I believe that the dealerships that are struggling or know that they could do better with the internet are the ones with the lack of upper management’s knowledge on what to monitor, what to manage and how to make the department accountable. Put on top of that, the knowledge of what third party sites are good in your market, where to spend the internet budget, how to update the dealerships website, know the process of how the photos and inventory are being populated to all of these sites, and to make sure all of your internet leads are getting replied to in a timely manner and are being put through a good, effective internet process. These are the stores that struggle with the internet and get to the point of giving up on it or restructuring it every 6 months, the whole time knowing that the Internet is where they need to be these days to keep up with the consumer and the industry.

This is where dealerships with a knowledgeable Internet Director start getting the upper hand on results, like excellent response times, closing percentages, return on investment, low cost per sale and an overall more effective internet presence that helps effect the whole store. I see the Internet Director position at the store as similar to the GSM and the reason is that just like the GSM, the Internet Director is responsible to make sure that the virtual lot (website) looks good, they need to make sure they have the staff to handle the traffic and close the deals, they handle all the internet vendors, make sure that the ROI is in line, all the internet advertising is correct and the department is producing. But not only does sales benefit from having an Internet Director but also parts, service, body shop and F&I get to benefit from a well ran Internet operation. 

If you are a smaller store and have 1-2 Internet managers or salespeople handling the leads there is typically too much work for them to be effective selling cars!
1-2 Internet Managers responsible for 100-250+ leads
and is also responsible for:
-SELLING CARS
-Response time to leads
-Phone leads
-CRM updates
-Website updates
-Data/inventory feeds
-3rd Party vendors
-Internet reporting
-Photos
-Descriptions
-Locates
-Incentives
-Internet Specials
-Meet/greet appointments
….any many other responsibilities

But just like any industry, the larger stores, and large dealer groups have the resources and income to be able to hire a full time Internet Director while the single point or small multiple point dealer group still struggle to find a way to compete in their market. The big dealer groups have an Internet Director that manages 10+ stores (upwards of 30-40 stores in the larger dealer groups) that manage the departments and visit the stores on a monthly/quarterly bases.

So where do the small dealers go?

You can send your internet manager to conferences, hire an internet consultant for a day or two, but when the day is over, it is still up to the store and the management team to make sure they are getting the results they need. But most sales managers/GSM’s that I speak to (and I have spoken to about 1000+ of them nation wide over the last year) tell me that they wear too many hats already, so to make sure they monitor the Internet department is usually done only to their best ability. As long as their internet person sells their 10-15 units that’s good enough. This is not the sales managers/GSM fault, it is no different then having them be responsible for your parts or services departments, there is only so much they are going to know and only so much that they can monitor and as long as it is getting some results, that all they can do.

So I ask you again, where do the small dealers go?

Hiring a full time Internet Director would be the best place to start if you have the resources or income. But to have a full time Internet Director to manage a 1-3 person Internet Department might not seem to cost effective. Not only that but most the stores I talk to have a hard enough time finding good sales people or Internet Managers, much less finding a great Internet Director that really knows what they are doing. So now what? Hmmmm......

I believe that the dealerships that are struggling or know that they could do better with the internet are the ones with the lack of upper management’s knowledge on what to monitor, what to manage and how to make the department accountable. Put on top of that, the knowledge of what third party sites are good in your market, where to spend the internet budget, how to update the dealerships website, know the process of how the photos and inventory are being populated to all of these sites, and to make sure all of your internet leads are getting replied to in a timely manner and are being put through a good, effective internet process. These are the stores that struggle with the internet and get to the point of giving up on it or restructuring it every 6 months, the whole time knowing that the Internet is where they need to be these days to keep up with the consumer and the industry.

This is where dealerships with a knowledgeable Internet Director start getting the upper hand on results, like excellent response times, closing percentages, return on investment, low cost per sale and an overall more effective internet presence that helps effect the whole store. I see the Internet Director position at the store as similar to the GSM and the reason is that just like the GSM, the Internet Director is responsible to make sure that the virtual lot (website) looks good, they need to make sure they have the staff to handle the traffic and close the deals, they handle all the internet vendors, make sure that the ROI is in line, all the internet advertising is correct and the department is producing. But not only does sales benefit from having an Internet Director but also parts, service, body shop and F&I get to benefit from a well ran Internet operation. 

