As dealerships when we’re looking at our marketing, social media, lead management and customer follow up programs we’re often focusing too often on what our “reach” is.  By this, I mean how many customers our message is getting to through – how many people visit our VDP, Visit our Website, how much traffic our vehicles got on XYZ lead generator, how many leads we got, how many customers are in our database, etc. 

My argument will be, and will always be, that all of this communication is great.  My contention is that our real goal needs to be to get 2-way communication with our customer…thus an engaged customer.

Customers can be in MANY phases of our lifecycle communication, but for ease of understanding I’ll oversimplify it to these 3, with brief explanations:

Pre-Sale – customers who haven’t bought from us, or are just entering the market.   This could be just starting research online, just stopping to our store to get information or the customer who has submitted a lead but hasn’t visited our store.  This could also be a REPEAT/REFERRAL/SERVICE customer who is just initiating the “research” phase on their own.

Current Sales Prospect – This is an engaged customer, they have visited the store or have 2-way communication after submitting a lead, making a phone call or reaching out to their past sales consultant. 

Post Sale – This would be after purchase – what kind of marketing, follow up or customer communication, are we going to maintain?  This can include CSI, Anniversary, Birthday or even lease pull ahead/loan maturation reach outs.  Could also be a “VEHICLE EXCHANGE” type program, where we are attempting to speed up the customer’s cycle and acquire their trade – for this article, I’ll consider this Dealership initiated.

I’m recommending a couple of VERY simple things to engage your customers, keep them engaged and also ensure that we are able to own this customer for future Service and Sales Opportunities.  I know, this is overly simplistic, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that many dealerships (some in my own group) are very poor (at best) with these types of concepts…especially with actual non-auto emailed follow ups. I’ll apologize in advance, this is where it is likely to get VERY long and drawn out – hopefully there is enough here to keep your interest!

1.  MAKE SURE THEY GET INTO YOUR CRM!!!!

Seems obvious and I hate that it needs to be said, but this CRM is there to be a database and ensure follow up is completed.  How many of your opportunities aren’t even making it into your CRM…especially in the “PRE-SALE” phase of lifecycle communication (even repeats/referrals)?  I know I have been surprised…Would you be?

2.  BE AUTHENTIC, SPECIFIC AND ENGAGING IN EMAILS AND VOICEMAILS

I’m a big fan of doing a couple of simple things to build urgency when trying to get a customer engaged.  Contact in flurries AND use all contact methods – call/email/text all in a short burst.  I mean, why not use all the tools you have while creating some sense of urgency.  Know your message, know your reason and believe in it.  Whatever the purpose for your communication, convey it with passion, excitement and urgency.  This goes for ANY stage of lifecycle communication.

3.  COMMUNICATE YOUR DEALERSHIPS POST SALE FOLLOW UP PROCESS

Know how you expect your Sales Consultants (and dealership as a whole) to communicate with a customer after they purchase.  Remember, most (aside from the calls) can be automated.  Best practice would be to have a personal email written.  Also, don’t forget to include handwritten letters for Anniversaries and include your business card again…this is a NICE touch!  The message of these should be thank you, can I help, any referrals and please let me know if there is anything I can do.  THIS COULD BE A POST ALL ITS OWN.

4.  EMBRACE SOCIAL MEDIA

One of the simplest and most engaging things we’ve done on Facebook is share our customers pictures after they purchase.  Have all of your team members like or share the photos (especially the person who sold it) and if they can, tag the purchasers in the comments.  This uses the power of the people who follow your page and the reach of their friends too!  Also try a boosted post, upload targeted campaigns (service and sales) and really micro target your customer base with the right offers.  Maybe you load all of your 2010-2012 Cruze customers into FB with their emails and send them the current Cruze lease special.  For Service – maybe you take your whole customer base you haven’t seen in more than 9 months and target them with current service specials.

