Every department at a dealership needs training, but your BDC can benefit the most from regular coaching to maximize the results they get for your business. They rely on their phone scripts and skills to set appointments for your salespeople, and the tiny details they get from training can be the difference between hitting your monthly goals and the entire dealership falling flat.

Of course, every business is different. There are many types of automotive dealership BDC training available for a variety of budgets, but how do you find the most effective strategy for your business model?

In many cases, a professional consulting agency that specializes in long-term active coaching is the best way to go and will deliver the biggest return on your training investment by far. However, we’ll cover all the training options—from single written materials to a full-blown partnership—so you can choose the right balance for your BDC team. 

BOOKS/WRITTEN MATERIALS

There’s no shortage of printed content to keep your BDC sharp, and this time-tested strategy offers a number of benefits. You can put expert tips into your people’s hands quickly, and they can review them whenever they need a touchup. Almost any automotive dealership BDC training program will include some of these resources.

Pros:

• Inexpensive 
• Content is typically in-depth. 
• Employees can refer back to the text whenever they need to.

Cons:

• No trainer on hand to explain the material when, inevitably, someone needs help.
• Not ideal for the (up to) 75% of your team who are tactile, visual, or auditory learners.
• Only 10% of the information is retained long-term on average.
• 
  

PRE-RECORDED VIDEO PRESENTATIONS

Video presentations can be extremely beneficial, and these run the gamut from professionally produced instruction to amateur how-tos. As long as the information is solid and presented effectively, the production values aren’t terribly important.

Pros: 

• Will likely appeal to a wider range of learning styles, depending on how the video is put together.
• Retention rates are 2.5x better than only reading the content.
• Costs will range from free to moderate. A few of the best trainers in the country offer excellent content for free as an introduction to their full active coaching program. These resources give you excellent tips and help you find the consultant who’s right for you. 

Cons:  

• Without follow-up training and mid-video breaks for interactive group activities, retention rates are still on the lower side (about 20%)
• No one is available to answer questions and clear up misunderstandings. 
• Any repetition of training videos to re-train staff can quickly become very tedious, limiting long-term program effectiveness.

REMOTE/IN-PERSON PRESENTATIONS

Live training presentations with an industry expert—whether remote or in-person—are often more effective than printed materials and videos in most cases. These options allow your people to ask questions and engage in role-playing scenarios that mimic common customer interactions. 

Pros: 

• Deeply interactive and engaging presentations with multiple audio/visual elements and group activities can boost retention rates as high as 75%. Engagement is also vastly improved.
• The opportunity to ask questions and get real-time answers is finally on the table, and it’s a crucial tool in this process.

Cons: 

• If you’ve opted for a one-time presentation, once it’s over… it’s over. 
• Expensive, especially when you’re covering the presenter’s flights and hotel.
• Inefficient in terms of individual learning, as some team members inevitably fall behind. Others get bored and zone out.
• Presenters who spend more time talking and very little time interacting can produce retention rates of as low as 5%. That’s an extremely poor return on your investment. 

ACTIVE COACHING WITH PHONE NINJAS

The automotive dealership BDC training resources we’ve talked about are actually just individual components of an ideal training model. They can produce decent results on their own, but will never be anywhere near as effective as hiring a training partner who has built a complete program utilizing these tools in addition to active coaching that supports your team’s development over time. 

Phone Ninjas has combined the best of these teaching methods to produce our time-tested training program that consistently brings in three to four times more appointments every month from your phone traffic than the average dealership. How do we do it?

• Our VP of Training, Mike Hoyser, conducts an initial group training session, either in person or remotely as you prefer.
• Written training materials like our free scripts have been perfected through years of fine-tuning in the field, and serve as a foundation for the scripts we fine-tune for your business. We’ve also got an extensive resource library available on demand.
• Our professional training videos are available 24/7 and serve as support resources for your internal BDC training. 
• We’ve got a roster of amazing coaches who work with your people individually in weekly sessions until your BDC team has everything down. These individual sessions focus on real calls taken from their daily work and often serve as helpful examples for your entire team.
• Our mystery shopping team confirms that new skills translate to the real world—where they result in higher sales numbers for your dealership. 

GET YOUR BDC FIRING ON ALL CYLINDERS TODAY WITH PHONE NINJAS

At Phone Ninjas, our reputation as one of the best automotive consultants in the country is backed up by decades of industry experience in the business. We can’t wait to show you how we’ll turbocharge key BDC metrics several times over, increasing your appointment set and show rates and driving business to every aspect of your dealership.

Contact us today for two free mystery shops and a free demo of our program and find out what a difference the best automotive dealership BDC training on the market can make.

BDCs are one of the most important revenue generators for your business, but it’s not always easy to directly measure ROI because they don’t sell directly. They generate leads, manage and anticipate customer needs, and use that information to set appointments and nurture customers toward engagement with your services.

As a result, the concepts and strategies it takes to make a BDC successful are unlike any other aspect of your dealership. Many of the skills your reps need are soft, and they have to be supported with the right tools and a solid coaching partner.

Best practices can be hard to pin down, but we’ve identified the most important points for your BDC manager to prioritize. These four items are sure to boost your bottom line.

1. USE SALES SCRIPTS

Phone scrips give your BDC team a clear, repeatable path to revenue, and there’s a reason they’re at the top of our list of dealership BDC best practices. Without scripts, your team is relying on improvisation and personal experience—and that’s a recipe for leaving revenue and opportunities on the table.  

Well-written scripts provide a host of benefits, including:

• Keeping team members moving smoothly towards conversion.
• Eliminating distracting chatter.
• Establishing a proven roadmap for all employees, covering the situations they’ll encounter on the phone.
• Providing a safety net for newer team members.
• Giving your reps confidence that frees them up to focus on customer needs.
• Collecting customer data for your CRM software database.
• Guaranteeing your team members will always ask for an appointment.
• Ensuring your customers know instantly that they’ve reached your dealership.

Evidence shows that if your scripts are written with more events and branches, they will be more successful. A great script covers all common customer interactions as well as sections for troubleshooting, and field testing is essential for dialing in your messaging.

