You know the feeling. That moment when you hit the accelerator and feel the power of your engine, the rush of air around you as you speed your way around the track to victory. That’s the same feeling that quality leads – real, high-quality leads – provide to your BDC. When your dealership has a steady stream of quality leads, it generates momentum, allowing your team to accelerate faster and more profitably on today’s racetrack that’s slowed by inflation, lessened demand, and softening grosses in the preowned market. Let’s talk about why quality leads are so important for your dealership in auto retail today.
Why Leads are More Important Today
Quality leads (particularly 1st party website leads) have always been essential for any profitably growing dealership because those leads allow the BDC’s of those dealerships to focus their efforts on potential customers who may be interested in their vehicles. These are serious shoppers who are most likely…
- at or near the end of their shopping cycle, and;
- most likely, actively shopping the competition.
Not only do quality leads help the BDC to be more effective, but they also improve the opportunity-costs ratio of the BDC agents’ time, and today that is critical
Think this through… for most dealers today, inventory levels are still a challenge, shoppers are again actively looking for deals, they want timely and quality responses from your BDC, and they rightfully believe that inflation and time is working against them. In that scenario, do you want your BDC chasing down leads that have a 2-5% close rate, (meaning those leads are slow to respond to an agent, if they even respond at all), or leads with 15, 20, even 25% close rates. Leads as mentioned above: are near the end of their sales cycle and actively shopping 3 or more of your local competitors. It’s these high-quality leads that your team needs to have. It’s these leads that’ll help them win more deals faster.
As you know generating quality leads requires a combination of both online and offline strategies, not to mention the availability of the right inventory on your lot. Given those, apart from your existing service (vehicle exchange) and sold customers (equity mining) your best source of quality leads today are those visitors that are actively engaged with the inventory on your website. They’re there! They’re shopping! They want to buy! Converting more of those visitors into leads sooner into leads for your BDC is absolutely the fastest and most effective line around the racetrack that leads to more deals and more profitability for your dealership.
Generating quality leads is essential for any successful dealership today as it allows BDC’s to focus their efforts on valuable high quality opportunities that have strong close rates, thereby maximizing their time throughout their day, week, and month. By focusing on more quality leads, you will be getting the maximum ROI out of your marketing and your BDC / Sales efforts while keeping costs down by avoiding the time-suck and opportunity-cost losses of your BDC that’s wasting its time working on poor to below-average leads. Now get out there and hit the gas! Convert more of the leads from your website so you that you and your team reach victory lane faster!