Dealership CRM Leads Not Arriving? A Diagnostic Tree

Six checks, in order, that find where a provider's lead stopped on its way to a salesperson, and the setting that gets it moving again.

"We are not getting our leads" is a feeling. One missing lead is a fact you can trace. Before you change any setting, pick a single lead the provider says it sent and collect five things:

• The customer's name, phone and email.
• The date and time the provider says it went out.
• The provider's lead ID or reference number.
• The exact address or link the provider delivered it to.
• Who at your store expected to see it, and where they looked.

Then walk the tree below in order. Each check either finds the lead or rules out a whole branch, and the order matters: there is no point tuning alerts for a lead the provider sent to an old mailbox.

1. Did the provider send it?
2. Did it go to the right delivery address or ADF email?
3. Is the website form connected?
4. Did it merge into a customer you already had?
5. Did the assignment rules hand it to someone you did not expect?
6. Did the alert reach the right person?

Most cases end at check one or two. The rest usually turn out to be a lead that arrived exactly as designed and landed somewhere nobody was looking.

Start on the provider's side, because the most common reason a lead never shows up is that it was never sent, or was sent somewhere else. Ask your provider rep for their delivery record of the lead: the time, the recipient address, the format and the delivery status. A good provider can read that back in a few minutes.

Things that quietly stop delivery on the provider's side:

• A campaign paused, a monthly budget used up early, or a billing hold on the account.
• A change to your radius, ZIP codes or vehicle filters that shrank the volume.
• A new account rep who rebuilt your delivery settings from an old form.
• A contract that ended or renewed with different terms nobody passed along.

Then compare their record with yours. In LeadLocate CRM, open Account Settings and Lead Source Settings. Each source shows its Total Leads Received and its Last Lead Received, and a source that has never received a lead reads Awaiting first lead. Open the source's Activity Log and look at the time the provider gave you. If there is no entry at all for that time, the lead never reached this source. The provider either did not send it or sent it to a different address, which is check two.

Leave your number and a lead specialist calls you back to answer your questions about pricing, coverage, and setup. Mon - Sat, 9:00 AM - 6:00 PM Pacific.

Prefer to talk right now? Call or text 844-376-2274.

Every lead source in LeadLocate has its own intake email address, and most providers deliver to it as an ADF email, the standard lead format for automotive. The guide to ADF XML explains the format. The question here is simple: is the address on the provider's file the one on your source?

Leads commonly go astray because the provider still has your previous CRM's address, a salesperson's personal email, or a group mailbox whose forward stopped when someone changed a password. Open the source, use Copy Address, and compare it character by character with what the provider has. To correct it, the What happens next panel on the source has a ready request with Copy Message that you can send straight to the provider.

The Activity Log result on each delivery tells you what happened when a lead did arrive:

If you run another CRM beside LeadLocate, Instant push to CRM email sends each lead from a source to your push-to-CRM address as a branded copy with ADF attached. When the lead is in LeadLocate and missing from the other system, check that address. The automotive CRM ADF XML integration page covers the setup.

Leads from your own website and landing pages do not come through a provider. They come through a form that posts to your account's form intake link. When those leads go quiet, the form is almost always the reason, and the trigger is usually a website change: a redesign, a new form plugin or a new vendor who rebuilt the contact page.

• Is the link where it belongs? Open the source in Lead Source Settings and use Copy URL. That link goes in the form's setting for where submissions are sent, not in a redirect or thank you page field.
• Do the fields match? Forms map best when the fields are called name (or first name and last name), phone, email and message. A submission needs a name and a phone or an email to become a lead.
• Did someone switch the source off? A source marked Active takes leads. One that was paused for a finished promotion stays paused until someone ticks the box again.
• Test it like a shopper. Fill in the form from your own phone and watch the Activity Log. Within moments the lead should appear with the source's label on it.

Forms built in LeadLocate need none of this: your LeadLocate website, personal salesperson websites and every page built in Lead Pages are connected from the day they go live. Chat tools and landing page tools from other vendors use the same form intake link. The how to connect a website form guide shows each step, and website forms to CRM explains the feature.

Now the lead has a Success entry in the Activity Log, and your team still says it is not there. The most common reason is that it landed on a customer the CRM already knew.

When a new inquiry carries the same phone and email as a customer already in your CRM, the customer keeps one record. The earlier history joins the new lead, a note on the lead lists what moved, and the lead still shows as New so a salesperson notices it. A manager who searches by today's date for a new name may miss it, because the name is one the store has seen before. Search by the customer's phone number or email instead.

A salesperson may also have combined records by hand with Merge Duplicate Records, which folds matching records into one keeper and writes a note of what was merged. The merge duplicate leads page explains both cases.

Two more places to look before you move on:

• The DNC Blacklist. A customer whose phone or email is on the Do Not Call Blacklist is hidden from every CRM view, whichever source they came through. If the customer once asked the store to stop contacting them, that is where their new inquiry sits.
• The Trash Bin. Deleted leads go to the Trash Bin with the delete reason, and they can be restored from there.

