INTERNET LEADS them into your store . Do you have a CRM ( Customer Relationship Management system ) that tells you the details of every customer , their products , their potential needs ? Basically , are you using the data that is available ?”
Sabourin ’ s question about using the data gets back to O ’ Hagan ’ s joke about the roach in the kitchen . The restaurant owner didn ’ t need to shine the light on the roach to know it was there or could have been there . He needed to act to remove or prevent roaches . Similarly , OPE dealer sales teams should know that leads are coming in , or at least that the website ( or social media , or email campaign ) allows them to . Are they doing anything about it ? Are salespeople collecting the leads , assigning them to the right people , and responding to them ?
Pay attention to leads
“ Our dealers focused in on response time and knowing the system ,” said Lookenbill of Kubota . “ They had two primary goals . First , responding more quickly . And second , making sure they address the system ’ s auto response . Some dealers did not realize the leads were coming in or that the responses were not going out . So it was bringing the attention to internet leads .” Lookenbill said that what registered with a lot of dealers is to think about a customer that comes into their store late on a Friday afternoon . “ Are you going to shut the door on those customers ?”
Most shoppers today , whether looking for a car , a chain saw or a pair of shoes , visit a website before visiting a retailer . Power equipment dealers who encourage these website customers to interact online ( essentially “ meeting the customer online ”) end up selling more products to them . Auto dealers learned this a lesson 15 or 20 years ago . Then powersports dealers got wise to it . Finally other industries , like ag and OPE , are starting to learn as well .
Pied Piper has found that , among dealers they ’ ve studied , quick and personal response to website customer inquiries means 50 % more unit sales on average to the same quantity of website customers , compared to dealers who fail to personally respond . O ’ Hagan said that web-response behaviors directly impact “ web-lead-close-rates ” or , in other words , the number of units a dealership sells to customers who first contact the dealership via the dealer website .
Kubota enables this , according to Lookenbill , through its Kaizen Excellence Program . This is the OEM ’ s award recognition program for dealers to show continuous improvement . “ There are no dollar incentives tied to this ,” he said . “ Dealers can ignore this . But it will help dealers sell more tractors .”
Do you have a CRM ( Customer Relationship Management system ) that tells you the details of every customer , their products , their potential needs ?
Vital but not always simple
O ’ Hagan said that even car dealers today have trouble responding effectively to web shoppers . They can be invisible compared to in-store shoppers along with all the operations tasks of running a dealership . When busy employees decide what to do next , the web customers are typically out of sight and out of mind .
“ One way for dealers to find improvement ,” said O ’ Hagan , “ is to make sure these lead emails are not sitting in a spam folder .”
Also , know that some people prefer email , others like text messages and some want a phone call . “ You need to hit the customer with multiple paths of communication , then continue with the method that the customer responds to ,” O ’ Hagan said . It ’ s not about the communication method that your salespeople prefer to use . It ’ s the one the potential customer prefers .
You also need to make sure your technology is working ; web service providers can have breakdowns too . “ A tractor client of ours thought it was doing a good job with response time ,” said O ’ Hagan , “ but the web provider was having difficulties so only about 30 percent of the responses were even going out .”
“ Our data has shown that , beyond 24 hours , the customer is far less interested . So this study focused on that first 24-hour time frame ,” said O ’ Hagan .
Here ’ s how the ILE study worked
Pied Piper submitted customer inquiries through the websites of 726 compact tractor dealerships representing all major brands . Each inquiry asked a specific question about a tractor in inventory and included a customer name , email address , and local telephone number . Pied Piper then evaluated the speed and quality of dealership responses by email , telephone , chat , and text message over the next 24 hours , creating an ILE overall score ranging between 0 and 100 .
This year dealers were more likely to quickly answer a web customer ’ s inquiry by email or text : 27 % of the time on average for 2025 vs 22 % of the time for 2024 . In contrast , dealers were less likely to respond to web customers using multiple paths ( email , text , phone ): 11 % of the time on average vs 13 % for 2024 . Customers were more likely to be “ ghosted ” this year , receiving no response from dealers 20 % of the time on average , compared to 18 % last year .
www . OPE-Plus . com March 2025 OPE + 23