Now let’s look at this from another angle. Let’s say that these nuts are the lifeblood of your economic welfare. If you are honest with yourself that is exactly what Internet leads are to you. Internet leads provide you and your staff with daily opportunities to do what you do best, sell cars and make money. If this is your dealership why would you opt for anyone other than a premium Internet lead distributor?
One thing that I’m sure you want is fresh finance leads no matter what type your pocketbook and taste desires. Why would you settle for anything less? Fresh leads produce the best results. Now fresh leads don’t stay that way for long so it’s best to work them as quickly as possible. In fact the very best results are achieved if you work the leads within minutes of receiving them. The longer you let them lay around the less likely that they will provide satisfactory results.
Dealers would like to blame the provider for the lack of productivity from Internet leads even though they were fresh when distributed but old when worked. The truth is that the process should be evaluated to make sure it isn’t an end user problem not a distributor problem. If the fresh leads were utilized as recommended they most likely would have produced your desired result. Specific lead handling processes and accountability for the business will increase your success rate tremendously.
One thing that you need to be warned of is buying too many leads for your staff to handle effectively. If you don’t have enough sales people to properly focus on the leads they will become stale quickly. The documented industry standard is 80-100 leads maximum a month for each sales representative. Too many leads and your staff will mentally filter through them and call only the ones that they determine can purchase and ignore the remainder. That’s commonly known in the industry as “cherry picking” but for this argument I’ll say they’re eating all their favorite nuts and tossing out the rest. They have just squandered some great opportunities to do business and cheated the dealership out of potential sales. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again if your sales people are clairvoyant enough to know who can buy and who can’t by looking at a piece of paper why are they still selling cars for a living? Don’t you think their skill would provide them a better income playing the ponies or making a killing in the stock market?