What Is an Internet Lead?

A shopper who reaches the store as a record instead of a handshake, and the hour that decides whether it becomes an appointment.

An internet lead is an inquiry that arrives as data. Somebody typed their name, a phone number or email address and usually a vehicle into a form, and that record landed in the store's system. Nobody shook a hand, nobody took a copy of a license, and the salesperson is starting from a screen instead of a conversation.

That is the whole difference, and it explains everything else about how the job is done. A walk in is already standing in front of a vehicle and can be asked a question. An internet lead is a name, a number and a sentence of intent, and the first task is not selling, it is making contact with a human being who is probably looking at three other stores in another browser tab. The floor terms sit beside this one in the automotive sales glossary.

Six places cover most stores. The dealership's own website, which is usually the best quality traffic because the shopper chose the store. Third party lead providers and marketplaces, which sell inquiries the store did not generate itself. Paid campaigns pointing at a landing page. Chat on the website, which produces a lead from a conversation rather than a form. Text inquiries from an advertised number. And trade or offer pages, where somebody asks what their vehicle is worth, which is a sales lead wearing different clothes.

They do not behave alike, which is why they are never worth reporting as one line called Internet. A shopper who filled out a form on the store's own vehicle detail page is far along. A shopper who clicked a payment estimate on a marketplace may be six weeks away. Recording each place separately is the job of the lead source field, and a store that gets that wrong cannot tell the two apart.

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.

Illustrative example, not a statistic. Two stores receive the same inquiry about a used crossover at 6:10 in the evening. Store A has the lead routed to a rep who gets an alert on the phone, texts at 6:11 with his name and a photo of the unit, calls at 6:14, leaves a short voicemail, and follows with an email holding two payment structures. Store B assigns it in the morning, calls at 9:40 the next day and leaves a message asking the customer to call back.

By the time store B calls, the shopper has already had a conversation with store A about the vehicle, the trade and Saturday at 11. Store B is not competing on price at that point, it is competing for attention that has already been spent. That is why every conversation about internet leads becomes a conversation about response time, covered in detail on responding to internet leads in five minutes.

Five habits account for most of it. Leads with no owner, sitting in a shared inbox while everyone assumes somebody else has them. One attempt and a mental note, when the number of people who answer an unknown number on the first ring is small. A first message so generic the shopper cannot tell it from the four others they received. Working only the leads that look easy, which quietly abandons the half that take three weeks. And no written record, so the next rep who opens the file knows nothing about the conversation.

The sixth is treating an internet lead as a lesser customer. A shopper asking about a $60,000 truck from a phone at 11 at night is a buyer with a job and a family and no time to visit four lots. Explaining behaviour like that rather than complaining about it is what separates an internet department that produces from one that files complaints about lead quality.

Every source is set up as a feed, so the lead arrives attributed and already assigned to an owner, with a notification on the phone and on the screen. An automated first message can go out the second it lands, from a template written per source, so the shopper hears back before the tab is closed. From the record itself a rep texts in the two way texting inbox with pictures of the actual unit, calls through the browser softphone with the call recorded and transcribed, sends an email from the store's own domain, and books the appointment on a shared calendar. What happens after the first day is handled by follow up processes, multi step plans per lead type that keep the record moving for months, with the wording set once in automated templates. When the customer finally arrives, the record already holds the vehicle, the trade and the whole conversation.

How fast should you respond to an internet lead?

As close to immediately as the store can manage, and by more than one channel. An instant text acknowledging the inquiry buys the time it takes a person to make a real call.

Should the first contact be a call, a text or an email?

All three, in that order of value, starting with whichever is fastest. A text gets read, a call builds the relationship, an email carries the detail the shopper asked for.

Is an internet lead the same as an exclusive lead?

No. Internet lead describes how the shopper made contact. Exclusive describes how many stores received that same inquiry. An internet lead can be either exclusive or shared.

Should the BDC or the sales floor work internet leads?

Whichever can answer within minutes, every hour the store advertises. Most stores route provider traffic to the BDC for the first contact and hand the appointment to the floor.

A specialist drops a lead into a live account and works it the way a good rep would: alert, text, call, appointment, follow up plan.

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