This doesn’t hold true for all, but it will hit the nail on the head for many.  Your middle management is killing your Internet sales.  Not in a good way.  Not like “Wow!  You guys are killing it!”.  No.  They are hurting your online sales efforts.

How?  What they don’t know, WILL hurt them.  DealerKnows fields many calls from dealers, but even more from their Internet personnel.  What we continue to hear is the pushback your Internet Sales Managers and BDC teams are receiving from the sales managers in your stores when trying to fulfill their job duties.

I previously detailed one of the primary ways in my blog titled “The 4 Words That Make Sales Managers Sound Stupid”.  Those four words?  “Just get ‘em in.”  Without preparing your BDC agents and ISMs with any information, they are expected to coerce a researched, interested party into the store with no value to give them.  Needless to say, the “hallelujahs”, “thank you’s” and “TESTIFY’s” we got through email was great.  That is just one way your managers are hindering your online sales.  Many have no willingness to (or understanding why) give out information to the customers before coming in.  This tactic is killing you.

Another way?  If the sales management insists on handing over a new Internet price for every…single… lead… rather than a researched, validated price structure for all models that the ISM can be trusted to speedily calculate and hand over, then they are hurting your online efforts.  Timing is key.  If your Internet team has to go for them every…single….time they have a new lead and want to give out a price, you are slowing down the response time and likely giving the manager the ability to choose the Internet pricing they give that day, on that car, off the top of their head.  This is killing your response time.

Want to hear more?  Micro-managing.  Who do your sales managers think they are to brow-beat an ISM over their closing ratio, their pricing, or worse off, their customers when they are letting the salespeople run wild on the showroom floor?  If your sales managers are constantly asking your ISMs “What is going on with this lead?”  or “Whatever happened to the folks interested in the…?”, but are not enforcing ANY of the sales folks to call back ANY of their customers that have been in, then they are hypocrites  and they are killing your Internet team’s motivation.

• What are some other ways your sales managers are destroying an online foundation in your store?
• Demanding to handle inbound calls/leads/etc for your store, rather than your BD team, so they can remain in control, yet are unwilling to call to confirm appointments.
• Not demanding the sales team to make appointments as well.
• Not reinforcing the use of the CRM on the showroom.
• Not requiring the sales team to source customers properly.
• Not forcing the sales team to obtain a customer’s email address.
• Taking their sweet, old time to get pricing, availability, truthful spec info and more to their Internet team so they can then pass it on to the interested party.
• Not getting pricing up on the newest pre-owned cars that hit your lot.
• Not supporting new digital initiatives in the store that might help them win ZMOT, while at the same time, not listening to how their sales team handle calls.
• Allowing the salespeople to handle calls.
• Not training the salespeople to handle calls.
• The list goes on
• And on
• And on…

I know I am preaching to the choir here because there are more ISMs and Internet Directors reading this than there are dealer managers and owners likely.  (Sad that the group most thirsty for information and willing to learn and progress are often the ones with the least amount of power to do so.  As is in life.  Still shameful.)  However, if you are a dealer owner or GM, I strongly urge you to open up the blinds, let the light in, and ask your Internet team what they NEED and WANT from the middle management at your store to improve their job performance and the numbers.

Too many great people in eBusiness positions are scared of speaking up for fear of causing waves in the water, but if prompted and protected, they will give you the keys to untold sales.  Look at the hierarchy of the people in your store and make sure the sales managers are not stifling the productivity of your Internet team.  Or keep the blinds closed and watch as they kill your Internet sales one by one.

Your CRM is there for a purpose.  For the longest time we allowed our sales teams to carry a notepad in their back pocket to keep track of their customers.  We would trust that they would pull it out once a day, flip through the past few pages, review what needs to take place, and have the necessary notes stored in able to then follow up with the store’s customers.  If not this way, then you had them log all of their opportunities onto an Up Sheet that you would hope they visit once a day to complete some follow-up.  Obviously, these methods fall slightly short of being an “exact science”.

So CRMs (a good CRM anyway) has allowed us to determine the time intervals that are best to follow up with our clients.  They let us choose what method of communication (phone, email, text, etc) to trigger the sales team to utilize.  A CRM gives us the ability to alert our team when a new lead arrives or action actions that must be taken.  We can build out intricate follow-up processes that continue long-term, based on several variables, even when different events occur in the customer’s lifecycle, consistently, on-going, every time.  Well that is all well and good, but it still takes someone to perform a little “dealership day care” to keep the sales and Internet teams using the system to its fullest.

