Thanks for posting this! It's so time-consuming to create a page on our website, but I definitely need to take the time to do that.

I agree that the myriad of products Google has released this year have been game changers for SEO and important tools for auto dealers to add into their digital strategy. But the fact of the matter is that the future has already happened, Google's landscape has already changed tremendously, opening opportunities for better marketing. I don't believe Google will cease or replace its indexing algorithm for these products alone, but rather use them in addition to its ever evolving algorithm to provide the most relevant content for the searcher. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

http://goo.gl/NecTlR by the results of this graphic, the social media impact is already well underway and is by far larger than any of the others. 7 out of the top 8 are social. While I'm not discounting the importantance of other avenues, I'm poitning out that the social impact already superseeds them by far and will continue to be the driving factor.

I agree with you that Google will be soon be relying much more on Social Signals in the near future but it will not be the entire algorithm. As you probabley know, there are over 200 ranking factors. Google has to be careful becasue just like linkbuilding people will begin to manipulate the social signals and begin to produce thin content and have a cirlce of people commenting, +1, and resharing for the purpose of rankning high.This is already happening. Google is hard at work to understand the human language and semantics ( meaning of words) and have been data mining voice search for several years. Just like with enhanced campagins knowing the Device, Time and Location can help to determine what a consumer is looking for. Google is scared to death of mobile and understands that voice search is the future. People want to ask questions and get immediate results without having to contimually refine searches. I agree that the old way of thinking is gone with link building and Meta Data. I hope we are finally at a stage where the effort of trying to game the algorithn is higher than creating quality content that someone would pay for but provide for free(Youtilitly). Answer your cutomers problems, provide value, and build real relationships. Google wants to rank real people and not websites, Things not strings How do we prepare that? Create quality content that will be shared. Make sure your dealership is maked up for Schema and is listed in the Google Knowledge Graph.Obviously a lot more you can do but I look forward to your next post!

Love this article! Excellent points and very well written! Kind of like having a medical school class on how to perform heart surgery given by a flight attendant. What does the flight attendant know about heart surgery? Or, even better, reading a book from the original assembly line for the Model T and trying to apply it to today's modern assembly line. Kudos Chris, another excellent point, as usual.

Thanks Chris! To be honest one of the best things IML ever did was hire you. You're a front lines car guy and exactly the model I'm promoting here. The way you connect with our managers and our sales people on a level they can relate to is a prime example of the right way to do it. Thanks for your feedback.

I think this article is spot on. I have 4 BDC "managers" who I believe do nothing. They play favorites and give good leads to the same few salespeople. They are not even good at their job and use subject lines in mass Emails that say things like "you have got to read this" They do the bare minimum for the business/marketing side of the dealership. I am new to the whole industry and have been thinking of a way to become on of those hybrid salesmen. I know I can do a much better job.

Although I certainly respect your opinion I simply don't agree. Granted I do not own a dealership either and have to be the one to justify the cost of the existence of a BDC either. We have had the Hybrid or "Elite Sales Staff" as we called them who handled all Internet and Phone traffic, our very best sales sales people, and only allowed the rest to catch floor traffic. Is this the same format you are speaking of? This is what happened. They were of course successful, which meant they were always out front with a customer doing test drives, write-ups, trade evaluations, closing a sell and doing a vehicle deliveries. While they were busy with the customers who they got into the dealership as we knew the would, but are also eating up their day, you guessed it, all the leads they are sitting on are not being followed up properly because they just can't be in two places at the same time! Many potential customers found themselves in a bottleneck we created of slow response time and the complaints started mounting. Potential customers were lost therefore we gained no significant advantage. If you have an answer to this new dilemma created by the instant success you WILL have by creating a Hybrid Internet Sales Team, brother I’m ALL ears. I would also point out that you can get good BDC people who can handle an internet lead properly, write good emails and execute productive phone calls, follow-up timely and set appointments. I'm not saying they are easy to find but they tend to be people who have the skills but are unable or unwilling to work the hours of a car salesperson for various reasons. We just had one of our best salespeople who gave birth to a child and she requested BDC hours for obvious reasons. In closing we have tried everything in my 8 years as Internet Director and it looks like now we have decided to go back to a BDC setup. We will sell more cars. Our owner and COO are trying to justify the cost of its existence… As The World Turns.

