Archive for the ‘Auto Dealer BDC Consulting’ Category

Doctor Doctor – Dealer e Process

Monday, August 16th, 2010

“I play a doctor on television”……………..

……..would you let him operate on you? Probably not- yet we still see time and time again people holding “Internet Marketing, Management, Director and/or Guru” titles in dealerships who have absolutely no right being at the helm of the Internet Sales Department ship. He or she interviewed well for the job, threw around the right buzz words and was convincing enough to get an offer letter. He or she talked a good talk, but once on the job they struggle to walk the walk.

Doctor Auto Dealer

Why is that? How does this happen and more importantly what can you do to make sure that when you are hiring for your Internet Department’s Manager you know what you are looking for?

You need to know and document (job description) what experience and skills you need for the sales end of things within your internet department and then identify what experience and skill you need for the technical, operational and promotional aspect of your Internet marketing- 2 separate individuals and/or skill sets. More often than not a store hires an Internet Manager with the expectation that the manager will:

  • Provide IT support
  • Manage the store(s) network
  • Troubleshoot for end users of systems
  • Manage the dealer’s websites(s)
  • Promote the website (SEO and SEM)
  • Promote the store (merchandizing of inventory and ecommerce marketing)
  • Manage the departments staff- develop and motivate
  • Manage the CRM and its users
  • Manage Third Party lead providers
  • Manager inventor on websites such as Cars.com & Autotrader
  • Manage a pricing tool such as VAuto or Firstlook
  • Sell the appointment, and in some stores sell the vehicle

These expectations are a very tall order for one person alone to pull off. The reality is that it will be like finding a needle in a haystack to fill a job description that lists all of those performance requirements. To fill that would mean finding someone who has the ability to deliver soft skills (sales, negotiating, communicating, rapport building –people skills etc) along with hard skills (vast technical knowledge, computer skills etc.)

Don’t get me wrong, it can be done, but it is very tough to find a candidate that possesses all of the skill sets necessary to fulfill each one of these requirements. Usually if a person is strong in soft skills they have a tendency to be weaker in the hard skills and vice a versa. Not impossible, just unlikely.

We have a tendency to do what I call “easy hires” in dealerships. Here is the scenario; we like a particular sales guy or girl, she or he is just not quite cutting the mustard in the sales department, they have a knack for computer knowledge, you find yourself going to him or her when there is a “technical issue” with your network or something computer related. What do you do? Well a lot of stores take someone like this and place them at the helm of that Internet Department ship or the BDC- you give them the scalpel and sutures and tell them to get to work. Best intentions are usually at play here but a set up for mediocrity at best for the employee and the department.

Your Internet Department cannot thrive with mediocrity. If you want to own your segment of the market you have to do what everyone else isn’t doing.

If your hiring for the department is an outside job be careful that you are not looking for the “Geek Squad” guy or girl to come cruising in with a pocket protectors, radiation burns from their computer screens and a plethora of Internet Marketing and technology buzz words they throw around……this is not a sound criteria in which to decide to offer them the Internet Department Manager position either. This type will do well with your technical and operational end of things but typically fail miserably when it comes to people skills necessary for sales.

The most successful Internet Departments I ever worked with had 2 captains at the helm. They did not necessarily share “captain” title either. The Internet Manager was the driver of the department- the people driver and his or her “assistant” was the technical guru. A good Internet Manager will see to it that his or her department is structured that way. A good Internet Manager (or any manager for that matter) knows exactly his or her weaknesses and hires and develops people around themselves accordingly.

I recommend when interviewing, that first and foremost on your interview question sheet is how the candidate plans on creating a fine oiled machine. This will help you to determine with all that is needed to be done well in your Internet Department if this person has the leadership qualities necessary to identify deficiencies and find or develop their people to support them..

Dealer e Process

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Don’t Be A Tiger Woods With Your Internet/BDC Dept.