2. WORK WITH A COACHING PARTNER

Once you’ve got an amazing script in place, it’s not enough to hand them out and let your team hit the phones. Your staff will require intensive coaching to master the new material. 

The automotive industry is unlike any other sales ecosystem, and it takes a dedicated industry specialist to identify and improve the nuanced skills your BDC teams will need to master. With just 15-20 minutes a week, they can provide your reps with key specifics from their own calls that can drastically improve their work.

They’ll ensure:

• Delivery is natural and enthusiastic every time.
• Memorization that limits errors and improves delivery.
• Team members know where the pitch is going, enhancing their intuition when going off-script becomes necessary.
• Team members can tailor the language of the script to match their personality and individual manner of speaking, further improving the naturalness of delivery.
• Advanced techniques for working with individual customers.

The best model for this sort of coaching is one-on-one mentorship using real calls taken in the course of their job duties. It will take time for your team members to master your scripts, but this sort of in-depth and personalized coaching is one of the key dealership BDC best practices that pay off quickly. 

3. MAXIMIZE APPOINTMENT SHOW RATES

Now that your team has the basics in place, you need to implement dealership BDC best practices that significantly improve the rates at which your customers keep their appointments. Here are five simple and easy-to-implement techniques that should govern every appointment-setting process:

1. Customer contact information is obtained and entered into the CRM software.
2. Agents give customers your dealership name and contact information.
3. Agents give high-quality directions to your dealership starting from the customer’s location.
4. Customers are reminded that someone will be following up to confirm the appointment and answer any follow-up questions they might think of.
5. The BDC manager makes the follow-up call.

This solid road map to success makes the most of your opportunities and ensures that appointment sets turn into shows for around three-quarters of all inbound calls.

4. INCENTIVIZE YOUR BDC REPS

In many dealerships, rank-and-file BDC agents are paid an hourly rate. But does this really make sense? You’d never consider paying your salespeople an hourly rate, and commission approaches work just as well for appointment setting as they do for direct sales.

Dealership BDC best practices demand your BDC agents be paid on commission, as it’s a proven way to increase productivity in sales. There are a variety of ways to implement this model, but at its core, your agents should be paid a commission on every high-intent lead appointment they set that shows up, and a cut of the sale commission. 

Often this means splitting the commission on the sale with the sales staff. The sales department won’t like this, but when you consider your BDC team is generating appointments from up to 80% of your call traffic, they’re hand-delivering a flood of ready-to-buy customers to your sales team’s doorstep. And the sales staff can close more deals more quickly (more traffic, better lead preparation), so ultimately, they’ll be making more money, too.

TRIPLE YOUR PHONE TRAFFIC APPOINTMENT RATES

Phone Ninjas’ clients routinely see 60% appointment rates on inbound calls—three times the industry average of 20%—and some of our hardest-working clients are able to get up to 80%.  

We can achieve this for your dealership because we specialize in honing scripts to the unique challenges of the automotive industry and tailoring them to every client’s needs. Our unique training model then coaches individual team members over the course of short weekly appointments using calls they took for your dealership. Finally, our mystery shoppers verify this training on the ground and perform any necessary follow-up coaching.

Implementing these dealership BDC best practices begins by contacting us today for a free demo and two free mystery shops.

Over two-thirds of customers say a business’s customer representatives are key to a great experience. Given that your business development center is the communications center of your entire dealership, the BDC reps you choose can make or break appointments and customer relationships before they even get started. 

But how do you pick the winning candidates from the stack of resumes? What are the personal qualifications, experiences, and intangibles a new BDC rep needs to excel?

We’ve put together a list to help your hiring team find the right people for the job. Some of these elements can be developed or trained, and others cannot. But because you’ll know exactly what personalities and skill sets to prioritize, your hiring processes will be more efficient and productive. 

1. ENGAGING PERSONALITY

Expert Phone Ninjas coach Amy Hayes puts it best: “Anyone can learn the secrets of selling—but you can’t teach someone to have a personality.” 

Your customers will mirror the energy your BDC rep brings to the call, so the people you hire need to project an inviting and engaging experience by being:

• Warm and likable.
• Empathetic and a careful listener
• A real “people person”.
• An enthusiastic presenter.

Rarely will you find someone who is amazing in all these ways, but if they’ve got some degree of each of these four checkboxes, your coaching partner will have plenty to work with. 

2. ACTIVE LISTENER

The University of Southern California notes that up to 70% of all employees exhibit poor listening skills and habits that result in misunderstandings, errors, and missed opportunities. This is one problem your BDC team—and your dealership—simply can’t afford. Every BDC rep needs to have excellent listening skills, as these are key to qualifying customers and nurturing them toward setting appointments. 

This is even more true in an age where sales scripts are becoming the norm. Active listening will help your team know when to pause or elaborate on the script to address customer concerns instead of pivoting at awkward moments or missing opportunities. 

Your agents also need to listen to what customers are telling them as well as what they aren’t saying. Things like intent, tone of voice, confidence, and more all shape an effective approach to fulfilling customer needs. 

3. GOOD COMMUNICATOR

This is more than just having a decent vocabulary. Every successful BDC rep must have the ability to make meaningful connections with customers through nothing but their verbal communication.  

When interviewing candidates, listen carefully to how they respond to you. Great communicators will:

• Speak clearly and concisely.
• Be accurate in their facts.
• Display an understanding of appropriate word choice and tone.
• Restate what you have asked to confirm they understand you (up to 40-60% of message content can be lost between speaker and listener).
• Ask open-ended questions to avoid conversation-killing “yes-no” answers.
• Use regionally-accepted professional modes of speech.

People with these aptitudes and skills are going to be a lot more effective when delivering customer service as they’ll be able to quickly identify needs and deliver helpful responses. 

4. QUICK THINKER

The last thing any customer needs to hear is a BDC rep caught off guard by a question and fumbling for an answer. 

This doesn’t mean your team has to know everything that might be asked. Rather, they need to be able to process information quickly and come up with an answer that keeps the conversation moving—even if the response is a polite delaying tactic to give them time to find the answer.

