WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif. — CallSource, a provider of call tracking, marketing analysis and sales improvement, launched the RADAR Report, which ranks automotive retailers by their success in converting prospect calls into showroom appointments. The report measures call performance for dealers across the country and provides benchmarks for how dealerships are doing compared to their competition.

As more retailers are shifting their focus to various forms of online marketing, they are often overlooking the fact that more than 80 percent of customers use the phone to contact a dealership when they are ready to buy, officials said. If retailers could turn just a few more calls per week into appointments, they can improve annual profits by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“How incoming calls are handled is still an incredibly important part of automotive retailing success,” said Andrew Price, president of CallSource Automotive. “The RADAR Report provides a comprehensive measurement showing how dealerships fare against competition in their geography and also against other dealers in the same brand. Providing statistical measurement of call management performance provides dealerships with a baseline to understand how they are doing and also provides a method to help them track improvements over time.”

The report will highlight the Top 10 performing dealerships for overall call-to-appointment ratios. Currently, the industry average is 7.8 percent, though several CallSource clients are approaching 30 percent. “We see the RADAR Report as an aspirational goal for the automotive retailing industry,” Price said. “Car dealers are competitive by nature and we believe they will up their game to see their name on the RADAR Report. By focusing attention on call management performance, we believe the industry as a whole will begin to improve.”