Most car dealers have between 500-1500 contacts in their CRM marked dead & lost. They also have a bunch of customers marked SOLD, well, hopefully. All three of those designations mean that no one at the dealership is actively following up to sell that contact a new car. Can we say, “Missed Opportunities”!?!  

Let’s start with the SOLD customers. How long ago were they sold? Do they have multiple drivers in the home? Did they finance or lease? When is their lease up? Following up with sold customers is tricky because you don’t want to be obnoxious, but showing them a high trade value, indicating that you WANT THEIR CAR, and that they can get a newer model for the same payment or lower – these are all proven effective to generate new sales out of thin air. 

Here’s an example of a FRIKIN dealer who quickly realized that prospecting sold customers WORKS with our SALESiQ email blasts. 

Four minutes after sending the WE WANT YOUR CAR email template to the SOLD customers in this dealer’s CRM they had a Cherry Lead with trade info and an appointment request. BOOM!

Now for the dead & lost leads where there is significantly more untapped opportunity. Some of them are labelled correctly, but a big chunk are actually still in the market for a new or used car. 

By sending an email blast to their big ‘ol list of lost & dead leads, our dealers are re-engaging one third of the contacts. ONE THIRD. That amounts to a s#!$ ton of deals being pulled from thin air. Deals that were dead and buried- resurrected. We call them zombie customers and they buy cars every day! 

Let’s break it down. 

These contacts get marked lost for a myriad of reasons: 

1. They were unresponsive
2. They replied saying they were no longer interested
3. The vehicle they originally wanted is not available
4. The salesperson didn’t want to follow up anymore 
5. They had objections which could not be overcome

Typically, once a lead is marked lost, no one ever makes another attempt to contact them. It’s pretty unfortunate when you think about how little effort it would take to re-engage many of them. Let’s break it down: 

1. They were unresponsive because the lead response you sent/voicemail you left was garbage. You included no useful information. They determined you were not going to help them and ghosted you.

Solution: Send them vehicle availability, price, and payment info.

2. They may no longer be interested in the exact car on which they first inquired. 

Solution: People are squirrelly, they often switch from new to used, or vice versa. They will shop across multiple brands and vehicle types. Send them OPTIONS. Cars, trucks, new, used, everything you’ve got – with price and payment info. 

3. Vehicle not available? See solution above. 

4. Salesperson is lazy? 

Solution: Umm.. I’m not gonna say it but you know what you gotta do. This is also why its crucial that management review the CRM activity regularly and ask questions! Why is the lead marked lost? What happened? Move the lead back to “active” and send them some useful information. 

5. Objections we couldn’t overcome… what are they?

Solution: Just because we couldn’t initially overcome their objection doesn’t mean we can’t today. Car sales is fluid. Inventory is constantly changing, so is price. Payments fluctuate dramatically throughout the sales month based on lender rates. Send the customer dynamic quotes with multiple vehicle options and interactive payments to see if we can hop that hurdle now! 

If you want help identifying opportunities to prospect your lost, dead, and sold customers using email campaigns including price & payments to re-engage at least one third of them, give us a shout! We can help.