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. 

Setting up a car dealership BDC is a big step into the future of the business, but there’s still plenty of work to be done. BDCs are incredible revenue generators, but your people will need ongoing training to keep their skills sharp. Industry trends are also a moving target, and that means editing phone scripts and improving strategies to maximize its value. 

That being said, your BDC should be designed to operate with minimal oversight. You’ve got a lot going on just keeping the dealership running, and developing your team is the work of dedicated training specialists. Is this an investment? Of course, but a great partner can deliver an incredible ROI.

Ideally, the team doing the training should be able to coordinate with your manager to take care of everything so all you have to do is green-light the funds and read the good news in the reports they send. Here’s everything you need to know to keep your BDC ahead of the game. 

HOW IS A BDC DIFFERENT FROM MY OTHER DEPARTMENTS?

Unlike the sales department, your car dealership BDC doesn’t really do a lot of negotiating or outright selling. That’s the work of your sales team, but these frontline customer service representatives are responsible for setting everyone else up for success by managing appointments, routing calls, generating leads, and delivering key messaging about the services you offer. 

While they’ll wear a lot of hats depending on the nature of the call, a BDC’s work can be broken down into three broad categories.

• Greeting customers and channeling inbound calls to the appropriate contact.
• Working with sales scripts.
• Scheduling appointments

While these things can definitely be improved by your training partner, BDC reps have to have a natural flair for the work. That’s why picking the right person to do the managing and hiring is key to building a better department. 

GREETING CUSTOMERS AND CHANNELING INBOUND CALLS

These skills are drawn directly from the skill set your receptionists utilize on a daily basis. Your car dealership BDC will not be replacing them since you always need a dedicated team to meet and greet customers in person, but your BDC reps will definitely be handling most of the inbound calls.

And just like your receptionists, BDC staff are often the initial point of contact customers have with your dealership, and first impressions are everything. Here are a few excellent free training videos led by Nicole Marcellino from Phone Ninjas that will be extremely useful for developing your new team members:

• Receptionist training
• Inbound calls: 1. The Greeting
• Inbound calls: 2. Qualifying a Generic Vehicle
• Inbound calls: 3. Qualifying a Specific Vehicle

SALES SCRIPTS

The key to consistent, high-quality customer service and brand messaging is well-crafted phone scripts. If you are not using these, you are undoubtedly leaving revenue opportunities on the table left and right.   

Now, we know scripts can sometimes have a bad reputation in the industry. We’ve all had this experience: bored customer service agents robotically mumbling their way through a terrible script without ever giving you the information you need. And yes, if bad scripts are executed poorly they can hurt your business. That’s why it’s so important to work with a dedicated training partner. 

When scripts are well-written and delivered confidently, they can have explosive results for your dealership’s bottom line. Here’s what your team needs to keep improving:

• Effective scripts written and updated by qualified industry professionals (here’s a great source of free, high-quality scripts).
• Regular coaching for delivery and memorization.
• Developing the language of the scripts to suit individual styles (with your BDC manager’s supervision).

This ongoing training can be a lot of work for time-strapped owners and GMs. The good news is that there are excellent companies out there that can handle this active coaching process, and because they’re dedicated experts, they can deliver excellent results in 15- to 20-minute weekly or monthly sessions. 

SETTING APPOINTMENTS

Most dealerships struggle to convert 20% of their internet and phone traffic to in-person, live appointments. In reality, the average needs to be much higher, especially with inbound customer contacts. Well-run BDCs are averaging at least 50%, and the top training partners can deliver even bigger numbers with the right strategy and focus. 

Once again, Phone Ninjas instructor Nicole Marcellino covers everything you need to know with the second half of her series on the secrets of leveraging inbound calls:

• Inbound call 4. Obtain Contact Information 
• Inbound call 5. Ask for the Appointment
• Inbound call 6. Drive to Closure
• Inbound call 7. Giving Proper Directions (to your car dealership)

With these simple techniques and some positive coaching, your car dealership BDC will make sure your showroom is flooded with interested customers so your salespeople can capitalize. 

