Phil Sura, VP Automotive Division, Unity Works Media, Inc.
Hospitals have to be the most inefficient models in existence. During a trip to Boston, I was required to visit an emergency room for a spider bite. I knew that I needed some antibiotics to fight a small infection and I was disappointed to discover that Boston didn’t have health clinics or nurse practitioners at drug stores. It took an entire frustrating afternoon to work through the red tape to visit a doctor at a hospital and get the prescription. The hospitals have an advantage over the public since they have a monopoly. The option of death or serious illness is not a viable option. How many customers look at your dealership the same way? My suggestion is that the dealers who do not embrace process improvement with their Internet departments are frustrating customers.
I had the opportunity of facilitating a Best Practices Panel at the 4th Digital Dealer Conference in Orlando. The Internet department or a BDC without defined processes is not hitting its full potential. Many dealerships are paying for tremendous tools that are not being used because of lack of training or lack of process.
Some of the brightest e-Commerce directors were involved on this panel, including Steve Stauning with Asbury Automotive, Dean Russell from Bleeker Automotive, Mike Capps and Ken Forsyth from Goodson Honda, Wayne Ussery, director of Internet marketing with Jim Ellis Group, Kathy Martinez with the Ed Morris Group and Andy Warner with Dealer Management Services. Every panelist listed has successfully moved the sales needle by implementing processes at their dealership.
During the panel discussion, we covered key areas associated with the people, pay plans, measurements, lead conversion, ROI, workflow and negotiations over the Internet. Each BDC manager or Internet manager should have a plan built around this type of list.
• What are the key measurements that you focus on each month? How do you measure success?
• What are some key goals associated with these key measurements? Example: Key focus is closing ratio from leads to dealer website and outside leads….My closing ratio from dealer website leads is ______percent while I have a goal of ________percent for outside leads….
• How do you pay your Internet people? (type of base, percentage, etc.) Remember that a pay plan is a job description and it should motivate.
• How long do you focus on a lead and what type of frequency of contact do you have? (How many times do you call versus send e-mail? How long do you keep the customer as an active customer before you stop the follow-up?)
• How have you done in the collection of e-mail addresses? How do you collect them and what percentage of retail customers do you collect? What is your plan to capture 90 percent of the e-mail addresses of customers purchasing a car this month?
• Are you involved with e-mail campaigns? What is the plan (frequency and focus)?
• How do you track ROI with leads (third-party leads and leads from your web site)? What is your goal and do you fire outside companies that do not hit minimum measurements?
• How do you recruit and train your new Internet people? What tools do you use (PI, IQ testing)? What type of profile are you looking for?
• How are you using lead retrieval tools and parasites to drive leads?
• How do you track conversion (the number of leads coming off the web site (800-line set with Who’s Calling calls plus e-mail leads)?
• How do you prioritize the activity associated with all the leads? How do you assign tasks associated with leads one hour old compared to the leads that come in at midnight, how do you work the leads that are three days old? What do you do with the 60-day-old leads? Do you work the leads forever? Where is the majority of the focus? Do you have scripted responses that are consistent with all sales members?
• How do you separate your operation from the other dealership responses to capture the attention of a customer submitting a lead to the store? How do you avoid being boring (“We are the best in the state and we have five cars just like the one you want and we are the cheapest”)?
• What is your process for negotiating price with customers online?
• How far do you go in allowing a customer to purchase a car strictly online (will you deliver a car to the customer; if the answer is no, why not)? What is the process for collecting information?
• What one thing did you do last year that helped move the needle more than anything else and what are two things that you will implement this year to drive the sales needle? What are you focused on this year from a best practices perspective?
I respect the groups or stores that have already defined each of these points. They are ahead of the curve and it shows with the bottom line performance. An example is the store which two of the panelist represented, Goodson Honda, located in Houston. Mike Capps and Ken Forsyth are the classic odd couple. Mike has a strong sales background and he didn’t understand the Internet several years ago. Ken is all technology. Together Ken and Mike have moved the sales needle from 50 units to 230, just out of the Internet department. I wrote about this operation last year for Digital Dealer magazine (“I’m the New Internet Director. Now What?”) and you can access the article under my name in the archives records online http://www.digitaldealer-magazine.com/. When I initially wrote the article Goodson was tracking at 200. Since then, they have moved up to 230 retail sales out of their Internet team. This didn’t happen by mistake. A key component with the success enjoyed at Goodson Honda was focusing on process improvement combined with strong leadership.
So what about you? If you are a dealer or general manager, are you focused on driving this part of your business? Are you coaching the entire management team to understand this shift in the way that customers are buying cars? A sad reality is that I know of a number of sales teams where there is still friction between the floor management and the Internet team. The root of this problem lies with senior management not supporting the Internet team. I actually know a couple of very talented directors who simply moved on last month because they were not getting support from the senior management. The car market is off in most cities. In some isolated cases, dealers and GMs will look at the success that they are getting out of the Internet department and believe that this is business that they would have picked up anyhow without an Internet team with higher grosses. My response to this is: get real. If you don’t believe me, call the dealers without a strong Internet/ BDC department and see how they did for the month. The next panel discussion that I will be facilitating for Digital Dealer is being held will be in Dallas in early October. We will have another all-star lineup of successful Internet directors. Until then, use the bullet points listed on this article as suggestions to develop your own processes.
