Have you ever sat at your desk with your palm against your forehead, trying to put together the same old marketing you do month after month? You are not alone. It can be easy to place your vendors on autopilot and follow the OEM's sales and specials – sliding into an auto loop approach to your overall marketing strategy. Whether that's simply adding spend with one Vendor, adding a vendor's product, or hiring a new vendor to create the digital assets. It's getting stuck in this hamster wheel vendor auto-loop that can get you off track. With the mindset of "here's another month behind us." The goal and strategy is, and remains, to connect the dots between all of your vendors, building continuity in your digital marketing efforts. If you are experiencing "marketing fatigue," it is best to take a step back, re-focus, and get to work.

Your Vendor Cannot Do What You Do Not Ask. Connect the Dots First. Approach Your Vendor With A Clear Business Strategy. 

Sounds simple, no? But the truth is so many dealers do not take the time to read their vendors reports or, worse, take the time to strategize with them. And make no mistake, it's not that the vendors are unwilling to do so, either. Vendors want you to be involved, trust me – they do. So while it is the Vendor's responsibility to run the best ad campaign possible, it's your responsibility as the dealer to effectively communicate your breakpoints, business goals, clearly present your dealers brand. Anyone can send out an email blast, create ad campaigns, or POP Marketing. But not everyone can create successful ad campaigns. 

One of the best things you can do for your dealership is to connect the dots on all of the reporting you have and outline the following items: 

- Total Leads (phone calls, form fills, chats, texts, etc.) from each lead source.

- Total Leads sold per each source. 

- Days to close for each source (for multiple leads within a profile, take the averages for days to close; i.e., if the lead comes in and it takes 90 days to close after multiple inquiries, use the averages for those leads). 

• - Average email open rates, click rates, and conversion rate on the click-through rate – outlining the top five email blasts, asking yourself what the promotion was, subject lines, and content. 

-Cost of each lead source (this is not to talk about "acquisition costs" either. That's another article).

Once you have gathered this data, outline it on a whiteboard (or a report), which will give you a better picture of the primary traffic source for leads. The next step is to then review your OEM defector reports. That is understanding which areas in your PMA you are losing the most amount of sales too. More importantly, what is your market share cap not just with your PMA, but as an OEM. With this information – that is "lead source data", it's time to work with your vendors. 

Having a conversation with the facts (data) and a clear business goal will offer a much better strategy meeting with your Vendor. The idea that instead of simply focusing on a month-end report, you are now digging into areas of opportunity based on a clearly laid out approach. That is creating ad campaigns for areas of opportunity. At which point, the Vendor should take the time to review the sales data and other OEM data to better understand your market. Building ad campaigns that are not generic or detached from your buyer. 

It is meetings – strategized like the above – that can reignite your passion, and more importantly, your interest in taking a different approach to your marketing strategy. The stronger your results are, the more likely you are to keep pushing along. Not to mention, it's these trials and errors that build success. I would rather lose two thousand on a campaign – explaining it to the owner that ad did not perform one month, owning my mistake with humbleness than continue trudging along with a vendor who gets average results. 

Bottom Line: this is not saying "forgo" or "remove" all of your vendors, and go into a new strategy blind-folded. This is offering the idea that instead of remaining on auto-pilot, take the time to understand what is working and what your areas of opportunity are. Chances are there are strategies or ads that your competition is not doing. It's those ads that will not just get back on the map, but get you the much-needed market share in your PMA. 

Are you ready to break the cycle, take a risk, and make it happen? Do yourself a favor and work with your vendors! 

Is there a lot of thought that goes into deciding which call to actions to offer on the VDP’s? Or is it a constant free for all, or worse an afterthought? The idea that more is better, where dealers easily have more than five or six different ways for the customer to inquire about a vehicle. Having multiple options for the customer to choose from sounds like a great idea. However, having too many choices can make it confusing for the customer. Not to mention, when you do get the inquiry via the CRM, more often than not, the BDC Agent or Sales Consultant is not aware of where the lead came from. All of which can create an unnecessary breakpoint. Here are some to consider when choosing which call to action to display on your website. 

The Forms Are Not Labeled in the CRM. You Have No Idea What Form the Customer Completed. This Causes Break Points. 

Think about it for a minute.  If the customer completed a form for the sales price (whatever that means for your dealership as each dealership has its own interpretation as to what the sale price is), but the lead in the CRM says general inquiry, what do you think happens? The BDC Agent or Sales Consultant will reach out to the customer asking them if they want to come in for a test drive. To which the customer might ask, “I wanted the sales price.” You might not think this happens, BUT it does. And when it happens, it can and will cause frustration on the customer's end, where the customer was expecting an answer to what seems to be a simple question, really. 

