The DMS systems are under assault to change their behavior and cost structure. Dealer Track was slamming when we stopped by as an alternative to ADP and Reynolds. Dealers want support to be better and cost effective. Everyone is working to keep their customers happy and satisfy their needs but it is a battle.

AutoRaptor had a great show, new business and connecting with all our partners, Carfax, Dealer Track, PBS, AutoTrader, Autobytel, ADP, the list goes on.

We have a great story to tell — and we’ll tell you more soon. But since that story’s a bit long, for now we’ll keep it short and sweet and stick to briefly describing some of the more obvious changes (that you may have already noticed).

New name, same great flavor: “E-Leads” is now labeled “Unassigned” since any Up Sheet regardless of where it came from can be unassigned. Come and get ‘em!

Remember the ‘Your Account’ link? It’s been renamed to reflect ‘you’ like never before. Go ahead: Click it, and you’ll see the ‘Your User Account’ screen where you can change your contact info, password, e-mail signature, and more.

Those of you with access to more than one dealership have a new home — as in a ‘home’ icon to move your mouse cursor over in order to reveal a list of dealerships (and a count of any unread e-mail in each). Bonus: It’s even fun to use. Try it!

Some dealerships use the (cool) Action Plan feature to automatically create a bunch of tasks that can have due dates waaaaay into the future. We trimmed up the length of that list so that it’d only show those tasks due in the next 10 days. Seeing the full list of tasks is a mere click away. There’s enough to do….

But wait… there’s more… Stay tuned for this never-ending story of AutoRaptor improving to help you succeed. We promise it won’t be boring.

Dealers overthink the basics and forget about the sales relationship between a sales person and the potential customer.  The concern is more about the steps of the sale than the sale.  Steps of the sale and structure are important in the process but building a common ground with the customer will close more deals than just following a restrictive sales process.

Dealers should think of today’s Smartphone, IPod, IPad and the new way to communicate and empower the sales person, it would be a novel idea. I ran a sales floor for over 35 years and empowering does work. All that it needs to work well is a team effort with a strong champion, simple technology and structure.  Sales persons will embrace technology and see the benefits of data management as they sell more cars. Empowered sales people do not give away the store; they increase profitability by keeping strong business relations with their customers. Empowerment helps retain sales people, which in turn help retain your customer base. It is a WIN, WIN for all.

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Many dealers and managers want a system that will control the sales process without human involvement. If a sales person fails in the process they want the system to send a flag that they can react too.  I believe that managers need to be pro active in the sales process and correct bad behavior as it happens. With AutoRaptor Managers see real time data entries by their sales persons. It is more effective than alerts of bad behavior.  When a sales person enters data to an up sheet, the Manager can see and react to help make a deal. I have seen dealers with other systems make sales persons print an up sheet so they can treat the digital world as their old paper world. The present and future is digital, leave paper in the past and stop the back and forth between the sales person and the customer. Everyone knows that the biggest complaint by the consumers is the back and forth. It is not needed in today’s world, change your though process and you will be surprised how many more cars you can sell.

As Dealers and Managers you need to take charge and a condition of employment for your sales staffs is use the system you’re committed to. Listen to what I hear from some dealers.

*If my sales persons like it I will buy it.

*I do not want to force my Manager to change they way he works.

*We do not sell enough cars to warrant the expense.

*Why change I am making money.

There is more but I think you get the idea, lack of commitment and responsibility by the Dealer for any process or system means failure. AutoRaptor does make it simple and yet powerful as you enter the digital world. Make the move forward and succeed.

All comments welcome,

“As an independent dealer, we chose AutoRaptor as a way to more effectively manage our leads.  Its low cost and web-based platform was ideal for a dealership of our size.  What we also discovered along the way, however, was AutoRaptor’s ability to become an easy to use and comprehensive way to manage deals from beginning to end. “

Jahon Jamali, General Manager

Just one comment from an Independent dealer who sees what technology can do to improve his business. Small staff or large AutoRaptor can handle all types of users with custom settings for the way you operate. Integrated with other web services so that your inventory is always within the application. Desk deals, send emails and follow up, follow up, follow up and win the deal.

