Walk-in to won: running a whole wheel sale on one screen

Comparing feature lists tells you very little about whether software will help at the counter. Walking a real sale through it tells you a lot. So here's one, start to finish, the way it runs when everything lives in one place.

A customer pulls in. He's been thinking about wheels for his truck for a while and wants to see options. This is the point where it usually gets slow.

The customer goes in first

Name, number, and his vehicle. It takes a few seconds, and it matters because everything that follows attaches to him instead of to a sticky note that gets thrown away on Friday.

Then a photo of his truck

The actual one, sitting in your lot, taken on a phone. Most shops skip this because they've never had a reason to take it. It's the step that changes the rest of the conversation. There's advice on getting a usable shot in how to photograph a car for a wheel preview.

Wheels from your catalog, not a binder

Filtered to what fits and what he's after, so he's choosing between three real options rather than scrolling a wall of them. He points at two or three.

The wheels go on his truck

Ten seconds later he's looking at his own vehicle, his color, wearing the set he pointed at. This is where the hesitation tends to go, because there's nothing left for him to picture.

Fitment gets checked while he looks

Bolt pattern, offset and clearance against his truck specifically. If something won't work you find out now, with him standing there and three other options on screen, rather than in the bay next week with the tires already mounted.

Price the job in the same place

Wheels, tires, TPMS, mount and balance, as one number next to the picture. He sees what it looks like and what it costs in the same glance, which is the combination that gets a yes.

If he still wants to think

Text him the link. He shows it to his wife at home. You can see whether he opened it, which tells you who's worth a call on Thursday and who isn't.

However it ends, it's recorded

Interested, won or lost. The sale carries a status, so your close rate becomes a number you can look at rather than a feeling you have. Over a few months that also tells you which wheels actually sell, which is worth more than any supplier's recommendation.

Read back through that and notice what didn't happen. No switching between tools, no retyping a spec into a quote, no hunting for a photo of approximately the right vehicle, no sticky note. That's the case for running it on one system: the sale never has to stop while you go and find something.