Bryant, we are looking into Conquest also, I really wish we could get some feedback from other dealers that are using it.

Talk to ANY Manager at a CarMax - we are NOT a one-price store but ARE reviewing their pay plans as a possible future solution to a question we know is coming!

Don't worry! If you belong to a 20 Group you are under-paying them already! Your profits are safe as long as you want to be competitive (which is code for the same) as the competition.All of us, I am at the front of the line, have fallen prey to the pointy headed accountants involved in 20 Groups. They have nothing to really offer so they came up with a percentage of gross (17% domestic and up to 23% in some imports).The funny thing is none of us is satisfied, in fact I would say most of us whine, about the quality of today's salespeople. If you pay them like dirt you will get that in return! I have a lot of experience with one price pay plans.....$250 Weekly Salary (no, you can't charge it back to them)$200 Per Delivery$500 Bonus at 12 Deliveries$750 Bonus at 16 DeliveriesThis delivers $60,000 annually to a 16 car per month salesperson and that is what the job is worth....no more and no less.

We just revamped our pay plans to give our sales team more consistant pay. We are paying everyone a $21000 a year salary which they get paid $800 every two weeks. We then pay them a bonus payout every month (similar to a manager) with a combination of units and gross. For used car sales people we start at 7 cars sold to pay bonuses and $24000 gross and pay a combined payout based on gross and units. Seems to be working out well for our salespeople, they are liking the consistancy.

I don't know the actually salaries of the salesmen here. But I do know that for each sell they make they receive a minimum of $200. If we have to write the contract that adds another $25. If they mention Gap, Accident Health, or extended warranty, in front of F&I and the customer purchases any of those above that is an added bonus. They get a monthly draw (goes by experience and how long they have been here) and that is guaranteed every month. If they want an actual commission check then they have to sell enough to go OVER their draw. I am hourly so I don't receive a true commission on the ones that I sell. I get $100 per car and they take out the taxes for me so I don't have to pay them at the end of the year. My commission is made up in all the overtime that I get paid as compared to the salesmen who don't get overtime since it's calculated into their annual salary.

We are still on commission. Get a draw check or weekly advance of 290 week and then a washout end of month where they take out the draw or advance. They are paid 25% of front end gross, 50 bucks if the f and i sell a warranty, 25 bucks if the paint guard add on sticks (that gross goes to back end). Mini is 100 new and used. If they hit 15 units they get 500 bonus and if they hit 15 three mos in a row they get 1000. They also get 1% for every sold unit over 10 for a max of 15% on top of the 25% retro. We do have a 1700 used pack and 1300 new pack and have to price very competitively.

Why tie a salesperson's pay plan to gross when it is something they can't control? The only thing they will do is look at what used cars you have that have a large gross and then shoe horn there customer into that vehicle even though it may not be the one that is right for them. We are one priced, we pay a base and then on volume. Those both vary based on tenure.

I believe that in the consumer's mind, NO PRICE = HIGHEST PRICE.

I am so hopeful that this will get good comments. I was just informed that our sales department is leaning towards this same decision. Since we have been more efficient at putting competitive pricing online, our leads and phone traffic (and our sales) have dropped considerably. The salesmanagers are begging to take the prices off so people have to call for one. I don't want that to happen, but the results are not giving me much of a leg to stand on.

I would love to hear more on this..... We are currently advertising MSRP less rebates, but no other discounts. One dealer in our area has no pricing.

https://youtu.be/yiYvUqCpu-k

I am a sales consultant. Why have your people been leaving? I would normally leave if management berates me. I have found a dealership that I like right now. Just gotta sell more cars. It's also good to have great leadership in management. Positive folks that know what they're doing. People that we can learn from. etc.

Hi Bryant. Your dilemma is not uncommon and something we hear frequently when we first work with a new client. One thing you can pretty easily do on your own is to add a "jobs" tab to your current dealership website. This will serve as a landing place for customers and other interested parties to be abreast of opportunity within your organization. This is an relatively easy way to obtain resumes. The resources you mentioned are good, but you need to massively ramp up your exposure. The culture of your dealership is certainly important. Use examples of successful salespeople within the organization who at first never considered auto sales as a profession. High quality individuals are more abundant than you might realize. Let me know if we can help.

Bryant, this will be controversial: Scrap your pay plan, ignore your 20 Group and look to a more successful business model OUTSIDE the car business! Imagine investing in a four year education for your child only to have them come home to tell you they took a job in the car business as a salesperson? You and every other concerned parent would be horrified! What a waste of an education! My son is going to get into a business with 90% turn-over? Today, tomorrow's new workforce is taught about career paths, advancement, continuing education, growth, etc... and our business with the archaic pay plans is not on the list of jobs they will consider so what does that leave us with? Imagine this: "hey Mom and Dad, I got a job! It pays $50,000 Salary and I get a company car!" How would you compete with that? You wouldn't, you couldn't and it is about to happen to you unless you get smart and make some changes.

indeed.com will allow you to go and find people that looking for a job change, make a contact with those people to come in and talk about your career opportunities and see if you are a fit.

Bryant, according to the NADA Workforce study, sales consultant turnover at non-luxury dealerships increased to 80% last year...you are not alone with this problem. After having numerous conversation with both management and sales consultants regarding turnover at dealerships, I wrote an eBook on the topic: The Auto Dealer’s 10-Step Guide to Hiring the Best Employees. You can find the link to download it on my profile. It has tips on how to attract and retain people at your dealership. Over the years, I found that the most common mistakes dealers make when hiring sales people are rushing the hiring decision, believing what is on a candidates resume and what they say in the interview, hiring based on a gut feel, not fully vetting candidates, and not having defined expectations for new employees. If you are not getting the response you are looking for out of your online posts, try revamping your job advertisements. Spend less time talking about what you want out of a candidate, and spend more time telling the candidate what they will get out of you (career growth, company culture, earnings potential). Put a similar level of effort into advertising your job openings as you do into advertising your cars. If you are really stuck, there are recruitment companies out there that specialize in the placement of automotive professionals.