5. HONESTY

This is a biggie. Instead of inventing an answer to move the conversation along, your team members need to have the courage (and the freedom) to say, “I don’t know—but let me find out for you.” 

Honest customer service reps will bring a number of benefits to your dealership:

• Build trust.
• Foster brand loyalty.
• Increase repeat business.
• Raise profits. 
• Prevent customers from being surprised during their appointments, leading to more productive sessions.

More than half of all customers say honesty is critical to earning their business. By hiring candidates with integrity, your customers will learn to trust your dealership.

6. GOOD TIME MANAGEMENT SKILLS

Your BDC department is making and taking hundreds of calls a day, especially during peak hours/seasons. A BDC rep who knows how to manage their time effectively will get to all their tasks on a given day. 

They will also have a superior ability to pivot between tasks, which they certainly need to do in this fast-paced environment.

7. PASSION FOR YOUR PRODUCTS

This one is very difficult to train, but customers can absolutely tell when a BDC rep is enthusiastic about your products and services. After all, they will mirror the energy your employees bring to their phone calls. 

There are other advantages as well. These candidates will be more likely to learn about your product line on their own time, which will result in product knowledge and use scenarios you won’t find in the technical manuals. Product information will be remembered more consistently, and these types of BDC reps may have personal experience with your products.

SET YOUR TEAM UP FOR SUCCESS

Even perfect candidates will require the right support and training to be successful. Sales scripts are incredibly valuable, but they aren’t shortcuts to success; every team member needs a mentor or coach who can help them grow and develop in natural, effective ways.

Phone Ninjas is the training partner that can make that happen. Our active coaching program is designed to work with each BDC rep individually on your scripts and style so they can deliver your company’s customer service and brand message in a relaxed, natural manner that customers will embrace. 

Our training program is helping some of the nation’s top dealerships stay ahead of the competition by doubling and tripling appointment set rates from 20% to nearly 70%—and we’d love to show you what we can do for your business. Contact us today for a free demo and two free mystery shops.

Your business development center is the lifeblood of your dealership. Between channeling leads to your sales teams, setting appointments with customers, and staying ahead of customer needs, there isn’t a corner of your business it doesn’t impact. 

But it doesn’t generate profit all by itself, so it can be hard to understand how it’s performing. What metrics should you be tracking to ensure your BDC isn’t just doing “OK”, but amazingly well?

We’ll give you the lowdown on what KPIs to track to make sure your BDC is serving your dealership as intended. Here’s everything you need to know to build a winner that stands out in the automotive industry. 

WHAT SHOULD MY BDC BE DOING?

A lot of dealerships have a BDC because they want to improve a particular aspect of their business’s performance like appointment setting. And while a well-trained BDC team can definitely deliver, this department can serve a number of critical revenue-generating functions—they should never be limited to boosting one or two basic KPIs. 

While you should be molding your BDC to perfectly match your dealership, here are the core mission goals they should all be working toward:

Increasing appointment set and show rates

Determining customers’ intent and channeling them appropriately

Making lead development calls

Addressing common customer questions and delivering consistent service

If they aren’t doing all of these things yet, talk to your consulting and coaching partner. They will be able to help get your BDC up to speed and make the most of their time and resources for your business. 

In the meantime, here are the numbers you should expect to see in your reports to identify if your BDC is barely getting over the finish line or crushing the competition.  

SETTING CUSTOMER APPOINTMENTS

Whether the call is incoming or outgoing, your team should be setting appointments to bring customers through the doors. Inbound calls will naturally have a higher appointment set rate than outbound calls, as when a customer calls you they’re usually already looking for something. 

OK: Your BDC team is converting half your inbound calls to live appointments, versus 20% of the outbound calls. These are the bare minimums, though, and you should be aiming higher. 

Amazing: 80% of inbound and 25% of outbound calls resulting in appointments would be outstanding. It takes a lot of detailed work from your training partner and BDC representatives to get it right, but the rewards are huge. 

Boosting these numbers means refining your phone scripts and intensively training your people on them. Believe it or not, a big reason customers don’t set an appointment is…no one asked them! That line absolutely has to be in your scripts.

APPOINTMENT SHOW RATE

Setting the appointment is only the beginning. Getting them to turn up is the next step.

OK: A 50% show rate is the floor on this KPI. 

Amazing: 60% would be better, but with good systems in place you should be seeing around 75% of your customers keeping their appointments.

Training your people to ask for customer details and giving directions that ensure the customer knows where they’re going is critical. Having a manager follow up with a second call to confirm the appointment a day or so ahead of time is also a smart move. Do both.

DETERMINING CUSTOMER INTENT

Your BDC could be generating tons of leads, but still not serving your dealership well. Especially if you pay your BDC staff on commission (an excellent business model), if you don’t have qualifying metrics built in you could have a flood of low-intent customers clogging your sales team’s inbox, wasting valuable time.

OK: 20% of your customer appointments being high-intent leads is about what your sales team will need to hit those monthly sales goals.

Amazing: 40% and above makes the most of your opportunities, and you can build in language and strategies to your phone scripts that help nurture customers through your pipeline in the most efficient possible way.

Your BDC staff only has partial control over these numbers, but there are steps to take. Your training partner should be teaching your employees to sort incoming leads by intent: high-intent customers will have an appropriate budget and are ready to make a purchase in the immediate future. These customers should be a high priority for appointment set conversion. Lower tiers each have strategies to develop them.

To help your staff identify potential high-intent customers they can contact, equip them with customer data platform (CDP) software if you haven’t already. This innovation uses AI to sort collected and purchased data from across your dealership platforms (CRM, DMS, etc.) to find the “needle in the haystack” that would normally be missed.

LEAD DEVELOPMENT

This KPI should be judged by the ratio of inbound to outbound calls your agents are making every day.

OK: A 1:1 ratio of inbound to outbound calls indicates priorities need to be adjusted.

Amazing: Your BDC agents need to be making twice as many outbound calls as inbound. Leads calling in usually already know about you, and you can’t grow your business only catering to your current customers. Outbound BDC calls are critical to the long-term growth of your business.

