BDC Agents are not sales people!

Your BDC agents work in an environment that is vastly different from the sales floor.  Whether it be on desks in the open or in cubicles, the face to face with the customer is almost all together removed.  Not only this, but you have to keep in mind that your agents have different motivations than that of Salespeople at the dealership.  While a salesperson main motivation is to sell a customer on a certain vehicle, this is not so with a BDC agent.  The BDC agents motivation is to simply get the customer in to the show room.  For this reason a BDC Agent will often have a softer touch than the Salesperson, answering questions and guiding the process along, without going for the hard sale.

Be 95% Coach and 5% Cop

A cop Is there when you do something wrong.  He's there to write a ticket, or dole out whatever the proper corrective measure is.  A Coach is there to guide you along the learning process, and let you know what you are doing right and what things you need to work on.  There is always room for improvement, therefore coaching is constant.  Be a Coach and not a cop.  This does not mean not to correct errors, but learn how to accentuate the positive.  Point out what your agents are doing right when they do a good job.  Keep the atmosphere positive and coach your agents, and they will grow and thrive.

Managing the Work Load

Learning how to manage your workload may be the most crucial factor in the success of your BDC Agents.  Set daily goals for you agents for amount of calls made and appointments set.  These short term goals help track progress and keep your agents motivated.  These goals are something for them to strive for on a daily basis while you work towards your monthly/yearly long term goals.  Keep track of your agents personal bests, and have them strive to better themselves daily.  Reward and recognize them when they meet these goals.  Wether it bee paying for lunch, or a gift card or some other prize for who has the most calls at the end of the week or month. This will keep them motivated and working towards something, while keeping the atmosphere positive.

Business Development Centers have a lot of moving parts.

This can affect efficiency in ways you never thought about. The complexity of managing the people, the CRM, workload, the customers, the reports, and the dealership departments you are serving can create an environment that looks like controlled chaos. Here are some ways to simplify the whole process of Business Development and create an environment that is both efficient and effective.

Why Simplify?

I suppose one way of thinking suggests complexity is good. I agree as long as you are both efficient and effective. As an example, you may have your CRM dialed in to route leads from different sources to different processes or people. Sounds complex but it’s not. It’s simple, leads go to relevant processes and competent people, lending itself to efficiency and effectiveness.

It’s the job that is complex. So, another way of thinking is to think, simplify their job. Their daily routine is what’s complex. If a BDC Agent has too many tasks in her dashboard, has to take time to track down information she should have in front of her (while a customer is waiting), is missing inbound calls and basically just trying to get through the day; that’s a hard job, and therein lies the complexity.

Your goal should be to make their job as easy as possible. Make it easy (or easier) for them to set appointments.

Five Ways to Simplify

Get the reps dashboards under control. Calibrate your CRM to generate the fewest most relevant tasks possible. If your agent’s dashboards are not getting completed, then the work isn’t getting done. An agent who is expected to answer phones and work fresh internet leads all day can probably complete 60 -80 tasks on her dashboard as well. It’s your job to make sure that is what’s happening.

One thing we do to help is combine tasks. It’s our process to make calls. If we make a call and have to leave a voicemail, we send an email also and possibly a text opt-in. But in the CRM, this represents one task to mark complete. No need for a task generated for the email and text, it’s the process of completing any task.

Prioritize the tasks. Use the features in your CRM that help you filter tasks as much as possible. Here is a sample of how to prioritize an agent’s workload, Priority of Tasks.

When agents have the right number of the right tasks each day you have simplified things with clarity on what’s important.

Managing the work load. Now that your workload is more effective because you have minimized and prioritized (improved efficiency), it’s time to plan your day with each agent or in groups, whatever makes sense.

Start every shift with a huddle (especially for sales agents; service agents just about have to be one on one because the phone never stops ringing long enough to talk to them all at once).

In the huddle talk about how many tasks are on the dashboards, the probable amount of leads that will have to be worked as well. Ask each agent (or team) for a couple goals for the day. One would be appointments created and another might be how many calls they make. As the day goes by talk about the goals. Don’t wait till 6:00 to realize an agent didn’t hit her goal.

Do an exit interview when employees leave. It can be very informal. The importance is you following up on their verbal commitments and evaluating briefly. When an agent goes home, and she has cleared her dashboard, hit her appointment goal and the boss recognizes it, she has an easy job in her eyes because she can get it done.

The showroom has a role. The showroom has a big impact on the efficiencies and effectiveness of the BDC.

First and foremost is data collection. Besides names, numbers and addresses the showroom is responsible for updating the sales steps, marking appointments complete, assigning the sales person and leaving work notes, or story notes as I like to call them.