One of the ways to resolve this issue is by contacting the vendor that manages your website. You can have them label the various forms on the website: 

Dealer Website (Parent Label) 

VDP Price Inquiry (Child Label)  

Dealer Website (Parent Label)

Test Drive Coupon 

By labeling the leads with the correct form name, it can have a positive impact for many reasons. One of the most important reasons to do this is to ensure that your team knows where the lead came from! And while we should always offer the same level of customer service - the way we both approach and provide the customer service varies on the situation at hand. Imagine knowing that the customer inquired on the “test drive” coupon. So that when you called them you can start the conversation by first thanking them, but secondly confirming their test drive. At which point, you can confirm if vehicle options are flexible and or whether or not they have a trade. 

In this example, not only did you notice the purpose of the customer's inquiry, but more importantly, you effectively can mold their experience based on what they inquired on. All of which can and will offer the prospective customer a positive experience that is consistent with what they experienced before receiving your phone call, email, or text. On the flip side, imagine if you did not know if they wanted to test drive the vehicle, and your time was spent focusing on “asking for the appointment” when that is already something the customer wanted. And while we might not think that the customer is not paying attention - they are! I mean, especially if they had to filter through all of the loud noise on the website, having gone through more than six or seven different options before contacting the dealership. 

And sure, not all examples are the above.  The point in discussing this is that in order to offer the customer a good experience, we have to resolve any potential breakpoints. One of the most significant breakpoints to overcome is not knowing what the customer is asking, which can make for a really frustrating experience. This is also a relatively simple fix, no? It starts with first making yourself an internal list of the various lead labels. At which point, once you have confirmed the changes with the web provider, and the CRM (making sure they receive the lead correctly, which is most often ADF format), you need to make sure your team is aware of the changes! This will help ensure that when they do answer the leads that they take the time to read where the lead came from! 

Have you taken the time to review the lead labels? If so, has this had a positive impact on your store? 

It is easy to choose the ban-aided approach we know so well in our industry, no? If a vendor's solution can somehow "magically" fix the issue, then it must be true, right? This approach leaves us continually going back to square one, or what we call "back to the basics" - "block and tackle approach." But what if we didn't have to continually go back to square one, slapping one band-aid on at a time? And instead, we focused on the real issue - a crack in the foundation - that causes the breakpoints we deal with? 

One of the biggest breakpoints us dealers face today is handling incoming phone calls, which is a multifaceted issue and comprises the following core concerns: 

● Training processes on the dealer level to handle the incoming calls 

● CRM Integration of the incoming calls is it worth the clutter?

● Management of the incoming calls

● Inbound line tracking vendor

● Total marketing spend dictates inbound call volume, but do you NEED to spend more to get more?

More often than not, we tend to look at the above items with a siloed, tunnel vision approach. Make no mistake, all of these concerns are intertwined, and if one of the above is "broken," it negatively affects everything. Instead of slapping another band-aid to the foundation, looking for a "magical" fix using your phone vendor's "magical buckets," let's, look at each one of the core elements—the most critical being training. 

Training Processes On the Dealer Level to Handle Inbound Phone Calls 

Sure, your phone tracking software might offer "tips and training" on handling inbound calls, which sounds great, right? But for those of us who have managed the vendor side of inbound calls, their reporting, tips-tricks, and training often do not mesh well with your current sales processes. Not to mention, merely relying on a report of "call buckets" does not, by any means, paint the real picture. For example, most call vendors cannot associate duplicate calls. And for those in a BDC or BD Manager role, you often wind up spending more time reworking the reports yourself to get accurate numbers. Numbers that tell a completely different story than of what's reported in the CRM. And, well, you know why - the customer completes a test drive request, and then calls into the dealership. You already set the appointment, but you did not get the appointment according to the phone tracking vendor. So that must mean that your appointment set rate is terrible! So now you need to complete their training courses on setting appointments, right?  

Wrong. Well, partially, but the point is that by looking at it from one angle, you are not getting the full picture of where the breakpoints are hiding. And sure, there will be calls that bombed, and you did not get the appointment. But, taking the time to go through every single "missed appointment" call due to the lack of vendor capabilities is not the best way to approach this issue. And driving home "training" from telephone call analytics on a cornucopia of calls that come from hundreds of other stores doesn't really help MY STORE.

