Internet Sales 20 Group
XII
The 6th habit in Dr. Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly
Effective People book is the habit to “Synergize.” Let me break
that down for you. Synergy is defined as “two or more agents
that come together are greater than their individual effect.”
In effect, one plus one equals three. My favorite way to
explain synergy to my children is to say that peanut butter is
good, and jelly is good, too. But, if you put them together,
they make an even better
sandwich. Synergy is such a powerful word I chose it as half of
my company’s name, Dealer Synergy. What I wanted to articulate
was that dealerships have their uniqueness, their
individualities,
and things at which they are great. On the other hand, Dealer
Synergy and I have our own experiences, our own strengths and
our own philosophies. When you put our company with any
dealership, you will have synergy.
Unfortunately, most dealership’s Internet departments operate
as silos in the dealership. They are an island. Even going into
2009, there is still not 1,000 percent (not a typo) buy-in. On
the flipside, the ISM or Director has to MacGyver the department
in order to keep things afloat. I highly suggest that
dealerships work
more towards full cooperation and buy in from the top down in
their stores. Have the
entire management team involved in what is going on. Have the
floor sales team work with the Internet team, making phone
calls, setting appointments too, TOing deals, lost
opportunities, etc.
I’ll give you an example. I have a large Honda dealer in
Virginia that was tracking their “dead deals” from their
Internet department. They were floored at just how many of these
deals were getting deaded. The problem was that there wasn’t a
high level accountability. Seeing this, the dealership created a
process protocol
that whenever an Internet coordinator deaded a lead, it went
straight to one of the
designated floor sales team members that went into lead revival
mode. The result?
They sold seven units last month due to lead revival
initiatives.
Let me break down the math. Let’s say you have an Internet
department that is buyingor generating 500 leads a month. If you
sell to 10 percent of these, or 50 units, you will have 450
leads left over. Some are bogus,
some have bought elsewhere and about 250 to 300 will carry over
to next month. So, you go into next month with 250 to 300 leads,
plus that month’s additional fresh 500 leads. You are looking at
a residual flow factor of 750 to 800 leads within 60 days.
Now, let’s go back to all of those leads that were dead for
price, distance, trade, credit, bought elsewhere, no answer,
etc. Who TOs those dead leads? Who verifies that they really are
dead? Who tries to revive
them? For most dealerships the answer is no one. Let’s take it a
step farther here for a moment. I have stores that are literally
receiving thousands of leads per month. If you are a dealership
that receives 1,000
leads a month, those probably cost your dealership about
$20,000. If you close 10 percent, that will be 100 units sold,
and 900 leads not sold. There were probably at least 450 leads
deaded that month. That
is $9,000 dead money. Multiply that by 12 and that’s $108,000 in
lost money for the year. Doesn’t it make sense to have someone
at least go over those leads, check them, and try to resurrect
them? Just like there should be 100 percent TO on the showroom
floor, there should be 100 percent TO in the Internet
department.
Dealerships should create strategy for their Internet
departments — their Internet Dealerships — that will utilize
the resources of all of its team members, from the Internet
coordinators to the Internet sales managers and directors, to
the salesman on the showroom floor to all of the managers in the
dealership. With 87 to 97 percent of people going online before
they ever step foot into a dealership, it is important that
there is no
us/them mentality between the Internet department and the rest
of the dealership. There is no Internet department, but an
Internet dealership mentality. There needs to be full buy in
from top down, full communication and participation to maximize
success for your initiative.
Sean V. Bradley
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