They simply try to get leads through the door. That is how they get paid. They a lot of the time make false claims which then gets planted on the salesmen when BDC turns them over to us. I think it may just be the quality of the BDC representatives in my dealership. Where we go real wrong is advertising budget.

Amazingly true as hard as it is to hear. Anyone in the business for any length of time knows the woes of today's sales person who complains that there is just no money anymore in selling cars.....well they are right there isn't like there used to be and there is very good reason. As you pointed out Chris, we have layered the sales process to such a degree that there just isn't enough pie to go around. When you create a department to handle all responsibilities that used to be just part of the job, the money has to come from somewhere. Typically I have found that just because there is now a BDC isnt always a sure fire way to more sales. If the machine isnt well run to begin with a BDC just ends up being a diluting factor to profit margins. If I had a dollar for every sales person who complained about "not enough money to be made here" while their BDC took calls, followed up on unsolds, as well as made the who do you know/referral calls as well as orphan owner calls, I would be writing this from the bow of a very beautiful boat with my umbrella drink. The key is back to basics- hire the right people with the right core competencies to handle all aspects of the sales responsibilities- and then effectively manage and develop them instead of creating departments to delegate the parts of the job that the most sales people these days don't like to do

All very valid points, the key here is the training, process and the people you staff. The industry has dramatically changed, with all the technology and research available it’s requiring more "customer service" and this requires the salesman to be so. With the right process and people you can have a very cost effective and successful BDC and still allows for the salesman to "make more money" by providing customers a great experience and value for their dollar! The job of a BDC is not to sell the cars over the phone, but to provide a great reason why buy from your dealership and set the appointment. Compensate your BDC staff for a sold appointment instead of a show appointment. Also allows salesman to rotate a shift in the BDC, this allows for the difficult callers or leads to be redirected to the professional, the priority of incoming calls should be to a salesman, BDC staff should be creating residual business by making outbound calls to orphans owner, unsold orphan leads, conquest manifest, data on your CRM otherwise just sitting there… My experience has been that customers are more willing to share information or reasons why they didn’t purchased with a non-sales person than with a salesman or manager. The bottom line is that with adequate training, with the right staff and written processes you can have a profitable and successful BDC.

BDC seems a bit too complacent and not experimental enough to make increasing changes for sales in general. With what you both said above I will have to agree. Making sales should be left up to the salespeople. I would rather see fewer BDC and hire 1 or 2 very skilled internet marketers, lead generators or content marketers to come in and appeal to our target. People who can break away from tradition marketing decisions (which don't yield returns anymore) and turn the company into a more modern era mobile and internet socialite.

appease * not appeal

In many ways I agree with Chris Hill. I was at one point anti BDC and all about the "cradle to grave" setup. By the way I still prefer that setup if I had to go back into a dealership as a sales person because I know that the way I handle it with dedication and success not many are willing to. With that being said, that style works best when you have a team that are committed as I would be. The problems with that thought is that it creates more politics and more reasons for sales team to dislike each other. When I worked "cradle to grave" my team and I were looked down on because we were selling cars while the sales floor was only taking floor ups. In many cases, more customers came through the door by appointment then just walk in. The BDC or GRC (Guest Relations Center), a term we use at Dealer eTraining is the marketing and support staff for the dealership. They are responsible for having super fast response times, maintain the CRM properly, present themselves in a guest relations manner to bring back unsold customers, follow up on loyalty and equity opportunities, and take incoming calls to provide the guest on the phone a world class experience. When running the BDC the right way there are many reasons for the existence. While there maybe a cost associated with it, think about the benefits of it with regards to guest relations and giving the guest a better experience. The same experience that can potentially increase CSI and keep them coming back. The average sales professional might be too lazy to do any of those tasks. At the end of the day, the setup of the dealership will dictate how important a BDC is to the operation. As a BDC Manager it is the most underrated and disrespected positions in the dealership because upper management and sometimes ownership really do not understand in what value a quality BDC Manager can bring. The focus is always on the expense of it and not the profit or addition to the bottom line.

