How to Prioritize High-Intent Dealership Leads with AI

Even for seasoned dealership sales staff, lead qualification and lead management is one of the most problematic parts of the process, but it’s obviously essential - no cars are going to get sold if there aren’t leads that end up being conversions. Let’s take a look at how AI for dealership lead management can end up being one of the most important dealership sales tools in your toolkit.

What Makes A Dealership Lead Solid?

Think about the signs that indicate a lead might be serious about a purchase. They’ll typically ask questions like:

• Do you have any (year/make/model) in stock right now?
• Is this particular vehicle still available?
• Do you offer any incentives on this one?
• What kind of a monthly payment should I expect?
• What can you offer me on my trade-in?
• Can we set up an appointment?

And then…

• When can we schedule a test drive?

Those are all the things you want to hear from a lead, but you have to be able to get a lead far enough along to even have that conversation. What if a conversational AI platform can save you some steps along the way?

How AI Sales Agents Can Help Screen and Cultivate Leads

AI for car dealerships can help keep your sales team from wasting time on cold leads and tire kickers by engaging with potential leads and getting some of those necessary conversations going. AI-powered lead management is designed to identify the customers who are more serious about a purchase by identifying those signals and then pushing the more valuable opportunities up to the front of the line. Think about the typical questions:

• “Just looking” (low intent)
• “I saw a black one on the website, do you still have that one in stock?” (growing intent)
• “Can we discuss trade-in value?” (higher intent)
• “Can we make an appointment for 6 tomorrow?” (strong next step)

AI for car dealerships can respond to customer inquiries after hours (while the thought is still fresh in the customer’s mind) and can access dealership info such as inventory, hours and processes to get the customer the answers they need.

It can be customized for store-specific or region-specific needs, such as responding in Spanish or with a regional accent or whatever other preferences you might have for your customers and situation. It can also follow up with potential leads who might have drifted off, and can revisit them up to 180 days to hopefully turn those dormant leads into active ones again.

By helping to set the scene with leads, dealership AI can free up your sales team to do the important tasks of building relationships, handling customers in-person, negotiating pricing and financing and doing everything that goes with the all-important human element of auto sales.

Turning Leads into Conversions

Think about how your operations could be helped by a system that can not only qualify and develop leads, but can set appointments, book service appointments or recall service after the sale, set up broadcast campaigns (all enabled by analyzing CRM data) and ensure your sales team is fully informed by syncing up AI conversation summaries into the existing CRM.

This isn’t just speculative, because the results are in – dealerships that have used Matador’s AI systems report a boost in pipeline conversion of about 25% on average.

It’s all about identifying customers with serious intent, prioritizing those leads and giving your sales team the resources they need to zero in on the right opportunities - steps that can be tedious and time-consuming for even the most diligent salespeople.

When you consider the whole package of what Matador can do to help your sales team and your dealership’s operations, it really does make a lot of sense. Why not schedule an appointment with Matador and find out more about what we can do to enhance your dealership and your sales team’s performance?