Additionally, this generic training offering is merely an attempt to be "everything to everyone," and as we saw in the late 20-teens, that doesn't work. Sure, many "say" they listen to all your calls, but let's really dig deep into that statement and then transition that into HOW that architects their training for YOUR store? The answer is, it doesn't. 

This is a breakpoint on the vendor side that can do more harm than good. Hence, it is essential to curate your own training on the dealer level to handle the calls vs. solely relying on one side of the equation to handle all of your training. Instead of focusing on "magical buckets" from a one-sided perspective, look at the entire story in the CRM. Using a dedicated training vendor that can connect the dots is not only a best practice; it's the only practice if you really want to drive sustainable results and still expect to get your job done. Additionally, I don't know too many "trainers" working at the store in that capacity with the bandwidth, the tools or the support to drive results. Having said that, do some exist, sure they do. But I'm not talking about the exceptions. I'm talking about the rule. Connecting the dots means they have the whole story, a story that gives the dealer the breakpoints that need to be addressed. 

Management of the incoming Calls 

Getting a text alert for a "bad" call sounds fantastic, right? Well, again, if your vendor cannot aggregate duplicate calls, defining customers who already had appointments, etc. then your manager will be wasting time. Time that could be spent using their CRM to manage and monitor for potential breakpoints actively. Not to mention, taking the extra time to have to go back into the vendor's platform to "fix" the call is not just painful, but pointless. If the vendor is integrated into the CRM, then manage it in the CRM. Make no mistake, it is essential to look at how many calls you are getting, but most CRM's offer a "multiple lead source" report, which can define the total leads by source, "individually." By taking this approach, you get the full story, and better yet, you can work with your teams to address the breakpoints by effective training. And what's actually in the CRM anyway? Think about it, without true and proper training, without effective training, all that you see (even with an API) would be worthless audio files matched up to Caller ID's. Having a fully trained staff actually obtaining contact information the right way means far less management intervention is necessary. How many managers look forward to reviewing those buckets? Or reviewing those alerts for matches? I know I don't. 

The other big red flag with solely using a phone vendor's reports is that I cannot tell you how many times I have seen GM's take away the phone calls from the sales consultants or BDC Agents, and (yes) Sales Managers due to the "reports." This made for a lot of arguing, which led to heated debates on the real issue, lack of training and resources on the dealer level. Simply throwing the new rep on the block into the BDC closet to get phone training in five minutes, or watching another "generic video" is not going to work. Not to mention, let's face it, most sales managers cannot handle incoming telephone calls themselves. This is not about putting anyone down, either. Look, my phone skills were *hateful* when I first started. It took a lot of training and time spent with trainers to get where I am today. If your teams are well trained, armed with solid word-tracking, and phone skills, they will sell more vehicles. 

CRM Integration of incoming Calls 

If your CRM can do this, GET IT DONE. It is a lifesaver. Taking time to manage multiple platforms, all while trying to increase your appointments, is not time well spent. If your phone tracking provider lets you track calls in the CRM (effectively), you can easily manage a seamless workflow. But if you have to take the time to listen to each call, then go back into the vendor's platform to "fix" the call – that is brutally painful. I vividly remember having to spend a good 1-2hrs every night re-scoring the calls so that my teams got paid accordingly, to then have to defend why I "fixed" the call. As if I were on a mission to "fudge" reports. Come on, every "change" made is tracked in most CRM's (check out your audit reports). I still have a headache thinking about it. 

Total Marketing Spend to Increase incoming Calls 

The more you spend – depending on the ad campaign – can mean a significant increase in the total volume of incoming calls. Those incoming calls mean there are more opportunities to sell vehicles. But simply getting more calls does not mean that you will sell more vehicles, and certainly not because they were dropped in your vendors "call buckets" either. For example, if your store is setting appointments at an average of 30%, then by default, yes - you will book more appointments. However, if you take the time to "build your foundation" not slapping band-aids on (using your tracking providers "buckets" and "tips"), you could actually increase your set rate from 30% to 60%. Taking the more laborious approach, time, money, and resources to solve the problem will mean better results. Making more out of the total advertising spend. But spending time working out of "buckets" – with a siloed approach – will not solve the problem, and you will just work yourself in circles, all while creating more breakpoints on the dealer level. 

