Stop Losing Sales to Missed Test Drives — Field Force Tracking is the Answer

Fix your sales agents’ workflow and prevent missed test drives in your car dealership with field force tracking.

Offering test drives is one of the most effective car sales strategies. It allows customers to gauge the car’s build, interiors and performance while being emotionally appealing.

The result? You build strong customer relationships and boost car sales.

However, missed test drives and untracked sales visits are common challenges faced by car dealerships. Not only is it a big loss for the dealerships but also affects their market reputation and customer loyalty.

So, how to fix this issue?

Well, the best way is to use field force tracking software to manage your agents’ sales and visits. Dive in to learn how!

5 Main Reasons Behind Missed Test Drives and Untracked Sales Visits in Car Dealerships

Before we learn how to use field force tracking to eliminate missed test drives, it’s important to know the reasons behind missed test drives. We have narrowed down the cause of missed test drives and untracked sales visits to the following 5 reasons.

1. Poor Test Drive Scheduling

The leading cause behind missed test drives is poor scheduling. Many car dealerships rely on calls or WhatsApp messages to coordinate with their staff. These modes of communication are prone to errors and difficult to keep track of.

Without a centralized system to log every test drive appointment and monitor visits, it’s difficult to know vehicle availability, driver availability, and assign tasks optimally.

2. Lack of Communication with Leads

Customers often book test drives casually and later lose interest. This results in agents’ time and efforts being wasted. Dealers also fail to reconfirm test drives with timely calls and messages.

They don’t follow up with customers, solve their queries on time or fail to gauge their seriousness through screening forms. It results in low-quality leads or potential buyers who miss their scheduled test drives.

3. Unprepared Field Executives

Creating and assigning tasks without carrying out locational research or checking vehicle availability can cause last minute hurdles in the test drive appointment.

Agents may not be aware of the exact make and model of the car or forget to tell customers about key features. All this arises from poor preparation and not taking test drives seriously.

4. No Accountability

A scattered workflow is another huge reason for missed test drives. When sales or test drive agents work without accountability, marking tasks done without verification and self-assigning tasks without authorisation, it leads to a haphazard workflow. This can result in scheduled appointments being overlooked or completely missed.

5. No Real-Time Work Monitoring

Without live activity tracking of your agents, it’s hard to verify whether a field visit was completed or skipped. Lack of GPS tracking or digital check-ins leads to:

• Executives marking test drives as done without proof.
• Managers unaware of no-shows or fake visit reports.
• No visibility into field activities – travel, test drive tasks, break times

How To Tackle Missed Test Drives and Untracked Sales Visits With Field Force Tracking?

Here are 9 strategies car dealerships can adopt to get rid of missed test drives and better track their sales visits.

1. Integrate Basic Activity Tracking Tools

Field force tracking software is essential to manage your field sales agents and their activities. It allows managers to:

• Review geo-verified attendance at test drive site
• Check actual workhours and verify visits
• View every agent’s time spent with the customer
• Collect customer data via custom forms
• Optimise travel routes for agents

2. Smart Task Scheduling

To solve the biggest cause of missed test drives, scheduling conflicts, you need a field task management system. It helps car dealerships to:

• Assign tasks and schedule test drives based on reps’ availability, location and bandwidth.
• Attach detailed descriptions and audio notes to explain tasks in detail irrespective of the language.
• Prevent repeat task allocation and detect any duplication or overlaps.
• Assign tasks in advance and ensure vehicle availability.

3. Use Automated Reminders

Many sales tracking solutions support automated reminders via SMS, email, WhatsApp, Telegram, and other channels. Sales teams can also directly communicate with customers to confirm or remind them of scheduled test drives.

Managers can implement a two-step confirmation:

• One 24 hours before
• Another 1 hour prior to the scheduled drive

A simple reminder or confirmation call increases the likelihood of the customer showing up or rescheduling responsibly. Automated updates also keep sales reps informed about any shift or task changes.

4. Live Visibility into Field Operations

What gets measured, gets managed. 

This applies strongly to sales visits and test drives as well.

With built-in GPS technology and geofencing, field force tracking software lets managers track the real-time location and activities of their sales teams. Managers can set virtual boundaries around test drive sites & stay updated whenever agents enter/exit these zones. They can instantly check whether a sales rep is on the way, stuck in traffic, or taking a wrong route.

