How to keep Facebook Marketplace leads from going cold.

• Messages go to whoever listed the car. When that person is off, busy or has left, nobody else sees them.
• They arrive as phone notifications among everything else, and a quick "is this still available?" is easy to leave for later.
• Nothing ties the message to the car on your lot, so nobody else can tell whether the customer got an answer.
• There's no reminder to follow up, so a buyer who goes quiet after one reply is simply forgotten.

Meta offers no way for any software, Motorvar included, to read Marketplace inquiries. When a car is listed under your dealership's Facebook Page, messages about it may arrive in the Page's own inbox instead. Bringing those Page messages into Motorvar is coming soon.

Messages sent to someone's personal profile can't be reached by any tool, so they have to be copied in by hand. That's why the habits below matter more than the software.

1. Where Facebook lets you, list cars as your dealership's Page rather than from a personal profile, so messages come to the business instead of one person.
2. Give one person the job of checking Marketplace messages through the day, and name a backup for their day off.
3. Turn every real inquiry into a lead the moment it arrives, with the car it's about and Facebook as the source. In Motorvar that's one short form on the leads board.
4. Reply within the hour, while the buyer is still looking at your car.
5. Ask for a phone number or an email address early, so the conversation doesn't depend on one Facebook account.

Change the words in brackets, keep them short, and always end with a simple next step.

• How fast should you answer a car lead?
• Moving your lot off spreadsheets