Bottom Line: take the time to invest in your dealer teams by first training them! Work with a training company that can build a solid foundation. Once your foundation is built, use the tools "together" to enhance your team's performance. The stronger your team performs by having the right phone skills, means less time spent managing your phone vendor's buckets. And instead, you can work with your team on objections, all while increasing your set rate, which means your dealership now has more opportunities to close! As for the managers, make sure they participate in the training too! They cannot manage the breakpoints and areas of opportunities if they do not have proper phone skills. 

Do You Manage Your Training from Buckets? For Those Who Have Trained Their Teams First, What Do Your Results Look Like? 

There is not a lot of flexibility when it comes to customizing a work-flow in many of today’s CRM’s. Where in many cases the standard work-flow is both a phone call and email, and while both are very important - so is texting. In fact, texting could arguably be more important - in some cases - than the standard dealer email that does not always answer the customer's questions. That said, here are the top things to consider when implementing a work-flow and the shortcomings we face on the dealer level.

If the Customer Does Not Provide a Phone Number the CRM Still Says to Make a Phone Call.

This is one of the most common issues with the CRM’s in today’s market. Wherein, even though the customer does not provide a phone number the work-flow still offers that the BDC Agent or Sales Consultant needs to make a phone call. This also then means that in the CRM’s reporting it will offer that the BDC Agent or Sales Consultant has not completed their workflow tasks. And if your pay plan for the BDC Agent is tied to the completion of their tasks it makes it that much more difficult to manage. As the BDC Manager will have to manually delete the overdue tasks and or change them to another type.

Where is Texting? Many of today's CRM Work-flows do not include texting as a part of the work-flow.

One of the biggest pet peeves with a lot of today’s CRM’s is that they do not include texting as a part of the work-flow. Yet as we know, texting the customer is becoming more and more relevant as it is a very effective means of communicating with our customers. That said it is important for the CRM providers to ensure it becomes apart of the work-flow. Otherwise (as mentioned above) if your BDC Agent’s pay plan is tied to the completion of their tasks their focus will be misplaced. As they are making unnecessary calls and emails.

A Rigid Work-Flow. Two Phone Calls on the First Day. Emails and More!

There is such a thing as over communicating with the customer. This is especially true if you are calling the customer two to three times, emailing and texting them. All without receiving a response, unless that is of course to unsubscribe or they have opted out of texting. And make no mistake, this is not to offer that we should not try to get in touch with the customer a few times on the first day. What it does offer, though is that we need to make sure the content we are offering makes sense. If the customer is not responding to your phone calls and or replying to the emails you sent then it is best to review the content. It could be something as simple as your subject line, or that the email went to their spam folder. Either way, before completing that additional email task is best to look at your overall open and response rate. This will help you get in front of more customers!

Bottom Line: Instead of worrying about the completion of a task for the sake of it make sure the content is relevant. Knowing that not all leads are the same and or require the same level of contact. In fact, in many cases, the customer might add in their initial reply email what times work best for them for you to call. So if you ignore this - to complete a task - then you could potentially run the risk of losing this customer. In doing so, you will see an increase in the overall response rate, which will translate into more sales.

How Do You Handle Your Store’s Work-Flow? Do You Find That it Limits your BDC Agents Productivity? Do You Tie Your BDC Agents Pay Plan to their Work-Flow Task Completion Rate?

Every month we get leads, lots of leads. But as you know, not all leads are of quality. Yet so many dealers waste precious time answering bad leads. For the sake of this article, a bad lead is one that does not have the following: valid contact information (phone/email), a coupon inquiry from a customer that has sold (yes, this happens), or are plain old spam. If your Sales Consultants or BDC Agents are spending time calling, emailing, or texting bad leads for the sake of completing their CRM work-flow, they are wasting a lot of valuable time. Time that could be better utilized calling leads with a higher probability of booking an appointment. And no, this is not about "cherry-picking" or only working with low-hanging fruit, either. 

So what do you do with bad leads? How Do You Manage Bad Leads?  

If there is no means of connecting with the customer, the lead needs to be marked "bad." However, there are multiple ways to go about marking the lead bad. One of the best ways to do this - depending on your CRM's capabilities - is to mark the "status" as "bad-lead." At which point, at the end of the month, you can easily report on how many leads were not able to be contacted. This does a few things for your dealership: 

First: your BDC Agents or Sales Consultants are not wasting their time trying to contact a lead with invalid information. This also helps them stay on task with calling customers that have valid contact information. And while this - itself - seems trivial or not a big deal, it is a big deal. There could easily be 10-20% of bad leads monthly! That truly adds up after a month or so.

