CRM is acronyms for Customer Relationship Management, it is suppose to be a system that keeps your dealership running efficiently and help you organize your tasks, customers, appointments and inventory. But poorly designed or developed software can cost you business and money in real life. To design and develop an automotive CRM takes time and talent, with good understanding of the business. There are many providers out there claiming they are in business since the early 80s and they have the best system in the market (which is true back in the 80s, and their software has not progressed for almost 20 years). Don’t be sold into another useless solution again, you don’t have to pay $2000-$5000 per month to use some outdated, unintuitive, poorly designed and developed system, that in actuality can cause you money and business. You don’t get a better system because you are paying for a bigger price tag.

In the world of automotive sales, there is really very little scientific or technical knowledge that is required. By having your staff using a complicated system that requires training will actually hurt your business. Car sales person are not programmers, they are two completely different breed of people. A poorly developed and seemly complex system will result in poor data integrity. And a technical night mare for user mistakes, and technical traps. Imagine if your staff can’t tell you how much your used car in your inventory really cost. Because they don’t understand the system, or they are mis-quoting customer monthly payments due to the poor user interface. And difficult to understand financial calculator.

So the next time you are looking for a CRM system for your dealership please keep in mind you don’t have to pay $1500 per month and $2000 setup fee just to use something that is less sophisticated than Facebook. And make sure your next CRM solution is actually developed by computer programmers, not car sales person who hired some overseas programmer to produce.

This article is brought to you by Dealer Elite CRM, you can find us online at http://www.dealerelites.ca

Now moving on to the bad, or the weaknesses of some of the CRM solutions today! Well one of the biggest draw back of automotive CRM system today is its platform. Almost all of them are web based portal system that is accessed through a browser windows. Here are some of the draw backs of that system, for one refreshment rate, every time you input something through a web site it will load another page to display the result. It will cause major delays between the data transfer and require much more bandwidth to operate. The second draw back of that system is there are different standards between the browsers making it not 100% compatible with all systems. For example the way this portal displays on Internet Explorer 8 is not the same way as Internet Explorer 6. Even worse certain system requires you to go back in time to Internet Explorer 5 to be compatible with them. That’s just to show you when the technology was developed. Third draw back would be security issues, not only the HTML or JavaScript codes will be visible to users, it offers great information for a hacker to break in the system. Things such as the system structure, or vital system file names are all exposed to the naked eye making a web based system more vulnerable compare to a desktop solution.

Ok here comes the ugly, for one the real ugly thing about the automotive CRM systems today is the price tag. After careful research on the market I have found they are all asking from the lowest of $1500 per month to as high as $5000 per month. Not to mention setup fees ranging from $1200 all the way to $10000. In a nut shell these web based systems are lot less sophisticated than Facebook, yet Facebook is free to use. At Dealer Elite CRM solutions we don’t believe in ripping off our clients with ridiculous prices, on top of that we deliver a quality, well tested, desktop solution with $0 setup fees, and very affordable monthly plans at fraction of the cost compare to the competition. Contact us today for your demonstration, and account setup. Visit us online at http://www.dealerelites.ca

Let’s take for advertising spending for example. By asking your online customers the right question at the right moment, you can categorize your incoming traffic with the labels such as radio ad, Google, flyer drops, newspaper…etc. With good data integrity build into the CRM, your solution will be able to tell you which advertising avenue is generating the most amount of interest. Therefore you should increase your spending on Google, and drop your spending on newspaper ads. This data can be further sorted and viewed as a comparison chart on a monthly basis or yearly basis. Moving on to the next topic of are you giving leads to the right sales person? This is a crucial part of your daily operation, because a wasted lead can literally translate to wasted resources. After you spend thousands of dollars attracting your potential customer, the last thing you want to do is to waste that lead to a bad sales person.

To track a sales person’s performance you can do it in two ways, first is to calculate his or her closing ratio, and with a good CRM solution it is just few mouse clicks away. You can chart his or her performance by month, even compare to another sales person. You can also track a sales person’s performance by call tracking. The new technology of voice over IP is supported by all major automotive CRM solutions. In coming phone calls can be recorded and played back for you to filter and categorize. You can then use this information to judge for yourself if you are betting on the right horse or not. Another good feature offered by a well developed CRM is called vehicle performance reporting. This type of intelligence will include data such as your best selling vehicle, average inventory age, average turn over ratio, total profit per month, and so on. It is useful data for you to figure out what is your best seller, and if have an imbalance in your current inventory.

There are also rare features of a CRM solution that can offer you 3D charts with real live time data extraction from your database, you can literally see how you are doing at this moment in time. Visual representation of your business intelligent data is uncommon, but there are solutions out there that currently supports this feature. This article is brought to you by Dealer Elite CRM solution, visit us online at dealer crm solution

If the system deployed is not user intuitive enough, it will most likely require training to use the system properly. Now if the training is missed, or the user didn’t retain the training course, he or she can enter bad data, or worse yet, no data at all into the CRM, which will defeat all the intended purposes. Just remember the next time you meet with your automotive CRM or DMS system vendor, take a look at the user interface, does it make sense to be where it is? Is the system clearly labeled? Can a high school student figure it out without any training? Unnecessary complexity is not always a good thing, it often create more problems than it solves. So don’t get caught up with the tech savvy acronyms. Make sure the system is secure, well designed and developed, above all users friendly!

So the next time you are putting your CRM solution to the test, make sure you are getting what you are paying for. I hope this article can help you make some more informative decisions when it comes to your next automotive CRM solution. This article is brought to you by Dealer Elite CRM, to visit us online please visit http://www.dealerelites.ca

After been in the automotive industry for the past 8 years I have encountered many so called total CRM solution for your dealership. They usually consists of some poorly developed web site or portal where all of your transactions are based on the page refresh, and it is surprising even with these CRM solutions in place a dealership still relies on the old spread sheet to keep their inventory up to date. What that translates to me is inadequate system support where used car manager still feels the need to have their “holy bible” of used car inventory separately from their CRM system. And the CRM system is incapable of producing a real live inventory that can be accurately captured and delivered to the sales floor. If you are currently running on a system where you need to rely on external source to keep your inventories up to date then you are certainly using the wrong CRM software.

Many of today’s CRM solutions are proprietary technology where they refuse to integrate or work with other systems. For example does your CRM solution export your inventory with ease to Microsoft Excel if that is your preferred method of reproducing your inventory list? Can your currently CRM solution export your sales performance report to a spread sheet so it can be easily emailed to your superior? In another word when you finally settle on the right CRM solution for your dealership, make sure it is flexible and compatible with other existing technologies. Because after all your CRM solutions suppose to help you run your business more effectively not to create more technological obstacles in your path.

Thank you for reading this article it is brought to you by Dealer Elite CRM, for your affordable CRM and DMS solutions please visit us online at Automotive DMS system