I am sorry but I couldn't disagree with you more. I have managed internet departments (salespeople working leads A to Z), full blown BDC departments (with 10+ members) and hybrids of both in my 12 years in the business in NY/NJ metro area. The most success I have had, and the most money I have made for the store and myself, has been with the BDC appointment setting model. As you mentioned, you could probably put your BDC staff on the floor and they would do OK, but could you put any of your salespeople in the BDC? I have tried and found that most couldn't hack it. Yes, a salesperson theoretically should be more educated on the product and possibly a "better closer" but that's not necessarily relevant as we are talking about two different sets of skills required here. To convince internet leads and phone-ups to come visit the dealership, as opposed to the other 6 dealers they are talking with, requires a unique set of phone etiquette and communication skills to break through the impersonal barrier of speaking or typing to someone that you can’t look into their eyes, and without the use of your body language and big smile. Especially when that customer was already low-balled by another dealer and wants to know your best price, trade value, interest rate, etc all before coming down. I agree that when a salesperson works the lead, and there is no hand-off when the customer arrives, then the closing percentage does certainly tend to be higher. However, the number of appointments that a salesperson is able to get in is substantially lower than what a BDC rep can produce, so that you end up closing less deals. And that largely has to do with the time factor. When the salesperson does get an appointment to arrive, and hopefully purchase, then he is away from his phone and email for hours at a time and unable to respond to other customers. A good BDC rep can handle 150-200 prospects per month, making 50 to 75 calls on an average day, plus typing emails, online chats, and updating the CRM with notes. A salesperson couldn’t handle even half that amount, especially if they're good (meaning they keep having appointments show to take up their time)! And we haven't even covered the fact that a true BDC does more than just call leads and phone-ups. The department should also be doing showroom follow up, plus lease retention, plus CSI follow-up. They also should be doing database mining to increase your customer retention. That can include calling previous finance customers that probably have equity in their current vehicles to come down and trade them, as well as calling customers that service with you but never purchased from you, or just received a large service bill that may want to consider trading in instead. I apologize for the lengthy response but this is a discussion I have come across frequently and have spent the time to do the research and have proven that even with the added expenses of the BDC salary, the extra deals we make because we have a BDC more than justifies the cost. In addition, do you really think anyone would believe that if the dealership cut some expenses (such as the BDC) that they would use that money to start paying the salespeople more? Lol.

We all know BDC departments differ from every company. One company might have the BDC make appointments, go on test drives and sell cars, while another BDC may simply make phone calls and greet the customers before handing off to a salesman. My company is the later and there seems to be more disconnect and broken sale than if just salespeople did it on their own. Of course there are reasons for this: first of all a lot of car dealerships have a humongous turnover ratio because they hire anything that comes through the door without taking skill and professionalism into consideration. I believe the position of the "sleezy salesman" is deteriorating. The top salespeople in my company come from background in integrity driven sales which should be a main focus, but there are may other reasons why this is not used. A company could have 1 well versed and talented salesman (who could be all over social media and connecting with potential clients), but this salesman may be hitting so many goals that they could be more expensive than keeping 2 new salespeople who may sell the same amount in any given month. A lot of the time it comes down to spending in the "now," but if you build a sweet team of talent who work together and build a reputation online and word of mouth then spending money on new recruits would tremendously recline in the long run.

Yes Jay I would agree with you here. I may just be in this position because I see a lot of lost potential with my immediate BDC. You can say it takes a lot of time with follow up Emails and retention, but not when there is no uniqueness and personality to the follow ups retention, but more of hassle emails neither you or I would ever read. It seems as if your BDC department of 10+ could handle a lot more, but I could be working with a company with a poor beginning plan and future plan as well. I in no way want to discredit BDC, but just want a nice conversation reveal good debate which you all have provided so far.

