How well you engage with a lead almost directly translates to how well you sell. Having great customer engagement drives your customers to respond and engage back with you, and that’s the end goal.

If you’re spending time on your initial engagements, then you’re saving yourself time down the road. If you have excited and engaged customers, then you don’t have to try and convince them to buy from you, and you’ll have happier customers.

Here are 4 tips to help you drive customer engagement with quality work.

1. Before contacting a lead, do your research

When a lead comes in, do your research on the person! Spend 3 minutes looking for information about the customer, starting with your own CRM. If the customer’s bought from your dealership before, then you know you’ve already got a great basis for selling to them considering they came back to your dealership.

Scan through the customer’s social media pages. You can find really helpful information, such as job position and family life. While you don’t want to get creepy, you can ask questions to the customer based on what you found. For example, if you see that he/she has kids, you can ask about possibly needing room for car seats. 

Make sure to also check about the vehicle inquired. That’s what the customer really cares about, so make sure you have all the information possible about the vehicle, including things like exterior and interior options and features.

2. Ask questions about what the customer cares about

Naturally, people are more inclined to answer questions than randomly give up more information. Asking your customers questions makes them feel valued, so make sure you’re doing this from the moment a lead comes in.

If you’re doing the research, then you should have plenty of questions to ask that are both relevant to the customer and helpful to you. Think about what the customer cares about based on what you’ve gathered about his or her life.

Also, make sure that you ask about possible trade-ins. Customers love to feel valued, but they love saving money even more. Starting with questions about trade-ins or deals almost always guarantee an engaged customer.

3. Leave quality voicemails and emails

If you can’t get in touch with a customer immediately, then that means you’re stuck leaving a voicemail. Voicemails are great about getting information across, but it’s hard to get a customer to call you back (or even to listen all the way through). Your voicemails need to provide just the right information to convince a customer to call you back. This also applies to emails; getting someone to respond to you no matter what the medium is can be a challenge. 

There’s some helpful tips to doing this, and one of those is about being cheerful. If your sales reps don’t sound inviting, then few people are going to call back. In about 30 seconds, you want to sound caffeinated and excited, and ready to help the customer. For emails, keep them short enough that your customer will read it, but present any helpful information such as savings that will interest them.

Keep in mind that no one likes spam, and no one likes their phone going off 14 times in an hour. Leave one voicemail, and let the customer come to you after that. There’s no use in frustrating a potential customer or wasting your time calling that many times so quickly. Emails follow these same rules.

4. Record a quick video

While you sell cars every day and see cars every day, your customers don’t. Buying a new vehicle isn’t an everyday thing, so it’s exciting for most people. By sending a short video detailing the car that a customer is interested in, you’re helping them get excited and ready to come into your dealership.

These videos are highly tailored to your customer, so don’t let them become too professional. Be personal, film it from a front-facing and rear-facing camera, and address the customer by name. If your video looks too professional, then you lose that personal touch that makes the customer feel valued.

Do a walk around of the car he or she is interested in, and make sure you’re excited about it. You might hate the car that’s chosen, but make it look like the best car in the world. Show features and what the interior looks like. Creating interest and excitement in your customer is going to make them much more likely to buy.