Furthermore, manager can:

• View completed vs. pending test drives
• Prevent inefficient routes through integrated maps.
• Spot geographic gaps in lead coverage
• Reassign a different rep if assigned one is unavailable or delayed
• Understand the real time-to-close for leads after test drives
• Identify reps who need support or retraining

This live visibility ensures smoother test drive operations and higher customer satisfaction.

5. Smarter, Data-Backed Analysis

Field sales tracking tools for car dealerships can be used to analyse customer and employee data. They can generate various reports that help to gain valuable insight into sales visits and test drives.

You can use Target vs Achievement report and Task Completion report to check:

• Areas with high no-show rates.
• Underperforming sales reps.
• The most productive time slots.
• The most in-demand car models.

Using this data, managers can optimize appointment scheduling, allocate resources efficiently, and target high-conversion areas.

6. Empower the Field Sales Team

Field sales teams are the face of your car dealership. They are the ones who interact with customers and drive revenue. Empowering them can improve their morale and boost performance. You can take the following steps to empower your sales reps.

• Train reps on customer handling: Not just pitching but listening and building rapport.
• Set daily visit and follow-up targets: Make field accountability part of the culture.
• Recognize consistency, not just high performance: Reward those who deliver reliable customer experiences.

7. Customer Pre-Qualification and Prioritisation

Not all leads are of the same quality and should be prioritised as such. Some customers may only want a quick demo of the car, and some may require multiple test drives and consultations.

Thus, you should conduct customer surveys before scheduling appointments and setting their priority. Using field force automation software like TrackoField, you can better capture customer intent or data using forms with custom fields. Here is the data you should collect:

• Is the customer ready to buy within a certain timeframe?
• Have they shortlisted specific models?
• Are they comparing multiple dealers?

By filtering for intent, you reduce wasted test drives and prioritize high-potential leads.

8. Offer Incentives for Showing Up

To ensure customers show up for test drives, you can offer small perks like:

• Free fuel vouchers
• Car care kits
• Service discounts

These serve as reward for customers and make them more likely to show up for the test drives. Plus, it drives engagement, improves service satisfaction and helps to build a loyal customer base.

9. Custom Test Drive Locations

Using historical data, car dealerships can figure out where customers like to take test drives the most. It could be at near their home, office or a traffic-free location. Thus, car dealerships can offer test drives to clients at their preferred locations. The result?

• Increased convenience for customers
• Enhanced brand image of dealership

How TrackoField Helped Car Dealership Streamline Its Sales and Test Drives?

TrackoField offers powerful yet easy-to-use tools that bring structure and organisation to your sales operations without overwhelming your team. Plus, it prioritises monitoring and supervision without invading privacy.

The car dealership gained instant visibility into every stage of customer engagement thanks to TrackoField’s GPS-based visit verification, real-time test drive scheduling, and sales rep productivity tracking. The software also ensured:

• Test drives were conducted on time.
• Follow-ups were not missed.
• Field executives remained accountable.

With route distance tracking, attendance monitoring, and performance analytics, car dealerships can optimize manpower, reduce lead leakage, and deliver a more consistent customer experience.

The best thing? All this can happen without increasing administrative overload on your field agents.

Conclusion

Offering test drives to potential customers is necessary for any car dealership. It appeals to customers’ emotions, boosts conversions and builds brand trust.

But many car dealerships struggle with missed test drives and untracked sales visits too. How do they solve them?

Well, test drives should be properly scheduled, leads and reps should be regularly reminded. Also, sales reps should work with accountability, and managers should have visibility into test-drive operations.

A field force tracking system can help you achieve all this. If you need more convincing, explore TrackoField and book a free demo today.

FAQs

• How to reduce missed test drives in auto dealerships?

  Here a few steps you can take to reduce missed test drives in auto dealerships.
  -Optimise test drive scheduling
  -Improve your reconfirmation process
  -Experiment with pre-drive videos and light customer incentives
  -Equip your field team with tools that give you visibility, not control

• What are common reasons why sales visits are not tracked at dealerships?

  The most common reasons behind test drive visits going untracked are:
  -Not using an effective field force tracking solution
  -Loss of network connectivity
  -Self-assigning tasks without informing managers

• How can missed test drives impact dealership revenue?

  Missed test drives or customer no-shows can affect your car dealership’s market reputation and word-of-mouth among the customers. Missed test drives also lead to resource and time wastage, which directly affects sales revenue.