There are two things that salespeople are known for:

Working their pay plans and

Not following up with customers the way they should (or at all)

It’s not their fault.  Our industry seems to magnetically pull in those with self-diagnosed ADHD and lets them run wild in between our walls.  Your sales team loses focus, stops dedicating their energy to the task at hand within the CRM and goes off on a tear about something else.  It requires your Sales Managers to wrangle them up and get them back on point.  This is where your CRM’s dashboard comes in handy.

I often ask dealers, “How do your Sales Managers manage your sales team?”  Let me tell you, nowadays there are no right answers to this question without the words “ensure” “utilizing” and “CRM” in them.  Your managers should be keeping a watchful eye on the CRM dashboard throughout the day to ensure your team is utilizing the CRM to its fullest and actually completing the tasks scheduled for them.  Then your dealership must make it financially rewarding (or punishable) to do so.  If it is 2pm and you see Jimmy drinking his Red Bull and laughing on the showroom floor, take a look at how many of the day’s tasks he completed.  You will see only one of two scenarios.

a)  He’s made only 2 of the 33 scheduled follow-up calls for the day (yet he has time to ham it up with the folks on the floor) or
b)  He made ALL 33 of his day’s calls, somehow miraculously between the times of 9:05am to 9:09am.  Oh yeah, and he left messages on every call.

Your managers must begin “managing” their teams and holding them accountable.  Whether utilization is tracked, measured, and spiffed upon, or simply browbeat into the team, they must start making the calls and emails required of them.  If you want to sell more cars, get your teams to honestly make the calls prescribed for them.  Simple as that.

While your Internet team can fall off the wagon too, it is likely because they can get overwhelmed if they lose any time for the day.  A few leads are missed, an alert isn’t received, a customer comes in that takes more of their time than expected, and there is no catching up.  Unlike the sales floor where the salesperson can just not take a customer for the day and get through all of their overdue tasks, the Internet team has opportunities that pour in…. and never stop pouring in.

The reason our Virtual Dealer Training program was created in the first place is because dealers don’t have the staff or the time to track what their Internet teams are missing. You need someone to perform Dealership Day Care for your Internet teams.  Your Internet Director/eCommerce Director/BD Manager often doesn’t have the time to monitor all email correspondence, but, believe me, it is necessary.  Do you know what your staff is emailing to your customers?  Are they answering their questions?  Are they NOT calling and NOT following up with them?  The CRM allows you to catch these things, but only if you are looking.  While our teams are much more mature than children, they need constant guidance (and positive reinforcement through training) to keep ahead of the class.

It is time dealers do a little Dealership Day Care on behalf of their sales and Internet teams.  You need to maximize the opportunities you are receiving and the only way to do that is to monitor, police, measure, and motivate your teams… through the utilization of your CRM and through consistent training and management.

This is not meant to be a gripe session or make DealerKnows sound cocky, stuck-up, or ungrateful. We are talking about a rewiring of how dealers should go about considering future partnerships… be it Internet training or choosing where to get their haircut. We believe people should expect more from the service companies they choose and not rush to a decision. Patience, they say, is a virtue.

DealerKnows Consulting certainly doesn’t take on every single dealer client that reaches out to us for training. Several factors come into play before we determine whether or not it will be a fruitful partnership for both parties. However, recently, two different clients that engaged DealerKnows for their training needs turned away because we “just can’t get to the store fast enough.”

Let it be known that DealerKnows Consulting is not Supercuts. If you want to partner with an Internet training company that is obviously in such low demand that they can begin training the next day, I believe you need to reevaluate what you are looking for in a consulting partner. We do typically book out 3-4 weeks in advance, but please understand, that isn’t an indictment of our level of service, but a testimonial toward it. If you walk into a Supercuts for a haircut, to save either time or money, understand that results may vary.

We are more of a boutique salon. Every customer is different and every “stylist” here is well-trained to handle your individual, unique needs. That is why those customers that go to a Great Clips will go to any Great Clips and expect the same, average service. Those dealer clients that chose our salon of trainers in the past are now our evangelists. They wouldn’t go elsewhere.

