Ask 10 different dealers for their opinion on automotive business development centers and you will likely get 10 different answers. We’ve seen it all — we have clients who have their own fully functioning BDCs onsite, others who outsource, and another group that is achieving great results without BDCs.

There is no perfect answer to the question, and we’ve seen successes from each scenario previously mentioned. So, when considering if your dealership could benefit from adding a BDC into your processes, it’s important to understand the benefits that one could bring.

Ultimately, we believe the goal of the business development center is to develop relationships and increase showroom traffic for the

dealership. BDCs are often the heart of the dealership and vital to the overall success of the store. If they are done effectively and consistently, BDCs will generate more traffic and profit for the dealership.

Why Are BDCs Important?

Because response time matters. Over 80% of car buyers start their research online, and many consumers have inquired at multiple dealerships, so the first to respond or the one who responds at just the right time is going to earn their business — which means that consistency is key.

A well-run BDC will improve engagement and ensure quality through continual coaching and accountability. A strong BDC manager will ensure customers are being followed up with extensively via calls/texts/emails for multiple days, because productivity produces results. When the showroom is busy, you want your sales staff to be able to focus on the customers who are there in person without compromising the real-time response to fresh new leads. A BDC is a dedicated team that you can rely on so your sales team can do what they do best, and you can be confident your prospective customers are being taken care of at the same time.

What Is the Dealership’s Role in the BDC’s Success?

It is crucial to understand that using a BDC, whether onsite or remotely, is a partnership and not a test. There’s got to be a total mindset and commitment made by the whole dealership to say this is what we are doing and we’re in it for the long-term. A dealer must think of the BDC as an extension of the sales team — a support system that is built to accommodate their unique needs.

Also, communication equals success. Always keep your BDC team up to date with any current promotions that you are running. They will leverage these incentives to increase the number of appointments set.

What to Do First?

If you are considering inserting BDC into your processes, we would recommend that you first evaluate both your current processes and your existing team and take note of what you are really good at. From there you can determine what gaps you need filled.

Consult with your CRM/ILM rep since they already know your dealership inside and out and can make helpful recommendations for you. Also, you’ll need to do some research to decide if you want to have your BDC onsite or outsource. If you do decide to outsource, make sure you are partnering with a company you can trust — one that has your overall success as a priority and not just getting you as an account.

by Melissa Sinclair

We’ve all seen it. Different departments in an auto dealership – accounting, customer service, programming, and sales – sometimes have a hard time understanding one another, even if they get along just fine.

It’s easy to forget that other departments not only exist, but that they face their own unique set of pressures and tasks. Working in one particular position, employees are trained to think and operate in a way which will benefit their specific responsibilities.

Many times, those same procedures run contrary to how people in other departments function, despite the fact that all the departments are chasing a shared goal – the bottom line.

Often times, making an effort to see “the big picture” from another department’s perspective can mean the difference between success and failure.

To maintain an efficient and productive dealership, communication between departments is a must. When the objective of the company is clear, when concerns and requests are acknowledged, and when every team is kept up to date with accurate information, both the company and the clients will thrive.

When the communication breaks down, it’s painfully obvious.

There are three ways you can build a positive work environment and fortify the relationships between departments, so every employee feels part of one large team instead of separate individual groups.

Appreciate Others

Show your appreciation whenever you can. Everyone, regardless of position or title, wants to feel appreciated, so genuinely compliment the people around you when they do something well or if they have done something to help you.

Be Positive

College football coach Lou Holtz guided the University of Notre Dame to a national title in 1988, but he also holds title to one of the most meme-worthy quotes about success.

“Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it,” said Holtz.

No doubt about it. Positivity is contagious, and it will help reinforce smooth-working relationships with your colleagues. No one wants to be around someone who is negative all the time, and if allowed to fester, negativity can be just as contagious.

To illustrate the power of perspective, there is a well-known story of an elementary school teacher who wrote 25 words on the chalkboard. All were spelled correctly. Except one.

Her students giggled at the single word that was wrong. Until the teacher pointed out the students had failed to notice all the words she had spelled right.

Finding negativity in things is often easiest to do, but your happiness, and often times your success, is determined by your perspective, not your circumstances.

Team Build

Americans love their sports, and it’s no coincidence that the three most popular – football, basketball, and baseball – depend on players working together toward a common goal.

For veteran Duke University basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski, it is the hallmark of his sport.