If you are a smaller store and have 1-2 Internet managers or salespeople handling the leads there is typically too much work for them to be effective selling cars!
1-2 Internet Managers responsible for 100-250+ leads
and is also responsible for:
-SELLING CARS
-Response time to leads
-Phone leads
-CRM updates
-Website updates
-Data/inventory feeds
-3rd Party vendors
-Internet reporting
-Photos
-Descriptions
-Locates
-Incentives
-Internet Specials
-Meet/greet appointments
….any many other responsibilities

But just like any industry, the larger stores, and large dealer groups have the resources and income to be able to hire a full time Internet Director while the single point or small multiple point dealer group still struggle to find a way to compete in their market. The big dealer groups have an Internet Director that manages 10+ stores (upwards of 30-40 stores in the larger dealer groups) that manage the departments and visit the stores on a monthly/quarterly bases.

So where do the small dealers go?

You can send your internet manager to conferences, hire an internet consultant for a day or two, but when the day is over, it is still up to the store and the management team to make sure they are getting the results they need. But most sales managers/GSM’s that I speak to (and I have spoken to about 1000+ of them nation wide over the last year) tell me that they wear too many hats already, so to make sure they monitor the Internet department is usually done only to their best ability. As long as their internet person sells their 10-15 units that’s good enough. This is not the sales managers/GSM fault, it is no different then having them be responsible for your parts or services departments, there is only so much they are going to know and only so much that they can monitor and as long as it is getting some results, that all they can do.

So I ask you again, where do the small dealers go?

Hiring a full time Internet Director would be the best place to start if you have the resources or income. But to have a full time Internet Director to manage a 1-3 person Internet Department might not seem to cost effective. Not only that but most the stores I talk to have a hard enough time finding good sales people or Internet Managers, much less finding a great Internet Director that really knows what they are doing. So now what? Hmmmm......

Disclaimer: I am not an expert in ObamaCare and I don’t want to act like one so I am going to quote some recent articles for this article.

In order for a dealership to grow in sales volume, it takes hiring more staff a lot of times. If you are selling 100 cars a month and want to push it to 150, it might require to hire more porters, mechanics and/or sales managers/staff to handle the load. But that also might put you over the 50 employee limit that can push you into the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare which can eat into your profits. Some of these new employees could be part-time workers but according to a recent article on stltoday.com, by Jim Gallagher that won’t help either, “the Small Business Administration gives this example of how the math works. “Company X has 40 full-time workers working 40 hours per week, along with 20 part-time workers working 15 hours per week. The 20 part-time employees are counted as 10 full-time employees. Company X has 50 full-time employees.”

The same article from stltoday.com says: “Lots of companies close to the limit will hesitate to go over it. Doug Simms, vice president at the Meyer Group of benefits consultants, has a maid service as a client. The company was thinking of expanding into a new area, but that would put them over the 50-worker limit. “They decided they’re not going to,” Simms said. Of course, that strategy can be self-defeating in the long run. It limits the company’s growth — and ultimately the owner’s profit.”

But outsourcing some task to independent contractors to grow your store can be the answer. Another validation for this strategy was found in a March 2013 article from Nancy E. Joerg on w-p.com that stated:
“a U.S. Department of Labor spokeswoman recently said "The ACA is going to significantly affect the way employers hire and make hiring decisions, and it definitely increases the desire to hire more independent contractors …."
INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS DO NOT COUNT AS EMPLOYEES: Under the ACA, independent contractors do not count as employees when determining whether the employer meets the minimum threshold as a large employer.

So what other choice is left for the small to medium dealer to do if they want to grow?

Well there are several task that need to be done on a daily bases to grow your stores sales that can be out sourced to outside contractors. Let’s take used car sales and Internet management for example because these 2 departments are totally up to the dealership on the potential growth but take a lot of man hours to maintain and grow.

In used cars, you need to worry about making sure the vehicles are photo’d, priced effectively to market and described accurately in a timely manner, and that these vehicles are getting onto sites like Autotrader, cars.com, craigslist and your own website without any issues. If there are issues, the managers at the stores have to take time away from sales to manage and maintain these activities making them less productive to increase the sales volume. Managers need to do a “virtual lot walk” like they do their physical lot walk to make sure their vehicles on line stand as tall if not taller than they do on the lot. Good photo’d, good priced and good described vehicles on line will increase sales, but who is managing that process? If it is your manager, it is taking away from him selling cars on the lot. Hiring an outside contractor to handle these responsibilities will free up more time for your managers to sell more cars and work/train with your sales staff.

The internet department will also have task that are time consuming that are taking away valuable time away from the internet manager from working leads and selling more cars. They spend a lot of time updating the website, dealing with 3^rd party vendors, inventory feed problems, process problems, CRM updates, social media updates, reporting plus many other task. These task are not producing sales, but take valuable time away from that manager to be more productive working internet leads, which leads to selling more cars.