Call for a free demo at 888-421-6533 or email to contact@autoraptor.com and get started in managing your leads

My friend lives in a three-story condo, the dish is on the roof and he is in good heath at the age of 79. What would you do? He asked for a supervisor that explained they could install a heater for the dish or they could send a technician out but would have to charge for the service. The other choice is wait for warm weather.

Everyone at dinner laughed at the absurdity of the story. How would you handle this customer service scenario?

What? More data? Don’t worry, we haven’t lost our focus on achieving results (instead of focusing on data entry). Just a wee bit more data can go a long way in helping you and your store know what’s going on. Give a little, get a lot. Sound good? You know it does.

So, how does this work?

If the vehicle that you’re delivering is already an ‘Inventory’ vehicle — meaning a vehicle with a stock number — then you’re all set. But if it’s a ‘Custom’ or ‘Build’ vehicle then you’ll see something like this:

Just enter the stock number and the VIN should fill in automatically. If the VIN doesn’t magically appear (which means that this vehicle isn’t in inventory for some reason) then you can enter it manually; after you click ‘Confirm this Delivery’ or ‘Save Changes’ that vehicle will be immediately added to the inventory roster as a delivered vehicle.

It’s up to you whether to send out birth announcements.

Need more help? Just let us know at support@autoraptor.com or contact your favorite AutoRaptor representative.

The Midwest and Northeast have empty factories that produced American cars and trucks that are now malls, condos and many that are just empty. The worlds manufactures have built plants in the South and are making it work effectively. Only one American Company, Ford who has a chance to survive because they pawned the companies assets and saw the future in smart products and services. Arrogance at GM and Chrysler stopped them from making any real changes to their structure or the way they see the world.  Think what China will able to accomplish in the next five, ten years. The world market shares that they could potential grab, when will China build cars in the USA? Just think of that thought for a moment.

We need to run our business better than anyone, develop new methods, technologies that are ahead of the competition. American must think as Americans, innovating, educated, out of the box or we will be the country that is left behind. Imagine not having the best technologies, transferring technologies would not be an issue.

One of the reasons is that in the last 20 years administrative tasks have tied the sales managers to their desks for the majority of their working time. Little time is left for the art of deal making.  The manufacturers decided that they could have the dealer process claims, report sales plus assorted processes that they handled prior to computers and the web.

A second reason is that Managers expect a sales person to sell without any help from management. If I took a poll of owners and managers about what bothers them the most, I bet you it is the poor quality of their sales staff. Sales staffs reflect management’s standards; if they are low then guess what happens.  When I hear a manager say he can’t get a sales person to change their bad habits I just shake my head. If you think by complaining about an issue, it will change the outcome it will not.  Management must have structure, a sales process and technology. Structure means standards of accountability. Sales process means the steps of the sale to be followed by all sales persons. Technology is the means to process and manage accountability of your staff. As management you cannot sit in your office and wait for something to happen, you must create what happens. If you sit and wait for the next sales activity you are no different than the sales person who sits and stares out the window. Put the paper shuffling to a clerical and get involved in making deals.

Use technology to measure quickly how you are really performing with the purpose of improving the outcome. Train, teach and set the tone of what is expected, break the old culture and you will sell more cars.

So when we started AutoRaptor we made a decision that we would not need contracts to succeed. Build a better solution for a CRM and charge by the month.  We committed to keep the application on the cutting edge and evolve by listening to the end users.  Build features that get used, lean mean and effective. AutoRaptor is designed to simply help convert the lead to a sale with the use of technology. AutoRaptor is one solution, a CRM, BDC and ILM and we only charge an affordable monthly fee.  Click the contact link for a free web demonstration and see for yourselves.