Lead management for auto dealerships
A dealership has two inventories and usually manages only one of them. The vehicles are counted daily. The enquiries are not, and they are the thing that moves the vehicles.
Why speed is a financial question here
That is one vehicle. A dealership carrying sixty units at an average age of seventy days is spending well over a lakh a month on the privilege of holding stock, before the discount it will eventually take to clear the oldest of it. Every day taken off the average is money that was going to be spent and now is not.
Which reframes what follow-up is for. An enquiry worked the same day is not merely more likely to convert — it converts sooner, and the difference is measurable on the floorplan. The link between the lead system and the stock list is therefore not a convenience feature. It is where the return is.
What a dealership record has to hold
- The specific vehicle, or the specific configuration.“Interested in a hatchback” cannot be matched against stock. Variant, colour and transmission can.
- Trade-in, early.It changes the price conversation completely and usually decides the timing. Discovered at the end, it restarts the negotiation.
- Finance status.Whether the buyer is arranging their own, needs an introduction, or is waiting on approval. This is the most common reason a deal that everyone thought was closed does not close.
- Test drive, as an event with a date.Booked, taken, not taken. The strongest signal a dealership gets, and routinely recorded nowhere.
- Which salesperson owns it, without ambiguity.Two people calling the same prospect is worse than nobody calling.
The service relationship is the next sale
The workshop sees the customer several times a year for the whole ownership period; the sales floor sees them once every several years. Where those are separate systems, the dealership has no idea that a customer three services into a five-year-old vehicle is approaching a replacement decision — and that customer will be prospected by somebody, just not by the dealership that has their entire service history.
Joining the two records is usually the single highest-value change available, and it is a data problem rather than a sales one.
What to review weekly
- Enquiries with no contact attempt in 24 hours.A short list, reviewed by name. It stays short once people know it is read.
- Stock over the ageing threshold, with the enquiries matched to it. Ageing units and unworked enquiries for the same model is a routing problem, not a demand problem.
- Test drives booked against test drives taken.A gap between them is the cheapest thing on this list to fix.
Where this fits
The product is AcmaLMS, and the sector context is Auto. Outbound follow-up campaigns for service reminders and offers are AcmaOBD; where the dealership runs a call centre for enquiries and bookings, that is AcmaTel CCS.
