If you are reading this, I am sure you’re familiar with the long chain of the manufacturer to dealer to consumer.

No? Let me refresh your memory!

Let us take an example! If you are an automobile manufacturer and have dealerships all across the world, each dealer is selling your products further to the consumers, and simultaneously managing the agreement documents, services contracts, parts, warranties, installations, preventive maintenance etc. In a way, between the end user at the bottom and the manufacturer at the top, there’s a huge gap that covers a substantially large (or small) dealer network.

In my opinion, if the top and the bottom levels aren’t aligned perfectly, the gaps become increasingly disorganized and start going off tangent pretty quickly.

In order for the manufacturer and the dealers to be on the same page and establish processes that can help keep the supply chain in check, the customer service needs to be exemplary. Not only does the quality of customer service a major revenue generator but also a constant reminder of the business standards maintained by your organization.

 

Here is a layman version of what I just said –

You’re probably asking yourself, “Okay, me being a dealer makes my business process much different than the manufacturer as I am dealing with the end user.”

And if you’re a manufacturer you’re probably thinking to yourself, “Yeah that’s your side of it, but my process involves dealing with the dealers more often, so how can we work hand in hand?”

That’s a great point. And that’s where we come in!

3 Things A Franchisor/Dealership Owner Wants From His Dealers/Franchisees?

Increased Visibility & Reporting

At the Dealer Level –

If you are a dealer or a sales manager at a dealership, you probably want to know about the service process, about lead-time, about the pipeline of service orders. Here’re a few questions that might be circulating in your head all time –

  1. What is the status of all my leads?
  2. Where are all the leads coming from?
  3. Who all are we following up with?
  4. When are we scheduling our preventive maintenance calls?

All of that information, all of that data as it relates to your customer and your equipment in the field is very valuable. They help structure your sales process and help bring order to your organization.

At the Manufacturer Level –

On the other hand, the manufacturer is interested in reporting. The questions go something like this –

  1. How can I improve the operational efficiency of my dealer network?
  2. Where are our best processes, where is our best opportunity to improve, where are we getting the most revenue.

Reporting from the dealer level is of great interest to the manufacturer because they know where that revenue is coming from. One system across both can align those two interests and report to both the dealer and manufacturer.

Building Strong Dealer Networks

Two months ago, Orgzit team was at the Franchise India event, and it was a great get together of dealers and franchises from all over the world. After talking to a couple of them, we realized that all of them are looking for ways to structure their dealer network more rigorously.

Why?

Because they’re trying to increase sales. More dealers, more feet on the ground, more sales, more revenue.

This is a way that you can do that, very clearly and very efficiently. One of the many dealers I met talked about the disorganized setup of his sales team and how implementing ERP solutions like SAP or Oracle can become a huge cost setback for them. But when I told them about Orgzit’s pre-integrated, already set up service system and the ability to manage their dealer network from the get-go, I am sure the ears perked up a bit. An integrated system allows you to work cleaner and allows you to grow at a much quicker pace.

Think about McDonald’s. Ever wonder why McDonald’s outlets sprout up every street corner in every two weeks? Because they have a set process that works great for them.

Intellectual Resources

If you have a huge dealer network, you must have attended a lot of trade shows and summits on dealership management. As a dealer, that network is one of your biggest assets. You know what areas your product sells best into, you can co-market on things, you really can share thought leadership across your dealers.

The same principle applies to the software you are using, If everyone is on the same software, and you’re mirroring each other’s service processes, you can create that consistency of an experience to the customer/end user, and make it a much cleaner process for you and other peers as dealers.

Thus creating that intellectual network is more important than anything else.

How Orgzit Can Help You As A Dealer CRM Solution?

Orgzit Dealer CRM Solution helps you get started in the right direction without thinking what’s been going

Manage Your Dealer Network

Orgzit-Dealer-Orgznize
Organize a list of all your dealers

I think you understand how important it is to manage your dealer network. In Orgzit, you can create a centralized database of all dealers Information – contacts, emails, etc. Here are a few points –

  • Get a centralized database for dealer, customer, and product information.
  • Prioritize which orders need to go to manufacturing first and reduce lead-time.
  • Setup a process for generating & approving an invoice
  • Grant controlled access to dealers across cities/countries according to the information exchange.

Bonus: You can even track all the leads generated from the events that your dealers have attended.

Collaborate with Dealers In Orgzit Itself

Dealer_Collaborate_Orgzit
Collaborate with your dealers, sales team, and clients in the same place

Keeping all your conversation with dealers in one place is something that helps in saving time and keeping all your files in one place. Here’re a few points related to collaboration in Orgzit –

  • Chat, discuss and share files with your sales team and dealers from Orgzit itself
  • Efficiently assign service requests & complaints to your team for better customer service
  • Always be in good regards of your customers by sending them regular updates of their orders from Orgzit itself
  • Track changes made to the data in Orgzit itself for quick auditing

Analyze Dealer Performance

Analyze the performance of your sales team and dealers with Orgzit reports

Once your dealers, files and conversation in one place, you’ll realize that analysis is an important part of business growth. So knowing which dealer is getting you the most business and evaluating your dealer performance monthly is quintessential for measuring comparable ROI.

  • Generate custom Reports to check lead & order status
  • Track conversion ratio of leads generated by different franchises
  • Make a comparison on which franchise product has performed the best in the last week/month/year
  • Maintain a centralized account of sales efforts that your sales team is making with the dealers for better performance review

 

Customize Orgzit To Fit Your Business Processes

Dealer_Customize_Orgzit
Customize Orgzit to fit your business processes.

Do you run your franchise business in a particular way? Orgzit can be customized just the way you run your dealer network management process. Here’s what you can customize in Orgzit –

  • Setup reminders to ensure timely client-follow ups
  • Run location specific discount schemes from the same platform
  • Customize the dealer CRM process like you handle in your franchise
  • Set custom workflows to check if leads are being followed on a regular basis. Get notified when they are not

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