Recent Press - Miles Stearman

If auto dealerships respond slowly to Internet sales leads, don't blame customer-relationship management software, says Fran O'Hagan. He is CEO of Piped Piper, a consultancy that does an annual study using mystery shoppers to gauge Internet lead effectiveness of dealerships by vehicle brand.

CRM systems help dealerships track and manage leads. But the systems only are as good as the people using them – if they use them at all. “CRM is great” and does what it is supposed to do, O'Hagan says. When Internet mystery shoppers encounter a problem, “it isn't a problem with the CRM systems. The dealership process is broken.”

Fran O'Hagan recalls when his vice president of operations, Miles Stearman, phoned him with a sudden realization about selling cars in the digital age.

“Miles called from a dealership he was visiting and said, ‘The Internet is no longer incremental business at dealerships; it is the business,' and that's so true today,” says O'Hagan, president and CEO of Pied Piper Management, a firm that consults with dealers on boosting sales.