Jay Cohen and I started our careers working at the same dealership. It is amazing to see how we both saw the light with a BDC. In fact, I remember at Academy Honda back in those earlier days how there was the separate internet sales team and two showroom sales teams. In fact, I was on the floor and it was frustrating that the Internet department was always busy and we weren't. When I later went to work at an AutoNation store selling Honda I was in the same "cradle to grave" setup. I noticed the difference between showroom sales and internet sales. But with the internet becoming hotter over the years the importance of a BDC became bigger. Jay explained the benefits of the BDC perfectly.

Great dialogue ! Everyone has an opinion, although the bottom line; usually the most cost effective and profitable processes win out. Especially with the people who are ultimately writing a check at the end on the month, each month to pay for tools to monitor dealership profits and expenses.

Great article, dealers are losing a huge share of the market... we are well in to the 21st century. Leads are not being manufactured to not only an appointment, but a qualified pre sold customer. The very first impression can decide the outcome of someone raising their hand. Create a lead, receive a lead, develop report with lead with true salesmanship and benefit from a qualified appointment and sell more cars.

Great article, we are well in to the 21st century and need to improve our leads. The BDC needs to be operated as a department that is essential to the bottom line. With true salesmanship a lead can be generated, with building report the lead will convert to a pre sold customer. Certainly easier said than done, Chris has a very good outlook in what it would take.

I think the answer is not either/or but both. A well disciplined BDC helps to set appointments while separating the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. Face it, every single lead is not a potential customer. By all means dealerships should have motivated, well disciplined sales staffs and these staffs should be MANAGED. The issue is not to BDC or not to BDC, it is to manage the damned sales staff and not fall into the far too common model of the general manager as the lead personality of veteran closers with horrific follow up. If you have a BDC placing good prospects in front of your good closers it is a win/win. Your sales staff should then be focusing on repeat/referral business. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. A BDC also, as the article implies, makes a great farm system. I think the premise of this article needs carefully re-thought. IMHO

Obviously the trigger word here is "less-experienced". Of course you don't want inexperienced people to sell your cars for you. This is why you have a BDC in the first place. In working with Hundreds of BDC/RMC centers across the country successes vary depending on the skill and effort of the people you have.... Just like anything else. If one more old time GM car guy wants to tell us that BDC's are bad because the people who work in them are unskilled and untrained.... then Mr. GM I tell you that it's your fault it's not working. Would you hire sales people with zero experience and put them on the floor with zero training or support? Would you be surprised when they broomed 25 people in a row and never touched desk and never gained selection from anyone they talk to? Would you higher an F&I manager without any experience and then be shocked that he or she can't sell a single thing on their first day.... Why are our super skilled Sales people using delivery "secretary's" after the sale but yet... The BDC is a waste of time because the sales person should be doing it, before the sale? The fact is.. If you have a BDC full of your failed or worst sales people, then it's already destined to fail. If you can find me a sales person who can keep up his numbers, take 300+ phone calls and 200+ int leads and have 65% appointment ratio, an 80% show ratio, a 55% closing ratio and still have time to actually sell the appointments he makes.... Then you my friend have just found a needle in a haystack. As a BDC installer and trainer I've found... 10 people nationwide in about 10 years that can, and have, achieved that. Tell your sales people they have to do it, ignore your internet leads, over inform your phone customers, and call me in a few years when you've washed out and want to sell your franchise, Because someone who knows how to sell a car in 2014 instead of 1996 might be interested.....

The number one reason why BDCs fail, is the same reason that hybrid BDCs fail, as well as the "cradle to grave" approach fails. As an industry, we hire people way to quickly without a strong interview process to determine if they can really do the job. In football, all teams run certain plays. You can coach the hell out of your team, but if your QB can't throw, your O line can't block, and your RB can't find the lane, you will at best have limited success, regardless of how good a coach you are. You need talent first. It starts with self motivated talent. Get good at recruiting, and you will solve 80% of this mess. The method doesn't matter, IF one is determined to manage it properly. (another subject entirely) A good plan with good people = success. To speak to the one white elephant in the room on this matter, we seem to be ignoring high volume vs low volume dealers. BDC's generally thrive more, and are more needed for dealers that move a lot of metal. Especially if you are running a multi rooftop setup. Lower volume, and single point dealers should focus on cradle to grave as a general rule.