Does waiting three to four weeks really affect the success of your non-existent Internet operation? It is 2011. I know you want to right a wrong immediately, but you’ve waited a minimum 10 years too long (and we are giving you a few years credit here) to get involved in digital so will another three weeks destroy your business? No. But choosing the wrong stylist might. You don’t wait until your wedding day to go dress shopping or the day of your 20 year high-school reunion to get your hair cut for the first time. Aligning with an Automotive Internet training company is no different. It is a process that you shouldn’t take lightly.

The only negative we’ve ever received (beyond the recent “you aren’t able to get here within the next few days so you aren’t in consideration”) was on the DrivingSales Vendor Ratings page where we have top marks across the board, but one person said a “con” to DealerKnows Consulting was that “you have to book in advance”. When someone is sought-after, I assure you it is rarely a bad thing.

If you are looking for a walk-in type service that will likely deliver fast food results, it is your choice. Understand, though, that you might end up walking out having received a real hatchet job and your appearance will look worse for it. So ask yourself… how costly could a bad haircut be? Sure, waiting a little while and setting an appointment or scheduling an event isn’t fun, but you do it – just like at the doctor’s office, lawyer, accountant, dentist, high-end hotels and restaurants, salons, heck, even fortune tellers – because you realize that they are professionals and you’re putting your livelihood in their hands. You can’t walk up to the gate and buy a ticket to see the Rolling Stones. They’ll be sold out. And you can’t complain about the lousy seats you get on the airplane when you were the last to call about tickets.

So as you look for a service to fulfill your needs, be it Internet training or hairstyling, decide how you want to look and feel when you are finished. Some people apparently want Supercuts. We are not Supercuts.

DealerKnows Consulting – 847-456-5130

There is one thing a CRM cannot do and that is stop your sales team from taking the easy way out.  (That takes management).  My team actively mystery shops dealers all year long and the one guarantee we can make is that the majority of leads are flipped to a CRM status that automatically cancels your ongoing follow-up process.

You might have a 90-day process in place, but I promise you that, without management looking, a good majority of your leads are being flipped to “Lost” or “Bad Lead”  or “Out of Market” because it is simply too easy for your salespeople to end the cycle.  Even if alerts are set up in the system that catch leads switched to “Lost”, it takes someone diligently holding feet to the fire and ensuring leads aren’t trashed for no reason.  The path of least resistance is taken with your leads far more often than the lead management process is allowed to do its job.

You must train your people as to why the processes should run.  Allow the automated emails (going out with their name on it after all) to fire.  Maybe something in a latter email won’t offend, but entice.  Maybe the topic of a 75-day email reaches them at the right time and engages rather than annoys.  Your salespeople don’t always know their buying trends so they shouldn’t be allowed to cease the processes you put in place.

Over the last year, we at DealerKnows had over 400 mystery shops performed – and that doesn’t include the CRM email correspondence policing we do for our own dealers.  We also create and customize templates and long-term follow-up processes for our dealers.  Even with this, we’ve seen that the average number of days before all communication from dealership to prospect ends is roughly 8.  Eight days is the number of days the average dealership follows up with an Internet lead.  Now I know that your processes are built out longer than that, so I urge you to train your sales team to let it go.  Training and management will be the only way to stop them from dropping leads early.

Let the ongoing emails do their job.  Let the scheduled outgoing phone calls be made.  Let the automated alerts reach the customers. Nowadays, it takes more communication to sell vehicles, not less.  Let your scheduled follow-up rain down on the consumers until they say no more.  Otherwise you are wasting well spent money that could still be converted into a sale.  So for that reason, I ask you to… let it rain.

I mystery shop dealers every week and it still amazes me how many emails and auto-responders are sent directly to my junk mail. I just returned from speaking at a NADA 20 group where 5 of the 20 dealers’ emails were caught in SPAM. Last month, when Jared Hamilton, Brian Pasch, and I spoke to an NCM 20 group together, of the 35+ emails I received back from the attending dealers over the course of 5 days prior to the event, 8 of them went to SPAM. That is almost 25%. What are you doing to combat this?

There are several things you can do to avoid getting lost in a prospect’s junk mail. Here are just a few ways to put your best font forward.

