With car dealerships facing more challenges than they could care to count during these turbulent times, the answer to many problems lies in the implementation of high-quality automotive software. Here’s how it can help your dealership succeed:
- Keep track of your inventory
- Reliable lead management – no leads lost
- Effective and personalized marketing
- Clear and transparent communications within the dealership
- Effective aftersales process
- Enhanced efficiency in all dealership aspects
Keep reading to find out more how you can make your car dealership more efficient and profitable in 2023.
The automotive industry is at its highest rate of competition ever. However, it isn’t just the automakers that are working relentlessly to design and bring out new vehicles for the masses, car dealerships are having a hard time too.
There are countless challenges faced by car dealers. As one would believe, the volatile economy and parts shortages are just the tips of the iceberg. To strive during these times, the solution lies in automotive end-to-end planning software.
Biggest dealership challenges in 2023
If you’re running or managing a car dealership, you’ll know that the ongoing struggles are far from over. Sure, the profit margins have never been higher, but at least in the past the economic aspects were better.
Several factors such as inflation, high fuel prices, and the emergence of ride-sharing apps turn many customers away. However, these are just mainstream problems car dealers cannot control. There’s a number of issues that can be controlled though.
Marketing issues
This one’s troubling all the dealerships, especially the newer ones. Traditional advertising methods are complex and pricey, and they’re conversions are dropping. It’s time to embrace social media if you want to reach out to customers these days.
The simple solution is to use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) as automotive end-to-end planning software. It can not only help dealerships manage their business better, but it’ll also help customers in their buying process from the beginning to the end and beyond (aftersales).
Customer service
The entire automotive industry is competing with the rising costs and the main answer to lowering these costs – the ride-share industry. To stand out, every single automaker is offering all sorts of high-end features as standard. However, you should actually focus on nailing your customer service and aftersales to retain customers.
Online services and digital retailing are huge factors in influencing customers. Communication channels such as texts and emails are all the hype now, as consumers inquire about vehicles online.
Inventory troubles
There are two types of inventory issues at car dealerships. The first is that there’s a shortage of parts, so there are fewer cars available. The second one is the ineffective management of the existing inventory.
Car sales have dropped this year according to Bill Conerly of Forbes. Hence, car dealerships often have trouble storing aging cars. Even if the demand becomes high, due to inefficient management, dealerships lose customers.
Inefficiencies
The parts-and-service department is a key aspect of any dealership. However, challenges such as poor supply chain management, a lack of communication with the technicians, and the inability to schedule customers result in huge revenue loss.
Dealerships need to focus on modernizing their service department. A good service department can heavily influence customers to purchase their next car from a specific dealership (automotiveMastermind).
How can automotive end-to-end planning software help dealerships?
Auto software is considered to be the savior when it comes to optimizing car dealerships. Also known as dealer management software, there are automotive CRM solutions for all of the troubles mentioned above. Here’s how car dealer software helps:
Improved dealership marketing
One of the major services provided by some of this software is the management of marketing using processes such as email, forms, and other automated strategies. Everything’s printable and you get to view a comprehensive list of various analytics to observe consumer behavior.
Marketing campaigns are created and various types of leads are tracked. Not only will auto dealer software help you implement your strategies better, but you will also get to see how effective your marketing team is and fix any bottlenecks.
Better lead management
What happens when you have a bunch of people interested in your cars? You’ll need to manage all the leads from the various platforms that they were obtained from. A great automotive software does just that. This helps upgrade your customer relations immensely.
Then, there are the consumers that tend to lose interest. A proper dealer management software will get their attention by using various automated follow-up messages including ongoing deals and promotions.
Increased customer retention
Data is king during the age of information. It is important to maintain the data of your existing customers so that they can be treated with more niceties and you can profit more from them. This includes sales and aftersales.
Some of this software does just that with unlimited cloud storage options. This helps build long-lasting customer relations. You’ll close more deals and it’ll reward both you and your customers in the long run.
Enhanced efficiency thanks to automotive end-to-end planning software
Finally, software fixes all the dealership processes that need to be optimized. This includes managing your inventory and service; always remaining a step ahead on anything that needs to be sourced to prevent shortages. You’ll save a lot of time and satisfy more customers.