Ranking customers is a best practice for desk or floor managers. By doing so it’s easy for the BDC to know who to follow up with first and what the expected outcome is before they make the call. A customer who can’t buy doesn’t need to be reappointed. The agent only knows what is in front of her. Savvy desk managers know they can get more out of their agents in the BDC by having them call the right customers with the right message. Efficient and effective and simple.

Get the right reports at the right time. Reports can be real time wasters. Automate the reports you need for every day operations and stay out of the report generator during the day.

No matter where you are in relation to targets and goals what’s most important is helping your agents hit their goals today. Sitting there going through reports looking for pixey dust isn’t going to help.

In our operation there are 4 core reports we look at for sales BDC agents. A BDC performance report, an opportunity report, an ROI report and a new lead by source report. With these reports, you can determine how your BDC is doing, how your salespeople are doing, how your vendors are doing and where your business is coming from overall.

If your reports aren’t accurate then you have inefficiencies in other areas to address. Dare I say garbage in garbage out.

Evaluating is as important as goal setting. Don’t get 80% of this right and not finish the job. Evaluating how we did today, this week, this month, whatever the case may be is the key driver of improvement.

One efficient way to evaluate behavior is having agents score their own leads and phone calls. If an agent listens to a call and scores it herself she will learn from it, whether it scored well or not. Same goes with Internet leads, her responses and adherence to process.

Now you can relate performance results to the behavior that produced them. This is very effective and has proven to be one of the best ways to cause improvement.

I have seen a lot of high performance BDCs. Without fail they have these points down. The CRM is dialed in to create relevant tasks and every day the workload is managed. They set goals and the evaluation processes serve as accountability measures. The showroom is doing their part and everything is driven by the numbers and what they tell you about behavior.

Almost all improvement comes from simplification. Simplifying their job improves not only their performance, but in the simplification process you have simplified the processes, CRM, time management and other key influencers along the way.

It’s leaderships job to simplify processes and procedures. Making it easy for employees to do their jobs makes them effective and efficient. It improves productivity and performance while making the job more enjoyable and fulfilling.

It’s simple.

For more information or resources to simplify your BDC click here.

If you are having a bad day click here.

To perform at a high level, BDC’s need high level performers!

This is very important. Your BDC team will talk to more customers than anyone in the organization. They are responsible for 35% – 60% of your business, both in sales and service. Take a moment to review your reports. Look at how many inbound phone ups and internet leads that you had last month verses your showroom traffic. Which was higher?

What do great BDC's have in common?

• The right people
• The right number of people
• People doing the right things

Who am I looking for? 

In order to be a great BDC, you must hire people who have the skills, attitude and passion the job requires.

Chemistry among the BDC team is a big deal. People with cheerful disposition, a great attitude and ability to get things done, usually get along pretty well with other people of the same make-up.

Where to find them?

Depending on where your BDC is located, this could be easy or it could be difficult. There are several places that you can look to find qualified applicants. You can start by creating an exciting ad and post it to your social sites. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are all promising outlets. If an applicant finds you via the internet, then it's a guarantee they have at least some computer skills. Employment agencies can also be a good strategy for some BDC’s. Also, don't over look your database. Send out a mass email and  you may find some promising prospects.

How to screen them?

Once you have your applicants follow a thorough process for choosing the best possible candidates.

1. Interview by phone first. Makes sense doesn’t it? Put yourself into the customers shoes, Would you enjoy being assisted byt this person? If you like what you hear, keep them in the queue.

2. Have the candidate send you a video explaining why they would be good for the job. Twenty to thirty seconds is plenty. They don’t have to be Quentin Tarantino quality! You just want to know they aren’t afraid of it. Show me a fearless BDC agent and I’ll show you an appointment machine! If you like what you see, keep them in the queue.

Now bring these applicants in for an interview. If you need three people then interview at least six of the candidates in person.

3. Conduct the interview with two managers. This will save time and make choosing easier. Two heads are better than one.

You should always give them a typing test. Make sure they are comfortable with Microsoft office products or any software or application they’ll be expected to use.

4. Lastly, put all your applicants in a grid. Score them on things like attitude, communication skills, relevant experience, the quality of their video and their professional appearance.

You should be able to hire the very best of the bunch using this process.

How many agents do you need?

Lastly, you need to calculate how many BDC agents you need to hire! It's important to take the time to calculate how many representatives you will need so that you don't run into being understaffed or worse, being overstaffed and having to fire someone. Lets start by examining what processes your BDC is going to handle. Each process yeilds a different opportunity count, as well as each opportunity requires a different amount of tasks per process.  In the top chart, you can see the math worked out for the total number of tasks that each source creates. 

In the bottom chart, you can see how to equate how many agents you will need based on the amount of tasks that can be completed each day within each process. Use these two charts in conjunction with each other to calcute the number of agents that is right for your BDC.

This is just the beginning of building your A- team, the next step is training. You’ll find it’s much easier to build a profitable BDC when you have the right people.