DealerKnows,
Do you see/hear the internet lead customer becoming more urgent and shortening their buying cycle to less than 10 days from their inquiry?  It seems I’m constantly changing my Internet process to quicker, faster, more intensity every week.  I’ve changed templates already once this year to bring shorter, quicker responses to customer inquiring.

I understand 3rd party leads may have a longer cycle, but, customers on my site want answers now and buy tomorrow it seems.  Thoughts?

And thanks for your time and advice,
Darryl
Director of eCommerce and Business Development
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Hello Darryl,

Thanks for reaching out. To answer your question, yes. As we track this data for our dealer clients, the buying cycle for ALL Internet leads (not just organic/website leads) are shortening. As a matter of fact, we had a CRM company do some data analysis for us and it showed that (out of all customers that DID purchase in the first 90 days), 45% of phone and Internet customers bought in the first 7 days. 75% in the first 30 days, and the other 25% over the last 2 months. With that said, no dealer wants to lose 25% of their sales so we still urge for long-term follow-up.

We provide our customers a slew of email templates and processes, and we’ve always had a heavily front-loaded process where more activity takes place in the first 10 days than in the next 80 days. Even with that, we do update our processes or templates quarterly to keep up with ever-changing consumer trends.  Keep doing what you are doing, Darryl, by focusing on making a fast, good first impression.

Joe Webb