The 10-Second Version (AI Summary)
What happened: Earl Wheless of Gaffney Buick GMC shared on our latest Edge Webinar how his store reviews every flagged customer call in real time.
Why it matters: The store grew from about 50 to about 100 sales a month, and the calls they catch now are deals that used to disappear.
What to do: Get every call logged, even the "sorry, we sold it" ones, and coach from what you hear.
AI-generated and reviewed by the ASOTU team.
Where do customer conversations go when nobody writes them down?
One of our team members ran a pizza place right as ordering shifted from the phone to online. People would call in while they were placing an online order, just to explain the parts they couldn't figure out on the website. Wild days. Phones do all sorts of things, and the conversation that matters most is often happening somewhere you aren't looking.
Dealership phones work the same way. On our latest Edge Webinar with CallRevu, Paul sat down with Earl Wheless, Internet Sales Manager at Gaffney Buick GMC, and Trish Kaliandasani, Account Manager at CallRevu, to talk about the calls that slip through.
Earl's store went from three salespeople selling about 50 cars a month to five salespeople selling about 100.
Gaffney Buick GMC is a family-owned store in a small South Carolina community.
It has served the area for about 20 years, with a deep base of repeat customers. Here's how it has changed since Earl came back five years ago:
When Earl came back | Today | |
|---|---|---|
Salespeople | 3 | 5 |
Monthly sales | About 50 | About 100 |
Flagged calls reviewed and closed out | Under 100% | 100% |
Every incoming call gets analyzed. When the AI flags something, like an on-hold hang-up, a service customer who sounds unhappy, or a missed opportunity, every manager gets a text with a summary and a link to the recording. In one recent case, a salesperson told a caller the store had no blue Sierra 1500. Three were in transit. The store caught it, called back, and worked on setting an appointment.
"[Y]ou just kind of spin around at the desk and say, 'Hey, Jamie, did you hear what that customer said?'"
Earl Wheless, Internet Sales Manager, Gaffney Buick GMC
Earl's first habit for any new internet sales manager:
Auto-log every call into the CRM, because salespeople skip logging "sorry, we sold it" calls when they think those calls count against them.
Review those calls from a dashboard widget, where the AI tags the stock number or model the customer asked about.
Attach a follow-up workflow so no caller just disappears.
Why do salespeople stop dreading recorded calls?
When Gaffney started reviewing calls, the team played recordings in meetings, and the room winced. Some calls ended with a quick "no, we don't have that one" and a hang-up. Once everyone knew the calls were reviewed, and that reviews were for coaching, the work got better. Earl's team now goes through flagged calls in sales meetings every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, adds notes to each alert, and closes every one out. Owner Scott tells his managers to be servants to their people, and wins that come from a callback get celebrated out loud.
Paul's take: Any owner can record calls. The ones whose teams treat it as coaching are the ones who earned that trust.
What gets measured gets improved. Trish offered a simple test: can you say how many deals your call alerts saved this month? If that number doesn't come easily, start there. The full replay is linked at the top of this piece.
