The sixth annual automotive research study by Urban Science in collaboration with The Harris Poll highlighted that nine in 10 U.S. car buyers said a traditional dealership is their top choice for purchasing a vehicle.

Now let’s delve deeper into the Urban Science research data collected from 252 franchised dealers across the United States with the title of sales manager, general manager or principal/VP/owner about handling leads that start a journey toward delivery.

Urban Science reported dealers are confident in the ability of their sales teams to nurture and convert leads, with 72% saying they are very or extremely confident their sales process converts leads effectively.

However, when asked about common limitations in their sales process, 38% of dealers told Urban Science about a lack of real-time insights into lost sales and 34% pointed to inconsistent follow-up.

Most dealers — 75% to be exact — told Urban Science that they follow up on a lead in less than five minutes.

“In an increasingly competitive marketplace, there is little room for error when it comes to engaging and converting leads,” Urban Science said in its survey report, which also noted 82% of consumers said follow-up is important or extremely important to them and 72% said they expect to hear from a dealership no later than 24 hours after expressing interest in a vehicle.

Deploying artificial intelligence is a tool sometimes being used to help dealerships with this task, as highlighted throughout the May edition of Auto Remarketing.

But only 14% of dealers surveyed by Urban Science told researchers that they have confidence in AI tools for lead follow-up, versus 57% for their in-house sales teams.

“With dealers continuing to rely primarily on their sales teams to handle lead outreach (at least for now), it’s essential salespeople are able to allocate time effectively,” Urban Science wrote in the report. “That introduces a new challenge. Even when sales teams excel at engaging customers, most dealers complain of limited insight into lead status.”

According to the survey, 74% of dealers said they are not fully satisfied with their ability to know if a lead has defected.

Eric Demont is global product director of dealership solutions at Urban Science.

“Dealers say if they could improve just one lead metric, it would be their lead-to-sale conversion rate,” Demont said in the report. “To boost conversion rates, dealers first need a clear understanding of what is driving their sales teams’ wins and losses, including daily defection insights.

“Once they have visibility into defection patterns, dealers can use that information to drive store performance by making targeted improvements to their follow-up, training and marketing workflows,” Demont went on to say.

Complete survey results can be found via this website.