Second: The more you start to mark and report bad leads, you can start to look at the vendor who is supplying them. The idea is that while the vendor is saying you are getting a "tremendous" amount of leads, you can report back saying that out of the 125 leads, 35 were not able to be contacted and we only sold three. Those three sold units - after taking the cost of the provider out - did not have a strong ROI. More so, after two to three months of tracking this vendor's lead quality, it might mean that you ought to move those funds to a campaign that is pushing more traffic to your dealer's website with a stronger conversion rate. 

Third: Morale is everything. If your sales managers are not taking out bad leads (again, this has to *CLEARLY* be outlined/defined as to what constitutes a bad lead), then it can - in many cases - become nearly impossible for your BDC Agents or Sales Consultants to hit their core objectives. That is hitting a specific set/show rate when the lead quality is not making that a remote possibility. Again, this is not about marking "leads" bad if the customer simply does not respond. That is a whole other discussion. Instead, this is about removing the "bad" leads that are not possible to communicate with. 

Bottom Line: Marking leads bad - due to invalid contact information - is not about "skewing" the system to show better results. The purpose and point of marking leads bad due to invalid contact information is to help keep your team on task and make sure that you are holding your vendors accountable. And yes, it is no secret - that with any vendor - there will be leads that are bad. However, when the majority of the leads are invalid and or the set/show/sold rates are the lowest out of the mix, then you have the data on hand to make a well-informed business decision. 

How do you handle bad leads? Do you actively manage this in your CRM? 

Designing a pay plan focused primarily on commission on the dealer level is not uncommon; in fact, the entire premise of the pay plan is “the more appointments you book that show and sell the more you will make,” which can be true depending on the pay plan. However, if the pay plan is just focused on commission, it can quickly become a group of individuals working separately. And because there is not a team effort when it comes to managing customers, there are often gaping holes in your follow-up. Just check one of your BDC Agents work-flows at random, and you will find several uncompleted tasks.

To avoid the risk of losing sales due to a lack of team effort, there are other components to consider when approaching the pay plan:

Hourly Rate vs. Salary?

It is quite common for your BDC Agent to be an hourly employee, which can be quite costly. A prime example of this is overtime. Take a look at their hours; are they clocking out for lunch? If not that can add as much as five hours per week in unintended over-time, which depending on your state is time and a half for their pay. You take one to two BDC Agents doing that, and now you are paying ten hours a week, and forty hours a month! If you salaried your BDC Agent, you would potentially save thousands of dollars in overtime. However, when it comes to determining their salaried rate, it is best to review the going rate in your area. So while it might sound harsh - business is business, and in many cases, the overtime that is worked was highly unproductive.

Only Paid if the Appointment is Sold?

There are two sides to this scenario, and both are worth addressing; one of biggest reasons dealers do not pay based on whether the appointment sold or not is the age-old argument of “they do not have control on whether or not the customer sells,” which is true. The primary purpose of the BDC Agent is to book an appointment getting the customer into the dealership. Now that said, the reason why dealers have moved towards the plan that only pays if the customer sells is due to the issue of “the BDC agents do not bring in quality appointments. They will try and qualify the customer more if they know they only get paid if the appointment sells.”

Two things, if your BDC Agent is bringing in a customer with a recent repossession or if the customer wants a $350 payment on a $45k vehicle with zero money down - then yes, that is not best practice. However, your BDC Agents have far more significant issues if that is what they are doing. The second issue with that pay plan is the fact that if the BDC Agent is being paid only if the unit sells then they might be too involved in the deal. For example, instead of the BDC Agent moving onto the next phone call, email or text they are steadily focused and involved with the desking manager and sales consultant handling the deal. That distraction can cause ill productivity; as much as a half an hour can be lost as their focus has shifted.  This is not to say that your team does not need to have a commission-based plan, but this does offer that there are perhaps better ways to pay your BDC Agents. One of the ways of doing so is by paying if the appointment were to show, and then pay a volume bonus. If they hit “x” amount of shown appointments, they get a tiered bonus.

Bottom Line: your hourly rate could be costing you thousands of dollars in unintended overtime. It is best that you take some time and review the amount of overtime year over the year looking to see if your appointments increased. Chances are it is minimal, and if it is minimal then you know, it has cost your dealer money decreasing an already thinning bottom line. The other thing you ought to consider too is reviewing the cost of the BDC. Wherein, once you look at the payout of their commission, plus the salaried rate (or hourly), less their “sold” units, you can look at their actual cost and what their ROI is for the dealership.