Fixing this can take a few different forms:

Insufficient staffing/inefficient work schedules can leave a few employees taking too many inbound calls. Hire more people, or distribute your BDC agent hours to better match predictable call spikes (lunchtime) and dead times (weekday mornings). 

A lack of leads from your CRM/CDP can be an issue. You’ll need a highly capable platform, and your team will need to be properly trained to understand how to use it effectively. 

Check with your BDC manager or training partner to make sure the employees know they’re supposed to be making calls at a 2:1 ratio, and that their job duties are prioritized so as to allow them to hit these numbers.

CREATING A WINNING BDC

No matter why you started your BDC, the fact is, they can often drive revenue for your business in ways you never even imagined. Like any investment, these talented representatives need to be empowered to deliver the biggest return possible, and that means finding every way to leverage the opportunities they’ll have. 

And as you probably noticed, most of the remedies we’ve discussed above emphasize the need to properly and continuously train your people. The automotive industry is constantly evolving, and that’s why it’s so important to equip your BDC with a dedicated industry specialist who can keep them sharp, deliver excellent scripts, and help them stay on top of new customer trends. 

The best of the best not only deliver one-on-one coaching for your team using their real-world calls, but they can do so efficiently so they don’t interfere with larger business goals. Plus, they’ll be able to give you insight into many different aspects of your business and develop a flexible relationship that meets your unique dealership needs. 

That’s how you make the most of every investment—and take your BDC from the sideline to primetime so they can deliver for your bottom line. 

Even in today’s fast-paced digital world, the phone is still the most important business generator for every successful dealership. That means your team’s phone skills must be razor-sharp to capitalize on every revenue opportunity. 

Unfortunately, these critical phone interactions can be hard to evaluate, and a few small but important details can be the difference between a sale and a fail. On top of that, most generic training doesn’t address their actual performance, so it’s difficult for both managers and employees to identify and correct any problems. 

Phone mystery shops are the ideal way to discover what’s actually happening on sales calls, and empower your team with the constructive feedback they need to start closing more deals. Here are the top ways this mystery shopping can help you increase appointment rates and crush your monthly sales goals. 

A REAL CUSTOMER’S PERSPECTIVE

What you need to know most about your customers is why they choose to purchase… and why they don’t. Since mystery shoppers pose as real customers, they get an honest look at how your sales team manages the experience. 

There are many invaluable aspects of calls that phone mystery shoppers can identify and highlight that won’t show up in any other training scenario or in customer surveys. These include key areas like appointment setting, asking for referrals, and confirming important customer details. They are also able to evaluate how sales representatives use scripted language to drive sales and examine soft skills like tone and delivery. 

And because auto sales are so specific, a training partner with industry experience is essential for providing mystery shops that can make the biggest impact. They’ll uncover every missed opportunity, and if something comes up in the moment, they’ll know how to dig deeper and explore new scenarios. 

ACTIONABLE FEEDBACK FOR FOLLOW-UP TRAINING

Because mystery shops are based on real-world calls, your training partner will be in the perfect position to identify specific language and teachable moments that can be shared with the team and developed individually to improve sales outcomes.

Some common issues include not asking for an appointment, deviating from the sales script, improperly navigating branching scripts, forgetting to collect full customer details, excessive hold times, and off-message conversations. All of these elements lead directly to gains and losses on your bottom line and can be easily addressed with timely feedback and coaching support. 

DRIVE HIGH-MARGIN UPSELLS

These are hugely profitable for dealerships and offer customers a ton of extra value. These service contracts, extended warranties, comfort and performance upgrades, subscription apps, and vehicle treatments do a lot more for your dealership than bolster the bottom line. They offer your customers increased comfort, performance, and peace of mind—all of which foster loyalty with your dealership. 

Phone mystery shops will consistently identify missed opportunities when presenting these high-margin upsells. This enables you to modify sales scripts and conduct supplemental training to improve your upselling ratios. 

IMPROVED BRAND MESSAGING

Every employee is an ambassador for your business, and phone interactions should provide continuity between online content and larger corporate messaging. A uniform, high-quality brand messaging campaign improves every aspect of your business: brand perception, customer loyalty, marketing effectiveness, sales volume, word-of-mouth referrals, top-of-funnel lead generation, and trust in your brand. Every single one of these is essential to a healthy, growing business.

Phone mystery shops will tell you how effectively your team is presenting your dealership and the brands you carry, and where your training partner can help them be even better.

KEEP TABS ON THE COMPETITION

Phone mystery shops can help you improve your business’s sales strategy, but they aren’t just internal processes. They can also tell you how you measure up to the competition—something every business owner absolutely must know.

By mystery shopping the competition, you can gain critical intel on pricing, special promotions, competitive advantages, opportunities for differentiation, quality of customer service, inventory levels, inventory variety and availability, and a host of other details you must be aware of to remain competitive.

KEEPING YOUR TEAM SHARP AND ON POINT

Phone mystery shops are the best way to get very specific feedback on every aspect of your team’s phone game. They arm you with the information you need to improve your sales scripts and sales team’s presentations so you don’t lose out on sales and upsells. 

At Phone Ninjas, we use mystery shops as a foundational part of all our automotive training and consulting services to improve every aspect of your sales team’s strategy. Our in-house mystery shoppers are trained to spot every dollar left on the table, allowing our coaches to sharpen your representatives’ phone skills in efficient one-on-one sessions that examine the actual calls they handled for your dealership.

By helping people build durable skills that will stand the test of time, this approach allows our clients to routinely exceed their competition’s appointment set rates and outperform them on the bottom line. Reach out today for two free mystery shops, and find out the difference that a true automotive industry expert can make. 

If you’re concerned as an owner or GM that you’ve been putting too much time into your BDC, you might be right. A business development center is not the type of department you should need to micromanage. With the right manager and training partner, your BDC should be driving revenues in every department, and all you’ll have to do is make a few big-picture decisions here and there. 

Of course, getting a great team isn’t enough—they will also need a few tools for the job. If you give them a solid foundation with great hardware and software, phone scripts, and coaching, they’ll be in a position to make the most of your investment while you focus on other aspects of your business. 

