Digital Dealer - February 2018 - 30

DDW & CATA | Feb. 13-14, 2018 | Chicago

Cover Story (Continued from pg. 29)
we're constantly talking about and
working on, is always being open to
new ideas. This industry is ever-changing, especially in the digital
sphere, which is really a good piece
of what BDC is handling now. I
think you have to be open to change.
Actually, I'm currently rebuilding
our BDC process from what it was
so that we can be more transparent
with the customer versus the standard run-of-the-mill script and the
old-fashioned process. My second
part of my philosophy is to be open
to that change and to other ideas.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU
GIVE A DEALERSHIP PLANNING
TO START OR IMPROVE ITS OWN
BDC OPERATION?

First oﬀ, make sure you have
the right people. If you don't have
the right people in place, the rest
is a moot point. How do you know
you have the right people? It starts
with a solid interviewing and hiring
process. You want to evaluate the
people you already have. I would
start from scratch and do some kind
of interviewing-counseling-coaching
session with those people to make
sure everybody is paddling the
same way in the boat. Eliminating
anybody who doesn't ﬁt, anybody
who is negative or toxic, people
who don't agree with the culture or
mission statement or mission of the
dealership.
Once you know you have the right
people, for me, it's all about metrics.
That really needs to be a daily conversation and not just focusing on
appointments but looking at staﬀing. Who do you have by individual
and then by type. By those diﬀerent
types and by the diﬀerent employee,
how many calls are they making?
What is their connection ratio? How
many appointments are they making, what's their show percentage,
their sales percentage? You can ﬁnd
anything and everything in there. I
don't need to physically be in a store
to be able to tell you what's going
on. I've mastered the art of read30

FEBRUARY 2018

ing into those metrics so well that
simply by looking at metrics I can
identify the problem.
COULD YOU WALK US
THROUGH A TYPICAL DAY
IN THE LIFE OF YOUR BDC
MANAGERS?

They normally work an early
schedule. We do that on purpose
and prefer to have them be one of
the ﬁrst ones in. Generally, they're
in about a half-hour before their
staﬀ. We want them to begin to sift
through any new internet leads that
came in the night before and after
closed business hours. We do that
because we want them to be the ﬁrst
touch-point. We want them to send
out that ﬁrst email, which should be
a personalized video email from the
BDC or internet manager directly.
Obviously, we want to make sure
they're doing it because we want to
make sure it is not just personalized
but compliant to the manufacturer,
if need be. And, also, it frees up the
BDC rep, so when reps get in at 9
a.m., they can get on the phone.
After the BDC or internet manager goes through those leads, the
next thing they'll do is go through
the leads that came in the day before in terms of their appointments.
They're doing that throughout the
day as well. They're going to go back
and double-check for the evening
appointments. Did they show up? If
they did, did they purchase or lease?
If they did not show up, the manager will call them. They will call the
no-shows. That is something that's
mandatory. The call must be made
by the manager and not by the
person who scheduled the appointment. At that point, the manager
will reconﬁrm any appointments
that had not already been reconﬁrmed for the day.
Monday through Friday they
are required to hold a 15-to-30minute group training session
with their people. And that can be
phone training, CRM training, or
some kind of motivational session,

D I G I TA L D E A L E R . C O M

leadership training. We do want two
or three of them to be phone-skills
related. The other two is up to their
discretion but they must hold those
sessions. After that, they pretty
much break oﬀ. We'll spend 10-to15 minutes with each individual,
because individuals are always at a
diﬀerent level. We go through where
they're at once a day: are they going
to hit their objective? If they're not
going to hit their objective, how can
we help them? We kind of break
those metrics down with the rep,
giving them a plan of action. How
many managers sit and do that,
in BDC or Sales, on a daily basis?
Many do that every now and then,
especially when a store is failing,
but I think it should be done daily.
There's a saying: All it takes to have
a good month is four good weeks.
But when once a month is gone, it's
gone. If you're on top of it on a daily
basis, you can usually make up for
those deﬁciencies.
They'll do a quick website review.
Whether it's ﬁve or ten or ﬁfteen
minutes every day, they must
review their website. We're always
encouraging they do that daily. At
that point, it's usually about time to
wrap it up for the day. They'll do a
recap of what's taken place so far.
Just kind of ﬁguring out the metrics
for the day prior to leaving and the
next morning repeating the process
and going over those metrics, where
they left oﬀ. That's pretty much
their standard day.
HOW IMPORTANT IS THE CRM
TO A BDC'S SUCCESS?

Very, very important. When I'm
talking to other dealerships and
dealer groups, whether it's people I
just know from my time in the business, online forum, social media,
auto group, and so on, I'm constantly seeing a CRM battle. They'll say,
we can't get the salespeople to use
the CRM correctly. We have a pretty
solid handle on that. However, no
store is perfect and you're always
going to have that handful of people
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Digital Dealer - February 2018