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

Does your store play the sales game with a style similar to Tiger Woods? Does your store “appear” to be a great professional, ethical and respectful player at first only to prove otherwise once a customer sets foot in your store? Let me ask it another way; does your Internet and/BDC department perform  like a competitive “pro” on your first nine holes of the sales game, getting them in the door- only to find your sales department causes the game to fall apart with a weak and cheap approach on the back nine of the sales round? Does a less than satisfactory number make you feel like you were chased and beat with a 9 iron?

Tiger Woods Cheating Automotive sales are much like the game of golf: there is a front nine and a back nine to the “game”. 80%+ of the time the front nine of the game, generating and cultivating of the sales leads, takes place in an Internet and/or BDC department through an Internet lead or phone up.  When the front nine is “played” well in a store, there is an appointment set by your Internet and/or BDC department. This appointment “shows” and the back nine of the game is played out. There is either a “score” (sale) or the brutal reality that you just played an expensive round and you are a shankapotomus. When you compare the cost of advertising and doing business with today’s green fees you can see that blowing a sale in your store on the back nine can cost more than a round of golf, and isn’t nearly as much fun.

Here are 3 things to consider for increasing your stores likelihood of a playing a great back nine once the front nine has been completed:

First impressions- you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Cliché I know, but so critical in this case. Do you know how many times I have walked into a store to find an antiquated “firing squad tower” of sales managers? To the average visitor this presentation is menacing to say the least, makes one feel as though they are approaching the Wizard of Oz.

Let’s start with body language- smiles are usually at a premium in stores that have less than stellar closing ratios. I once visited 17 stores in one day and made a note of the number of stores where I was greeted by a warm friendly face. Three (3), that’s right THREE stores used smiles as part of their sales process. Not surprising to me, these were the only 3 stores out of the 17 that had sales activity underway. Coincidence? The other 14 stores sales people all looked as if they were fed the same Ex-Lax frosted brownies.

If you cannot be a welcoming environment in the first 30 seconds of a prospects visit- you substantially lower your likelihood of a sale. (Regardless of how wonderful the appointment setter is). Remembering here that a customer can drive 10 miles in either direction of your store and most likely find a like or exact vehicle to the one that brought them into your store. Customers are looking for a SALESPERSON first- car second.

Transition from Internet/BDC sales lead to sales floor opportunity- make the appointed prospect feel “expected” and special- you and I know just how “special” they are (it’s what we are all working so hard for right? The appointment?)….let them know how “special” they are, give the impression you have been waiting for them when they arrive. Appointment boards where the prospect can see it is a huge tool for this effect. A store I worked in Seattle made sure that every appointment whenever possible was posted on the managers appointment board and the vehicle of interest was prepped and sitting ready for a test drive in a designated “holding” area- cleaned, warmed up or cooled off.

Communication- Make sure the right hand knows what the left hand is doing. This is a leading factor of a debacle in a store that has an Internet/BDC department which creates appointments for sales people. Your departments have to be on the same page ALL the time. This starts with how you present your store, inventory and specials on your website and in your advertising.  Once a prospect gets ONE piece of information different from what he or she received from the Internet/BDC department- your credibility has taken a hit and you will spend a significant amount of time having to rebuild it in order to move the prospect along in the process. Once you have created this shake in credibility- it is very hard- if not impossible to regain control and rapport with the prospect. A critical factor; sharing of correspondence and ALL information that the prospect has received from your store prior to their visit making sure that there is consistency in your communications with the prospects across the board.

By making sure you have these few consistent policies in place you can greatly improve your likelihood of closing those much cherished Internet and/or BDC appointments. Play the whole game with professionalism, integrity and respect towards your prospects- remembering they can “play around” at dozens of other courses but they chose yours- Show em that you are truly the Jack Nicklaus of the game.

Dealer E Process

For more information on Internet/BDC Consulting, Contact Dealer e Process at 877-551-2555

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Auto Dealer Aged Inventory

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

Is your inventory like a fine wine aging to “perfection?” The word “age” and the word “inventory” used in the same sentence in our industry spells COST- to you!