A lead that arrived and was assigned to someone other than the person waiting for it looks exactly like a lead that never arrived. Open the source and read its Lead Assignment.

• Round Robin rotates leads across the people in the rotation. A salesperson who is not in the rotation never receives one, and the rotation is set per person. See round robin lead assignment.
• Single User sends every lead to one person. If that person left or was switched off, the leads arrive with nobody working them. Point the source at an active user and save.
• Unassigned (everyone can claim) leaves each lead open for the first person who takes it. Nobody is told it is theirs, so these are easy to miss on a busy Saturday.

Two rules surprise stores most. On a rotating source, a returning customer who already has a salesperson goes back to that salesperson instead of the next person in line, which is usually what the store wants and occasionally what a new rep complains about. And every source has a Default Status for New Leads: newly arrived leads land in that status, so a Leads view set to show a different status keeps them out of sight while they sit safely in the CRM.

The last branch covers the lead that arrived, was assigned correctly and still went unworked because nobody heard about it.

• The source's alert. Under Notifications and Automation on the source, SMS notification on new lead texts the assigned salesperson the moment a lead arrives. Confirm it is ticked.
• The salesperson's number. The alert goes to the mobile number on the user record. It has to be the cell phone they carry, with no extension. A number that once replied with a stop keyword stops receiving alerts on that channel until it opts back in.
• Their own preferences. Each user sets alerts under Account Settings, My Account Settings, Alert Settings, with separate switches under Text Notifications and Notification Sounds. A manager can set them for anyone from User Management.
• The browser. Browsers block sound on a tab until someone clicks in the page, and a muted tab plays nothing. The on screen notice still appears, so if you see it, the alert fired.
• Manager copies. Manager copies on the source send each new lead to manager phones and emails, and Default Manager Copies cover leads that arrive without a source of their own.

The lead notifications and alerts page describes every alert type.

Exclusive local leads from your LeadLocate campaigns arrive on Your LeadLocate Feeds, which are set up for your account, so the provider and address checks above are ours to handle. Every lead in your zone is delivered to you alone, with LeadLocate as its source.

If a LeadLocate lead your team expected is not where they looked, run checks four to six first: a merge into an existing customer, the assignment on the feed and the alert to the salesperson. You choose the manager copies on each of your LeadLocate feeds, so a manager can see every lead land. Two account settings also change what arrives. A store on Skip A Month pauses lead delivery for that month while the CRM stays active, and the zone and campaign selections in Lead Targeting decide where leads come from. Our team can look up any delivery with you at 844-376-2274.

Keep this table by the desk for automotive lead delivery troubleshooting. Find the symptom, then go straight to the check.

To stop the problem returning, send one test lead per source each month and watch the Last Lead Received column. Give every provider its own source, so a silent one stands out. Before a website redesign, list every form and reconnect each one before launch. And when a salesperson leaves, update the rotation the same day. Lead sources, intake addresses, the Activity Log and manager copies are part of the LeadLocate CRM on every plan, and plans are on the pricing page. The lead source integration page covers how every source is set up.

The provider says they sent the lead, but the Activity Log shows nothing. What now?

The lead went to a different address. Ask the provider for the exact recipient address on their delivery record and compare it with the intake email on your source using Copy Address. Send them the ready request from What happens next with Copy Message, then ask for a test lead.

What do Parse failed and Intake unknown mean in the Activity Log?

Parse failed means the email reached your source but did not read as a lead, usually because the provider changed its format; our team sets the source up to read the new one. Intake unknown means mail arrived at an address that matches none of your sources.

The lead is in my inbox but not in the CRM. Why?

Your inbox copy and the CRM delivery are two separate destinations on the provider's side. The provider is emailing you a notice and sending the lead itself somewhere else, or nowhere. Give the provider your source's intake address as the delivery address for the lead.

A lead arrived but the salesperson never got an alert. What should we check?

Confirm SMS notification on new lead is ticked on the source, that the mobile number on the salesperson's user record is the cell they carry, and that Text Notifications are on in their Alert Settings. A source set to Unassigned has no owner to alert.

Why did a lead go to a different salesperson than the rotation?

On a rotating source, a returning customer who already has a salesperson goes back to that salesperson. Check the customer's history by phone number. If the source is set to Single User, every lead goes to that one person regardless of the rotation.

How quickly should a lead appear after the provider sends it?

Within moments. Send a test from your own phone, or ask the provider for one, and watch the source's Activity Log. If the provider's record shows a send time and your log shows nothing near it, the lead went to another address.

Can a provider send the same lead twice?

Yes, and it is harmless. A repeat delivery of the same message shows as Duplicate in the Activity Log and is created only once, so the customer never ends up with two records from one inquiry.

Watch the demo to see Lead Source Settings, the Activity Log and alerts at work, or call our team at 844-376-2274 to trace a delivery with you.

Prefer to talk right now? Call or text 844-376-2274.