A GREAT TRAINING PARTNER MAKES IT EASY 

Establishing your BDC is a major hurdle to clear, but with the right training partner, it’s easy to keep getting better. This is where Phone Ninjas can deliver incredible value for busy GMs and managers who don’t have the time or expertise to handle the upkeep. We’re an automotive phone training and consulting company founded by industry professionals with decades of sales and coaching experience, and we’ve been working with BDCs around the country to keep them ahead of the competition.

Our best clients are achieving appointment rates up to 80%, quadrupling the industry average, and backing those numbers up with the skills they need to unlock every revenue opportunity. But don’t take our word for it—hear what Christine at Wesley Chapel Toyota has to say about her Phone Ninjas coaching experience.

Contact us today for a free demo and two mystery shops to find out what Phone Ninjas can do for your car dealership BDC! 

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!

Evaluating your dealership’s sales team performance may seem as simple as looking at the bottom line, but in today’s market, it’s actually a very complicated equation. The top competitors are utilizing every tool and strategy at their disposal to maximize revenue, including sales scripts, BDCs, and extending vehicle sales conversations to integrate other services and drive return business. 

Because of this complexity, dealership owners and GMs need to use many metrics to evaluate how well the business is performing. In fact, it’s increasingly common to bring in dedicated specialists who can take a deep dive into the sales side to develop coaching strategies that take advantage of every opportunity. 

But what are these experts seeing that you might be missing? Here’s what to look at to evaluate sales team performance and keep your people working at peak efficiency. 

THE HARD DATA

While there are many nuances to modern sales strategies, anything that can be measured should be. Every GM should be familiar with the relevant data sets, what they mean, and—most importantly—what you can do to improve them. 

Vital KPIs

The following list includes the main metrics that can be used to monitor various aspects of your dealership’s sales strategy. They are the starting point for any consultant’s work and point them in the right direction to find possible gaps in skills or issues in sales scripts. 

Dollar metrics

Inventory turnover

Per-vehicle revenue targets

Used/new vehicle sales ratio

Sales per employee

Call-appointment ratios

Lead follow-up times

Conversion rates

Of course, many aspects of these numbers are related, and it takes a keen eye to understand exactly how they’re influencing your overall sales goals. 

Analyzing Trends

The next step is to use the information these metrics are telling you as a baseline for evaluating particular aspects of sales team performance and setting goals for improvement. This is where a dedicated training partner can make a big difference, both in terms of time and results. After all, an expert who knows what they’re looking for will find the problems immediately, whereas in-house processes often have a steep and expensive learning curve.

An automotive sales consultant will use this information to:

Evaluate work efficiency

Predict customer behavior changes

Identify unmet customer needs

Accurately evaluate employee strengths and weaknesses

Support key strategic decisions

Identify emerging trends 

Help you get out in front of potential challenges

Suggest effective product selection and marketing channels.

And this is just the beginning. A good statistical analysis of your sales team performance data is absolutely required in this day and age. It gives you the edge over the competition, helps you accurately understand employee needs, identify hidden strengths, and uncover trends and problems before they become serious liabilities.

EVALUATING SOFT SKILLS AND PHONE STRATEGIES

Once you understand the numbers, you’ll be ready to take a look at your team. This includes reviewing all your materials and observing their actual performance on the job. Ideally, you should use techniques that let you do both at once and you’ll need to review how your training procedures will address the issues. 

Mystery Shoppers

Human beings have a natural tendency to change their behavior in the presence of observers. In this case, that means you or your management team. So, the mere attempt to directly measure your employees’ skills will cause them to react differently than they would with regular customers.

This is where mystery shopping comes into play. A mystery shopper poses as a real customer on the phone to obtain a highly realistic impression of your sales team’s performance. These calls can be extremely revealing and often highlight concrete reasons why certain KPIs are underperforming. For instance, do you know why so many dealerships have low appointment rates? Their sales reps forget to ask. 

Whether it’s a script omission or just a performance issue, mystery shoppers give you the information you need to quickly correct every instance of an employee accidentally talking your dealership out of an opportunity to sell. It’s so important that many of the top dealerships in the country have dedicated business development centers (BDCs) that do nothing but handle and route customer calls. 

Examine Training Quality

To reach high levels of quality and consistency in your customer service, your coaching partner will need a training strategy that translates evaluations to real-world sales team performance improvement. Here’s what you should expect to see from a top consultant:

High-quality, engaging instruction and materials.