1. Tiny font tends to get caught in spam. If you have font smaller than 10px, it can get you nailed by the triggers. (Think of all the legalese trapped at the bottom of special offers…that is why)
2. Large font sizes bigger than 2+ gets trapped in spam filters
3. More than two font sizes and two font types are no good either
4. More than two images or two links in your email can get you caught as well
5. If you do send an image, make sure it isn’t too large and overwhelming to the email
6. If you do send an attachment, make sure it is under 300k
7. Don’t use too many bolds, colors, exclamation points, or italics
8. Make sure your email text has the same font and size as your signature. (Not sure if it affects spam, but it ticks me off and looks unprofessional
9. Don’t use punctuation in your subject line  (Writing a good subject line is a necessity and worthy of another blog entirely.  Recognize its importance)
10. Make sure that if you are sending an html email, you have a higher percentage of text to html image. (I just learned of this one by researching… pretty cool)
11. Always test yourself by mystery shopping as you can easily get put on a blacklist – and that can be the primary reason you are getting sent to spam
12. And do your best to steer clear of these “trigger” words:

Some believe that an Internet Sale is a customer that originated as a lead and is sold by your ISM or Internet team.  Since it is sold by the “Internet person”, it is an Internet Sale.  Others believe an Internet Sale is every vehicle bought by a customer who was primarily influenced by information/resources found online.  Dealers tend to structure their pay plans based on the first scenario even though industry leaders preach that to properly dedicate your advertising budget, you have to track and recognize the latter.

So… it’s about Sourcing.  Dedicate energy to training your team on sourcing and designing a way to truly capture a customer’s influencing motive.  Was it the radio ad running during lunch times that brought the customer in or influenced their decision to choose you as a dealership?  Could it be your service department that takes care of them so well?  Or might it have been the two hours they spent online before walking into your showroom unannounced, but prepared?  Don’t you feel it is imperative to know this before you set next month’s advertising budget?

Make sure your team is closely monitoring the sources from where your customers are coming.  You must be sourcing correctly before you hold anyone accountable for ROI.  If a lead is from your website’s Inventory page, you want to know.  If it is from your Inventory listed on Cars.com, you want to know as well.  If it is because they are a previous customer, you want to know.  Some will be internet sales and some will not be… we all recognize that.  However, many sales that appear to be your old-fashioned walk-in or phone up could very well be an Internet sale.  You just don’t know it until you source correctly.

Now let me give you ONE exception of something that looks like an Internet Sale, but in my opinion, isn’t.  (And this will end up being another challenge to a website vendor).  If a customer calls into your dealership from the number on your website’s header, I don’t consider that an Internet Sale.  Not unless they were perusing your site’s back pages before calling the number at the top.  We must realize that a website’s header is today’s white pages.  People don’t check the yellow book in their pantry anymore.  They go to your dealership site and pull the number from there.  If a customer calls after only visiting your homepage, I don’t believe you should count that as an Internet Sale – no matter who handled the call. 

NOW – If a website provider wants to figure out a way to have one specific, trackable number on the homepage’s website header, but a different toll-free number on each back-page website header THEN I believe we could truly source website calls as Internet Sales.  Not until.  If you are a website vendor who does this, please reach out on this post.  If you are someone tracking your store’s Internet Sales, I’d love to hear your opinion on what is and isn’t an Internet Sale at your store.

“Places, everyone, places” the director shouts. You have put everyone in position, but can you ensure your cast understands what needs to be done? Do they know what is expected of them? Many of your sales managers and service writers have been given the title and responsibility because they’ve succeeded on the sales floor or as a service tech. They’ve filled in during the absences of other managers and excelled. When promoted, though, few are given quality, written job descriptions detailing what their position entails because we feel they already know what is asked of them. Or perhaps a job description wasn’t provided solely because many don’t know what all to include.

A job description simply states the roles and responsibilities required of the position along with a reporting structure and details involving hours and expectations. It should address future questions, employee’s potential for growth/earnings, functions of the job, skills needed, and how actions will be conducted.

Here are the basics for every job description:

Job Title
Confirm the title of their position. Representative, Associate, Consultant, Specialist, Coordinator, Manager, and Director all mean different things to different people. Having the job title spelled out will deter them from asking for a special designating word on their business cards (i.e. the ever-popular “sales specialist” being chosen over “sales representative”.

Salary Range
This serves as a reference guide to comparable salaries within the industry. Make sure that the starting salary is noted as well as well as mid-range (and high) expectations for the position. If applicable, specify commissions, performance bonuses, percentage of profit, and any potential raises for long-term employment.

