All we ever talk about - it seems - is response time, engagement rate, closing rate, set-rate, show-rate the list goes on. And while I am not saying that the above is not important (because it is very important) what I am saying is that Dealers might be missing the point.

The point of we spend so much time worrying about leads and where they come from, response, time, engagement rate, set-rate, show rate, close rate (even writing it twice can be annoying, really) but why haven’t we taken the time to understand and review when those leads are hitting the CRM?

The busiest time for lead traffic based on a year over year study showed that between the hours of  12:00 - 2:00 pm was the busiest time.

77% of the appointments for Internet Leads (OEM, Third Party, & Dealer Website) were booked between the hours of 8-5PM

By the way, this is not an argument entirely for an amazing BDC Manager schedule, either. Rather it was a wake up call to optimize the success rate and ROI for all of the money being spent on leads - with several stores spending over $10k a month in leads.

In order to work with the data, we used a year over year lead data on third Party, Dealer Website, & OEM leads. Once we exported the leads we broke down the traffic times by using the timestamps on the lead submissions. Breaking it into three sections - 12AM - 7AM | 8AM - 5PM | 5-11PM.

It was found that 85% of the leads (OEM, Third Party, & Dealer Website) came into the CRM Monday - Friday 8-5PM. With less than 12% of the leads coming in after 7PM.

Taking it a step further we exported the appointments report for internet leads YOY - using a report that timestamped the time in which the appointment was created. In addition to whether the appointment showed or sold - breaking it down, again, by third party, OEM, & Dealer Website.

77% of the appointments year over year were booked between the hours of 8-5PM with a show rate of 72% and a sold rate of 58% with the busiest time for booking appointments being 12:17PM (to be precise) with more than ¾ of the appointments being booked between the hours of 12-1PM (lunch time, no?)

Appointments booked after 5PM - 12AM had a show rate of under 48% - where the top source of leads derived from OEM & Third Party (please note that I am referring to the lead that came in after 5PM that booked an appointment that day had a *slim* show rate).

If the leads come in between the hours of 8-5PM there had to be a reason, no? Well - there is a reason - 60%+ of car buyers today use their mobile phone. No longer does the customer need a desktop to surf the web. Therefore, it is considered best practice If paid search (SEO/SEM) is strategized to be spent during certain hours than you should see an increase of leads during those hours.

Google bases your “busy” hours based on web traffic - why haven’t they shared this yet I wonder? - so why not take advantage of it? Or maybe we are just ignoring it?

That said, we switched our BDC hours to 9-6PM - one rep working the graveyard shift 11-8PM (with me the BDC Manager working 8-5PM), and we have seen a *significant* increase in not only our set rate, but our sold rate!! This has been a *huge* game changer.