In Store Now: Know Who Is on the Lot

The most valuable customer a dealership has is the one standing in the showroom right now. In-Store Now puts that fact on the lead, where the whole store can see it.

In-Store Now is the flag on a lead in LeadLocate CRM that says this person is physically here, on the lot, at this moment. That is all it is, and it is one of the more useful small things in the CRM, because a dealership's day is organized around exactly that fact. Who is in the building decides which manager walks the floor, which desk gets the next number, whether the BDC keeps calling a customer who is standing at a desk, and whether the appointment the BDC booked at ten actually showed.

Most stores track it on a whiteboard or not at all. The whiteboard knows a name and maybe a rep; it does not know that the name is a lead that came in on Tuesday from a specific source, texted twice, and asked about a specific unit. The LeadLocate CRM knows all of that, and In-Store Now attaches the visit to it. The result is that the store's record of a customer, from the first text to the delivery, includes the day they walked in, and everybody working that customer saw it happen.

At ten fifteen a couple walks in and says they have an appointment. The receptionist finds the lead, the one the BDC booked yesterday, and flags it In-Store Now. On the floor, the assigned rep already knows they are here because the lead is his and it is now marked as in the building; he stops what he was doing and meets them. In the BDC, the agent who booked the appointment sees the flag and stops the reminder call she was about to make, and counts the appointment as shown. At the desk, the sales manager sees that a customer who asked about a specific used truck is on the lot and pulls that unit's numbers before the rep asks.

At noon a walk in wanders the front line with no lead in the system. The rep who takes him creates the lead from the phone app with a driver license scan, flags him In-Store Now, and the store now knows one more thing than it did: there is a live customer on the lot, who has him, and what he is looking at. When the couple from ten fifteen leaves without buying, the flag comes off, the visit is in the record, and the unsold showroom follow up starts from a lead that says exactly when they were here and what they saw. Nobody asked who had the guy in the blue shirt, because the CRM already said.

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.

In-Store Now is set on the lead record itself, in the Leads menu of the desktop CRM, where the lead's conversation, status, tags, appointments and notes already live. It is a control on the lead rather than a separate screen, which is the point: the person flagging a customer is looking at that customer's record, and the people who see the flag are the people who work that record. A Manager looking at the team's leads sees who is in the building across the floor; a User sees it on the leads they are working.

It sits alongside the rest of the lead's identity. Custom lead statuses say where a lead is in the process; tags say what kind of lead it is; row colors make both visible at a glance in the inbox; In-Store Now says whether the lead is standing in the showroom right now. Inventory Link shows on the CRM side too, in the Inventory menu and on the phone app, so a rep with an in store customer can pull the unit the customer came to see and send it into the conversation with the vehicle insert button without leaving the lead. The what is a walk in page covers the customer who arrives with no lead; In-Store Now is what turns that arrival into a record.

A whiteboard answers one question, who is here, and it answers it only for the people standing in front of it. The flag answers several. Who is here, because the lead is marked. Who has them, because the lead is assigned. Where they came from, because every lead carries its source from Lead Feeds Manager. What they want, because the conversation is on the lead: the texts, the calls, the unit they asked about. Whether the appointment showed, because the appointment on the calendar and the flag on the lead are the same customer.

That last one matters more than it looks. A BDC is judged on appointments that show, and an appointment that shows is exactly a lead that was booked and then flagged In-Store Now. When the flag is the habit, the store has a record of shown appointments that came from the work rather than from a BDC manager's memory, and the argument between the BDC and the floor about whether the customer ever came in has an answer. The in store customer check in page walks through the whole arrival, from the flag to the license scan; this page is the flag itself.

Once a customer is flagged in store, the rest of the CRM is waiting. The identity scanner reads a driver license and an insurance card into the customer record, so the name, address and date of birth on the deal are what the license says. The Customer Profile is the one shared buyer record, co-buyer included, with personal information encrypted, that the desk and the deal both read from. Start New Deal from the lead opens EZ Desking with the customer already in it, and the deal carries a Road to Sale checklist so nothing between the demo and the delivery is forgotten. The deal's visit log records the visit against the deal.