How do you pay your BDC? Do you have an hourly rate or salary? For those with a salaried rate have you noticed any changes in their performance?

Trust is imperative as it offers the customer the peace of mind that they have made the right decision regarding the servicing of their vehicle. And while the trust is earned through providing the correct information on the site such as accurate pricing, services, and rentals.  Earning the customers trust is also an integral part of other services offered with chat & text being a considerable part of that! 

When is the last time you were on your site and went through the chat or text process? Do you offer that on your site? Those that do offer it - do you have their chat reps handle the leads? If so, have you taken the time to speak with your account manager setting expectations for how customers are to be handled? 

Here are the top things to review and check-out to earn their trust! 

Chat Service 

Chatting can be very convenient for the customer. Where more often than not the customer is simply wanting to book an appointment. Perhaps asking a question about their service inquiring about what their contract entails. Sounds simple enough right? 

The problem comes into play, however, if the customer asks a question that the rep is unable to answer. And what's worse is if the rep misinforms the customer about a service cost or their service contract. When the customer arrives - the service advisor is most likely unaware of where the appointment came from much less what was offered - the customer than has to feel as if they are defending themselves with the information they were provided. Starting the visit off on a bad note. All because the chat rep was misinformed about policy.

One example of a mishap you can avoid is a chat where the customer was told that windshield wipers were a part of the service contract. When the customer arrived and asked “what type of windshield wipers they were getting” the service advisor looked with a blank stare offering that it is not at all apart of the contract. The customer got upset and while we were able to de-escalate the situation it made for a frustrating experience for both the customer and advisor!  

Take the extra minute and work with the account rep to ensure they are on the same page about expectations on customer questions & services! 

Texting 

Having all of these options are GREAT! But, not so great when a customer texts you and their response goes into the abyss as no one is checking the CRM for unmatched texting conversations. 
The customer texts a simple question - can I wait for my vehicle tomorrow while it is in service? Only to not get a response. Comes in the next day and it's completely backed up! And will take 3+ hours for the service! No fun for anyone. 

Do you use texting for service? If so, who handles the texting conversations?

Booking the Appointment 

When the customer schedules their appointment for a service (and the pricing is offered for the said service online), they are expecting it to be the same cost. Now mind you, of course, there will be the situation where the customer did not select the right service for their vehicle. And the advisor has to explain to the customer the price difference. Sure the customer might be slightly upset. But they are most likely going to be more understanding then if the customer were to have selected a service and the cost is much higher in store than of what was advertised! 

Do you show pricing within the service scheduler? If so, has it made a difference in overall spend? 

Bottom Line: if you are offering services to assist the customer offering them a more transparent experience then make sure the quality of their experience is the level of customer service you expect! Turn Key is GREAT, BUT only great if it WORKS! 

When is the last time you used your chat service to book an appointment? How was your experience? Do you manage chat/text in-house? 

While Digital Retailing has remained a buzz word within the industry, the situation we are all currently facing has turned us talking about it into actualizing it in our uncharted new normal. How we actually approach Digital Retailing, however, varies drastically dealer to dealer. Namely, it is easy to talk about what Digital Retailing potentially means, or promoting it on your website - but when it comes to actualizing an internal process, marketing it, and, more importantly, managing the touch-points, there is a lot to accomplish. 

Here are some of the key components to consider when approaching digital retailing. 

Digital Retailing is More than Just Updating Your Website. What is Your Actual Process? What Does Digital Retailing Mean? 

For so long, the digital retailing conversation encapsulated the idea of having a physical cart on your website. The idea that the customer could add a vehicle to a cart and move through the various steps. And while that is a unique idea, it's the steps that define your sales process that count. 

There has to be a clearly defined process that both your dealer teams and customers will easily be able to follow. The notion that merely saying you offer "shopping" from home or "contactless delivery" does not mean anything to the customer. Your dealer teams also must understand every step of the process, everything from inventory selection (needs analysis), credit applications, trade-ins, delivery, and OEM delivery guidelines, to name a few. One of the most essential steps in this online process is the needs analysis. In that, when the customer does select the vehicle they are interested in, you are making sure it is the vehicle they would like to test drive by confirming their needs, wants, and desires in features, etc. 

So what does this process look like? 

Marketing & Sales Process: A transparent process that is outlined on your dealer's website, which really should be its own page - perhaps something to the effect of "contactless delivery." On that page, you can easily layout the actual process. 

Step One:  complete the needs analysis - the customer selects their vehicle of interest.