So, what do they need to succeed? Here are the basics every BDC should have to maximize appointments, generate leads, and boost every aspect of your business—without eating into your daily routine. 

1. SEPARATE SPACE

Everyone deals with space limitations in their businesses, but your BDC is somewhat unique in that it really does require a dedicated workspace that’s physically separated from other dealership activities. After all, they’ll be focusing 100% on customer needs, and that means being removed from distractions and noises that will filter through. 

In fact, unlike other aspects of your dealership, a BDC doesn’t even need to be on the premises! They can operate efficiently from an offsite space, and this is a common choice when a BDC is acting as a hub for several dealerships at once. 

2. COMPUTERS AND CRM SOFTWARE

These two go hand-in-hand. A great CRM (customer relationship management) platform will allow your team to organize and analyze every customer detail, and it’s the foundation of their revenue-driving activities. You’ll also need to ensure they have hardware that can run it quickly and efficiently, so speak to your automotive consultant for details.  

You’ll need a dedicated workstation for each employee to maximize what they can deliver for you, and invest in some good-quality wired headsets. Wireless headsets can run into all kinds of problems, and every loss of service is a potential sale hanging up the phone. 

3. EMPOWER YOUR MANAGER

The right BDC manager can help you capitalize on revenue opportunities in every department. On top of that, if you empower them to take the reins, they can handle all the day-to-day operations, monitor key metrics, make adjustments with your team, and generate reports. 

To do this efficiently—and without you watching over their shoulder— a BDC manager must have the authority to:

• Offer employment to candidates.
• Select employee work assignments.
• Evaluate team performance.
• Write or modify sales scripts to improve performance.
• Exert reasonable control over the departmental budget.

4. ADEQUATE STAFFING RESOURCES

With the right resources, your BDC will be able to maximize the return they deliver on your investment. There’s always a temptation to ask a little more of a great team, but make sure you don’t overload them when it’s actually worth hiring another representative. 

Listen closely to your BDC manager’s input and keep an eye on key metrics like missed calls and callbacks. Too many calls is a good problem to have, and it may mean it’s time to expand. 

5. COMMISSION VS. SALARY?

Some businesses see their BDC as a customer service department and hire employees at an hourly rate. This is outdated thinking and misses an opportunity to leverage the advantages of a commission model. 

Just like your sales team, your BDC is about pursuing opportunities to drive revenue. That’s why setting goals for things like appointment set and show rates and rewarding representatives in their paychecks for hitting goals keeps them hungry and growing your business. 

6. SALES SCRIPTS

To ensure consistent brand messaging and top-notch customer service, scripts are a must-have. They give your employees a proven road map to closing and cover any normal situation they might encounter. 

Should you write them yourself? You can, but there’s a much better option: the automotive training specialist who’s working with your BDC should be willing to write them for you. These experts have professionalized knowledge of the latest best practices and customer trends in the industry, and they’ll already be working directly with your BDC associates to make sure they’re perfectly executed. 

7. A GREAT TRAINING AND COACHING PARTNER

This is the number one place where GMs and owners lose time and money. Keeping your team on point with training updates and constructive feedback is an ongoing job that can be the difference between huge returns and constant burns. You definitely don’t have time, but believe it or not… …neither does your BDC manager. 

They’re going to have their hands full coordinating your team, and training is an extremely specialized skill. The key to a BDC that runs like clockwork and delivers huge returns is to set them up with a dedicated automotive training and coaching expert they can coordinate with on an ongoing basis. They’ll catch all the details you’re looking for, and many more you aren’t. 

CREATE A BDC THAT RUNS HANDS-FREE

The top dealerships in the country stay ahead of the competition because they work smarter, not just harder. BDCs are an indispensable part of the modern industry, and getting the most out of the investment for the least amount of time is all down to organizing it properly from day one. 

With the right equipment, a great BDC manager will have everything they need to ensure the day-to-day operations are smooth so you don’t have to stress over the details. The final piece of the puzzle is working with a dedicated industry specialist who can handle the training and coaching side of the equation. These professionals make sure your BDC is always on top of its game and deliver the ongoing support it takes to stay ahead of the competition. 

Learn more about what goes into creating and maintaining one of these revenue-generating powerhouses, and set your BDC up to run on autopilot so you focus on putting your dealership into overdrive. 

Business development centers are the cornerstone of modern dealership revenue strategies. When these engines are finely tuned, they’re responsible for generating game-changing appointment rates and capitalizing on opportunities that many seasoned sales professionals didn’t even realize were there for the taking. 

That’s why, if you look at the top performers in the industry, you’ll probably find a BDC beating away at the heart of their business. 

They don’t just deliver on the bottom line, though. With a great manager and a dedicated industry coaching specialist, a business development center can nearly run itself. GMs are extremely busy, and outsourcing the hard work of training and optimizing a BDC is definitely worth the investment. 

So, how can you tell—just by the data in your reports—that your business development center is a hero for your dealership? We’re going to explain which numbers should be zeros, and when you need to make an adjustment. 

KEY METRICS FOR BDCS

The most important KPIs to measure for any business development center are appointment set and show rates and lead qualification stats. Everything your BDC does is about driving more qualified customers to salespeople and services so your team can capitalize, and if it’s got great phone scripts and training, those numbers will be outstanding. 

However, little details in language and delivery can make a big difference, and these are the things you’ll be counting on a training partner to catch and correct quickly. For each metric, below, there are specific actions they’ll need to take to boost performance. 

APPOINTMENT SET RATES

Of all the benefits your business development center can deliver for your dealership, setting appointments is by far the most valuable. There’s no sales team in the world that can sell in an empty showroom, and it’s essential that training and coaching focus on perfecting the details of setting appointments with customers.  

Hero: The top BDCs can consistently generate appointment rates of 60-80%. 

Zero: The traditional industry average is 20%, and any BDC below 50% has significant room for improvement. The most common reason appointments aren’t set is because a representative either forgot to ask or mishandled the interaction. Look at script language, use mystery shopping to evaluate delivery, and reinforce with coaching. 