One-on-one mentor relationships that emphasize coaching.

Training module that limits direct instruction to six-minute training segments, separated by interactive activities and discussions that encourage engagement.

Long-term strategies that space out the learning to maximize retention.

Verifying the training with mystery shoppers and following up to ensure skills stick.

PHONE NINJAS CAN HELP

With the hurricane of responsibilities owners and GMs have to wade through every day, most of these processes are beyond the reasonable scope of what you can achieve alone. A great partner can be an invaluable asset when judging sales team performance.

At, Phone Ninjas we’ve spent years analyzing sales teams in the automotive industry, and we have a long track record of boosting underperforming KPIs that make an impact on your bottom line. Our clients routinely see appointment rates double and triple, and that’s just one of the many ways we can get your sales department firing on all cylinders. 

Maximizing sales team performance starts with the best automotive sales consultant in the game, and no one does it better than us. Drop us a line for a free demo including two mystery shops so we can show you exactly how we’ll transform your salespeople into superstars!

The reports and spreadsheets that flood your desk are not the only tools you should be using while tracking sales performance KPIs. They are highly valuable, but do they really deliver the whole picture?

Nope! Not by a long shot. And while receipt, phone, and internet surveys can help bridge the gap in some ways, they are very old-school and deliver little if any real value.

Mystery shoppers can be the missing piece of the puzzle you’ve been looking for to get a complete picture of your business through tracking sales performance. But to do this, you must consistently employ them so you can match details of specific performance trends to the hard data.

NUMBERS DON’T TELL THE WHOLE STORY

Sales reports and KPIs are popular metrics for tracking sales performance, but the problem with them is that humans can’t be reduced to an Excel spreadsheet. It turns out we are heavily driven by our emotions, and that’s why the effectiveness of sales calls is much more difficult to analyze beyond success and failure. 

Mystery shoppers are a key tool to learning why your customers buy what they buy, shop where they shop, and if they are ever coming back. It takes time for a human to evaluate emotions, and because mystery shoppers pose as customers, they will directly experience how your team and business policies impact your customers.

Evaluate Customer Service

If you’re watching over their shoulder, or if they feel like they’re being otherwise evaluated, your employees will act differently than they will with regular customers. It’s just a fact of human nature. So if your sales are rising or falling unexpectedly with no clear reason in the reports, your customer service should be a top concern.

While a sales call can feel highly personal, the fact is, customer service is about delivering consistent information and driving a lead toward value. Things like ensuring your salespeople use effective language for setting appointments and confirming them, for instance, can be easily identified during a mystery call, but a sales report simply points to an outcome that could be for many reasons. If you use mystery shoppers on a regular basis, you will be able to tie your metrics to actions on calls, not guess at the problem. 

Verify Compliance with Corporate Policies and the Law

These twin items are of critical importance to maintaining a healthy bottom line. Virtually every dealership of any sort has its own best practices and government regulations with which they must comply. 

If overall employee compliance is eroding, mystery shoppers will tell you before it becomes a significant problem. Considering the expensive implications of a failure to adhere to a franchising agreement, or worse, lawsuits and legal repercussions? You definitely want to catch these items early before they cause a really big problem.

Measuring Social Skills

It’s an open secret that, with the rise of the internet, social skills are in decline across nearly every part of the human experience. The isolation, loss of social norms, lower levels of interaction, reduced empathy, etc. caused by an over-reliance on digital devices and communication are affecting your customers as well as your team. 

That means intrapersonal skills are actually becoming more important these days. Customers who are less socially-abled will require superior interpersonal skills from your employees if you want to escort them to a sale. That’s one of the many reasons phone scripts are such an important point of any dealership’s game—they ensure customers are compassionately and consistently helped every step of the way and no revenue opportunity is left on the table.

A good mystery shopper will deliver the unvarnished truth of how your people’s people skills are measuring up. By matching this data with numbers collected while tracking sales performance, you’ve got yet another powerful tool at your command.

Verify Training Effectiveness 

Just because mystery shopping is intended to mimic an actual call doesn’t mean there aren’t goals. Because mystery shoppers work with you to develop an in-depth evaluation form, they’re able to measure how consistently and effectively your team is employing the training you’ve been paying for. 

