Lightning leads
Point - click - call back; lead management systems help close deals faster.

By Greg Gerber

The days of waiting four to six weeks for information from a company are long gone. Today, consider yourself lucky if consumers grant you four to six minutes to fulfill their requests for product info or prices.

Lead generation has been a challenge in the information age. Consumers refuse to wait until businesses "find the time" to respond to their questions. In fact, some studies show the first company to respond to an online inquiry is often the company which nets the deal.

Channel Blade Technologies has developed an innovative online platform that takes lead delivery to a whole new level. By partnering with manufacturers and their dealers, leads can be captured and delivered almost instantaneously.

Imagine a customer visiting an OEM Web site over a cup of coffee Saturday morning. He finds a travel trailer he's interested in and clicks on the link for more information. As soon as he hits submit, the lead is forwarded to the OEM's sales office and to the buyer's local RV dealer. Before he has time to surf to another Web site, his cell phone rings as the dealer's sales manager calls to answer questions the buyer might have. Spooky? No, it's the smart way of doing business today.

Up and running with Footsteps
Channel Blade's Footsteps software system accepts leads from any source including classified advertising and manufacturer Web sites, so long as the information is relayed in the system's preferred XML format.

The system overcomes two primary hurdles in lead management, said Jon Lintvet, director of business development for Channel Blade. The first is speed. Leads are delivered in near real-time. If both the manufacturer and dealer use the same system, the leads are delivered as quickly as Channel Blade's computer processors can determine the closest dealership to the potential buyer.

The second factor is the ability to manage and follow-up on the leads. Leads delivered instantly are still useless unless someone is held accountable for ensuring the customer is contacted, said Lintvet. The Channel Blade system allows managers to check the status of all leads from any computer anywhere, whether it's at home, on vacation or at a trade show.

"There is some evidence that if people wait as long as four hours to respond to a buyer inquiry, they increase chances of losing the sale by 10 times," said Lintvet.

Channel Blade conducted a study to monitor the lead processing capability of 10 manufacturers and 50 dealers. They discovered that nobody got back to the buyer approximately 60 percent of the time.

"Two factors play into that," said Lintvet. "Perhaps the dealership was too busy to get around to it. But the key factor is this: Did the OEM do anything about it?"

In many cases, it's not getting to dealers because of connectivity issues or bad e-mail addresses. Perhaps the territory rules are out of sync on the manufacturer's Web site. But the bottom line is that the lead was lost and two businesses suffered as a result - the dealer and the manufacturer.

But the opposite can happen, too. Lintvet said the system is so reliable and so fast to follow-up that Channel Blade actually had to slow it down to avoid embarrassing salespeople.

"We were at the Miami Boat Show testing our application," he explained. "We had been using an offline application for years that captured information when people entered the booth area. That system checked to see if the visitor had contacted the dealership before and who the sales rep was before scheduling a note to be sent to the buyer that night thanking him for stopping by and inviting him to a breakfast tour of the new model.

"Miami was the first show we tried using our online application and we actually had to program a delay into the system because customers were getting thank you messages while they were still in the booth," he added.

OEMs own the leads, too
The big point of differentiation with the Channel Blade platform, according to Lintvet, is downstream visibility, or the ability for manufacturers to see what happens to leads generated on its Web site.

"Many systems send e-mail and make sure it didn't bounce and that it was opened. That's fantastic in its own right, but it just scratches the surface of an effective lead management system," he explained. "If OEMs use the same system their dealers do, the OEM can pull up the lead and see when it was received, when it was delivered and any subsequent correspondence that took place, including whether the buyer looked at additional units."

"From an OEM perspective, they have a stake in lead follow-up, too," said Lintvet. "The buyer came to the OEM's Web site and the OEM had to invest in technology to deliver the lead to the dealer quickly. Manufacturers deserve a return on their investment."

Lintvet said the auto industry charges dealers for leads generated on the OEM's Web site. Those manufacturers buy search engine words on the market and then sell leads back to the dealers.

Dealers are also asking for this type of accountability because they know leads delivered slowly can kill the potential of a sale, said Lintvet. The too familiar story is the one about a consumer who submits a lead to a manufacturer Web site at 6 p.m. Friday night because his plans changed and he can go shopping over the weekend. The lead sits in the manufacturer's general e-mail box until someone finds time to respond, which may be as late as Monday afternoon.

"In the meantime, the buyer has hit six other Web sites where the leads are integrated between the manufacturer and dealer," Lintvet added. "A competitor received the lead in real time and worked it over the weekend, resulting in a sale."

Bogging down the process
Another problem with lead management systems is that some deliver leads via e-mail which requires the information to be re-keyed into the dealer's software system in order to be tracked. That wastes time and increases the chances a name, address or phone number is entered incorrectly. Channel Blade's system seamlessly integrates with the dealership management system to capture and store critical data.

Fleetwood and Airstream already use Channel Blade technology, as do RV Trader, RVSearch.com and RVWeb.com.

Dealers need a system to manage and track leads. Most have leads pouring in from a variety of sources including: GoRVing.com, RVTraderOnline.com, RVAmerica.com, walk-in customers, phone calls, RV shows, the dealer's own Web site as well as those generated by each manufacturer he represents.

"If manufacturers are invested in the same system dealers already use, it make sense for them to climb onboard or get left behind," said Lintvet. "Dealers won't want to use multiple lead management systems, and those leads that flow into their system seamlessly are the leads the dealer will work the fastest.