APPOINTMENT SHOW RATES

If set rates are high but you’re still getting no-shows, it’s not because your customers are indifferent. In most cases, that means scripts aren’t confirming important details or follow-up processes aren’t effective. And with average closing rates for successful appointments at 40%, your BDC’s performance is directly tied to profits.  

Hero: A 75% show rate is the baseline for a well-oiled BDC machine. 

Zero: If you’re getting less than 75% regularly, check that your scripts confirm customer details politely and clearly, ensure that information goes to your BDC manager in a timely fashion, and verify your BDC manager is following up with helpful details and good directions the day before. 

LEAD QUALIFICATION

This used to be the work of sales teams, but business development centers now handle all of the inbound and outbound lead generation, follow-ups, and referrals. They’re much more efficient at gathering customer information and evaluating lead quality, and their process-oriented approach means they consistently produce reliable results. 

Here are the three factors they will be able to track with their CRM software to optimize their lead generation strategy:

Customer Intent: The BDC can give salespeople a heads-up for managing customer interactions. Plus, they can connect them with additional services and opportunities.  

Budget: This lets your BDC team guide a customer through inventory they can afford to save your sales and finance teams time. 

Timeline: By providing context, BDC associates convey urgency and opportunity for everyone at your dealership. 

Hero: If your business development center is performing well, 20-40% of your leads should have high intent, a budget that matches desirable inventory, and be ready to buy in the near future. 

Zero: Partially or minimally qualified leads aren’t where your sales team should be heavily investing their resources. If your qualified lead numbers are low, mystery shopping will give your training partner direct insight into how your BDC agents are evaluating and managing these calls. 

It can be difficult to tease the issue apart since it’s often complicated. That’s why an automotive consultant with deep industry experience and a long track record of coaching success is invaluable for optimizing a BDC’s performance. They will be able to spot subtle issues that are often invisible to even the most experienced GM.

KEEP YOUR FINGER ON THE PULSE WITH PHONE NINJAS

If you’re looking to operate a winning business development center at your dealership, Phone Ninjas is the training partner that will keep your team on point so they never miss a revenue opportunity. We evaluate and develop your BDC with mystery shops, custom phone scripts, and an active coaching model that’s proven to deliver big numbers and competitive returns.

Our coaches work one-on-one with your BDC representatives and managers to maximize your appointment set and show rates with specific and detailed teaching points taken from their real-world customer calls. We also help with the challenging and nuanced skills surrounding lead qualification to make sure a potential sale never slips through the cracks. 

Contact us today for a free demo and two mystery shops, and leave zero doubt that your business development center into the hero of your dealership!

Now that your Business Development Center is up and running, how can you tell if your BDC agent or team is making the most of your revenue opportunities? The nation’s leading dealerships always bring in a professional training partner on day one because it allows these business machines to be largely self-driving, but that doesn’t mean a GM can fall asleep at the wheel. 

There are two reasons why it’s important for you to have a thorough working knowledge of what makes a BDC agent effective—even if you’re trusting others to run it. First, you’ll need to understand your training partner’s reports and where to look if there’s a problem. And second, these are the details that let you separate a decent auto consultant from an expert!

To ensure you always have your finger on the pulse, we’ve identified the key metrics you need to monitor and the steps to take if they aren’t up to scratch.

APPOINTMENT SET RATE

Your call-to-appointment conversion rate is the single most important KPI every BDC agent needs to help deliver. At a minimum, 50% of inbound calls and 20% of outbound calls need to result in a live, in-person appointment. 

APPOINTMENT SHOW RATE

No matter how hard your BDC agent tries, some folks just won’t keep their appointment. It’s a fact of life. However, if your show rate is below 75%, there are probably performance-related issues that need to be addressed by your training partner. 

CALLS PER DAY

Depending on your market, your team should shoot for around 70 inbound calls a day and twice as many outbound. Inbound calls are more directly tied to appointment rates and sales goals, and outbound calls tend to drive growth. 

DROP RATE

This is the number of calls your team cannot answer because they have more calls than agents to handle them. You never want this number higher than 9%, and even that’s pushing it.

CALLBACK RATE

An ignored missed call is a lost revenue opportunity—plain and simple. If your team isn’t following up on every single one, customers will simply go elsewhere.

TIME ON THE PHONE

BDC agents should be spending about 75% of their day on the phone taking and receiving calls. They send business to every other department, so this number affects everything you do. 

HOW TO FIX THESE ISSUES

Every BCD agent needs ongoing training support no matter how talented they are on the phone. The fact is, automotive sales are always changing, and new updates and tactics will need to be identified, improved, and maintained. 

If your numbers are painting a picture that needs improvement, here’s where to start.

LOW APPOINTMENT SET RATE

Assuming your BDC agent is hitting their “calls per day” and “time on phone” KPIs (70 inbound, 140 outbound calls; 75% of their time on the phone), the most common reason for a low appointment set rate is simple:

A BDC agent forgets to ask. 

It’s an unforced error, but surprisingly common—especially for teams working without scripts. Here are some tips and tactics from Phone Ninjas expert consultant Nicole Marcellino to ensure your appointment set rate stays high.  

If they’re making the ask but not delivering results, then you may need to look at your sales scripts and the training your BDC agent is receiving on them. 

Your scripts need to:

• Include appointment setting language.
• Cover common customer questions and concerns.
• Provide multiple paths to appointment setting.
• Leave the door open if a customer declines.

TOO MANY NO-SHOWS

It’s one thing to set an appointment, and another to get a customer in the showroom. To make it as easy as possible for a customer to visit, your agents will need to:

• Get customer contact information.
• Check the details before hanging up. 
• Give good directions to the dealership from their location.
• Remind the customer their manager will be calling a day or two before the appointment to confirm.

These reminder calls aren’t just robotic, either. They are a chance for your team to stay ahead of a few obstacles a customer may face, including:

• Reminding the customer of the appointment and catching miscommunications.
• Answering new questions.
• Verifying directions.
• Letting them know who their contact will be at the dealership. 

