How to action your prospects

What is an action?

How can I update the prospect 'stage'?

Creating an appointment

Marking a prospect as sold or lost

Configurable automation

 

What is an action?

An action refers to activity around a prospect, or alternatively, tasks which have been performed to progress the prospect through each stage of the buying journey. There are a number of actions that can be made in Autogate, including emails, SMS, calls, appointments and notes.

You will see the below options on the right-hand side of each prospect:

mceclip0.png

The options under 'prospect management' are purely for noting any actions you have taken with that customer. As an example, adding an 'email' action will not email the customer, but it will leave a note on that prospect you have sent them an email. This is handy for anyone else who views the prospect to know what contact has been made with them.

Email: the salesperson has sent an email to the prospect

SMS: the salesperson has texted the prospect

Calls: the salesperson has called the prospect 

Appts: the salesperson has booked in an appointment with the prospect

Notes:  any other note relating to the prospect.

 

Please note that any button under the 'chat' section in the above screenshot is a direct communication with the prospect.

 

How can I update the prospect 'stage'?

Each prospect you receive can go through 4 different stages, each stage helps give you an overview of how progressed the prospect is within the buyer journey. The stage of prospect can be easily viewed from your prospect page.

mceclip2.png

 

The 4 stages are as follows:

New: the prospect has just arrived in Autogate and has not yet been actioned at this stage

Contact: the prospect is updated to this stage once an action has been applied to it, see "what is an action" above for further clarification

Commitment: once you create an appointment for a particular prospect, it will move to the commitment stage. See here to learn how to create an appointment.

Result: this is the final stage; this is where the prospect has either bought from you or is no longer interested in the item. The prospect will move to this stage once it has been marked as 'sold' or 'lost', this is explained here.

 

Creating an appointment

To create an appointment within Autogate, click on the lead from your prospect list, and on the right-hand side you will see an option to add an appointment.

mceclip1.png

You will then be presented with a screen which allows you to add information about the appointment.

mceclip3.png

You will then have the appointment appear on the prospect.

mceclip4.png

Lastly, once the appointment is created in Autogate, the person creating the appointment will receive an email with a calendar invite which you can sync with your schedule.

 

Marking a prospect as sold or lost

When you click on any lead from your prospect list, you will find options to mark the lead as lost, sold, duplicate or unworkable.

mceclip0.png

It is important to mark leads as sold or lost to keep your prospects screen up to date with your current leads, as well as to ensure your dashboard reporting is as accurate as possible.

Configurable automation

Another option to stay on top of your leads in configurable automation. Navigate to your settings, and click this option. 

mceclip0.png

What this feature does is give you the ability to escalate un-actioned leads through sending notification emails. You have the ability to send an escalation email to someone in the dealership should a lead not be actioned for a certain period of time.

mceclip1.png

 

Was this article helpful?
Have more questions? Submit a request