5.  TEXT, TEXT, TEXT, TEXT!!!!

Every customer should be asked for approval to be texted!  By the way, there are solutions out there to manage your texting and keep it off of personal cell phones.  Give the customer a reason – like I’m going to share with you a quick video of the vehicle so you can remember it…or I’ll text you the link to the vehicle, etc.  This keeps the emotional bond between your vehicle and the customer…also, it is far more effective than a call, an email or a mailpiece.  I’m including 50 stats about Text Messages HERE if you’re not sold!  Text the customer thank you for visiting as they leave…the next day send them a video of their vehicle and say something to the effect of “I think you forgot something here”.  For service, imagine how much faster your status check and work approval times would be with texting rather than call/email.  Embrace it, it’s not going away…find a way to exploit it and like those who were ahead of the internet game…YOU WILL DOMINATE!

Sorry again for the length of this, I hope you all found this helpful.  As always, this isn’t a comprehensive or in depth look on what can be done…just an opportunity to get some thought starters out there and easily implementable solutions to problems every dealership has.  If you don’t have these problems, PLEASE HELP US MERE MORTALS OUT!!!!

Yes, I know it’s a Jackson 5 song and yes, I know that a BDC isn’t the easiest thing to launch and manage at our dealerships.  Below you’ll find the 3 Main Steps and some thought starters for each topic, hope this helps!

***DISCLAIMER – what is listed below is by no means an all-inclusive and exhaustive list!  I know we have an educated and high performing site here so I’d like to encourage engagement and responses with what your Dealership does (that isn’t on this list) that you feel is vital to your performance!!!!***

1. Who is responsible for:
   • Responding to the leads
   • Managing follow up Process (schedule and templates)
   • Managing results
   • Determining and conducting training / coaching needs
2. When and How are we following up with our customers/leads?
   • Know what your follow up schedule will be
     • What forms of communication will you use?
     • What technologies would we like to incorporate?
     • What do our Emails look like?
     • How long will we be following up for:
       • Phone Ups
       • Internet Leads
       • Chats
       • Life cycle communication
         • Post Purchase follow ups/referral asks
         • Lease expiration
         • CSI related (service and sales)
         • Equity position
   • Determine what you want the “Tone” of your message to be as this needs to be communicated and transparent throughout your communications and marketing.
     • Are you lowest price?
     • Are you best service?
     • Do you offer free oil changes?
     • Are you transparent in pricing?
     • Do you have the largest selection?
3. Train, Implement, Measure and Hold Accountable
   • Train
     • The expectations (follow up schedule)
     • The skills (email and phone skills)
     • Train the systems (CRM, Chat, etc.)
   • Implement your processes
   • Measure and Track your results/performance (minimum)
     • The number of leads received and Appointments Set/Shown/Sold
     • Conversion Percentages
       • % of Leads converted to an Appointment
       • % of Leads converted to a Sold Unit
       • % of “Shows” that end up a Sold Unit
     • Response Times
   • Hold designated responders accountable to meeting the expectations and performance

I know this seems like a lot, but these are the basics that need to be done, planned for and implemented to have a successful BDC/Internet Program.  Now, this won’t yield you record breaking results – but controlling these variables will get you respectable results, with manageable processes that you can track and rely on the outcomes! 

For those of you who want to have an Above Average BDC, you should think about the items below:

• Goal Setting – Daily, Weekly and Monthly Goals
  • Track them, update them, coach to them
  • Pace them and make tweaks in live time
  • Start considering some more advanced metrics
    • % of leads contacted
    • Template open rates
    • Template response rates
    • Compare lead performance by source
      • Used vs. new

• Ongoing Training and Development
  • Once someone is “good” they’re skills still need to be refined and expanded, never stop finding ways to improve processes, templates or skills (phone/chat/email)

• Be different/innovative
  • Know what dealers around you are doing and find a way to be different
  • Explore and embrace new technology (personalized videos, creative email templates, new lead generating sources and methods)
  • Live and die by your “Why buy from us” reasons

• Re-evaluate regularly
  • Monthly, Quarterly, Yearly
  • Make changes and improvements on a schedule
  • Look at what is working and what isn’t working
  • Mystery Shop
  • Learn new things

It's important to understand who is actually trying hard to improve, evovle and stay in front of ever changing market we work in.  I'm as big of a culprit as anyone, so don't take this as me pointing fingers without taking some of the blame.  