And as training gets forgotten or drifts over time, you definitely want to know if it’s having an effect on the numbers you’re collecting while tracking sales performance. It will help you identify the best intervals for retraining and map overall skill growth.

Confirm Training Quality

Your people are out there in the trenches every day, and they know your customers well. If your training is obsolete or just plain bad, trust us, they know. 

If your training is based on poor assumptions, is deficient in its quality, or if the people performing the training are not up to the task, mystery shoppers will identify these problems. After all, they don’t strictly follow the evaluation form you drew up with them. A mystery shopper has the freedom and the responsibility to investigate other issues as they arise.

COMBINE MYSTERY SHOPPING AND TRAINING

Now that you see how accurately tracking sales performance requires mystery shopping, you can take the next step: combining your training program and mystery shoppers into a unified whole.

Phone Ninjas has built our entire business on this core philosophy. Mike Hoyser, our VP of Training, personally works with your team for initial analysis and strategy. Our Phone Ninjas then coach them individually over time to optimize learning and growth. Finally, our mystery shoppers verify the training so we can follow up with additional coaching if needed. 

This process is entirely hands-off for you, so you can focus on developing your business. We’re so confident of our integrated approach that we offer a free demo and two free mystery shops with no further commitment. If you choose to hire us, we work on a month-to-month basis so you can maximize your training budget without getting locked into long-term contracts.

Call or email us today so we can help transform your bottom line!

Your people are the heartbeat of your company’s success. Without them, your business would close tonight, but it’s not enough to simply keep them grinding toward monthly sales goals by dangling the same old carrots. Sales team motivation is built around shared vision, enthusiasm for the industry, the potential for career advancement, and achievable goals that translate to dollar bills in everyone’s pocket. 

To stay ahead of the competition, your employees have to feel like they matter and the work they’re doing is part of building a meaningful career. However, people can be complex, and successfully improving sales team motivation can be a difficult and occasionally non-intuitive task. What are some of the best ways to go about this?

There are two basic areas to focus on that can make all the difference: overall morale/culture, and specific incentivization. We’ll break them down so you can create a strategy that keeps your employees firing on all cylinders and hungry for more. 

WAYS TO BUILD MORALE

It’s no secret that happy workers are better workers—in fact, you can measure it. Employees with high morale generate 38% more revenue on average than their worn-down counterparts. Our first three tips are going to focus on keeping spirits up and bringing your team closer together.  

1. Recognize Performance

This is more than just a commission or an employee-of-the-week plaque. Taking your team members out to lunch, going above and beyond to help them, public thanks, and surprise benefits (doughnuts, coffee, etc.) are all great ways to improve your sales team motivation. Keep these shifting to avoid people coming to expect them, and remember: it’s not about how much you spend. Little investments that are carefully considered often mean much more than generic big-ticket expenses. 

2. Lead by Example

Employees respect employers who pitch in when hard work needs to be done, as well as understand the challenges of everyone’s job. When you’re respected, people work harder for you. Trust your team, and have their back when the going gets tough. 

This needs to be more than rolling up your sleeves, though. You should model the culture and values you want them to bring to the job. That starts with listening closely to their needs and working to minimize the obstacles in their path. Conversely, communicating the business’s challenges as appropriate is important context that can help them understand why decisions are being made instead of being left in the dark. If they don’t know why things are happening, they can easily form the wrong impression about your leadership skills. 

Finally, striving to create fair opportunities for your people is an investment that will assuredly pay you back, both in terms of a positive workplace culture and for navigating interpersonal challenges. If you avoid playing favorites, give your salespeople the chance to succeed on their own merits, and make your hiring processes about finding the best people for the job, they’ll be much more prepared to accept getting a “no” today. 

3. Give Them the Right Tools

You can be the nicest boss anyone’s ever had… but if the building is shabby, the breakroom is barren, the coffee’s bad, and their tools are old and broken, you’re going to have a lot of frustrated people on your sales floor.

A clean, comfortable, safe environment does wonders for morale, and if you couple that with the proper tools that let them show you their best, it’s a recipe for high-level sales team motivation. And, of course, don’t forget the most important tool of all: training! Invest in giving them the skills they need to succeed, and they’ll use them to generate huge returns for your business. 

