11 Benefits of Using a CRM at Your Dealership
3/1/2024Understanding the benefits of using a CRM at your dealership can be a game-changer – not just for customers, but also for your sales team and equipment managers. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems aren't just tools; they are transformative strategies that redefine how you connect with your clients, streamline your operations, and leverage data for unparalleled insights.
The benefits of a CRM extend well beyond mere contact management. They offer a holistic approach to understanding customer needs, behaviors, and preferences, enabling personalized interactions and building long-lasting relationships. Whether it's improving lead conversion rates, facilitating communication, or understanding your sales pipeline, the benefits of a CRM system are vast and varied.
In this article, we’ll delve into CRM features and benefits and how implementing a CRM can redefine success for your dealership, setting the stage for growth, efficiency, and an elevated customer experience.
Benefits of using customer relationship management software at your dealership
We have gathered feedback from several current partners and identified the top reasons their sales teams are quickly adopting Anvil Pro’s Dealer CRM solutions.
1. Ease of use
Get a complete view of each customer with a unified profile on a single platform. “If you make it easy for people, they will do it,” says Jason Nichol, Interior Sales Manager, PrairieCoast Equipment. “Instead of jumping around through three screens to get one result, Anvil Pro brings that information into one system.”
2. Mobile access
Get things done whenever and wherever you need to. As Duane Kautzman, former sales strategy and asset manager at Hutson Inc., states, “Our sales reps love the ability to mark quotes sold, right on their phones, when they’re out there with a customer. As fast as things sell when the market is hot, three minutes can make a difference. Somebody else could sell it when you have 50 or 60 reps with their fingers in the inventory.”
The benefit of customer relationship management software therefore extends beyond facilitating face-to-face relationships. It also allows you to keep up with the technologies your customers are using to search your inventory and meet them where they are on that technological playing field.
3. Real-time information
Anvil Pro’s dynamic reports and dashboards keep you on top of your deals. Set up automated reports to regularly refresh your data. Use visual dashboards to easily track activities like progress toward goals, to see deals needing attention, to stay on top of customer follow-up, and more.
4. Fast inventory search
Search for specific items in your inventory quickly using an AI-enhanced search bar. Drastically reduce the time required to locate inventory, quotes, or stock-unit history. This fast inventory search not only increases overall productivity at your shop; it also makes individual employees more efficient in their roles, increasing confidence in their duties and allowing them to spend more time fostering relationships with customers and doing other important tasks like calculating equipment values.
5. Easy navigation
Another benefit of using a CRM is that it allows employees to work within one system using a quick, intuitive navigation bar to easily locate information or start new records. Working on a new opportunity? Quickly create a new opportunity record. Access recent records and lists directly from the navigation bar to retrieve opportunities in progress.
“It’s all about staying in one system,” says Kautzman. “You don’t realize what the extra clicks do from a time-consumption standpoint, but it turns into a lot of minutes each day.” In other words, easier navigation translates to less time spent searching in your CRM and more time setting up objectives and getting things done.
6. Progress toward goals
Here’s another place where the real-time capability of a CRM makes a big difference. With a little automation magic, Anvil Pro’s CRM analytics can provide salespeople with a running total of progress toward goals, as an individual, a team, or a location. Anvil Pro shows them exactly where they stand with sales volume and can report year-over-year numbers.
7. Happier customers
Using a CRM creates process transparency, saving significant time for sales reps, according to Kautzman. When a customer calls with a question, there’s no need to chase around the dealership for answers. Pull up the customer account to quickly find the answer. A win-win.
8. Inventory notifications
Looking for a specific piece of inventory? Set up a notification to automatically update you when it becomes available. Between sales, holds, and return-to-inventory, stay up to date on stock units and make the best deal for customers.
9. Automate tasks
Nobody likes busywork, particularly in sales. A salesperson’s bread and butter is interacting with customers. Anvil’s automation capabilities reduce those repetitive tasks. Examples include:
- Pre-populating fields where information is known.
- Repeating inventory searches on a set schedule and sending results.
- Assembling and distributing insightful reports on a regular schedule.
10. Healthy competition
Everybody wants to be the best at what they do, says Andy Porsborg of Gooseneck Implement. “Don’t underestimate the power of bragging rights,” he says. Use analytics and automation in Anvil to track your sales against the rest of your team. Anvil Pro makes competition through sales tracking easy — whatever you use for the carrot.
11. Boost performance
Anvil Pro can help elevate the average salespeople to top performers when used consistently.
According to Nichol, reps may have good sales skills but, when they struggle with time management and organization, they tend to lose track of the details. Nichol describes the experience of one sales rep:
“Anvil Pro’s tools — the CRM and Visual Sales Pipeline — kept all the detail in front of him. It allowed him to see what he had and what he needed to do to move forward. His communication efforts improved and so did his stress levels, because he stopped getting calls from angry customers and started earning more money.”
Additional Anvil Pro CRM benefits and features for your business
With all this information about the benefits of using a CRM, you might come to the conclusion that the Anvil Pro platform is ONLY a CRM. In fact, it’s a toolbox of workflow solutions that includes inventory management, a sales pipeline process, marketing requests, and an order-to-cash feature that help you complete what you need to get done quicker and more efficiently at your equipment dealership.
Anvil Pro is designed to motivate your team members to engage. As leadership knows, unless employees buy in to adopting and using a system, neither the feedback that improves performance nor the benefits that save time and effort can happen. The benefits of using an integrated solution like Anvil Pro will ultimately be seen both in the efficiency of your sales team, as well as in your turn rate and customer satisfaction levels.