We puchased a Chevrolet store last August. We have just put a BDC department together for that store. We have had a BDC department for 4 years in our Hyundai store which is located one hour away from the Chevrolet store. We will have all of the BDC reps for both stores located at the Hyundai store. We are trying top get ready for our first audit from General motors.

We have developed scripts for every type of sales call. we also have documented processes on how to handle that. we are trying to get a concierge board in the showroom for sales appointments as well.

We also have a service BDC person for this store and have all of the above things for them as well. we do still have to document a few of the processes for this team.

I have a few questions for the Gm dealers in the community

1. Have you experienced this audit?

2. Is the score based on sales and service?

3. Is it ok for my chevy bdc reps to be working in a call center off site?

This past year we had a catastrophic flood in our city. The devastation around the city was huge. Thankfullly not many people were physicaly hurt....lots of property damage though. At the dealership we lost over 300 vehichles and had a sales/accounting building that flooded.

Our team was awesome! We immediately put buyers on the road puchasing vehichles at auctions. We also had a team start stripping and cleaning the buildings. We had a new server shipped to us within in two days and were up and running at that point. (low on inventory)

While we did a good job in this situation we could have been better prepared. We did not really have a backup plan in place. Contact lists were outdated, etc.

Speaking from experience, I urge each of you to have a plan in place. Any of you that already do please provide feeedback on what your plans are.

We have what I feel is a pretty agressive BDC pay plan for our sales and service BDC departments. I have seperate teams working in these roles.

The sales BDC reps are on a salary and are paid a bonus plan. The bonus plan is $15 for each appointment that shows. Each appointment that buys gives them an additional $10. This is split evenly among the 3 reps at the end of the month. This averages 1100 to 1200 dollars a month for each of them. The person with the best performance gets an additional bonus.

Our Service BDC reps are paid an hourly wage and are on bonus plan. They are paid $1.00 for every appt that they set that has a closed repair order. This bonus averages $300 to $350 per month for each of them.

With the year ending, I am thinking about changing these up a bit. Can any of you share what you are doing for your BDC reps?

We have a Business development center that has 5 sales business development reps and 2 service reps. I measure the reps with certain metrics.

For the sales group we look at number of calls per day, number of appointments made per day, number of appointment that have shown and the number of them that buy.

For service we measure the number of calls , number of appointments made and the number of them that show.

We also base their bonus plans around these metrics.

Am I missing anything? It is time to look at new pay plans for next year.

I just attended my 3^rd driving sales executive summit. This was by far the best one yet. We had a chance to learn from some of the best internet marketing people in the business.

The keynote speakers were very informative and easy to follow.  The topics they covered were relevant and cutting edge. I especially liked the info that Jared shared with us about customer experience. He shared some eye opening information. The best way to set ourselves apart from other dealerships is to provide a better customer experience.

The breakout sessions were great this year as well. I especially liked the one that Allyn Hayne from Launch gave. It was titled blurring the lines between social media and seo. It was great! He shared some of the most recent changes with google. If you did not see this session make sure that you watch the video when it is released by driving sales.

While I know that this conference has an expense …it is well worth it. The time out of the store is hard as well but there again it is worth it.

This year we decided as a dealership to become more involved in events in the community. We came up with a budget for this and jumped in! We are sponsoring the local auto race track and participating in other events in the community. We have participated in 5k events as well as relay for life. we try to do one event per month. We feel that this grass roots adveertising is worth so much....not to mention that it is nice to be involved with events that are good for the community.

 We also tie this in to our social media efforts as well. We always have some type of game that people can play and win different prizes.

 I am looking to the DrivingSales community for more ideas for this type of marketing.

Currently we use both AutoTrader and Cars.com. We have used them both for quite some time. The measurement that we use for them is cost per vehicle detail page. We feel that it is a good measurement for them. In our opinion it is their responsibility to get the customer to our vehicle detail page. We feel that our marketing takes over at that point. (Good pictures, right car, right place, etc.)
They are currently below .50 cents per vehicle detail page. We try to keep them under .60 cents per vehicle detail page. My question for the community is this. Do I need both? Based on our reporting both companies are performing well. AutoTrader seems to perform slightly better. They are also a lot easier to work with then cars.com. I just do not know if I would get the same customers with just one of them. 

 We have an inhouse BDC at our dealership. The bdc sales reps are responsible for taking all of the inbound sales calls. They also do followup on the fresh ups and internet leads that we get. These reps will also call clients that are in equity situations as well. Once they have a client interested they set appointments for the sales force.

  My service bdc reps take inbound service appointment calls. They also confirm every appointment as well as contact any clients with recalls. These reps also do survey calls to every customer the day after the client comes in. 

 We feel like we do a good in this departtment but I am looking for input from the driving sales community.

We are trying to break in to the social media world. We have hired a person in house to handle our social media efforts. Currently we are posting pictures of our customers and employees. We've also had several contests with local groups. We have partnered with a few charities in the area as well. We have them send there followers to our page in order to gain donations from us for them. This seems to work well for them and us. We also go to local events and try to have a presence in social media that way.

We feel like we could do a better job in this area. I am writing this to ask for ideas from those of you that dabble in social media. We would like to raise the number of relevant followers that we have. Also what are you guys doing with the followers that you do have?

I recently had the opportunity to attend the driving sales presidents club in New York. When my boss asked me to attend I thought it was going to be a bit above me. It is after all tailored towards owners and I am an internet/bdc manager at our dealership. Boy was I wrong in that assumption.

The meeting was very helpful to me. They went over the latest trends in the industry. Here are some of the high lights that I recall.

Tony Caputo discussed some of the things that he has used for team development at his dealership. This was very helpful to me. In fact I am going to try some of the things that he has done in the past with my team. He reminded me of how important team building is.

Jon Lancaster discussed economics of our industry. He gave me some valuable insight on a part of our business that I have not been exposed to. He also gave me some great recruiting ideas for service as well.

Dr. Jay Rao had a great discussion with us about Leadership skills. He gave me some great ideas on how to lead my team. He also reminded me of how important it is to be innovated with my thinking and planning.

Mark O’neal gave us a great question and answer session on end to end technology. Being the “geek” that I am it was very interesting to talk of the plans that they have with the dealer track acquisition of dealer.com.

Erin Kerrigan gave me some insight as to what owners go through when they are buying or selling a dealership.

And then there was Gary Vaynerchuck! He gave us a great talk on Social media. This was particularly helpful to me. He gave me some great ideas to try in our social media efforts. He also reminded me that we have to think outside of the box.

All in all this conference was very informative for me. It also reminded me how important team building is. I am looking forward to next year!