WAYS TO INCENTIVIZE PERFORMANCE 

We all know the value of commissions and bonus structures, but there are innumerable additional areas where small opportunities can improve sales team motivation. Many of these ideas build on existing incentives you already have in place or can provide extra value for team members with individual goals. 

4. Simple, Individualized Compensation Plans

The last thing your team wants to have to navigate is complicated commission structures. Employees prefer bonus and commission schedules that are simple, transparent, and easy to understand.

But even this basic idea can be improved on. If you create structures that have some flexibility, it allows employees to tailor their personal commission plan to pursue the things that matter most to them. That means your overall sales team motivation will be greater compared to a single umbrella model.

5. Incentivize Every Team Member

The conventional wisdom is that people who sell get commissions and the rest of the team gets a flat rate. But if your dealership sticks to this outdated model, you’re missing out on the many productivity increases that come from paying on a commission basis. 

Now, this doesn’t mean you pay your administrative assistants a commission on each email. But finding healthy ways to tie every employee’s compensation to their daily performance furthering the success of your business (ideally in every paycheck rather than yearly bonuses) encourages all departments to work together at a higher level of productivity. These can include small monthly or weekly goals that represent modest—but cumulative—gains. 

6. Eliminate Commission Caps and “Ratcheting” Quotas

Some details of compensation plans can have a negative impact on sales team motivation. For example, many large companies impose caps on commissions, de-incentivizing their best sales reps. And “ratcheting” quotas (increasing future quotas as a “reward” for exceeding current year expectations) is a particularly destructive practice. Who’s going to work hard if the owner just moves the bar to reap the rewards of your skills?

Your compensation model should never prioritize your personal profits over fair and equitable practices. If your people think you’re lining your pockets with their nickels and dimes, they’ll never give you anything close to their best.  

7. Train Your People Well

Without the proper training and tools (like great sales scripts), even the best salespeople are relying on individual experience and improvisation. But if you train them well on those scripts, they will feel supported, empowered, and confident. They’ll have solid tools that help them master any situation, and their commissions will increase as a result.

CHOOSE GREAT PARTNERS TO SUPPORT YOUR TEAM

No one can be an expert at everything, and even if you make your team’s morale a #1 priority it doesn’t mean you’re going to have the time to give them everything they need. This is particularly true of training, which can be a huge benefit to your sales team but incredibly hard to implement in-house. 

This is where a great training partner like Phone Ninjas can ensure your team always feels like you’re giving them the best shot at success. We’re automotive and heavy equipment sales professionals with decades of combined experience, and we know what keeps your people delivering 110%. We’ve used this knowledge to craft our amazing sales scripts and real-world coaching guidance that will translate to their paycheck at the end of the month. There’s no better way to increase sales team motivation!

Our in-depth training features one-on-one coaching sessions using examples from their actual job to improve presentation, naturalness, and performance. We back this up with our mystery shopping program that gauges the success of the training and follows up with shopped employees to perfect every last detail.

Contact us now to schedule a free demo and two free mystery shops for your dealership, and get your team’s energy at an all-time high!

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!

As showroom traffic slowly drops and customer habits change, your sales team’s phone skills are becoming more important than ever for maximizing revenue and hitting monthly sales goals. Customer service, in-person appointments, long-term loyalty, and higher sales and service engagement are all critical benefits you’re relying on your team’s phone skills to deliver.  

The average customer spends about eighteen minutes on any given customer service call, and a whopping 97% say a business’s customer service impacts their brand loyalty. Clearly, your team’s phone skills have to be top-notch. With so much on the line, how can you get the most out of your training investment?

Without a doubt, bringing in a phone mystery shopper is the fastest and most effective way to get real-world feedback and training tips that directly translate to increased sales and repeat business. If you’re not leveraging mystery shopping at your dealerships, here are seven reasons why it’s time to change your strategy.

1. ADDRESS NEEDS AND CLOSE DEALS

Customers who initiate a phone call are known as “high-intent” customers, meaning they’re already interested in a purchase and are looking to move down your sales funnel. Your sales team’s job is to identify what they want as quickly as possible and give them the answers they need to close the deal.

However, a few missteps here or there on a call can be the difference between a win and a loss. By mimicking a real customer interaction, a phone mystery shopper can identify areas where a salesperson is leaving revenue opportunities on the table and generate tips that will benefit your entire team. 