Purpose of the Position
Specify the objectives of the position. This section allows you to place a little weight on their shoulders and makes them understand how important of a role they play in the overall success of the dealership and the team.

Job Description/List of Duties
Beginning with the most important tasks first, list every duty required of them to perform their position. As the list continues, detail what their role is in the completion of each task. Are they simply delegating the work and ensuring it is done or is it their personal responsibility to complete it?

Hierarchy and Team
Define who they will be reporting to and what individuals be reporting directly to them. Many new employees come in with the expectation that, due to their title of manager, everyone without the title of manager reports to them. This can be a sensitive situation in those dealerships where the Internet department team reports solely to their Director and that Director reports to the General Manager only. It is best to clarify this “structure” of the departments up front so there is no confusion and specify who is on their “team”. A new employee understanding their supervisory role is imperative to their success and the streamlined processes you’ve created within your dealership.

Ideal Candidate / Skills Needed
The new employee must be told the skills they are going to need to be successful in the position. If there are certain solutions, software, or programs that are imperative they know going in, it is best to detail it here. If they are to have completed certain tasks during their past experiences, describe how the ideal candidate for the position will encompass those abilities.

Hours
We’re in the auto industry and it is well known that we often work insane hours. That being said, it is necessary to assign specific work hours expected for the position and include the dealership’s operating hours as well.

“And Other Duties Assigned”
The beauty of the car business is that no two days are the same. Every customer is different and each day there is a new circumstance to handle or concern to assuage. Including “And Other Duties Assigned” tells the employee they are responsible for those random chores that essentially help “take care of business”. Hopefully, we are all hiring those candidates that are looking to take on more responsibility and willing to fill up that rare free-time during the day with goal-oriented objectives on their own.

This statement of duties should be provided to every new employee on day one to overcome any unforeseen conflicts of the future. After all, it is usually the bad performance from an employee that causes the store to lose a sale or valuable customer, but, in the end, it will be you who shoulders the blame. Preparing a written, detailed job description for each and every position in the dealership (no matter how big or how small) provides total accountability because they now “know their role”.

With their roles clearly defined for them, you are setting them up on a path for success. As the director, you’ve given them their lines, their blocking, and all of the notes necessary for them to perform for the public day in and day out. The rest is up to them to put on a good show.

The challenge of “saving deals” has not been the inability to commoditize those deals needing saving into a software, but it is changing the overall mindset of management. (Granted, having a tech solution to funnel this deal info and print it into reports is exceedingly helpful nowadays). First and foremost, the biggest challenge of saving deals is that management simply has never created the processes necessary to make it a standard way of life within the dealership.

Here are the two most effective ways to save deals that I’ve found while involves just a little effort and time from multiple departments.

1) You must institute daily meetings to ensure that no stone is unturned and no customer is lost without trying twice. Your management staff should collectively review the previous day’s in-store and online opportunities (preferably pulling a detailed report quickly from a CRM module that gathers the data automatically for you) and meet every morning. They should hold daily meetings with F&I to determine necessary actions to finish off any unclosed deals and hold a brief 5-minute one-on-one meeting with each individual sales representative to discuss what can be done to convert lost customers into be-back sales.

2) The second most important step to saving deals is having your Business Development Center be the backstop for your dealership. There are ways technologically to ensure your sales people are making their follow-up calls to past and recent customers, but you have no way of knowing if it was the salesperson that may have prevented the deal closing in the first place. Use your BDC staff to act as a Customer Care Center and let them be a second voice at the dealership for your customers. When you have someone else reaching out to your customers, you are ensuring that no customer is being discarded by a salesperson and you are opening another channel for that customer to discuss a potential deal.

So remember, a dedicated policy of saving deals requires effort from your management, F&I, Sales and BDC teams, but it will all be well-worth it come month’s end.

Joe Webb - Automotive Internet Sales Trainer - DealerKnows Consulting

A car sales manager interviews a potential employee using only closed ended questions – with hilarious results. Written by Joe Webb and Performed by Joe Webb and Dave Hudson of D Hudson Productions in Chicago, The Not Good Interview details the importance of knowing how auto dealers should interview and what questions (open ended and closed ended) to use to find the right candidate. Also known as the “Jez” video.