Since joining the industry in 2006, Michael Lefthand has spent his entire auto retail career in the Internet department.
He likes the role, he says, because it’s always changing.
One big change? The way customers communicate. Lefthand, business development manager at SeaView Jeep and SeaBreeze Ford in New Jersey, has placed more emphasis in recent years on text messages. Texting customers yields quick responses and better engagement, and it has contributed to the stores’ bottom lines by helping to close more sales.
Lefthand uses two tools: one that automatically responds to submitted online leads and another that follows up with people who haven’t responded to previous messages, shoppers who visited a showroom without buying a car or a service customer with 100,000 miles on a vehicle.
“I don’t even know what I was doing prior to texting customers,” he said. “I think the times of calling people from a number that they don’t know or sending them an email that hopefully goes into the right folder, I think those days are kind of behind us.”
Lefthand, 37, spoke with Staff Reporter Lindsay VanHulle about the benefits he has discovered from texting with customers. Here are edited excerpts.
On the benefits of text messages
Texting can actually lead to phone calls. Productive phone calls, not just a cold call, or somebody submitted a lead at 11 o’clock at night and I’m calling the next morning from a number they don’t know and they don’t answer. So we’re incorporating the texting because it’s immediate and we’re finding that this is the way that customers want to be communicated with. For me, that’s always been the No. 1 thing. If someone is emailing you, then you email them. If someone’s calling you at the dealership, then you call them back. We’re seeing that an initial text goes out and the people respond right away.
They like the immediacy of it, I think, and getting an answer quickly. And it’s on their time, also, so that’s the benefit to them.
On texting with customers
Once, I did a text blast where I hit 4,000 people and I had a response rate of close to 20 percent. That’s where it kind of really hit me. If you asked anybody, could you get 20 percent of 4,000 people to respond to you based off of anything that you’ve ever done, any type of marketing you’ve ever done, anybody would sign up for that. And then once I saw that, then I was like, OK, I need to be texting every single person that I can text.
Getting those responses is one thing. It’s getting back to them in a timely fashion that you really have to be on the ball about. You have to have a staff that can actually manage that. I can tell you when you get 400 or 800 responses at once, it can be quite daunting to get back to people timely. The thing with the texting is that it is immediate, so if I sent you a text, you responded, and then I didn’t answer you for two hours, you kind of question: Do I really want your business?
On employee skills and training
It’s more of a customer service style of selling. But you need the right people in place at the dealership. You need to be comfortable with who’s answering the people. Luckily, I have a really, really good group of people around me who understand that this is the way that we’re doing it, and I trust them to answer as me, because I can’t answer every person, obviously.
You’ve got to be able to use a computer. I think the main skill is asking the right questions, asking the customer the right questions. I always say you can’t teach common sense, but some of this stuff is really common sense.
I think a lot of times, things are made more difficult than they need to be. So kind of understanding the customer and having the skill set to know where there’s a deal or know where the customer isn’t happy, those are some of the things I try to teach.
On phone calls
I also don’t want to sell short the phone call. I know people live and die by the phone. I’ve never really been one that’s been big on saying, “Oh, you’ve got to make 100 outbound phone calls today.” How can I get mad at a guy who’s made 20 appointments and never picked up the phone? I think there needs to be a little change there in terms of the way dealerships are looking at it. If you’ve got a smart, confident person answering text messages, it’s just as good as a smart, confident person speaking on the phone.
Even though it’s texting, it’s still generating phone calls, and it’s leading to more successful outbound calls. You might not be able to do a deal with a customer via text. You might actually have to call them, so recognizing when that call needs to be made or when you’ve reached that point.
On phone calls
I also don’t want to sell short the phone call. I know people live and die by the phone. I’ve never really been one that’s been big on saying, “Oh, you’ve got to make 100 outbound phone calls today.” How can I get mad at a guy who’s made 20 appointments and never picked up the phone? I think there needs to be a little change there in terms of the way dealerships are looking at it. If you’ve got a smart, confident person answering text messages, it’s just as good as a smart, confident person speaking on the phone.
Even though it’s texting, it’s still generating phone calls, and it’s leading to more successful outbound calls. You might not be able to do a deal with a customer via text. You might actually have to call them, so recognizing when that call needs to be made or when you’ve reached that point.
