For those who are unfamiliar, Agile project management (at its most basic level) is a means of breaking down larger projects/initiatives to assist with prioritization and organization within a specific time frame. In addition to ensuring project completion, it’s a great way to improve processes on ongoing projects and day-to-day tasks.

While it’s important to remember that this type of project management was originally developed for product/software teams, Agile has swiftly made its way into a number of different industries. For example, PERQ’s marketing team has leveraged Agile for the last 3 years and needless to say, it’s been immensely successful. 
 

Here’s how the our department uses it:

1. We separate each project and within those projects, we have a number of different tasks. When something is being worked on, it moves to “in progress.” When something is almost complete but awaiting feedback, it goes to “awaiting approval” and obviously, when it’s done, it moves to “done.”
    
2. For us, these projects are completed within 2 week Sprints – which means we’ve got 2 weeks to get these set of tasks completed.
    

The entirety of the project doesn’t need to be completed. A project can span over the course of a few months. But if we SAY we’re going to get something complete that sprint, it generally needs to be completed. We assign different points to different tasks as a means of estimating how long something is supposed to take. This helps immensely with the time management aspect. We eventually develop a better idea of how long certain tasks/projects are supposed to take.

Now for the obvious question: can folks in the automotive industry use Agile? Absolutely! Given how imperative it is for dealerships to have a strong marketing and sales presence in and out of the showroom, it would only make sense that agile process management/methodologies would prove to be useful in the automotive space.

Here are a few ways I believe that automotive dealerships can leverage and benefit from agile methodologies — especially in regards to sales, marketing and overall team management:

1. Keep Tabs on Dealer/Consumer Relationships: 
   
   If you work at or own an already established dealership, chances are pretty good that you have a relatively extensive consumer database — current customers, prospective customers, etc. Although your dealership has a team of salespeople to follow-up with those consumers, things can get a little hectic — especially if you run into the “always good to have” problem of having “too many leads.” Agile processes could potentially alleviate some of the chaos that comes with handling those many relationships. Instead of  perusing through your database — calling out to consumers in the order their contacts are received — certain types of consumers can be grouped together and prioritized for follow-up.
   
   For example: During a week long sprint, one salesperson would focus specifically on consumers who have shown interest in taking a test drive. Another salesperson might focus their time on following up with consumers who are interested in different financing options. The following sprints could then reflect the next stage of their consumer’s shopping journey. If in one sprint, a consumer is helping consumers in the test drive stage, they could help them with the purchase stage the next sprint.
   
   Naturally, there’s no one way to delegating these types of consumer relationships. Your dealership might choose to be a little more organic about it. Another possible way of handling consumer relationships would be handling each consumer as if they were their own task or project.
   
   If, for example, a salesperson has several appointments or phone calls scheduled, those can be assigned their own task or project — depending on how deep the relationship is. If Consumer #1 is schedule to come in and look at selected inventory, the Consumer could theoretically be the project, and the actions (the test drives, the conversations, the paperwork, etc.) could be the tasks or stories.
    
2. Vendor Management:
   
   Dealership owners and general managers often work with a number of different service providers and vendors. Regardless of how many of them you have in your rolodex — whether it’s 1 or 10 — keeping tabs on every piece of communication can be tricky when you have so many other moving parts. Agile process management can give general managers and dealership owners the opportunity to organize and prioritize the most crucial points of communication they have with a vendor.
   
   For example, a meeting to discuss cleaning up with CRM (with your service provider) can be its own task. Once the meet is over, it’ll go from “In Progress” to “Done.” If the meeting was approximately 2 hours, then that means the equivalent of 2 hours (in points) will be taken off your total of points that need to be completed. Managing those varying communications through Agile can help with your team’s overall progress.
    
3. Marketing & Events:
   
   Dealerships are no stranger to the world of marketing — and events for that matter. Whether it’s direct mail, SEO, SEM, social media marketing or event marketing, each of those specialities takes lots of time and lots of effort. Considering I, myself, am part of a marketing team, I can say with 100% confidence that your dealership’s marketing and events teams would greatly benefit from agile methodologies. Considering how granular marketing can become, it would prove extremely useful to break apart each of those marketing specialities and events into projects of their own.
   
   Each project would then have tasks appended to them with their own point estimations. At a high level, this gives the marketing team (as well as the general manager and owner) an idea of how much time and effort is going into promoting your dealership. For example: Putting on an entire event might take a full week.
   
   Think about everything that goes into making an event simply happen. You need to get printed materials, prizes, develop online ads, get in touch with an event team (if applicable) — and the list goes on. Breaking down each of your projects (in this case, a specific event is your “project”) helps eliminate as much chaos as much as possible; and provides additional clarity to parties who aren’t directly involved. 
    

Obviously, you may agree or disagree with the above suggestions. After all, agile process management isn’t an exact science and there are so many different ways of implementing these methodologies into your work environment. But hey, that’s the beauty of agile methodologies — they can be completely customized to your dealership’s needs and goals.