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A seasoned automotive sales veteran, Tiff Arcella’s career includes stellar performances as Internet manager and BDC director at Webb Ford in Highland, Indiana and BDC director and sales manager at Sutton Ford in Matteson, Illinois. Today she manages a team of Dealix regional sales managers for the Midwest region. Arcella joined Dealix because she saw it as a chance to put to work on a larger scale what she knew about Internet sales. As she explained, “The Internet sales process demands a high level of professionalism, and the most successful dealerships figured out what this entailed pretty early in the game. One of the most satisfying things about my job is being able to help dealers all along the spectrum to develop a more professional, more effective approach to their Internet leads.” Now that Tiff works with a variety of dealerships, versus just working for one dealership, she has an even broader perspective on what dealerships need to do, in order to be very successful at closing their leads. Here are Arcella’s Five Essential Best Practices for Succeeding with Your Leads:

1. Don’t Give Up on Leads Too Quickly!

It’s easy to call a lead (your prospect) twice, leave a message each time, not get a response, and write off the lead. Your lead management system may keep prompting you to try again, but you’ve already stopped believing that there’s any point in following up. And that’s when the game is over.

The fact is, in this situation, you’re the one who has pulled the plug. Put yourself in the position of someone who submits the lead. You’re working 60 hours a week, you have two kids home from school for Spring vacation, your mother-in-law is visiting, and your bathroom is being remodeled. Yes, you’re serious about buying a new car, but it may be a week or two before you’re ready to move to the next step - before you can even find time to return a phone call.

Give every lead the benefit of the doubt. Treat every lead as a person – someone who wants to talk to you, but may not do it this minute. If you’d like to increase your sales by 10%, this is your best first step.

2. Keep Your Promises - and Make Sure You Know What You’ve Promised

When you say, “I’ll get back to you within the hour,” and then call or email two hours later, your customer may not care. But some customers will care, and getting back to them within the promised timeframe will be taken as a mark of your seriousness and professionalism. Don’t blow it by being casual about time (or anything else that you say you’ll do).

Sometimes you make promises and don’t even know it. Thank your auto-response email, which you may not have looked at since you set it up months ago. Is it telling customers to expect a response in one hour? Half an hour? Ten minutes? Either do what it says, or edit it so that it doesn’t make a promise you can’t keep. That goes for all your standard response templates, too.

3. Don’t Fear the Phone

For the most part, the phone is the most effective medium for making a connection with customers and getting them to visit the showroom. So, you should pick up the phone and call your prospect the minute the lead shows up in your inbox. You might even catch the customer while they’re still online and before they receive your auto-responder. While emailing your lead can be easier than picking up the phone, and indeed, some prospects prefer to get an email, the most successful Internet salespeople I know use the phone, and/or a combination of phone and email. The phone is the best opportunity you’ll get to put the person on track toward a sale.

4. Check Your Emails for Mistakes Before Hitting “Send”

I do a lot of “mystery shopping” to help our dealers improve their sales processes. The errors I see in dealer emails can be horrifying: blatant grammatical mistakes, atrocious spelling, and serious mis-statements. I’ll never forget receiving an email that boldly announced, “We will not beat any price!” - a baffling combination of “We won’t be undersold” and “We will beat any price.”

Keeping your emails clean and mistake-free matters first and foremost because the mistakes can keep you from being understood, and that’s a sure way to lose sales. But there’s also the question of customer perception. Plenty of people out can’t spell or write a grammatical sentence, and your mistakes may not be visible to them. But customers who spot your mistakes are going to conclude they’re not dealing with the sharpest tack in the box, and that puts you at a real disadvantage.

A spellchecker can help you eliminate spelling errors. Grammar is harder, but giving your email a careful proofreading gives you a chance to catch the mistakes you’re able to recognize, not to mention any sentences that don’t say what you mean them to say. You’re always under pressure to respond quickly, but always take the time to review your emails before you hit “send.”

5. Respond Directly to the Lead’s Inquiry

Internet customers who ask a question via email expect an answer. That’s nothing surprising, but too often their questions go unanswered, usually for two main reasons.

One, sometimes the lead asks three questions (for example), and the Internet rep answers two and forgets to answer the third - or he/she simply doesn’t see the third question. Here, my tip is simply to read carefully and be thorough in your response. A conversation, either face-to-face or over the phone, is a fluid, flexible thing, and it’s easy for the customer to repeat a question or ask for clarification. In an email exchange, getting it all right the first time is an important way to establish a strong connection with the customer.

Two, sometimes a lead asks a question that sets off an alarm for the Internet rep: a question about price on a car on which there’s not much room for negotiation, for example, or a question about a model that isn’t currently in stock. A common tendency is to steer the customer’s attention somewhere else, but this doesn’t fly. You have to address the customer’s comment or question directly, even if you can’t give them the answer you think they want to hear. Good salespeople know that there’s nothing worse than not answering the question, and they have the skill and confidence to turn their straight answer into an opportunity to build trust.