Wow dead on and loved the advice- so simple to implement yet so MANY are not and wont. What is that all about? are we really all that successful and phat in our professional lives that being the first to bat with a customer isnt important? I have been to thousands of dealerships during my career and I have to tell you that the winners not only think like this but do it. Get your Nike's on folks and "JUST DO IT!"

Thanks Wendi! Love your attitude!

Pretty good advice Chris and I agree Wendi, many dealerships are doing this to get ahead. This type of activity helps Monday go better as well. I am curious if anyone has ever heard of anyone monitoring dealer activity on Sunday's. In several states in the midwest, dealers are required to be closed on Sunday. Could a dealership face legal trouble in states that require them to be closed on Sunday if they engage their customers?

Technically you are allowed to be open but not allowed to record any deals on Sunday. I don't want to speak for other states and their regulations but even so this isn't selling a car, just servicing a customer during off hours. Thanks for your feedback.

Chris, I agree with you completely and applaud your efforts to help your customers. Even more, I agree customers deserve prompt responses every day of the week. This is not an effort to discount the value of your post. Simply, wanted to recommend checking with your dealer management and local laws before engaging customers who are interested in buying a car on Sundays (if it is illegal to sell cars in your state on Sunday). After some research, I found the law and definitions in our state. Perhaps they will be helpful to someone in Iowa. Our law reads- A person licensed under this chapter shall not, either directly or through an agent, salesperson, or employee, engage in this state, or represent or advertise that the person is engaged or intends to engage in this state, in the business of buying or selling at retail new or used motor vehicles, other than mobile homes more than eight feet in width or more than thirty-two feet in length as defined in section 321.1, on the first day of the week, commonly known and designated as Sunday. Pasted from “Engage in this state in the business” or similar wording means doing any of the following acts for the purpose of selling motor vehicles or travel trailers at retail: to acquire, sell, exchange, hold, offer, display, broker, accept on consignment or conduct a retail auction, or to act as an agent for the purpose of doing any of these acts. A person selling at retail more than six motor vehicles or six travel trailers during a 12-month period may be presumed to be engaged in the business. See rule 761—425.20(322) for provisions regarding fleet sales and retail auction sales. Pasted from 21. “Selling” includes bartering, exchanging, delivering, or otherwise dealing in. https://www.legis.iowa.gov/DOCS/ACO/IC/LINC/Section.322.2.pdf At the end of the day, I was curious if anyone had a story about a state gone after a dealer for selling cars on Sunday. I

P.S. Ask your website provider, marketing firm or advertising coordinator to help you convey the message. These people should have answers for you.

