A call center working on active online leads simply doesn’t work!

Last week I heard it again: dealer managers (not the owners) believe that active leads – potential customers who themselves take the effort to contact the dealer or car company – should first be “pre-qualified” by a call center before being passed on to the salesperson.

Sounds logical

The idea of letting a call center filter leads sounds logical, because salespeople achieve too little conversion from leads. Out of 100 leads, too few are actually reached and too few appointments are made. But instead of addressing the root cause – a poor process, lack of management and insufficient training – additional costs are added by placing a call center in between.

Don’t get me wrong: as a co-shareholder of CARMEN Automotive BDC, we are happy to make those calls. But would I personally deploy such a call center as a dealer? No. The salesperson is and remains the designated person to follow up on leads. Why? When I call as a customer, I speak to a salesperson. When I walk into the showroom, I speak to a salesperson. And when I reach out online, it should be no different.

No process

The problem lies in the absence of a solid process that is followed, inspected weekly and adjusted where necessary. Because such a clear process is missing, you will mess up qualified – and now expensive – call center leads in exactly the same way as all the other leads. Call center or not.

Following up on leads – and I do this weekly in my own dealership – requires a process in which you respond quickly. Yes, the first call attempt must be made within two minutes. And an email and a WhatsApp message must be sent, depending on the communication channel chosen by the customer.

Out of 100 gross leads – and yes, some of them are weaker – you should always be able to speak to 80, especially if you make more than one attempt to reach them. It is precisely in the follow-up, the repeated contact attempts, that a call center makes the difference. The call center is not better, just more consistent in its approach, and that ultimately works to generate more than 36 appointments from 100 leads. Exactly as the 60% rule shows.

In Doesburg always above 20%!

In Doesburg, our conversion on gross leads is consistently above 22%, and that is not because we have better salespeople or lower prices. We speak to 80% of customers, 60% of whom make an appointment, and 80% of those actually show up. In other words, the process is designed to get as many people as possible into the showroom, where the salesperson performs best.

Deploying a call center is a band-aid on the wound, but it doesn’t really help you. It disguises a problem that the same manager apparently cannot solve. Then it becomes easier to call in reinforcements: a call center.

Of course, I also use Carmen Automotive BDC in the dealership, but only for escalations, after 6:00 PM, and for all lost leads that I still have called once more to check whether there is still an opportunity. The active lead belongs to the salesperson, who must be razor-sharp for every opportunity they get. Because as a dealer, you cannot win offline if you already lose online!