It’s time to ask yourself an important question; what kind of impressions are your BDC teams giving to customers? As the saying goes, you never get a second chance at a first impression, and since your BDC team is often the first point of contact the customer has with your dealership, it’s important to think about.  

While their role involves setting appointments for each inquiry that comes in, their mission is greater than that. To have a successful BDC team, each person must be equipped with all the information needed to build quality, value, and most of all, excitement about your dealership and the car.

Let’s face it: your BDC team won’t be experts on all the cars and their respective features, especially off-brand vehicles. They may also be working at an offsite location and be managing 10, 20, even 30, dealership locations at once.

On the flip side, today’s savvy customers conduct an average of 14 hours researching vehicles before they buy. If you pair a well-informed consumer with a BDC rep who isn’t knowledgeable on the vehicle, it can be disastrous.

To level the playing field, dealerships need to give BDC teams the tools and technology to turn them into “instant experts” on every car in their inventory, both in-brand and off-brand.

To win more appointments, make sure your BDC teams can answer the following 5 questions, proactively and with ease:

1. Is this car right for me?
2. Am I buying a lemon?
3. Why is this car better than others I’ve seen?
4. Is this a fair price?
5. Why should I buy from this dealership?

Remember: customers don’t want to be sold to, they want the facts. They want product experts, not salespeople.

BDC teams can feel confident if they are able to educate the customer on what they might not already know about the car, such as:

• The vehicle’s OEM packages and the value of those packages
• J.D. Power Crash Test Ratings
• Carfax Vehicle History Report
• Kelly Blue Book Pricing and market average
• Warranty information

If the customer wants to think about it or talk it over with family and friends, utilize technology to send them an e-mail or text with the vehicle information. Not only does this create transparency, you’re also capturing their contact information.

It is the BDC team’s job to start building excitement to get customers in the door. A technology-enabled, repeatable process allows them to answer the customer’s questions intelligently and build that excitement. It creates BDC teams who are instant experts on every car on your lot, and customers who see the value of their next vehicle.