Canada’s Top Marine Dealership Reaps the Benefits of Full Integration with IDS CRM

Download Buckeye Marine Success Story in PDF 

Recognized as the top Canadian dealership by Boating Industry’s Top 100 Dealers, Buckeye Marine, located in Bobcaygeon, ON, prides itself on more than 60 years of long-standing relationships in the boating community, giving back to the industry, and providing the best in customer service for the generations of customers who have walked through their doors.

Buckeye Marine implemented the IDS Astra Dealer Management System in 2004 to help manage the everyday operations of their business and is now reaping the benefits of full integration after recently implementing IDS CRM into their dealership.

Business Challenge: Automating the Sales Process While Improving the Customer Experience

In addition to IDS, Buckeye Marine was using a third-party software product to manage the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) side of their business.  Although useful, the hassle of double-entry from program to program became time consuming and tedious for its sales staff.  There were times where the salespeople spent more time maintaining data than customer interaction. Inconsistent information in multiple databases hampered the dealerships ability to contact customers effectively.  This had a direct impact on their sales process and overall customer service.

“I’d say the fewest steps you can give salespeople to successfully go from having somebody that they don’t know to having a new customer, the better,” said Carly Poole, Marketing Manager of Buckeye Marine.  “This comes anywhere from the implementation of the contact information, to figuring out what type of history they have, to what type of boat they are looking at, and all the way down the line.”

Solution: Astra G2 CRM Fully Integrated with IDS Dealer Management Software

It became obvious that Buckeye Marine needed an integrated solution that directly communicated with their dealer management system.  IDS CRM was that go-to solution.

“We chose IDS CRM because everything is in one place,” said Carly.  “It’s seamless because you don’t have to go from paper, to this system, to that system to get the end result.  It’s far superior to have all of your contacts and leads in one place and know what is happening within the sales department as a whole. ”

Not only does IDS CRM eliminate double-entry and improve automation, it also allows for your dealership to have full visibility of your opportunities and can help pinpoint any potential disadvantages you have in closing deals.  Being able to easily access this information can help your dealership better coach your sales staff.

“If you want a good grasp on your sales prospects, you need to know exactly what’s in your queue and how much business is on the table,” said Carly.  “You also need visibility of how much business you are losing, who you are losing it to, and why.  I think it’s a really good thing to make sure that type of reporting is in place.  It’s significantly easier to track this with IDS CRM than it is with other systems.”

Results: Increased Efficiency and Improved Contact/Lead Management

Full Visibility throughout the Dealership:

With CRM integration into IDS Astra, Carly and her staff not only have more visibility throughout the sales process, but also within the entire dealership.

“We have the visibility to see other things that are happening within the system,” said Carly.  “We can view customer purchase history, service history and different appointments that have been scheduled in the CRM.  This clear visibility obviously wasn’t accessible with two standalone systems.”

Easy-to-Use Email Marketing with Bronto:

IDS CRM integrates its email marketing through Bronto.  Being able to select specific dates and times to send emails, test subject lines, and track opens rates help Carly and her staff get a better understanding of their customer base and what they’re interested in.  Bronto allows the dealership to target a specific list of customers within their database and also automate post sales and service email follow-ups.

“We send our emails with Bronto and it is awesome,” said Carly.  “The tracking within it is superior to the product we were using before because it’s far more intuitive.  We love it!”

Sales Management:

A popular feature of the sales staff is the Sales Management Tool.  This feature allows the sales manager to check a dashboard and view percentages of qualified and non-qualified leads.  They can also view won and lost opportunities and the reasons for lost sales.

“Marking the contact’s opportunity won or lost is a great addition,” adds Carly.  “In the past, we had the ability to mark them sold, but we didn’t have the opportunity to mark one lost and give a reason.  Now the salespeople have to give a reason.  It allows us to see how many deals we are losing to ABC marine, and what are they doing differently than us.  ”

Synchronization through Outlook and Mobile Integration:

Another highly-touted feature of IDS CRM is synchronization through Outlook.  This allows for the salespeople to send out emails to prospects through their phone and have it automatically update in the CRM as well as their Outbox.

“Our senior sales professional will tell you that his favorite part is that emails are synchronized through Outlook,” said Carly.  “He loves that and thanks us often for switching to IDS CRM!  He’s used both CRM systems we’ve had and far prefers this tool over what we used in the past.  He thinks it’s much easier to use because of the integration.  It eliminates steps so he doesn’t have to email in one system then email in another system and everything is in different places.

Our staff is also very excited about having the mobile tool.  I think the more momentum there is toward web applications the better.  We have seen that all our manufacturers are offering either applications for tablets or iPhones, Androids, Blackberry’s, etc., so this is great addition within the CRM system.”

Unlimited Potential for Revenue with Automatic Work Flows

Now that Buckeye Marine is starting to see results from having a fully-integrated CRM solution, they are looking forward to what the future holds in regards to revenue potential.  IDS CRM is designed with the ability to create automatic work flows.  This allows for increased business in the service department as well as new sales.

“It is my intention to start using IDS’s automatic work flows,” said Carly.  “We actually have a list of different workflows that we want to set up so people get automated emails.  Service is a big one and we will have the functionality to serve those workflows.  When a service order is billed out, we can automatically send them a notification/email which includes a link to a survey.  It’s not something that we really had functionality to do before because our mass email system did not speak to IDS.   This will be a huge advantage for us.  We’ll also have the ability to do more marketing directly to our existing customers that just brought their boat in.  If somebody has a repair that’s over X number of dollars, we could trigger a message that encourages them to take a look at our new boats.  We are really excited about that potential!”

Download Buckeye Marine Success Story