2. KEEP CUSTOMERS COMING BACK

Customers who use an outside source for service and financing are much more likely to shop somewhere else when they look for their next car. One of the easiest ways to build loyalty is by connecting buyers with in-house service and financing options, and the best opportunity to do that is during those early sales calls.

A phone mystery shopper makes sure that your team never forgets to include all the deals and benefits your dealership offers and highlights these areas in your phone scripts. Not only does that make the most of your existing revenue streams, but it ensures that you’ll have more repeat customers down the line. 

3. GET AN ACCURATE LOOK AT YOUR TEAM’S SKILLS

One of the hardest aspects of a GM’s job is evaluating skills in the workplace. The problem is, it’s not as simple as just standing over someone’s shoulder and taking notes. Every boss knows employees don’t behave the same when they know they’re being watched, and the observer effect ruins the evaluation.

Mystery shopping finds out how your team is actually performing—not what they do when they’re nervous or trying to impress you. Those real interactions are what affect sales, and a phone mystery shopper will find out exactly what’s going on under the hood. 

4. COMPARE TO THE COMPETITION

A phone mystery shopper doesn’t just look at your business. They can (and should) evaluate your competitors as well. That will allow your training partner to find key areas you can take advantage of as well as places you need to improve. 

5. IMPROVE COMPLIANCE

When it comes to company policy and legal regulations, you simply cannot afford to operate outside the margins. A phone mystery shopper confirms your team’s compliance with these non-negotiable items. There’s nothing worse for a customer than getting conflicting information when it comes to issues like financing and product information. If they’re confused, or worse, don’t trust you, they’ll definitely hit the road. 

6. STAY ON TOP OF CUSTOMER TRENDS

Customer habits and priorities change over time—especially in the automotive industry—and staying on top of it all usually requires a dedicated training partner who keeps you up to speed on the latest facts and figures. 

As your team adapts, a phone mystery shopper can track how well new information is being retained and how effectively it’s being delivered. After all, learning takes time, and a few follow-up mystery shops are often all it takes to drill down on the most important details. The faster your people get comfortable, the sooner it will translate to a boost in sales.  

7. DRIVE APPOINTMENT RATES 

Internet car and truck purchases are increasing, but only account for 3% of overall sales. The overwhelming proportion of customers still prefer to buy cars from real people, and with showroom traffic falling, that puts more pressure than ever on your team’s phone skills to bring customers to your door.

Unfortunately, the average dealership only converts about 20% of phone calls into appointments, and it’s often for one simple reason: your team forgets to ask! By using well-designed phone scripts focusing on appointment setting, the top dealerships are hitting rates of at least 60% if not higher. 

One of the most important benefits a phone mystery shopper delivers is an evaluation of your team’s effectiveness in booking these appointments. Once you see where you’re falling short, you can get this major KPI up to where it should be.

CONNECT WITH A WINNING PHONE MYSTERY SHOPPER

Here at Phone Ninjas, phone training and mystery shopping are our bread and butter. Our clients routinely see their in-person appointment rates from phone traffic triple or even quadruple. It’s just one of the many aspects we work on with all our clients to build their business and bury the competition. 

Our training program is a complete system that supports your team from beginning to end. We start with a mystery shopper to get a baseline of your phone performance. Then, our VP of Training, Mike Hoyser, conducts an initial training session with your entire team. Finally, our Phone Ninjas go to work, coaching your employees in individual sessions on a weekly or monthly basis. 

Once the training is complete, we send in a phone mystery shopper to evaluate your team’s skills and highlight areas for improvement. With the results in hand, we follow up with shopped employees with further coaching to make sure they’ve mastered every detail.

To find out what Phone Ninjas can do for your dealership, reach out today for a free demo and two free mystery shops. We can’t wait to meet you and start training your team for success! 

You’ve been going over your dealership sales team’s KPIs and it doesn’t look good. You’ve been spending on training, but nothing seems to work. What’s going on? 

It could be any number of things, but there are a few obvious places to start. In most cases, revenue opportunities are left on the table because of inefficient or dated sales practices that aren’t giving customers what they need to make a purchase. This is especially true when it comes to the phone, and bringing in a mystery shopper can make a huge difference for your bottom line. These undercover professionals can give you the scoop on where your team is succeeding and where they could brush up on skills and consistency.

