Triage your AutoPlay, right now in 6 minutes.

AutoPlay remains the most powerful tool in managing your new vehicle sales pipeline in New Zealand, yet many Dealer Principals and Sales Managers are not across how effectively or ineffectively their team uses it. This article will change all of that for you in about 6 minutes.

Grab a stopwatch, reset your AutoPlay password, and let’s change all of that right now.

Other than measuring units sold and GP and F&I income, you might not know whether there is room to improve in your sales team. But what if you had quantitative data that showed you how effective or ineffective your sales team were without having to deep dive through loads of data. We call this the Boost AutoPlay Triage.

What is it? It is a very quick review of a small portion of the data within AutoPlay to help you understand how well your team is using AutoPlay. Make no mistake, a well-used AutoPlay will deliver more sales for your business and will create happier customers. The last part is because AutoPlay reminds your sales teams to meet the ‘commitments’ that they have made to your customers. So, without getting lost in the weeds, let's look at the five things you can quickly check, which will enable you to give you a sense of whether your team is using AutoPlay well or not.

You need to be able to navigate to the Analytics Reporting section on the left-hand side of your screen. When you mouse over the icons on the left, the dashboard names pop up.

The Golden Rules. If your team use this, you're on the way to managing the basics.

Step 1. Find your dealership score. This is a green dashboard widget found on the Home dashboard. It is a green icon with the percentage in the middle. Dealership Score is powerful because it's a composite score that gives you a quick sense of how well the basics of AutoPlay are being used within your business. The total score is made of a combination of lead sources being captured, with points deducted for overdue and stalled leads (an overdue lead is one that is between 3 and 21 days past its due date, and a stalled lead is one that is 22 days or more past its due date), Awaiting Action (a lead that has not being followed up within the allotted time), a data quality score (which looks at how well your team are capturing mobile and e-mail addresses and the listing on each lead), and Closed Reason (which means that leads when they are closed, they have a reason lodged against them, and noting that ‘not specified’ is not a true reason). These five areas combined make up the dealership score. If your dealership is 80% or less, you have work to do on the basics of good data in and the leads being worked well and in a timely manner. If your score is above 80%, broadly speaking, the wider team is doing the basics of AutoPlay well.

Step 2. Within the Analytics Reporting dashboard and look at your sales funnel, called Lead Conversion. At its core, the sales funnel shows you how many leads, how many test drives and how many sales your team have achieved. The conversion is always expressed as 100% for all leads, and test drives are a percentage of all leads, with the previous periods’ change in green or red to the side. Assuming that every lead goes in AutoPlay every time (more on that later) you will now see how effective your sales team are. Does the funnel look right to you? Are you selling more than you are test driving? Is your conversion to test drive right? Your experience will tell you whether the data looks right. Be mindful, however, that in the early days of improving your AutoPlay usage, it is possible that your sales team have created some bad habits. Perhaps they don’t record test drives in AutoPlay, for example, at the moment. Give them a clear expectation that all test drives should be recorded within AutoPlay, and the quality of the data and conversion rate will improve.

Step 3. Have a closer look at a qualitative measure, Leads with No Next Action. At its heart, AutoPlay is the road to a sale with reminders to move to the next step. The salesperson's role is to nudge and guide a customer or prospect between the steps from start to finish. Where the start is meet, greet, and qualify and the end is a sold vehicle. However, AutoPlay works at its best by serving up a list of actions every day for each salesperson. The program is at its weakest when salespeople do not add a next action. Without a Next Action put in AutoPlay, there is no reminder for that salesperson to follow up with the customer. And as a result of that, in turn, it is much less likely that the lead (or, more importantly, the customer) will be followed up. This will clearly affect your conversion rates negatively. You should aim to have zero leads that have No Next Action.

To find how many leads with No Next Action, go to Sales Pipeline (left hand side) >  Now (+/- 3 days) > Custom (deselect Now) and add a custom date range of the last 60 days in the two range date sections that pop up as soon as you select custom). Then select the Funnel icon on the top line (called ‘Show/Hide advanced search options…), then select No Next Action on the drop down headed ‘Any Next Action’. The number of leads with no next action will be shown in the red header bar.

Step 4. Investigate Overdue Leads. An overdue lead is a lead which has not been followed up in a timely manner; it means the customer commitment has been missed by 3-21 days. To check how many overdue just select Overdue from the top left drop down menu (the one that by default will say Now (+/- 3 days)). Be sure to select Any Status, rather than looking at just open or closed leads. The number of overdue is shown in the red header bar. Overdue Leads is such a broad catch all; some leads are just overdue and some are well on their way to being stalled. However I would argue that an organized salesperson should have zero overdue leads. From a customer's point of view being three days late for a call is not acceptable.

Step 5. Now do the same for Stalled. It is found in the same dropdown as Overdue. These leads are almost non-recoverable, because, according to AutoPlay this lead is at least 22 days past its due date.

Pause for a moment to consider what this means for your dealership’s reputation. One of your sales team has made a commitment to a customer, and then is at least 22 days late in meeting that commitment. Put yourselves in a customer's shoes and ask yourself whether that is acceptable or not.

Being able to quickly identify how well AutoPlay is being used is probably the most powerful tool in helping your sales manager understand how to deliver more sales. Your stalled and overdue may show you the heart of the problem, whereas dealer score will give you a sense of the quality of usage of AutoPlay, very few of these findings will tell you about how well your sales team interact with customers. At best they will show you how well the team use auto play.

Step 6. Check the quality of email responses sent to customers. In a recent mystery shop of over 40 customer and dealer interactions, it is clear that there is a wide variance in quality and a big opportunity to stand out from the crowd. You want to make sure the team have high standards and deliver this in a consistent manner.

Response Excellence. It's made of three things. Speed is pointless without an internal QC.

If you have worked through these steps and are a little bit despondent, never fear, the AutoPlay team will support you in getting better, or there are external trainers who understand AutoPlay well who can help you get on track.