Why Smart Dealerships Win With Unified Sales Platforms

App switching costs your sales teams time and money. Research from the Harvard Business Review found that on average, users switch between applications and websites almost 1,200 times daily. Each switch takes two seconds, which works out to 40 minutes of task-switching each day. And that’s not the only cost — according to the American Psychological Association (APA), “even brief mental blocks created by shifting tasks can cost as much as 40 percent of someone’s productive time.”

For dealership sales teams, constant switching can lead to several problems, including slow quoting, inventory visibility gaps, and inefficient use of CRM tools. The result? More work and fewer sales.

Unified dealer management platforms like NAXT offer single-source solutions that keep sales reps informed, improve customer experiences, and drive faster deal cycles. Here’s how.

What’s Holding Dealership Sales Back?

Teams rely on multiple systems to manage dealership sales. For example, staff may use customer relationship management (CRM) systems to track purchase and service histories, inventory management solutions to ensure vehicles are available, and quoting platforms to create customized pricing structures.

Individually, these applications are functional. In combination, however, they often frustrate sales team efforts.

Imagine a dealership called Henry’s Heavy Equipment Rentals, which has seen significant growth over the past year. Customers are satisfied, demand is steady, and the company is primed for an expansion. Henry’s top priority? Driving more sales to ensure steady revenue.

The 10-person sales team is given two goals. First is boosting current customer sales volumes. The second is finding (and converting) new sales leads. Disconnected systems, however, create four functional challenges. an integrated view of data across departments.

1) Duplicate data entry

Two sales team members are tasked with correlating customer, purchase, and service data across multiple platforms, which partially overlap. As a result, they spend more time identifying and removing duplicate information than finding new sales leads.

Duplicate data entry can also cause challenges if similar information is entered at different times in different applications — which source is the most accurate and relevant to the task at hand?

2) Limited inventory insights

The company’s best salesman, John, is closing the deal with a new client for 10 pieces of heavy equipment. But when the customer arrives to pick up their machinery, there’s nothing in stock. In the best-case scenario, John keeps the client but takes a loss on the sale. In the worst case, the client leaves and never comes back.

So what happened? Disconnected tools meant John was using out-of-date inventory information.

3) Quote delays

Henry prides himself on personalized, accurate sales quotes — but he’s not happy about how long his team takes to build and send these quotes. Without easy access to all relevant data sources, staff have two choices: Send over generic quotes ASAP, or take the time to sort through mountains of data. Neither is a great option.

4) Inconsistent follow-ups

Bob, Sam, and Lucy are responsible for customer follow-up. This helps ensure clients are satisfied with their experience and willing to return. Without a unified dealership platform, reminders may get lost in the shuffle, leading to late follow-ups and missed opportunities to strengthen customer relationships.

Integrated Systems = Better Sales

Choosing an integrated approach offers multiple benefits for sales teams, such as:

Faster quoting and proposal generation

Quotes and proposals depend on multiple pieces of data. From current pricing structures to inventory availability and equipment service histories, the more information sales teams have available, the faster they can create and send out quotes. With customers often facing strict project timelines, quicker quotes can mean more consistent sales.

Real-time access to inventory and pricing

Access to data isn’t enough on its own — this data must be complete, accurate, and available in real-time. Unified solutions provide a complete picture of on-site inventory, equipment earmarked for specific customers, and maintenance schedules that may impact availability. The NAXT platform collects all cost and revenue information on each piece of equipment, whether it is new, used, or part of your rental fleet. NAXT also connects both rental and service costs directly to the machine to improve financial visibility.

Visibility into customer histories

Past purchases and service experiences inform current sales efforts. With complete visibility into customer histories, sales teams are better equipped to create personalized offers and ensure timely follow-ups.

Automation of repetitive tasks

Tasks such as order creation, invoice approvals, and inventory tracking are necessary but time-consuming. Unified systems can help automate these repetitive tasks and provide more time for active sales efforts.

Access to sales dashboards and KPIs

Dashboards provide visibility into both current and historical sales volumes. Access to key performance indicators (KPIs), meanwhile, offers real-time performance insights to help managers and sales reps target key areas for improvement.

Making the Case for a One-System Model

Unified dealer platforms are all-in-one solutions that connect sales, inventory, finance, service, and customer data. For sales teams, deploying a one-system model significantly reduces the amount of time spent switching between apps and provides on-demand access to critical customer data.

The result is a more consistent approach to sales, service, and retention. Equipped with accurate data, sales teams can focus on what matters most: Customer relationships. Consider a seasonal client who rents 30-40 pieces of machinery each year and has done so for the past 5 years. In a fragmented sales system, it’s easy for staff to overlook persistent service and pricing issues that started small but have been steadily lowering the perceived value of the sales relationship. Using a unified platform, meanwhile, teams can easily track key metrics that let them take action ASAP.

The NAXT dealership platform is built on the trusted foundation of Microsoft Dynamics 365. With more than 700 preconfigured dealership processes, sales teams have everything they need to better connect with customers and drive increased revenue.

Why Dealerships Choose NAXT

The NAXT dealership platform covers 95% of core dealership processes right out of the box. With more than 20 years of experience, our global team of professionals ensures the solution is constantly refined and updated to meet evolving dealership expectations.

For Martin Briggs, president of RELIANZ mining, NAXT implementation helped his organization operate as “one team”, rather than sets of disconnected silos. “We’ve had better and faster access to data,” says Briggs, “which allows us to make decisions more in real time than the lag we had with our previous system.”

For Ben Van de Werff of Pon Equipment and Pon Power, NAXT provided a way to unify the entire sales process. “One set of data going all the way from prospects to the actual delivery means that we experience a lot fewer misunderstandings about the different options that we sell to the customer.”

While RELIANZ and Pon had different priorities, NAXT made both possible by providing complete visibility, ease of access, and consistency across sales data.

Better Together: Time to Consolidate Your Sales Stack

Disconnected applications can lead to longer sales cycles, missed sales opportunities, and customer dissatisfaction. Digital transformation driven by unified dealer management platforms provides on-demand access to the data your team needs when they need it. The result? Shorter sales cycles, more closed deals, and improved customer satisfaction.

With NAXT, your teams are better equipped to win more contracts and keep customers coming back. From complete department benchmarking to rental force visibility to client follow-up tracking, NAXT is your next step for success.

See how NAXT can unify and simplify your sales process. Schedule a demo today.

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