Step Two: complete the pre-approval process. 

Step Three: select an at-home consultation time.

Step Four: complete the trade-in process.

Step Five: complete the at-home delivery and OEM delivery process. 

Outlining the core steps will make it easier for your customer to know what to expect. As for the actual in-person at-home consultation, you need to outline, again, what the customer can expect in person. For example, you can outline the process - mirroring the above - informing the customer that you will bring the vehicle to them for a test drive, complete a trade-in analysis, etc. 

As for the Other Components to the At-Home Process, Here Are Other Items to Consider: 

Trade-in: This is probably one of the hardest components of the at-home delivery process. Where we must test drive their trade-in and do a complete analysis. However, with all of the tools we have out there - including being able to take photos of the vehicle sending them to the sales manager - we can help our used car sales managers by gathering as much information as possible. 

One of the other things you can do - depending on how far the dealership is from the customer - is after taking the test drive, take their trade-in back to the dealership allowing the customer to keep that brand-new vehicle in their driveway! But make no mistake, the trade-in process has to be transparent! The last thing you want to do is wind up having this process become much like it is at the dealership: the wizard behind the curtain, no? 

Instead of being the wizard behind the curtain - for those of you who use trade-in tools - you can complete the "walk-around" taking photos, and offer the customer the "range," which is entirely based on the information entered. Now (and I can hear the disinterest already), you have to train your sales consultants to make sure they are capturing the core components of the walk-around: tire test, dings, scratches, accidents, and how many owners to name a few. By offering the customer a thorough walk-around, the customer might actually even point out issues with the vehicle! Lastly, the sales consultant has to be honest and explain that the final trade-in value is subject to a final approval! 

OEM Delivery: More often than not, the OEM delivery process is a means of keeping the customer "occupied" while they wait to get into finance. But if we take a step back and think about it for a minute, isn't the customer a bit too preoccupied with what's arguably one of the most stressful parts of the process? By working with the customer at home - on their turf - the customer might be more invested in learning about their new vehicle. The other big difference with the at-home delivery is that instead of waiting on more than one customer at a time, you are giving the customer your undivided attention! What isn't the customer going to not like about that!? 

Social Media & Follow-Up: Given that the customer is on their own turf, they might be more inclined to allow you to take a photo of their new vehicle on their driveway! It does not get any better than that, no!? You also want to make sure that you take the time to follow-up with the customer, which means also offering another "at-home" follow-up consultation to revisit any features that they are either unaware of or having trouble with. If you can accomplish that before they receive the OEM survey, it could have a positive impact on your dealers CSI, but more importantly, it also means that you have a happier, stress-free customer. 

Bottom Line: Is there a lot involved with this process? Yes! Will it be easy to implement at your dealership? No! However, for those dealerships that are willing to make the investment - offering their customers a new experience - it can have a positive impact on your dealership's bottom line. But to make that happen, as mentioned above, there has to be a self-explanatory front-facing process that both your sales consultants and customers can easily understand. The other facet to making this a success is ensuring that your dealer follows the process. And while we all struggle with break-points in the process, it is much harder to "control" those break-points when you are on the customer's turf! 

Have you adopted digital retailing? If so what are some of the successes or obstacles you are facing? More so, how has your dealership handled those obstacles? 

OEM leads. One of the first things that come to mind is that they are not just expensive - some being as much as $25 per Lead - but they are often not the best lead source. Namely, they tend to have one of the lowest closing rates. One might think that because the customer is converting directly off of the OEM site that they have not just chosen their brand, but also their dealer. 

However, when was the last time we (us dealers) questioned how the OEM's lead process works? Asking the bold question: do they cause some of the rifts between dealers? Do they help create the "price-war" games as they send the same Lead to several dealers? More so, what can they do to not just help the dealership but offer the customer a better experience!?

Here are two things the OEM should consider when it comes to managing their lead processes.

How the Leads Are Distributed. Stop Pushing Leads to Out of PMA Dealers! 

We have all been there. That is getting a lead from the OEM that is not in your PMA, which in some cases means that the incentives are not the same. This is one issue I have never understood. Think about it, if the dealer is already hard-pressed to make a profit - losing money to sell the vehicle - why would they want to sell a unit to a customer that is not likely to come back for service? Service is the dealer's profit center. So while one or two deals at the end of the month might make or break your OEM kick-backs, selling out of PMA usually does not have any advantages for the dealer. 