If the customer wants to apply for financing, the rep texts a SecureWebX apply link and the application comes back to the finance office while the customer is still in the chair. If the customer wants to take the numbers home, the deal goes out as a customer deal page with e-signature and a PIN, and the conversation continues in Deal Chat. Every one of those tools starts from the same lead the flag was set on, which is why setting the flag is the first thing a rep does when a customer arrives and not an afterthought.

It replaces the up board, the shout across the showroom, and the text to the manager that says the ten fifteen is here. None of those cost money and all of them cost something: the appointment that showed and was never counted, the customer two reps both thought was theirs, the walk in who left before anyone knew he had arrived, the BDC reminder call that reached a customer who was sitting at a desk twenty feet from the caller. Some stores buy a separate showroom traffic tool to fix that, with its own tablet at the door, its own login and its own monthly bill, and then find that it and the CRM disagree about who came in.

In-Store Now is part of LeadLocate CRM on every plan, including CRM Only, listed on the pricing page, with no separate tool to buy and, more usefully, no separate record to reconcile. The visit is on the lead, and the lead is where the store already keeps everything else about that customer, so reports that read the CRM read the visit too. The unsold showroom follow up page explains what a store does with the customers who came in and left; In-Store Now is how the CRM knows who those customers were.

A customer on the lot hands over more personal information in an hour than a lead does in a week: a driver license, an insurance card, a trade title, a phone number written on a worksheet. When that information lands on sticky notes and in photos on personal phones, the store has copies it cannot see and cannot delete. When the customer is flagged In-Store Now on a lead, and the license is scanned into the Customer Profile where personal information is encrypted, and the trade goes into the trade in form with its photos and VIN scan, the store has one record, in one place, that the roles in User Management control.

The flag also creates the honest timeline that follow up depends on. A store that texts a customer three days after a visit is in a different position from one that texts a stranger, and the record of the visit, the conversation and the customer's consent all sit on the same lead. The DNC Blacklist with its live do not call lookup applies before any of that follow up goes out. And the flag comes off when the customer leaves, so nobody is marked as in the building who is not; it describes the present, and the lead's history describes the past.

There is nothing to turn on. In-Store Now is on the lead record in LeadLocate CRM from the first login on every plan. The setup is a habit rather than a setting: whoever greets a customer, the receptionist, the rep or the manager on the floor, finds the lead and sets the flag, and takes it off when the customer leaves. Stores that make the flag the first act of an arrival find that the appointment show count fixes itself, because showing up and being flagged become the same event. The help center article shows where the control is on the lead.

Pair it with the driver license scanner, so the customer who is here becomes a customer record in one scan. Pair it with the shared calendar and its appointments, so a booked appointment and a flagged arrival tell the BDC the appointment showed. Pair it with Team Chat, where the floor hears that the customer with the trade just pulled in, and with the desking tool, where the manager pulls numbers for the unit the customer came to see. If you want to see an arrival handled end to end before signing up, the pre-recorded live demo shows the CRM in use, and the contact page reaches a person who can talk through how a store your size runs its showroom.

What does In-Store Now actually do?

It marks a lead in LeadLocate CRM as physically on the lot right now. Anyone working the lead, and any Manager looking at the team's leads, sees the flag, and the visit becomes part of the lead's record.

Where do I set it?

On the lead record in the Leads menu of the desktop CRM, alongside the lead's status, tags, conversation and appointments. Take it off when the customer leaves so it always describes who is in the building now.

Does it work for a walk in with no lead?

Yes. Create the lead first, from the desk or from the phone app with a driver license scan, then flag it. The walk in becomes a record with a source, a conversation and a visit instead of a name nobody wrote down.

How does it help the BDC?

A booked appointment plus an In-Store Now flag on the same lead is a shown appointment. The BDC sees the customer arrived, stops reminder calls, and the show count comes from the record rather than from memory.

Is In-Store Now a showroom traffic system with a tablet at the door?

It is a flag on the lead inside the CRM, not a separate system. The value is that the visit lives with the lead's source, conversation, deal and follow up, so nothing has to be reconciled between two tools.

Does it cost extra?

No. In-Store Now is part of LeadLocate CRM on every plan, including CRM Only. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page.

In-Store Now is part of LeadLocate CRM on every plan, month to month. See an arrival handled from the flag to the deal in the demo, or ask us how stores your size run the showroom.

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