BlogBud's Story

The Sales Manager Warned Me About Bud...

I was a little anxious the first time I met Bud. He was a 50-something salesman at an RV dealership, and I was giving him a one-on-one training session. Why was I nervous? Because his sales manager had warned me that Bud was going to be the toughest hombre on their team to train on the new lead management system.

Sure enough, when I entered his office, I saw what the problem was. On his desk sat a file folder bulging at the seams with worksheets. Our task was to enter each worksheet into the computer, but Bud was barely able to do email and had been particularly negative when he was told the dealership was investing in lead management that he was expected to use. I was prepared for the usual “reluctance to change” attitude. I’d seen it many times before.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the reaction I got from Bud as we got down to business. As part of the initial training process, we had already partially entered an opportunity into the system off the top of his head – now we had to fill in the blanks from the worksheet.

But we had to find it first!

We spent over ten minutes trying to locate that worksheet. We went through every worksheet in his folder – in both directions (front to back and back to front). We went through his drawers – nothing. Eventually we found the worksheet– it had been there all along (tucked between two other worksheets).

After deciphering his notes (I believe the correct term is “chicken scratch”) we got the lead entered. The last step in the process was setting a task for what we wanted to do next with the lead. After about a half hour of entering leads it started getting easier. Even with his big fingers and difficult to read writing, it was only taking five or six minutes to enter each one - it ended up taking less than an hour to enter all twenty of his current leads.

Next we went to the Home Screen – from the one screen Bud was able to see what he needed to do today, tomorrow and the next day. He was also able to access everything there was to know every lead he was working with from that same screen.

That’s when it happened!

Bud had an “Ah Ha” moment. He realized the reason his dealership invested in lead management software wasn’t so “they” could monitor what he was doing. It was there to help him sell more. He realized all he needed to do every morning when he came in was look at the list of tasks he’d scheduled himself to do that day. No more rummaging through a folder full of worksheets he never seemed to get to the bottom of.

He told me flat out: “This is going to make my job WAY easier!”

About a third of the time dealerships decide to purchase lead management software they tell me it’s because they’re concerned that leads are falling through the cracks at their dealership and want something that helps prevent it from occurring. Normally it’s shortly after calculating their lead acquisition costs, or when they heard a “sure sale” went south because the sales person got busy and forgot to do a follow up. Leads are expensive, and people do make mistakes.

Any well designed lead management system shouldn’t be a make work project for the sales team. After all, they’re on commission, not being paid to sit in front of a computer.

Further, good RV lead management software shouldn’t require a sales person drag someone they just met on the lot into the dealership so they can enter them in.

Next, a lead management system that’s designed to prevent lack of follow-up or leads from falling through the cracks should always have an “open next task” so that when a task is completed, another one is automatically made – the only way to interrupt this process is to either sell the unit or set the lead to “lost”.

Finally, a good lead management system should integrate post sales follow up into the sales process with an understanding that sales people may only be working with a dozen or two people that want to buy right now, but have sold RV’s to hundreds of people in the past. Somehow those two groups have to be managed.

Quantech does all of the above, and more. Make this the year you get a lead management system. Call us today for a 15 minute consultation.