By Sean V. Bradley

Spring is here and it’s time for flowers to bloom, mowing the lawn and selling some cars! By the time you read this our Synergy Sessions Event in New Orleans might be over, but I assure you plans are already being made for the next event and I will keep you updated so if you missed our New Orleans event you can book early and attend our next one. 
Our letter this month is from the eCommerce Manager at LaFontaine Buick Pontiac GMC Cadillac in Highland, Michigan
 
Sean:
We are 250 new-car a month dealer, struggling to expand our Internet department. We have given valiant efforts to trying different scenarios to improve our volume. First we had two salespeople on the floor who only handled Internet leads from beginning to end. The best they could manage was 20 units a month and that was from a funnel of 400 leads. Even though our fancy CRM/ILM tool calculated follow up action plans with auto responses, phone calls prompts, electronic brochures, and more it seemed the team focused primarily on their previous customer base.
 We then hired two Internet Managers (myself included) that were working all the leads, scheduling appointments, maintaining all of our websites, third party sites, and training our sales staff.  Needless to say it became overwhelming and we found the sales floor cherry picking all of the work we had done to get the customer in the store.
We are now considering hiring an Internet Appointment Setter that would work all new incoming internet leads with the goal of setting the appointment and handing it off to a salesperson. This person would ideally not be a long term sales professional, but someone fairly new to the business that is internet savvy, and we could establish certain habits beneficial to internet sales follow up.
I don't want to set another Internet system up for failure. Should I look into correcting faults of the old processes, or would this new idea be a better way for our dealership to go? Thank you for your time and consideration. 
Brandy Barber
eCommerce Manager
LaFontaine Buick Pontiac GMC Cadillac
Highland, MI 48357

Brandy, your situation is not unfamiliar to hundreds if not thousands of dealerships across the country. Depending on your management team there are a few possible solutions to your challenges.  As a disciple of Stephen Covey and his Seven Habits of Highly Effective People book, I would first say to you, “Start with the end result in mind.”

Simply that means figure out what your volume or unit goal is to sell per month and from their you can work backwards to calculate how many leads need to be generated, how they need to be worked and what productivity you can expect and build into your model.   Let’s say you want to sell 40 vehicles a month through your Internet sales efforts. 

In the average store that means you need 400 leads to work with each month. You indicate you already have that many, but because of your inefficient process you can only deliver at a 5% closing ratio.  

Let’s put the number aside for right now and address setting up the right infrastructure to manage and control the process. In your letter you mention hiring an Appointment Setter and that is the right path, but you need to take it to the next level. 

Here are two options:

Option A) Hire two coordinators who are absolute wizards on the phone. I am talking “super sales ninja’s” who are versed on phone skills, handling objections offering rebuttals and continuing to follow up until they get the customer to agree to come in for an appointment.  They would handle emails, inbound and outbound phone calls and be very polite but persistent and sell the value of doing business with your organization. These folks are not telemarketer types reading from a script, but true phone sales professionals.
Then you have another team of at least two or three Internet sales professionals who handle the actual customers when they show up at the dealership. Their only job is to greet, present the product including the demo ride and then sell the prospects. They are not taking other floor ups but working exclusively and closely with the coordinators.

Option B or integrated model) In this option you would hire three to four coordinators who meet the criteria I indicated above but rather than feed those appointment to only two Internet sales people they would feed those leads to the sales team on the floor in a rotation basis and keep feeding leads to the best closers who handle the Internet customers in a professional fashion.  This model pre-disposes that all the folks on the floor are well versed on the differences between Internet prospects and folks just coming in the door who heard the commercial on the radio.

The team in your store might need some remedial training to get up to speed with this process, so you might be better off with Option A to begin your task.

Now let’s get back to the numbers to see how this will work.  It’s April and your team will have 400 leads coming in throughout the month.  You are really cranking and you sell 10% or 40 units. That leaves a balance of 360 leads unsold. Of those about 160 or 45% are bogus, dead or have bought elsewhere. That still leaves you with 200 leads that are still live.  Remember J.D. Power research says 49% will shop one month or less, and the other customers can take up to six months to purchase; with most buying with a ninety day window.

This is called the Residual Flow Factor and it’s critical to address this in your process. So instead of going into May expecting to work only 400 leads you will be working 600 leads. That’s 400 new and 200 leftover from the previous month. No way will your team be able to keep up, so you will need to either build your team members to handle these or adjust the number of new leads coming in each month.  So plan for growth and keep focused every day on your tasks at hand to keep on track and hit your numbers.

Brandy has won two free registrations to the Synergy Sessions Event and I look forward to speaking with her there.  Please keep your comments and questions coming.

Sean V. Bradley