My job is to go through dealer’s websites and analyze their web presence, the “stickiness” of its visitors and the websites general effectiveness as it relates to ecommerce efficiency and inventory management.

I have noticed over the last 2 months a phenomenon as I visit hundreds of dealer websites a week- less than 20% have advertized updated specials for their aging inventory- and typically the ones that DON’T have the oldest inventory. As a matter of fact over 50% of the sites visited had NO advertised specials at all. I found quite a few dealer sites that had large amounts of inventory that had been sitting on their lots for two, three and four hundred plus days! Yes you read that right. One particular site showed an average of over 200 days in stock for well over 40% of their total inventory.

In tough times we are going to see these numbers increase- but what baffles me is the majority of stores do nothing to merchandize the aging inventory aggressively through their website capabilities or their inventory management tools. Plain and simple, they do very little if anything to get the word out to move the inventory. There is no excuse for inventory of this age in these numbers sitting on a retailer’s lot, especially in the age of the Internet.

Your website is the place to feature the inventory that is costing you money with every day that it sits there-SPECIALS.  With the features available to you through your website provider and/or inventory management systems you are only (or should be) a click away from pushing the old stuff to the front of the line so your store can wave it’s arms alerting shoppers of your eagerness to deal on these units. There are no excuses anymore for not advertising specials because it has never been easier. A well managed website, with a constant eye on inventory is all you need to tackle this problem.

Well Managed Website

This means make sure you have someone who really knows how to navigate and maximize your website from the back end and utilizing all features. This doesn’t mean that just because your cousin’s brothers girlfriend is out of a job and “is really good on the computer” she is a “really good” candidate for the job of your ecommerce. Neither is an existing porter who “wants to move up and is good on the computer”. Make sure you have the right person and then turn to your web provider to provide training and support for this person. Use this aspect of their services- it is there (or should be) and it is invaluable to you.

(Make sure that who ever is going to be responsible for the management of your website has examples through references of his or her work and involvement with past employers eCommerce and webmaster tasks.)

Quite often dealerships throw the responsibility of managing their website into the job description of their Internet or BDC Manager. Quite often these people are not qualified in the areas that one needs to be qualified in order to effectively manage a stores marketing through the website. Most of the time a good Internet and or BDC Managers area of expertise is process management and people skills (or that is where it should be). That is where their efforts need to remain. Outsourcing for the management of the website from a merchandizing and marketing standpoint quite often is the most effective approach. Allow your Internet and/or BDC Managers to do what they do- manage the various sales opportunities you hired them to manage.

I am not saying here that there aren’t people out there who possess the skill sets required to be successful Internet/BDC Managers AND eCommerce webmaster experts who merchandize and market your inventory effectively- but there are two opposite skill sets required for these jobs that are not usually found in the same person. Personality competencies alone for these two job types are typically opposite ends of the charts- so it is hard to find a person who possesses both. Not impossible, but unlikely.

Constant Inventory Management

It needs to be part of your stores daily process to review your inventory through your inventory management system. This needs to be done by sales management FIRST, with instruction to the eCommerce webmaster SECONDLY as to what needs to be moved and at what price. If you coordinate sales management (new and used) to work with your Website manager (master, administrator etc.) daily at the beginning of each shift the process will take less than 15 minutes per day once you have dialed into having specials managed effectively.

Your inventory control system should provide you with all that you need to monitor and track every aspect of your inventory. Reports are but a click away as is the ability to feature inventory that needs to move. If everyone is doing their jobs correctly, all data is being entered as it should be, every shift should be looking at real time available inventory and specials that are designed to get the inventory off the lot. Once a week a queue can be done to run a report to see what worked as far as how things were “specialized” and what didn’t work. Moving forward, you will have a plan with proven successes behind you to put into place each time a vehicle hits that “dinosaur” status.

Incentivizing your sales, BDC and Internet personnel is also an effective way to move old product. Spiffs that make it worth while for a rep to “feature” a special when talking to a customer will dramatically shorten a vehicles shelf life. If you have a sea of vehicles on the lot and no one knows what is 200 days old- then how can you expect people to emphasize a “special”.

