The automotive industry has had to respond quickly to the challenges of the last two years, especially in how digitisation can help them react to changes in customer behaviour. However, this is only part of the story.

With a nationwide shortage of staff mainly due to the Great Resignation, retailers have to find new ways to maintain the same high level of service. At the same time, they also have to keep up with growing customer expectations surrounding their buying journey.

In this blog, we’ll discuss three key ways to manage and improve the efficiency of your staff and business processes, so that you can make more time for your customers and increase your sales revenue.

Minimise unnecessary admin

With every new customer that walks through your door or makes an enquiry online, there’s a new opportunity but also extra admin for your sales team to deal with.

If entering customer details or processing enquiries has to be done manually, this can easily soak up hours of a sales person’s time every week. What’s more, this burden can be multiplied if the process has to be repeated across different parts of the sales journey. Ensuring all data is stored in one accessible place can eliminate double-keying and drastically reduce the time commitment of managing crucial information.

This can also help sales staff deliver a more coordinated and personalised response to customers and improve the customer experience at the same time. A recent Dealerweb survey found that 41% of motorists use a mobile or tablet when making an initial enquiry, so expectations would be that sales executives can ‘pick up where they left off’ once they head to the dealership. A centralised platform that can capture and organise sales enquiries in a matter of seconds makes this possible, without any need for re-entering data, and can even prompt staff to proactively make contact with customers at the ideal times. For example, an email follow-up or just a simple text message can work wonders in making customers feel reassured and confident about the process.

Create a seamless central hub

Connected to the previous point, having all your key information in one place can help your team in other areas, too. Many dealerships find themselves weighed down by multiple platforms that fulfil different functions but that all use similar data. As well as wasting valuable time, this repetitive approach can be at risk of human error, data loss (especially when onboarding new staff), inconsistencies in data, and can lengthen customer response times. Having to provide the same information can also irritate customers.

A sales platform like Dealerweb Showroom is able to integrate with a wide variety of other systems, such as finance, warranty and compliance providers, so that every sales-related activity can be overseen and managed in one place. This makes the sales process much smoother, and breaks down the barriers of easier data uploading, access and management for all staff members.

Make more time for your customer

At a time when customer expectations are rising, the time savings that staff can make through simplified processes can help them deliver more focused, personalised experiences. It can also help them respond to contact more quickly and keep the buying journey running smoothly.

While this may sound more theoretical than practical, Dealerweb Showroom makes it possible to quantify the scale of the difference these time savings can make to your bottom line. Real-time management reporting can allow staff to identify areas of success along with potential areas of improvement. It can also help them understand how the extra time they have to respond to customers gives them a better chance of converting interest into sales.

In summary

Improving internal systems can have a major positive impact on increasing the efficiency of your sales team. In particular, they can manage their time better, and deliver improved experiences to customers as a result.

With less data to input, fewer errors, better integrated systems and coordinated access to data, your sales team can devote their efforts to where they deliver the most value: satisfying customers and maximising sales opportunities.

Dealerweb Showoom is ideal for boosting the efficiency and time management of busy dealership sales teams. To find out more on how we can support your sales processes, talk to the friendly Dealerweb team today.