Revving up Revenue: How to Increase Car Dealership Sales With Automated Reports

Are your sales teams struggling to decide which leads to pursue, or is inventory often mismatched with customer demand? Automated reporting can turn your data into actionable insights that you can use to drive sales and improve efficiency across your dealership.

Data serves many purposes within your car dealership’s operations. When it’s easily accessible in reports and dashboards, your team can use it to monitor things like inventory levels, technician efficiency, open repair orders, department-level key performance indicators (KPIs), financial performance, and more.  

But did you know that business intelligence (BI) reports can help you do more than manage your dealership’s critical numbers?  

By running daily health checks on your data, you'll also unlock the key to increasing sales across your dealership. Instead of relying solely on your sales team’s best guess or outdated information, you’re equipped with dynamic insights that tell sales reps which prospects to pursue, when to reach out, and how to drive even more upsells and cross-sells inside your existing customer base.  

Maintain Timely Access to Relevant Data

You can generate a wealth of valuable insight from the data moving throughout your dealership, like data from your dealer management system (DMS), payroll software, customer relationship management (CRM) platform, and more.  

However, the first step toward using your data to drive key decisions is ensuring you have continuous access to the right data. It’s hard to make clear decisions when you’re working with a jumble of disorganized figures or an Excel sheet that hasn’t been updated in the past several weeks.  

To develop a data-driven sales department, you need a way to consolidate complex information, like KPIs, into accessible, real-time dashboards that everyone can understand. 

A BI solution that’s designed especially for car dealers integrates with every data source you use, and it includes best practice report and dashboard templates to ensure you get daily updates about the most important numbers across your entire business — whether you manage one location or one hundred.  

These daily reports give you a complete, up-to-date overview of your operations, so you can more easily pinpoint sales trends and opportunities right away.  

Get to Know Your Customers on a Deeper Level

In the world of sales, understanding your customers’ behavior is critical to delivering products and solutions that meet their specific needs. What’s more, analyzing customer data helps you get to know their buying habits, how they prefer to interact with your dealership, where leads originate, and so much more.  

All this customer data helps you go beyond simply serving customers when they step into the showroom. You can also anticipate their needs, goals, and challenges. That way, your sales team can move from reactive selling to proactive outreach, nurturing, and follow-up with all types of customers.  

For example, if a customer has previously shown interest in eco-friendly vehicles, your team could reach out with personalized offers on hybrid or electric models based on her preferences. This approach makes customers feel valued and increases the likelihood of conversion. 

More data on your customers means highly personalized promotions and marketing campaigns that feel tailor-made to every potential buyer who interacts with your brand.  

The result? More qualified buyers trickling into your showroom, and a higher close rate for sales representatives who can use customer insights to confidently cater to their prospective buyers.

Find New Leads Through Your Fixed Ops Department

So, let’s say you’re already using BI to make data-driven decisions in your sales department – like which customers to prioritize, when to follow up, and which vehicles to show them when they visit the dealership. At the same time, you’re generating Fixed Ops reports to track customers’ service lifecycle.  

By combining this information and establishing regular communication between sales and fixed ops, you can identify new leads from within your existing Service Center customer base! Imagine John has been bringing his vehicle to your dealership for routine maintenance at least twice per year for the last seven years. Your Fixed Ops team has a record of which services have been completed, how many miles are on John’s car, and what services are recommended for his next visit.  

When John’s service record flags that his car is approaching high mileage, the sales team could prepare a personalized trade-in offer for a similar, newer model. This level of personalization will make John feel understood and may prompt him to consider an upgrade before he even realizes he needs one.  

On the flip side, surfacing service records to your sales team can prevent untimely outreach that could annoy your customers — like a representative reaching out about a new car purchase just a few weeks after a contact brought their new vehicle in for service. 

Stock Your Showroom to Meet Buyer Demands

A deep understanding of your customers is especially valuable when it comes to stocking your dealership with the right vehicles, rentals, and repair/maintenance parts. Pair it with up-to-date market information, and you’ll be able to fill your showroom with the vehicles your repeat and new customers alike are most interested in purchasing.  

With the right BI solution, you can compare market data to your own internal information to identify purchasing patterns and which vehicles or class of vehicles are purchased most often. 

If market data shows that four-door sedans are trending locally, and your internal reports show high turnover rates on sedans as well, you can stock more of them to meet demand. Conversely, automated reports call out vehicles that linger on the lot, allowing you to adjust pricing or run promotions. 

The same approach can be applied to your service and repair operations too. When your Fixed Operations Manager sees daily numbers related to which parts are used most often, which types of service orders are in progress, and how often existing customers are visiting your Service Center, they can better prepare for future orders by stocking the right parts to meet expected demand.

Increase Car Dealership Sales With TARGIT’s All-in-One Solution

At its core, business intelligence should help you integrate data into all the decisions taking place across your organization. It’s about creating a company culture where data leads decisions and strategies at all levels.  

Your BI solution shouldn’t be an exclusive tool for IT experts or a small team of analysts. Instead, you’ll want to invest in a solution that’s accessible and intuitive for everyone, from C-level executives to individual salespeople.  

TARGIT’s BI solution for car dealers equips you with everything you need to embed data into your decision-making process. We combine data from all your business systems into automated reports that give you next-level insight into your operations and the market. That way, you can manage daily performance and prepare for the road ahead from a single solution.  

The road from Point A to Point BI starts with a clear picture of which metrics you need to track in sales, service, finance, and more.  

Download our guide, "Creating a Data-Driven Automotive Dealership," to discover the most valuable KPIs for every part of your dealership.