Apple Approves 1.7. Get the Update!

DealerCRM for iPhone has been updated again. V1.7 is now in the app store. Go get it and PLEASE review it in detail in the store. Remember this is a salesperson tool and not designed to replace your desktop.

New Features Pushed this Week

Many of you know that we are in the midst of a major rewrite of the AutoPencil tools and although my mind is focused there, there are a lot of other things we've done:

• We've added a new picture upload option along with a matching merge code and new button in the image gallery (to insert the picture into an email). How about uploading a happy shot of your customer with his or her new car? Can you think of how you might use this new feature? Don't worry if the image is big, we'll resize it automatically for you.
• The comments field on the Customer Detail page has always annoyed me. You had to hit that little scroll button over and over to see any details that might be in there. No more, hit the expand button and it will be like it should have been since the beginning.
• We've added to the lead assignment schedule a new way to forward leads to other systems, or to our own system if you want. Imagine if you are a dealer group and you route all leads into a ILM account to sort and remove duplicates... call Support before you do it the first time and groups will need to buy an additional ILM license to do it. But finally this means broadcast emails across the group and real accountability and savings from the lead vendors.

More coming soon and the release of the new AutoPencil tool is any day.

Keith

Tracking Outbound Calls

OK, people have been asking me forever about the ability to track outbound calls. For a long time I have professed that the fact that 10 digits were dialed had very little to do with selling cars, but some dealers are unswayed by my arguments.

Today I am pleased to announce we can now track and record all outbound calls, from any phone AND integrate the results seamlessly and quickly into the DealerCRM suite. Best of all, we can do this at no additional charge for all dealers on the 2007 price point.

It's an amazing combination of data and technology and it's available now. Call Support for more information.

Keith

Daily New Features/Updates

Today we've made the following enhancements:

• FTC Compliant Customer Information Deletion. In the dealership settings area you will now find a new section which will allow you to specify how long to keep Bad/Lost prospect personal identification. Leave at 0 to keep the data indefinitely.
• Hotwatch can now be directed at anyone in CRM. When you assign a customer to hotwatch status you can now direct who will see the status on their myday. Clicking 'remove hotwatch' now removes the customer from your myday rather than the default salesperson.
• We've added an employee number field for CRM users. Dealerships can print this on forms to identify their salespeople and mangers.
• In ILM you can now determine how long a lead stays in the Urgent folder in the default status durations area of the control panel. the default is 3 days.
• ILM/CRM - We've added "email" field as a criteria for Customer Ownership Change
• In CRM you can now print MyDay's by team or for an individual sales rep
• Speed Baby Speed and we've added even more. Like a good car person, I can never get enough torque in this baby.

OK, that's enough for today... more to come tomorrow.

Keith

CRM Now has Operator and Appointment Boards!

I know we're fast when we add features, but this is getting ridiculous. Later today you will find two new additions to the My Dashboard area of the CRM tool:

• Operator Panel. OK so this has been here a while, but nobody new it was there. You can create phone scripts for the operator, show who's in the store and who is not and allow appointments to be scheduled
• Appointment Panels. Some of you have these really pretty plasma monitors in the showroom or tower, why not put them to good use?

Look in the lower right hand corner in the My Dashboard area for a drop down to try these new features out!

Keith

Changes in Sales DMS Reporting/Matching

Linking your DMS information to your CRM/ILM data is never easy, in fact it's just downright hard to do. We've made a number of changes as we continue to refine the process:

1. We now look for exact matches on salesperson names, both first and last, before we will auto-link DMS data to a record in iMagicLab. It's very important that you have the same data in your DMS as in your IML system so make sure you double check
2. We no longer support single name DMS entires. If the sale comes over with the salesperson name of "Bill" it will not auto-match, even if there is only one Bill in your IML system.
3. Later today we will push an enhancement to the Sales DMS report to allow you to force a match with mismatching records. Take a look tomorrow for this.

We're always working to improve and due to the arcane nature of DMS systems it makes it hard. Maybe we should build a DMS system? :)

Keith

New eBrochure Launches Today!

I'm VERY excited to announce a new feature to both the ILM and CRM products: eBrochure v2.0!

This new eBrochure gives you all the features of the old version but adds a ton more flexibility, you can add a header to brand it, we offer 8 different colorized skins you can choose from AND we now tell you when your prospects open the eBrochure!

SPAM was a major concern in this rewrite so you will notice we now drop in a button rather than the whole eBrochure into your outbound email. Customers click the botton and a vastly improved, richer experience awaits them.

Check it out inside your tool and I welcome your comments right here in the BLOG.

Keith

P.S. For those of you older users who prefer the previous version of our eBrochure just call support and they will switch you back to the past.