In 2017, TECOBI began as a Facebook marketing company for auto dealerships, offering a basic text messagingapplication to work with leads generated from social networks. We experienced rapid success due to the large lead volumes we were seeing from Facebook, signing up 130 dealerships nationwide in our first year. However, as we entered our second year, we faced major setbacks, losing 100 of our 130 clients and downsizing from 30 employees to just 4. The brand new company we just built, and thought we hit a homerun with, was on the brink of complete failure.
With only a $20,000 AMEX card left, I made the pivotal decision to jump on a plane and visit our remaining clients. The goal was to learn why dealers struggled to convert the massive volumes of leads generated through social media.
As I visited the dealerships, I discovered that the problem wasn’t a lack of motivation or effort from the salespeople. The issue was rooted in the mismatch between traditional CRM tasks and the unique characteristics of salespeople. Salespeople typically have short attention spans and require constant stimulation, making it difficult for them to focus on completing numerous CRM tasks and making countless calls that often lead to voicemails. This inefficiency led to cherry-picking leads instead of effectively following up with all potential customers. If the salespeople couldn’t effectively follow up with “in-market shopper” leads, there was no way they could follow up with an additional 500+ leads from social media.
After a year of traveling the country, I returned to the office with a mission: reinvent the lead follow-up process or I would have to start a new business. Over the course of the next year, I focused on rethinking lead follow-up, with text messaging and AI at its core. I aimed to create a system that would cater to the needs of salespeople while increasing efficiency in the follow-up process.
TECOBI has since emerged as a game-changing solution for dealerships, streamlining the lead follow-up process and prioritizing text messaging as the central channel for customer communication. Our platform offers features like Chat GPT Call Summaries, Digital Retail Landing Pages, DMS Integration, and TCPA & 10DLC Compliance, which further enhance the overall customer experience.
However, text messaging solved the problem a little too well. Dealerships went from have to make countless phone calls and complete mountains of tasks, to find one engaged customer, to sending a text message in the morning and ending up with hundreds of engaged customers at the push of a button. This newfound efficiency created the need for our BDC Services and Text Ninjas to help offset the overwhelming number of engaged customers.
Our Text Ninjas collaborate effortlessly with your sales team, engaging leads and obtaining vital customer information through captivating conversations. As leads become warm and qualified, we pass them on to your skilled closers, ensuring a seamless transition and optimizing the opportunity for success.
Addressing the inherent inefficiencies in traditional CRMs, embracing AI-driven innovation, and offering a robust support system with our BDC Services and Text Ninjas, TECOBI is transforming the automotive dealership landscape and setting a new standard for lead follow-up and customer engagement.
By using text message in the mornings to find customers that want to actively engage for the day, we can eliminate the need for sales staff to complete boring task work. At the push of a button, TECOBI’s platform can text message a working pipeline of leads and instantly find people who want to talk about buying a car right now. This pulls the sales team off the work they don’t want to do and gives them exactly what they want: engaged customers that want to talk.
Forcing your salespeople to sit at a desk, and complete boring follow up tasks, is like sticking a lion in a cage. Use text message to free them from those cages!
For those that have read this far into this blog, it’s my birthday next week. I rarely do any type of discount. Because our services are worth what we charge, but any dealer who signs up before the end of April 2023, will receive 50% off their setup fee if they mention this particular blog. Use the button below to schedule a demo.