One of the other situations that can arise out of this is OEM Incentives, depending on the month, the unit, and the trim level the incentives could vary slightly between PMA's especially if the Lead is in another state. Another issue dealers face when it comes to out PMA leads is the dealer processing fee situation. Each state has its own laws regarding what the dealer can charge their customers. With some states having as much as a 200 to 300 dollar difference. Whereas, if the leads went to the closest dealership based off of their zip-code, it could - in most cases - avoid most of these issues, and promote the idea of buying your vehicle from the local dealer. 

Are the OEM's Actually Hindering the Customer's Experience? Imagine Getting Emails from Seven Dealerships at Once - Especially if the Responses Do Not Answer the Customers Questions in the Lead! 

Offering the customer the best experience possible should not be an afterthought. The idea that many OEM's send a lead to all dealerships within a 50+ mile radius does not make sense. Sure, one could argue that they are trying to get the customer the best price possible. But chances are that for new inventory - with all of the current OEM pricing restrictions - prices are relatively the same. Why can't OEM's send the Lead to the closest dealership based on the customers' zip code? In doing so, it helps keep that Lead within its PMA, allowing the dealership a better chance of closing that customer. 

As for the customer's experience, getting multiple emails from various dealers - from the same OEM - at once can be frustrating for the customer. Think about it for a minute. Several dealers have auto-responders, send text messages, emails, calls, all overlapping each other. So wouldn't you be a bit frustrated that your inbox gets flooded? Especially considering that most of the immediate correspondence fails to actually answer the customer's questions in the inquiry - yet we wonder why our customers get frustrated? 

Lastly, as mentioned above, the customer is far more likely to service their vehicle with the dealership that is five miles away versus the dealer that is fifty-plus miles away. Sure, you will have the customer that wants to drive an hour further to save a few hundred bucks. But you will still have a better chance of selling that customer if you get the Lead first. Not to mention, we wonder why dealers struggle with retention rates in service, but we fail to adequately build the relationship with the customer - mostly because if they purchase outside of the PMA - with the same OEM - they did not get a chance to build a relationship. It is a lot easier to get the customer to come back for service if they know their sales consultant who is supposed to be introducing their customer to the service department at the time of delivery.  

Bottom Line: At the end of the day, the OEM's and dealers have to work together so we can offer the best experience possible. Part of offering a better experience to both the dealer and customer is having a solid approach to handling OEM leads. Ensuring that there is a fine balance in how communication is approached with the customer. All of which can have not just a positive impact on the customer's overall experience, but help the dealers keep their local customer's purchases local. 

When was the last time you engaged with your OEM on leads? 

It is no secret that the way we communicate with our customers has drastically changed in the last four to five years. Texting has become one of the top ways to communicate with your customers. Yet most OEM's still fail to count texting as a touchpoint in the customer's general correspondence regarding OEM leads! Sadly, many still only count phone calls and emails as touch points in reporting! 

Despite trying to explain the value of texting - regardless of the OEM's short comings - most of us have still experienced a meeting with the GM or Owner. A meeting where we have to explain why our total touch average has slipped gradually over the last few years. Spending more time worrying about a report that does not add up versus what is getting results. 

Another concern with the current data models regarding touch points to sale is that, for the most part, do not include texting! So are the studies that continue to say that twelve touch points are the average even accurate? Does one text each way a touchpoint, or is a conversation in its entirety a touchpoint? Does that even matter? 

The answer is NO! Instead of focusing on touchpoint averages on traditional communication forms, we should be focusing on the end goal; that is selling the vehicle! 

One of the many great things about texting is that it enables you to continue the conversation right where you left off! The idea that you are not expected to sit there and anxiously wait for the customer to text you back. Knowing, too, that the customer still has a 98% chance of seeing that text you last sent them. And until they physically delete the text from their inbox, it will remain there as a constant reminder! This does not, however, mean that your dealer should not have texting policies - to remain compliant - either! There are also several best practices to follow, which is a whole other article (coming soon!).

Despite the success we are having with texting, as mentioned above, most OEM's are still stuck in the past! And they tend to reprieve themselves of offering solutions other than providing the obvious "contact your leads." Now more than ever, the OEM's have to provide a clear sense of direction, allowing the dealers who have and continue to evolve their dealerships the ability to do so without the OEM's prohibiting them by failing to count texting in their reports! 

Have You Ditched the Stale OEM Reporting in Favor of Results? If So, What Are Some of the Successes You Have Seen? 

Has Your OEM Counted Texting as A Touch Point in Your Overall Customer Correspondence?