NOT ENOUGH CALLS PER DAY

If your BDC agent isn’t hitting 70 inbound and 140 outbound calls and you can see they’re working hard, it may be a process issue. You can:

• Structure their job responsibilities to realistically allow them to hit 75%.
• Edit scripts to be maximally efficient and always driving toward closing.
• Use a mystery shopper through your training partner to ensure your BDC agent is using the scripts efficiently and provide necessary coaching support.  
• Replace or upgrade slow/faulty equipment and software.
• Hire a sufficient number of BDC agents to cover the regular incoming call volume and expected outbound call volume. 
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UNANSWERED CALLS

If you are missing more than 6-9% of calls and your BDC agent is hitting other relevant KPIs (calls per day, on-phone time), speak to your BDC manager and training partner. It may be that there is a call volume issue they’re struggling with, or additional training and time management strategies may be required. 

MISSED CALLBACKS

Double-check that your CMR software/company has an appropriate mechanism to alert your BDC agent to missed calls and a process for following up. If they’re overloaded, it may be worth making a strategic decision to prioritize callbacks. 

INEFFICIENT CALL STRATEGIES

One of the best ways to help a BDC agent keep calls efficient is to use mystery shoppers. These training opportunities can highlight pointers that will benefit your entire team, including how to minimize:

• Inefficient call strategies.
• Overwritten phone scripts.
• Inexperience with particular scenarios.
• Workplace distractions.
• Technology deficiencies.

In other words, train and monitor your team to ensure an efficient, distraction-free workplace, and give them the training support they need to be successful!

TUNE UP YOUR BDC WITH PHONE NINJAS

At Phone Ninjas, we know how big an impact a well-trained BDC agent can have on your business. We work with top dealerships around the country to ensure that their BDCs are operating at peak efficiency so no revenue opportunity is left on the table.  

Our team delivers industry-leading training strategies that leverage custom phone scripts, active coaching, and in-depth analysis and reporting that accelerate your business past the competition. We tailor our consulting services to match your dealership’s needs and give your people the valuable skills and feedback required to deliver for your bottom line. 

Best of all, we prioritize your time to ensure our work doesn’t distract from your success. Schedule a demo of our services today, and start seeing the appointment rates and sales numbers you need to stay ahead of the pack. 

Your new business development center is finally up and running! You’ve hired a great manager, and they’re already making a big impact on key metrics like lead generation, appointment set rate, and monthly sales numbers. 

Implementing this new strategy has been the best decision you ever made, but your BDC manager is not a miracle worker. They’re going to need the right support and tools to keep your BDC operating at peak efficiency and driving your bottom line. 

Unfortunately, for many owners, BDCs are unknown territory, and ideally, they need to run without your direct supervision. That means knowing how to support your BDC manager so they can do the job on their own—and at Phone Ninjas, we’re experts at keeping these business-generating powerhouses burning clean and efficiently. Here’s everything you need to know. 

EMPOWER YOUR BDC MANAGER TO HIRE THE RIGHT PEOPLE

It’s easy to look at your BDC as little more than a re-branded customer service department. And while this is part of its mission, it misses the real point which is to bring in customers and maximize your revenue opportunities. 

To do this, your BDC manager must have the freedom and authority to hire the right people for their new team. It can be tempting to become overly involved in the process or water down priorities by bringing in other departments, but a great BDC needs to be narrowly focused on its role. They’re going to be routing traffic and coordinating important business opportunities to your team—and it’s their job to figure out the best way to do it. 

Of course, this support includes the budget necessary to hire an appropriate number of agents to do the job effectively. BDCs are rapidly becoming the beating heart of a successful dealership, pumping leads and money to every branch of your business. If you’re not sure what it’s going to take to operate at peak efficiency, definitely speak to your automotive training consultant to get the details.

GIVE THEM THE RIGHT TOOLS

Because they are new additions to dealerships, BDCs are often shoved into whatever space is available and given leftover equipment from other departments. This may seem like an efficient repurposing of your resources, but the truth is you’re just handcuffing your BDC manager from the get-go.

Successful BDCs require these basic items:

• Clean, safe, comfortable workspace that is separate from other departments. (It doesn’t even need to be on site!)
• High-quality, reliable internet access.
• Computers and other technology that are powerful enough to easily handle the reams of data that will be flowing through them.
• Data backup services, either local or outsourced.
• Adequate office equipment to do their job well.
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These resources are non-negotiable. After all, your BDC manager is focused on delivering the biggest return on your investment possible, so skimping on these is being penny smart but dollar foolish.

REWARD THEIR TEAM FOR THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS

Your BDC manager and their team will be the primary driver of sales going forward. It’s important to keep them hungry, and the best way to ensure high productivity from employees is to pay them for their performance! In other words, you’ll get their best by setting up a common-sense commission structure. 

What should those numbers be? That’s a great question for your training partner. These professionals have a deep knowledge of what makes a BDC tick, as well as a solid understanding of industry standards and regional trends. 

In general, it’s smart to structure pay packages in ways that compensate BDC agents beyond just their sales. Examples would include:

• Commission for setting valid appointments that actually show. That’s how you know their phone scripts are well-written and the team is properly prepared by the BDC manager. 
• Base salary or hourly wage that is a draw against commission.
• Bonuses on reaching appointment volume benchmarks.

By properly rewarding your BDC manager and their team for their efforts, not only will they become fabulously productive, but you’ll have solid data to qualify just how critical their contributions are to your bottom line. 

UTILIZE GREAT TRAINING RESOURCES

Well-trained employees are productive employees, and BDCs are no exception. If you expect your BDC manager to deliver the goods, they need to have access to high-quality training programs and partners that ensure their team members are set up for success.

What does a great training program look like? It should include every one of these four components:

• Provides high-quality initial instruction that is engaging and effective.
• Prioritizes mentoring employees individually over time to fully integrate new skills.
• Uses mystery shoppers to accurately measure the efficacy of the training.
• Delivers a long-term relationship that helps adapt to changing market conditions.

It sounds like a lot, but the best training teams can achieve all these goals with a surprisingly small investment of time. Typically, a few key examples shared with the team and short 20-minute touchup sessions are enough to address BDC manager concerns and keep the team on point. 