Again, these types of activities can be outsourced to an independent contractor to reduce the labor force load while helping the managers at the store be more productive and free up their time to help the dealership increase sales volume without adding another “employee”. There are many other types of jobs at the dealership that can be outsourced but these two are the most dominant ones to help increase sales that can be done from any location and not necessarily at the store. And here is why that could be possible, on a recent blog by Shane Snow titled “Half of Us May Soon Be Freelancers” he states several reasons why “it's entirely plausible that more than half of the American workforce will one day log in or show up every day as independent contractors.” The most dominate statement was: “The web lets you find the best person to do anything anywhere. Would you rather work with someone awesome or someone mediocre? Companies used to not have a choice, if the awesome person lived 3,000 miles away. Now they do.”

So I am asking you to think of how you can grow and then if you have limitations on your employee count to get there, think of other ways around the problem. That is what we car guys are good at doing, working around issues and tweaking what we have to get better results.  

Disclaimer: I am not an expert in ObamaCare and I don’t want to act like one so I am going to quote some recent articles for this article.

In order for a dealership to grow in sales volume, it takes hiring more staff a lot of times. If you are selling 100 cars a month and want to push it to 150, it might require to hire more porters, mechanics and/or sales managers/staff to handle the load. But that also might put you over the 50 employee limit that can push you into the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare which can eat into your profits. Some of these new employees could be part-time workers but according to a recent article on stltoday.com, by Jim Gallagher that won’t help either, “the Small Business Administration gives this example of how the math works. “Company X has 40 full-time workers working 40 hours per week, along with 20 part-time workers working 15 hours per week. The 20 part-time employees are counted as 10 full-time employees. Company X has 50 full-time employees.”

The same article from stltoday.com says: “Lots of companies close to the limit will hesitate to go over it. Doug Simms, vice president at the Meyer Group of benefits consultants, has a maid service as a client. The company was thinking of expanding into a new area, but that would put them over the 50-worker limit. “They decided they’re not going to,” Simms said. Of course, that strategy can be self-defeating in the long run. It limits the company’s growth — and ultimately the owner’s profit.”

But outsourcing some task to independent contractors to grow your store can be the answer. Another validation for this strategy was found in a March 2013 article from Nancy E. Joerg on w-p.com that stated:
“a U.S. Department of Labor spokeswoman recently said "The ACA is going to significantly affect the way employers hire and make hiring decisions, and it definitely increases the desire to hire more independent contractors …."
INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS DO NOT COUNT AS EMPLOYEES: Under the ACA, independent contractors do not count as employees when determining whether the employer meets the minimum threshold as a large employer.

So what other choice is left for the small to medium dealer to do if they want to grow?

Well there are several task that need to be done on a daily bases to grow your stores sales that can be out sourced to outside contractors. Let’s take used car sales and Internet management for example because these 2 departments are totally up to the dealership on the potential growth but take a lot of man hours to maintain and grow.

In used cars, you need to worry about making sure the vehicles are photo’d, priced effectively to market and described accurately in a timely manner, and that these vehicles are getting onto sites like Autotrader, cars.com, craigslist and your own website without any issues. If there are issues, the managers at the stores have to take time away from sales to manage and maintain these activities making them less productive to increase the sales volume. Managers need to do a “virtual lot walk” like they do their physical lot walk to make sure their vehicles on line stand as tall if not taller than they do on the lot. Good photo’d, good priced and good described vehicles on line will increase sales, but who is managing that process? If it is your manager, it is taking away from him selling cars on the lot. Hiring an outside contractor to handle these responsibilities will free up more time for your managers to sell more cars and work/train with your sales staff.

The internet department will also have task that are time consuming that are taking away valuable time away from the internet manager from working leads and selling more cars. They spend a lot of time updating the website, dealing with 3^rd party vendors, inventory feed problems, process problems, CRM updates, social media updates, reporting plus many other task. These task are not producing sales, but take valuable time away from that manager to be more productive working internet leads, which leads to selling more cars.

Again, these types of activities can be outsourced to an independent contractor to reduce the labor force load while helping the managers at the store be more productive and free up their time to help the dealership increase sales volume without adding another “employee”. There are many other types of jobs at the dealership that can be outsourced but these two are the most dominant ones to help increase sales that can be done from any location and not necessarily at the store. And here is why that could be possible, on a recent blog by Shane Snow titled “Half of Us May Soon Be Freelancers” he states several reasons why “it's entirely plausible that more than half of the American workforce will one day log in or show up every day as independent contractors.” The most dominate statement was: “The web lets you find the best person to do anything anywhere. Would you rather work with someone awesome or someone mediocre? Companies used to not have a choice, if the awesome person lived 3,000 miles away. Now they do.”

So I am asking you to think of how you can grow and then if you have limitations on your employee count to get there, think of other ways around the problem. That is what we car guys are good at doing, working around issues and tweaking what we have to get better results.