There are so many products, "tricks", solutions and problems in our industry that it is incredibly easy to lose focus on who we are and who we want to be.  We start swimming in circles...working hard to stay in the same spot rather than working hard to progress.  

Just a couple of things below that help me self assess and ensure that I'm moving ahead, not in circles:

• Know your trends and have goals - where was I?  Where do I want to be? What am I doing to get there?
• What am I doing, how am I doing it? - Try to determine what direction you're going to go...where you want you dealership/department to go and put in place the "steps" to accomplishing it.
• Keep your "To Do" list short - Put only the most pressing and important items on your list...only add the "minor things" to it once you've knocked the bigger things off of it.
• Get engagement from other "leaders" - Very few of us actually have the opportunity to implement or change something without it impacting leaders of different departments.
• Measure your impact - Are the changes we're making having the intended impact...if not how can we make sure that they are?

I know the title of this post makes it seem like I think that people aren't working hard.  In fact, I think that everyone in the industry (at least everyone who is on this site) actually cares about being as good as possible!  I think it's important that as we're working hard for 10-12 hours/day, 5-6-7 days per week that we're getting the biggest bang for our buck!

What do you do to make sure that you're always evolving and growing?

I will admit, I haven’t been in this industry all that long, but it seems like we often are victims of over analyzation and miscalculation.  We’re pretty good at selling vehicles, just bring me the customer and SHAZAM, let me work my magic – SOLD!  Often we struggle at retention, retaining customers and retaining employees seems to be an aspect of the business we are always working on.

The big obstacle that we put in front of ourselves is how do we retain our current business (Service, Sales, Parts) while earning new business?  I don’t want to sound over-simplistic, but it really is about listening to and doing what is best for your customer.  The concept of retention extends to our employees too; do what is best for them and be an advocate for their happiness and I promise you you’ll see the return on your investment from employees and customers! 

If our business truly attempts to take care of the people we encounter in all facets of our business, usually the people will take care of us.  They’ll buy more, they’ll service more, they’ll refer more friends/family and they’ll say great things about us on Social Media.  These are all things that are important to us.  Organic growth, though providing a truly great customer experience is the best money you can spend.  Spend it with your customers, spend it on your facility, spend it on your employees and it will be better than the money you spend on any advertisement, program, plan, training or technology. 

Our greatest resource is truly our customers and our employees, once we invest enough in them – with quality leadership every aspect of our business should improve. 

Simple concepts that win in retention:

• Retention is ALWAYS cheaper than starting over, with customers or employees.  Protect what you have, keep them happy and new business will come.  If you can’t keep what you already have, why go out and get new business/employees that you’re just going to lose anyway?

• Ask for and listen to feedback.  Employees and customers often provide us feedback, some of it we don’t want to hear or don’t care to hear.  Everyone has the customer/employee that just could never be made happy.  However, if you notice a theme amongst the feedback you’re getting, maybe there is something to the feedback being given…LISTEN TO IT!

• Have a plan, develop it, implement and execute it!  We’re really great in this industry about identifying obstacles/objections and sometimes we even overcome them.  But how often do we make plans, develop them, implement and execute.  If these 4 steps aren’t being fully followed, it’s likely you’re having some fall out somewhere.  Have a vision for the business you want to be, the employer you want to be and make sure that you take the necessary steps to get there. 

• It isn’t that hard, but retention is never easy!  Kind of a contradiction right?  Well by this I mean that it isn’t the difficult to implement ideas or thoughts, it is really doing the small things, doing them well and living by them.  It isn’t easy, because it’s not something you can fix once and just let it go.  It’s constantly curated, worked on and improved upon…this is where it becomes hard for us.  We move from fire to fire to fire, and often forget about the previous fire we just worked on!

I’m sure that everyone reading this already knew the things discussed and it’s nothing more than a reminder….but sometimes reading things that we already know is better than learning something new…you know, like RETENTION!