Start tracking each step of your recondition process. Find the area of slow downs and then change the process to become more efficient. We got ours down to 4 days for the last 3 month (included weekends). Keep in mind all the cars were in very good cosmetic condition. When our acquisitions have more cosmetic issues, the reconditioning slows down and can easily go back up over 7 days.

Tell the Service Department that based on their turnaround time, you can't wait and you have no choice but to start putting the vehicles on the lot, as soon as they come in. Tell them they can come and get it off the lot, when they get to it. As long as it is safe to drive, send it straight to detail and get it on the lot. No car should sit more than 48 hours, unless it needs 3rd party recon, etc...You can't sell a car off the back row. If Service thinks there is a chance that you will sell the vehicle, and they will get cut out, they will speed it up quickly. Remember, Service works for YOU. Not the other way around. Without Sales, the Dealership grinds to a halt. You can do without a Service Department.

Make an excel spreadsheet with the categories below. Update every morning. Email Service writers, Service, Manager, Self, Used Car Manager, GM, GSM an updated daily sheet. Keep it in their face every day without all the running around. Before you do this, have the car detailed before service if possible. Those that can be detailed should have photos online being marketed at least while it's in service. Your digital time to market isn't affected this way. stk# | year | make | model | color | trade date | service date | days to get to service | service aging | service writer | notes

The problem will never go away because your dealer or general Manager does not care. In my travels as an Educator I ran across one of the largest dealerships in the country. Their policy was amazing: Service had 72 hours from when the vehicle "get ready" was time stamped and handed to an Advisor or the Service Department absorbed the entire cost of reconditioning including all outside services. Guess what? Problem solved and was never an issue in the 9 years I was associated with them. Nothing else will work.

I can help you with this Bryant and it will be worth a look.  There are tons of one-off's that you can try to speed up the process: forms, spreadsheets, tracking devices.  We have all of that in one piece of software that will track, monitor, assess, control, display, and allow unlimited access and archiving.  

Let me know if you would like to have a conversation about Condition HUB

Scott (conditionhub.com)

I've been in quite a few dealerships and hopefully helped and learned something along the way to defining process. I have a couple thoughts on your topic. First, you are exactly right in your statement regarding not being able to get your team to follow the Internet process 100% of the time. That is indeed the true challenge. It seems that many times someone is hired who has "magic bean" templates that are supposed to engage the prospect better than any other. In reality any process followed 100% can be better than no process. But there are no magic beans out there. There are just those who believe in them. I'd start by insuring the sales team who handles the Internet department process is bought into the process. Easiest way to do this is to simply have them help in the creation of both the process and the templates. As a team, this is done and your crm should have the ability to let you know which templates actually get replies or are opened. Moving forward your team can redefine their process and templates as results are noticed and things change like the weather. The bottom line here is they bought into their process. That's the key. The second item I'd like to discuss is the way the prospect comes into the dealership. It was once by walking in supposedly. Some phone ups. And the Internet was beginning to drive them to us. Somehow we separated those who handled the Internet leads from the floor. It was easy to do this with the phone as well. But I think we are missing the point here.The sales process itself has changed and needs further changing. The means in which the prospect first touches the dealership isn't the key item. That's just their way of coming to us. What they want is a quick, easy, fast, friendly, fun sales process. Those on the sales floor need to evolve into also being able to work with those on the phone as well as those who touch us via the web first. After all, the Internet is really the phone on steroids when handled correctly. However the prospects are the same folks who walk in, or call. Managers need to be overseeing all forms of customer entry as well. There is no need to remove the Internet from the desk. Managers should manage and sit together to do so. The crossover of traffic is obvious and shouldn't managers know as much about those who are working deals as they can regardless of how the customer came to the store? Let's make the sales process simple. The professional salesperson gets to shake hands, take phone calls, and Internet leads. Cradle to grave. They work with their manager to bring the customer into the dealership, demo the Vehicle, sell the car, do the paperwork, deliver the car. One stop shop. Why have to try and transfer trust and rebuild rapport over again when passing a prospect to another sales person, finance manager, delivery agent, etc? My two cents is that we know the answer. We just choose to not do what feels normal. Let's not make this too difficult for a customer to buy from us. Perhaps if we stop making it so hard, we can get them to do that more often? Tony Z

I have to say that I agree with some of that and I disagree with some of it. In an ideal world, yes, the entire sales floor would all be properly trained on how to work the inbound phone ups and iLeads, but that requires buy-in and very active participation from the entire management team, both executive management and the desk managers. That is exceptionally rare. It also requires on-going training, and someone to inspect what you expect. It can be done, in a perfect world, but most of our worlds are not perfect. You can typically get the exact same results by hiring 2-3 BDC reps and either hiring a Business Development Manager, or delegating over site to the manager with the greatest affinity to following a process. Yes, BDC reps mean higher labor costs! but a BDC is also typically the department with the second-lowest turnover in the dealership (the office usually has the lowest). It is my experience that it is far easier to properly maintain a staff of 2-3 with low turnover than it is to constantly retrain new salespeople on a floor of 12-15 with a 50%-60% year-over-year turnover rate (which is industry average).

Edmunds.com. The lead volume for this third party lead provider is steadily increasing and most importantly they tend to provide the most low-funnel prospects. Edmunds influences 6 out of 10 buyers according to Polk. I have a very good friends who work there and I used to be a competitor vendor. I've done quite a bit of research on their performance including hearing feedback from dealers. You might seriously consider them.