Has your sales process kept up with the rapid changes in technology?  RV dealership and boat dealership salespeople are finding themselves texting and emailing with their customers as often as they are talking to them on the phone. Does your business facilitate this communication effectively?

It takes a robust Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to manage all of the incoming traffic available to your business.

On any given morning a Sales Manager may receive email leads from your website, manufacturer websites, online listing services, and classified advertisements in addition to phone calls and foot traffic to distribute to the appropriate sales staff. How does that process work in your business?  Is there a streamlined system designed to get the RIGHT leads to the RIGHT salespeople?

Because of the direct correlation between effective lead management and revenue, we have made mobile lead management a priority for all of Exuma Technologies’ products.  Whether you are trying to sell RVs, boats, services or marina slips, communicating with your customers quickly and on their chosen platform is integral to today’s sales success.

Here are some things to consider as your sales process evolves:

Mobile Lead Management
Make sure leads are delivered directly to sales people’s smartphone.  A sales person having the opportunity to call a lead before they leave their house as opposed to waiting to respond until after they arrive at work (and in some cases get the lead assigned to them) could mean you getting the sale over one of your competitors. The odds of calling to contact a lead decrease by over 10 times in the first hour.* We recommend ThreeClix for customers of RVMaster and DockMaster because of it’s seamless integration with their existing dealer and marina management systems.

Automatic lead assignment and work flow
Sales people have different expertise, some know your high line products better than your used inventory.  They also work on different schedules and time lines. Expecting your Sales Manager to juggle these variations across your entire sales staff is impossible.  Ensure your sales process has automatic lead assignment to get the right lead to the right salesperson immediately.

Constant review of results
Measure and monitor your effectiveness, then make changes based upon those measurements.  A key performance indicator is your sales people’s closing ratios and your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system should readily report this data allowing you to monitor both the effectiveness of your sales team and also your advertising efforts.  To quickly compute your per lead acquisition cost simply divide your advertising budget by the number of incoming leads you get.  If each incoming lead costs you $50 worth of advertising, how many are you willing to burn by matching up the customer to a random draw of sales people as opposed to a systematic review based on the customers wants and needs?

The best way to increase sales revenue is to focus on the leads you have coming in and employing the most effective sales process.  Be sure your business is able to keep up with the demands of today’s consumer and their preferred method of communication.

*Study conducted by leadresponsemanagement.org and Professor Oldroyd at MIT in 2010.