Questions from a reader: I read your article about PPC campaigns and was intrigued. I agree the value of PPC is in finding successful keywords that can be optimized for SEO purposes. So I'm assuming you are advocating a self-managed PPC program? Here's why ... Every PPC company I've dealt with always wants to include the 3 big words (dealer name, dealer brand, and dealer city). I consistently tell dealers if a customer/prospect is inputting any combination of those three, who are they looking for? Once they get the obvious answer, I ask them why are you paying for that? But once we remove the 3 biggies, the success of PPC campaigns drops dramatically. With that, a couple of questions ... 1. Are you promoting a self-managed program and recommend not to use a 3rd party PPC vendor? 2. Will a 3rd party vendor work with a dealer without using any combination of the big 3 keywords? 3. How much would you recommend spending per month on PPC if self-managed? 4. 3rd Party classified sits (AutoTrader, Cars.com, etc.) are all out saying customers use Google like a directory to find dealers and don't use it to shop for cars. Do you agree? My response: Thanks for reading the article and taking the time to write me. I can relate with what you’re dealing with when it comes to the “big three”. The reason these are so successful is that they come up at the top of the page or in a setting that draws the eye. If a dealership doesn’t already come up first when searching name, city and the brand they are carrying, they have bigger issues. Mainly, organic SEO of their home page. Google’s job is to give the user the most relevant answer to their terms. So that being said, if you aren’t in the top 2-3 for those big 3 then PPC is the least of your worries. What you are telling the dealers you work with is 100% correct. Remember the results are what the GM’s and admins at the dealership are looking at. If you were a marketing firm representing a company, you would want to show unreal success as well wouldn’t you? These marketing firms are lucky 90% of the dealerships out there don’t have people on staff that know any better and call them on it. 1. Are you promoting a self-managed program and recommend not to use a 3rd party PPC vendor? This is a loaded question. I highly suggest that dealerships start seeing the value of a good PPC program and what it can do for them if properly managed. If a dealer is willing to spend the type of money it takes to have an Internet Manager who is well versed in SEO, SEM and PPC campaigns, than I highly support the idea of doing it in house. Otherwise, this is a program that should be dealt with by professionals. It’s simply amazing how many firms aren’t proficient at this. That makes the search a bit harder. 2. Will a 3rd party vendor work with a dealer without using any combination of the big 3 keywords? A third party vendor works for you in every sense of the word. If they aren’t adhering to your wishes they should obviously be reminded or replaced with someone that will listen. PPC campaigns need to be managed and engaged. This is to ensure that the results you get from your PPC campaigns are actively tracked and reported to your organic SEO people. They will make the changes to your landing pages, meta tags and more to ensure you will start getting the traffic that your PPC results show. 3. How much would you recommend spending per month on PPC if self-managed? I don’t want to set that type of tone for the general consensus out there. I’m in the Chicago market so my PPC campaigns range from $2000/month for a less competitive Mazda market to $8000/month for a ultra-competitive Chevrolet market place. This is highly due to the fact that keywords here are more expensive per click than in your average market. That being said, I’d feel like I’m giving bad advice to dealers when it comes to budget, not knowing their personal market. This is a dynamic and always changing routine due to Google trending and demographic. 4. 3rd Party classified sits (AutoTrader, Cars.com, etc.) are all out saying customers use Google like a directory to find dealers and don't use it to shop for cars. Do you agree? I agree with the fact they do use Google to find local dealers to shop. I disagree with the idea they don’t use it to shop vehicles. Autotrader and Cars.com are extremely useful tools and will remain that way for a long time to come but not a resource to bundle all your eggs into. I tend to have a grandmother or a sibling whom is disconnected from the auto industry show me how they shop. These are our customers, not the car people out in the world. Trust me, if they know how to buy a vehicle, they will ensure they search all competitors and price them out with all local and regional dealers. Brian, let me know if I can be of any further assistance. I’d love to help any way I can. Take care and please follow me on Twitter for other blogs and articles I produce. https://twitter.com/CRMSensei

I assumed it would space it self out a bit better than that. I apologize for the wall of text ladies and gentlemen.

We tend to follow the rule that if no one is bidding on your name and you are properly placed in SEO/Places then there is no need to spend the money. But between the OEM and third party siphon sites, that is not usually the case.

(Chris - the comments render out spaced after the comment is saved; great stuff!)

Daniel, your organic SEO should carry you to the top of that list regardless. If people search your name, city and brand they will inherently be clicking on your website as well. I mean these people are out to find you when typing those words in. This alone makes you the most relevant search for those keywords.

This is the age old question, should I bid on my brand terms if I'm already ranking organically. Typically bidding on your brand terms is very inexpensive and is a great way to improve your campaigns overall quality scores simply due to the high CTR. There is a pretty good study (albeit done by Google) that seems to indicate that paid search ads gives you 89% incremental lift in site visitors – above and beyond traffic you would normally expect from your organic listings. Here is the link to the study http://searchengineland.com/google-study-ppc-ads-do-not-cannibalize-your-organic-traffic-86972 Bill