PHONE NINJAS WILL GET YOUR BDC UP AND RUNNING FAST

Getting your people great training is the most basic thing you can do to support your BDC manager. We founded Phone Ninjas specifically to empower your team to deliver maximum ROI, and we’ve designed our comprehensive training program with the best research-led strategies to impart all critical skills to your new business development center employees.

Our active coaching model partners a talented Phone Ninja with each team member, and they work together in one-on-one weekly sessions to build skills using real-life BDC calls they’ve been taking to best implement our training and scripts. Our clients are shocked to see their appointment-from-call rate skyrocket from the industry average of 20% to 60%, or even 80% and beyond. This is exactly what you want your BDC manager to bring into your business, and this is what Phone Ninjas’ hard-working coaches deliver.

There’s no time like the present to join the top dealerships with a modern BDC strategy. We’d love to show you how we’ll make this happen with a free demo and mystery shops—but we can only help once you reach out. Call us today to get started!

Let’s face it: every dollar you invest in your dealership needs to come with a return, and that goes double for the money you spend on boosting sales performance. As competition between dealerships is becoming ever fiercer, savvy owners and GMs are looking for new and innovative ways to increase profits with the most cost-effective strategies. 

There are a lot of consultants out there making big promises, but giving your word and actually knowing how to improve sales performance with data-backed results are worlds apart. Taking your dealership’s revenue to the next level means identifying where dollars are slipping through the cracks and correcting those issues as efficiently as possible so your people can do what they do best. 

Even small increases can lead to big rewards down the road, and nearly every dealership can make simple changes that dramatically increase key metrics like appointment rates. We’ll talk through some of the best ways to go about getting all your numbers where they need to be!

THE POWER OF 1%

Success is often perceived as a huge jump in single areas of productivity. But these solutions are often envisioned as big, vague processes that can seem impossible to take on. You’ve got to think hard about how to improve sales performance at your dealership to come up with practical real-world ideas.

A much more effective approach is to leverage a lot of marginal gains. The idea is that making 1% improvements in as many areas of your business as possible will pay off in a way that is greater than the sum of its parts. 

This is not a pie-in-the-sky theory either—it’s been proven to work. Consider that a 1% improvement in sales volume equates to a 3.3% increase in operating margin, and a 1% improvement in pricing leads to an 11% increase in operating margin.

What does this mean for dealerships? Glad you asked. When you’re looking for a training partner, they should be delivering ongoing training that helps your sales team make incremental improvements and solidify their skills. Relationships are everything when it comes to coaching for success, and the best consultants will never try to sell you on a one-and-done model.

DIG INTO YOUR METRICS

Your sales and performance data needs to be squeezed for every last bit of actionable intel. This may mean investing in better software, people with the right skills, or 3rd-party partners who specialize in crunching numbers. This will give you insights into demographic spending tendencies, seasonal fluctuations, add-on product benefits, etc. 

Any automotive consultant you’re considering for your dealership should be able to back up their strategy with solid analytics as well as specific industry advice—not generic sales jargon. After all, your people are pros, and improving sales performance takes concrete training points taken from mystery shops and other real-world evaluations that lead to results they’ll see in their paychecks and on your bottom line.  

EMBRACE SOCIAL MEDIA AND DIGITAL MARKETING

A smart social media campaign is one of the least expensive advertising campaigns you can invest in. And there are a wealth of advantages:

• Better brand/ product awareness. These days, 43% of customers learn about these through social media
• Increased sales. 87% of customers think social media helps them make purchasing decisions, 71% buy based on social media referrals, and 66% buy after seeing other people’s posts (which can be your shared posts if you design the campaign correctly).
• Lead Generation. Great social media campaigns are shown to improve the number of leads, closings, and even up to 48% larger deals.

Of course, it’s not always easy to understand how to manage a social media or digital advertising campaign, and the learning curve can cost you a lot of time and money with little in the way of results. This is where an automotive consultant can nail down your best targets and help customize a winning strategy. 

INVEST IN A BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT CENTER (BDC)

These departments are becoming more and more common in dealerships everywhere. BDCs are critical for managing leads, setting appointments, anticipating customer needs, routing call traffic, providing customer service, and so much more. 

These can be outsourced or built in-house. Which solution is right for your dealership is highly dependent on your budget, expertise, floor space, etc. But you absolutely need a BDC center coordinating all facets of your customer service in order to thrive.

That being said, these sales-boosting dynamos don’t just organize themselves. They’re highly refined revenue-generating investments that require a dedicated training partner to keep them working at maximum efficiency. That being said, you know who’s leveraging them?

The top dealerships in the country. And if you want to compete, you’ll need to get on board. 

INCREASE APPOINTMENT RATES

The single most important thing you can do when considering how to improve sales performance for your dealership is to increase the number of in-person appointments your BDC is booking. If you can believe it, only 20% of most dealerships’ phone and internet traffic results in appointments. Why? 

Because the customer wasn’t asked. 

To keep up with the top performers in the industry, your rate must be at least 60%. The key here is simple: your people need the best training and scripts. Phone scripts (executed properly) are key to giving your CS agents a proven roadmap that covers all common scenarios, and reminds them to ask the necessary questions, like “Would today or Friday be a better day for you to come in and see our amazing new deals?”

PHONE NINJAS KNOWS HOW TO GET PEOPLE THROUGH YOUR DOOR

At Phone Ninjas, we know how to improve sales performance for the dealerships. We’ve made our name in the industry by boosting our clients’ appointment rates from phone and internet channels far beyond the average to 60%, even 80% and higher. But that’s just one aspect of the value we bring to our partners in the automotive, motorcycle, and marine sales industries. 

Our proven training model is world-class. Our VP of Training, Mike Hoyser, conducts initial group activities to orient your salespeople to the areas we’re going to tackle. Then, our coaches work with your team in one-on-one weekly coaching sessions to improve their consistency and skills until everyone’s ready to fly on their own. We follow up with our mystery shopping team to ensure your customers are experiencing the very best service. If any shortcomings are identified, we continue working with team members to make sure no revenue opportunity is left on the table. 

You can stop wondering how to improve sales for your dealership. Reach out today for a free demo and to claim two free mystery shops! We can’t wait to help you break new records!