An Internet shopper can more easily be appointed if during communication with him/her your people are able to stress to them that the “special” advertised on the website is on the lot ready for them to see. Then make sure you have a sign on that “special” vehicle coordinating with what was said about the vehicle on your website. The days of mystic secrecy of “Internet Deals” need to come to an end. They are confusing to your staff, the customer and counter productive for your store as a whole. How many times have you heard either a client OR one of your employees say “I didn’t know that this vehicle was offered as a special on the Internet?” If you are going to advertise specials then advertise specials- so everyone knows, not just the Internet shopper and the Internet department. Lack of communication is what causes discrepancy within a dealership with both disappointed shoppers and employees. Loose loose.

To sum this all up, a bit of familiarizing or re-familiarizing yourself as well as your sales employees with your websites capabilities in merchandizing and inventory control through the help of your website provider is key to moving old inventory.

Committing to a 15 minute daily regime with the joint involvement of your Webmaster, Internet/BDC and Sales Management staff will allow you to create the consistency required to manage inventory and greatly reduce the problem. Using the features of your webs eCommerce capabilities, along with pulling your staff together you can painlessly correct this problem with resources you have available to you at no additional cost.

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Wait for the next big “savior” program or get back to the basics?

Monday, August 31st, 2009

My first experience with auto incentive buying was in August of 1986.  It was my first year in the business and General Motors announced 2.9% financing for a 36-month loan.  In today’s era of 0% loans being commonplace it may not seem to be that revolutionary but in the mid 80’s double digit rates were the norm.  Ford and Chrysler soon matched the rates and the war was on.  There was a hysteria created and I believe it changed the way consumers shop for cars.

Fast-forward to the mid 90’s and the “Slasher” era.  We trained the public to wait for the next big sale.  We offered trips, hot dogs, cash and everything but eternal life to get visitors to our showrooms.  Once there, they negotiated away most of the gross profit, serviced their vehicles themselves or at a local discount shop, and probably were not our best ambassadors in our local communities.  We did it because the pressure has always been there to sell more cars regardless of the long-term effect.

We have just experienced the phenomenon known as C.A.R.S or Cash for Clunkers.  I say phenomenon because of what I repeatedly witnessed firsthand in the last few weeks.  I saw people visit showrooms with a virtual $4,500 government check in their hand and they were going to spend it no matter what.  It didn’t matter that the vehicle they preferred to own had been sold out for weeks.  They were going to get their share of the entitlement and nobody was going to stop them.  I was consulting for a Chrysler store in Orange County when someone came in shopping for a Jeep Liberty.  When informed that those were no longer available they asked for a Patriot.  Same story.  “How about a Dodge Caliber?”  Sorry.  “What DO you have that qualifies?”  ½ ton Ram pick-up.  “What color?”  They went from a vehicle that we had trouble selling 6-months ago to a full-size pick-up.  Try managing a “road-to-a-sale” process for that scenario.

I believe the way to stop this insanity of “hype” advertising and selling is to do what we should have been doing all along; maintain significant contact with our owner base.  All of us know that our best prospect is our loyal list of repeat customers.  If best means highest gross profit potential, loyalty to our service department and a great source of referrals.  “Significant” contact doesn’t just mean a subscription to our online newsletter and an annual birthday card.  It means knowing more about that person, their family and their community than our competition could ever hope to know.  It means helping them retain the delivery “ether” throughout the ownership experience.  It means following up with them because we want to not because the factory is forcing us.

We have seen a lot of re-engineering over the years and it is time to do that now with our sales and follow-through processes.  Most of us have a CRM in the store that is being under-utilized.  Commit to getting to know it and use all of the tools that you said you would use when you first committed the thousands of dollars you’ve already spent to get it.

The way I see it we have two choices; wait for the next big “savior” program or get back to the basics.

Your CyberSalesPartner,

Jeff Lambert

Dealer e Process

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