What does a Sales Manager need in order to boost the department’s performance and profitability? They need tools and reports that allow them to:
- Measure sales force productivity. Is each team member making the most of each lead?
- See all the information recorded in the CRM
- Analyze how many calls are necessary to close a sale, so as to work on that indicator
Dealer management systems and CRM solutions that are specially designed for dealerships should have tools that allow you to make the most of potential customers, as well as help salespeople in each step of the sales process. In addition, they should also be able to manage vehicle inventory and calculate the key performance indicators of the Sales Department.
“Only by fully knowing what is happening with the sales team will you be able to increase the customer conversion rate.” Jorgelina Perez, Dealer Solution Specialist at Autologica.
What should the Sales Manager take into account? Let’s look at two key reports and how to interpret them.
Sales funnel
How many prospects (potential customers) are generated and how many become actual customers? In which step of the sales process are you losing the most potential customers? In order to answer these questions, the Sales Manager must analyze the Sales Funnel.
A CRM, ideally integrated with the DMS, allows you to define the stages of a sales process and track the trajectory of each prospect. The salesperson registers what happens with the prospect in each stage, with details of the conversation, commitments, etc. This information is used to create the sales funnel, that lets you:
- Know in which stage of the sale process you are losing the most prospects
- Learn how many calls it takes to close a sale
- Analyze if there are unqualified prospects that are wasting the sales teams’ time
- Know if I should increase the sales/marketing staff so as to improve follow-up
- Check that the sales team is recording the information of each call in the CRM
Vehicle time in inventory
One of the biggest issues in vehicle inventory management is inventory immobilization. This issue causes immobilized capital, insurance and warehouse expenses, etc. Modern dealer management systems allow you to have list all vehicles currently in your lot, sorted by the time they have been in stock. The Sales Manager can use this information to:
- Establish policies to offer vehicles that have been in stock for a long time, so as to prevent capital immobilization
- Know what vehicles are less popular among customers
Autologica DMS: Key report to determine the true margin of each sales operation
Autologica DMS offers a report that allows you to see the true margin of each sales operation, comparing the purchase amount of the vehicle, its sale value, and taking into account the additional expenses related to the sales process. This provides a much more accurate overview of the real profitability of each sale.
Thanks to this report the Sales Manager can detect:
- Vehicles that remain in inventory for too long and generate excessive costs
- Large investments in marketing to generate prospects that do not become opportunities
- Large discounts offered to customers to close the sale, but that affect the profitability of the transaction
- Communications expenses between the salesperson and the prospect
Conclusion
These reports provides the Sales Manager with a quick and accurate way to detect the efficiency of each salesperson and the health of the vehicle inventory, and help management decide which decisions to take, and which actions they should adopt to maximize the department’s profitability.
