Benefits of behavior prediction tech at auto dealerships

Picture this: It's Tuesday morning, early in the month. You're down a few cars at your dealership from what you initially hoped to sell by this point in the month. How do you make up the difference? Can your CRM or DMS tell you who is likely to buy, and why?

Ultimately, the answer comes down to the allocation of resources ranging from your sales team's time nurturing leads to dollars invested in marketing. In the car business, we all work hard, but by utilizing behavior prediction technology, your team is empowered to work smart while they work hard by offsetting opportunity costs through increased productivity and more efficient marketing spend.

In all your years working in the auto industry, how many people have you met who love making cold calls? The answer is probably zero or fewer.

Fortunately, behavior prediction technology is the key that unlocks a world of opportunity for your sales team. Asking your team to make cold calls is like asking them to drive a nail into a board with something other than a hammer. Sure, there are ways to make progress with that approach, but with a hammer (or in this case, advanced behavior prediction technology), the task becomes significantly easier.

These kinds of tools utilize every dataset across your dealership to analyze and pinpoint which of your former buyers and service customers in your CRM and DMS are reaching a point in their lives when they are most likely to be shopping. Factors considered include not only vehicle history, but also major changes in a person's life, like identifying growing families driving cars too small for their current situation.

Up to this point, your team could have tried 10 different ways to make connections with 10 different customers in your CRM and DMS with zero luck. With behavior prediction technology, 10 attempts to tap into what matters to a customer is replaced with one consistent approach that's personalized according to each prospective buyer – even if it requires 10 different tailored messages.

Increased productivity benefits more than just a dealership's bottom line. Outside of costly inefficiencies, a slew of unsuccessful cold calls will certainly take a toll on any sales team's morale. Rather than spinning their wheels being constantly rejected as part of an archaic "percentages" game, behavior prediction technology significantly increases each team member's chances of a successful connection. Those successful connections lead to sales, sales lead to money and happy employees and happy employees lead to low staff turnover.

Dealers spend tremendous amounts of money on advertising every year. Traditional marketing tactics — like billboards, newspapers and radio — are not as effective as they used to be. There's no way of telling how they perform and lead to sales, making it impossible to prove direct ROI.

While direct mail falls into the traditional marketing category, sending tailored messaging directly to customers is more important and effective than ever. This includes emails, SMS and traditional mail messages that speak to the customer through micro-targeted offers and deals based on their current vehicle and other important data.

Behavior prediction technology allows your team to identify the right people to convert with the right messaging, opposed to a "spray and pray" approach with random offers that aren't relevant to the majority of your customers.

Leveraging behavior prediction technology to empower your sales team to work smarter and put the right resources and messaging into your marketing will help dealers not only succeed today, but also set the stage for future success. Using this approach is sustainable — and cyclical. If customers are happy, dealer sales teams are happy and dealership leaders are happy.

All of this is made possible thanks to the power of behavior prediction technology.