects.
1. Can you quickly generate a report of your top paying customers?
While attracting new customers is critical to a growing business, being able to quickly identify a customer's history and performance with your dealership is critical. Any modern DMS should be able to quickly identify a customer by revenue rank, what parts they frequently purchase, and detail what brands that particular customer prefers in your dealership.
2. Can you view how your customers have performed year over year or quarter over quarter?
Being able to quickly analyze a customer’s business with you year-over-year or quarter-over-quarter can also be important. Can you identify a chance customer vs a key recurring customer? Can you identify a single large purchase of many parts and units made last year that is unlikely to occur again, vs smaller frequent purchases of items and parts that need more active inventory management?
3. Are you able to track all communication with a customer across your DMS and CRM?
The majority of the DMS platforms in the market offer minimal communication with a customer. Many dealers have to purchase a separate third-party communication platform to provide SMS/text messaging with a customer. This often creates a scenario where there is no single platform to capture all communications a dealership has had with a customer over time. A modern cloud DMS should ensure all communication with a customer is captured, including new leads though the CRM. Customers also love to receive real-time communications when their machine is being worked on, when work is completed, or when a part or machine is ready to be picked up. Make sure your DMS can send out email and text alerts on an automated basis to keep your customers informed and reduce phone calls to your dealership asking for status updates.
The primary role of the CRM is to ensure you can easily capture and track all the various methods a customer may be inquiring about parts, service, rentals, or equipment and turn these into leads. This reduces the shuffling a dealer principal and his/her staff need to perform, jumping across multiple systems to track and manually add leads. These are the 3 most important methods to capture customer leads critical for any CRM to address:
The role of the CRM is to allow your sales team or dealership staff to easily receive and respond to customer inquiries. If a customer is actively looking for a machine, part, service, or rental and you can’t view that in your CRM, that is significantly impairing your ability to quickly service the customer’s interest. Not only should you be able to view active inventory, you should be able to create a quote or estimate for the customer and deliver it via email or SMS. If you are looking at a CRM for an Equipment Dealer and it doesn’t have this capability, or you are forced to jump across multiple platforms, then you are not maximizing the value of your investment, and most likely are wasting time and possibly dropping valuable leads through the cracks.
Often a prospective or existing customer may be doing research on a new purchase or for future service. Your DMS should be able to relate tasks to your lead and assign them to a salesperson for future follow-up. It’s no good to have a great lead for future business if you can’t remember to follow up with them!
A dealer should be able to look up a customer and see all of the past and current communications, leads, work completed, purchase history, etc. A stand- alone or “bolt-on” CRM that contains only a subset of the information means you are missing the 360 view of the customer. If you look up a customer in the CRM, you will see what they might want to purchase, but you are missing all of the rest of the context of that customer. If you look up a customer in the DMS, you will see all the past and current work and purchases, but you’ll miss out on their future potential business. Ideally, a dealer has an all-in-one CRM and DMS system.
Another great advantage of sharing customer data across your DMS and CRM is the ability to create campaigns based on date or time targets or other promotions tied to customers’ purchases, warranty expirations, or maintenance schedules. By tying customer assets to these time based campaigns, your CRM is generating revenue across your customer base. The amount of time and cost to market to and win prospective customers is much greater than growing business from your existing customers. Leverage a unified DMS and CRM to mine your existing customers and increase their spend with you, whom they already know and trust!
6. Integrate with Social Media and Customer Experience Tools
Your dealership’s marketing doesn’t end with a website and email campaigns. You have a Facebook page and you have a Google company page. Your customers and prospects post reviews on those sites. You need to ensure that your CRM links directly into those pages so that you can more actively see and manage your reviews and your responses to those reviews.
Oh, and did you just have a great experience with a customer? You should be able to send them a Review Request right out of the CRM or DMS!
As a dealer, you always want to know how your customers felt about their experience and how you might improve your service. This is especially important to do before they post a review if they had a negative experience. The CRM or DMS supporting your equipment dealership should be able to automatically send out a survey that the customer can respond to at their leisure. It’s another great way to build (or rebuild) that relationship.
There are some very basic pitfalls to avoid when selecting a CRM to support your equipment dealership. When looking for a CRM, be sure to:
Oftentimes, equipment dealers will look at one of those larger established CRM platforms (e.g. Salesforce) whose popularity grew supporting technology companies or call centers. This is a very different business then selling equipment and services. While those well known CRMs offer thousands of features, integrations, and an extensive partner ecosystem, they are not simple to use or deploy and you probably don’t need 90% of what they offer. Purchasing one of these, plus getting it to integrate to your DMS, will probably cost more than your DMS itself!
2. Understand the software company with whom you are partnering with.
The equipment dealer business is based on service and relationships. Your customers buy from you because they know they have a local presence they can rely on for service and advice. You should demand no less from your CRM and DMS software providers. Think carefully when entering into a relationship with a conglomerate that has off-shored their support and rely on revenue based on mass market presence over top-notch support and innovation.
When a software vendor is proposing a bolt-on CRM to your 25-year-old DMS and claims “It’s integrated”, that’s a bit of a red flag. There is just too much data that has to move between a DMS and CRM for an integration to be effective across two legacy, or completely different, technologies.
A software vendor asking for a 12-month contract is standard and within market. In a true SAAS environment, it can take 3–4 months to break even on the cloud computing cost. However, anything over 12 months must be thoroughly vetted and anything beyond 24 months is just not reasonable for a CRM package for an equipment dealership.
True modern cloud-based applications are architected so that the software provider can push out frequent releases to any or all of their clients with the push of a button. Many of these modern cloud-based products push out new features on a daily basis and you never have to worry about getting an upgrade and the interruptions that might mean for your business (or even worse, only getting an upgrade every year or two). Some CRMs (and DMS’s) claim to be “modern cloud-based applications”, but they are really just stand-alone products that are hosted in the cloud. Those software providers simply moved their 1980’s or 1990’s software product from your back closet into Google or Amazon. But you are still stuck with receiving only rare upgrades and the system now probably runs even slower!
Our team consists of professionals who have extensive experience building and running dealerships as well as software businesses. We have built a modern cloud based DMS and The Best CRM for Equipment Dealerships, Outdoor Power Equipment Providers, and Commercial and Heavy Duty Truck providers, and more. Please reach out to me directly mwassy@flyntlok.com or fill out our ‘Contact’ form for more information.