While you’ve probably heard of mystery shopping before, you may not know just how powerful it can be compared to other forms of feedback. Our team has put together a first-class guide to give you the lowdown on this game-changing customer service evaluation tool.

WHY IS MY TEAM FALLING BEHIND?

There are any number of reasons your sales department may be underperforming, and all of them are correctable with the right tactics and training. Some of the more common issues include:

Skill Drift

In a surprising way, the smart go-getters you’ve hired to sell your products can negatively impact the overall effectiveness of your sales team if they become too creative in their approach. Today’s customers are looking for consistency of messaging and branding across every aspect of your business—no matter who picks up the phone. Over time, increasing individualization of key content can result in inconsistent experiences that impact sales goals. 

Additionally, specific product, policy, and pricing details can also start to blur, especially as new information comes in. It’s been demonstrated that memory details can drift 37% in a single year, so it’s important to make training and review an ongoing process at your dealership. 

Lack of Accurate Feedback

Even the best employees don’t always know how their daily interactions are impacting a sale, and it takes accurate feedback to make meaningful changes to their game. However, if the information they’re getting isn’t useful, then they might as well not get it at all—and you’ve wasted a lot of money! 

Customer surveys and comment cards occasionally have some valuable information, but in most cases, they don’t point in the direction of positive change. Owners and GMs should invest in tools that generate fast and detailed points for improvement and follow up with actionable advice. 

Limited or Ineffective Training

In an environment as dynamic and ever-changing as car sales, training has to be an ongoing priority. Ideally, dealerships should have a dedicated training partner who works with your team on a weekly or monthly basis to introduce new information, keep their skills on point, and make sure they stay in line with current best practices and policies. 

The best training consultants can achieve great results in surprisingly little time by utilizing mystery shops. These experiences deliver real-world examples of your team’s performance and highlight a few critical points for improvement. It’s a fast and efficient way to keep everyone on the same page while driving all your customers toward a sale. 

HOW DOES MYSTERY SHOPPING WORK?

Your training partner usually has a team of trained mystery shoppers they deploy to call your dealership and explore specific aspects of your phone service. However, not every consultant’s mystery shopper program delivers great results. Here’s what you should look for to get an ideal mystery shopper experience for your business:

1. Mystery shoppers (or their agency) prepare a rubric in consultation with you to ensure everything you need to have evaluated is covered. You’ll have priorities, and good partners can point out details you might not have considered.
2. The shopper calls your dealership posing as a customer. A great mystery shopper is sufficiently trained and experienced to avoid tipping off your sales team.
3. The mystery shopper poses pre-planned questions and investigates issues organically as they come up.
4. Afterward, you should receive a detailed report and a recording of the call to reference.
5. Your training partner uses the elements of the call to celebrate success and offer specific advice to your team on how to improve the interaction. 
6. Employees are individually coached over time to ensure new skills are integrated.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS TO MY BUSINESS?

A long-term investment in a mystery shopping partner can have a major impact on your overall sales numbers. They will:

• Identify revenue opportunities.
• Catch small issues before they grow and cost you money.
• Deliver fast, accurate feedback on the effectiveness of your sales strategies.
• Identify valuable differentiators from your competition. 
• Improve and unify your team’s presentation, procedures, and efficiency.
• Help craft your overall CS protocols to reflect the true needs of your customers.

As you can see, a mystery shopper offers tons of advantages that will drastically improve your sales team’s skill set and get your KPIs headed in the right direction.

PHONE NINJAS DOES IT ALL

We founded Phone Ninjas as a top-to-bottom training program for automotive dealerships, and the mystery shopper experience is one of our most important tools for identifying issues and coaching toward success. We use these powerful evaluation tools to uncover key areas of improvement and use them to create a comprehensive training strategy that is tailored to the needs and resources of your business. Then, we use mystery shops to check in on your team over time and hone in on teachable moments that translate to better sales numbers.

We’re so confident you’ll see the value in our program we’ll perform a demo and two mystery shops of your dealership for free with no further commitment. And we don’t do long-term contracts that lock you into an expensive payment plan. We bill month-to-month, so you partner with us for exactly as long as you need.

Call or email us today so we can start transforming your sales numbers!