"To me, teamwork is the beauty of our sport, where you have five acting as one. You become selfless," said the five-time national champion.

No doubt, many of you are zealous sports fans on Sunday, but don’t leave that enthusiasm at home on Monday morning.

Find common ground and spend time doing things with your fellow employees that are not necessarily work-related. It is important that individuals have a healthy work/life balance, so they can effectively stay charged.

At ProMax, I am surrounded by a group of people who are incredibly funny, dedicated and generous, many of whom I rarely encounter in my day-to-day tasks. Several years ago, we started coordinating fundraising events to support local organizations. What began as an attempt to give back to our community turned into new friendships, stronger associations between colleagues, and a solid foundation of people.

We are not only proud of where we work but also whom we work with.

In turn, this respect has enhanced our teamwork by blending the strengths and perspectives of all our employees no matter which department we work for.

Different departments supporting each other results in advanced productivity, higher morale and a better work environment. In addition, our teams realize that if they ever need help, they can count on other teams to provide it and are willing to return that favor as well.

It’s too easy to get “cubicle” fever. It can also be contagious. Instead, look for the big picture.

Take time to see the value each department brings to your dealership and go out of your way to work together. This will help you understand how every department is integral to your company’s success. Respect and appreciation guarantee positive results.

And that’s the real bottom line.

by Mark Vermeulen

We’ve all heard, “He is a great leader.” It might come up in a casual conversation, perhaps to make a point or to score points in a debate.

But what defines a great leader?

A great wartime leader would demonstrate different skills and attributes than a person striving for social change, or even the leader of a high school sports team.

On the showroom floor, leadership can be as simple as taking the next up, moving a car back to the lineup, or making the decision to walk away from a deal because it just isn’t the right deal.

A mentor of mine once said: “If in doubt, make the better choice. Sometimes that means to walk away. You will sleep better at night.”

Leaders are responsible to cultivate a vision and to guide others to the fulfilment of the mission. The ability to influence others to greatness is a sign of true leadership.

And leaders are needed at all levels of society. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower said as much in an article in Reader’s Digest four years before his death in 1969.

“In the Army, good leadership must go down through the ranks to the youngest corporal; in business there is always need of men who can direct others effectively; in community life we need men and women who, by right thinking and sound deeds, influence others,” wrote Eisenhower, who commanded the D-Day invasion and later served two terms as president.

Yes, we want to run successful automotive dealerships, but we also owe it to our neighbors to groom leaders for our communities. I have identified five key leadership traits that you should look for in yourself and your fellow employees:

1. Passionate

Effective leaders genuinely love what they do and enjoy the satisfaction and fulfillment that comes from doing a good job. They don’t work for the title or the power. They work for the betterment of the people around them.

2. Inspiring

Most good leaders see a need or opportunity, and the people around them become inspired and join in. They develop people to greatness. A leader is not appointed – they are recognized. If you think you are a leader, stop and turn around. Is anyone following you?

3. Trusted

Being a leader means you can be trusted to do the things that are required of you. Are you completing the tasks that are currently assigned to your position? Do you work well in your current team?

4. Realistic

True leaders know their limitations and continue to do the little things (work ethic, character) they did before they moved into a position of managing others.

5. Obedient

A good leader must first be a good follower. All leaders are subject to someone with higher authority. Even the president of the United States, arguably the most powerful man in the world, still answers to the American voters. It is the ability to follow instructions – to submit to a larger power or goal – that makes someone a true leader who can be trusted.

Unfortunately, we often confuse the trappings of power for great leadership. Nothing can be further from the truth.

Consider today’s political candidates, who make over-the-top campaign promises, but once in office, they deliver on very few of them. Position and title don’t define leadership; action does.

Drawing traffic to your dealerhip's website can seem like a forbidding task, considering the infinite number of websites you are competing against.

And not all are playing fair. Google, the nation’s leading search engine, even penalizes those websites that use shady practices to get clicks.

So where do you start?

With a simple twist in perspective. Think like a customer, not a website editor. What kinds of fresh, up-to-date website content would you want if you were sitting on the other side of the screen?

As far back as 1996, Bill Gates saw the future of the Internet when he coined the phrase, “Content is King,” in an interview on his Microsoft website.

“Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting,” Gates said.

Needless to say, he was right in his prediction. Fast forward 21 years, and content is what drives the Internet as we know it today.

Imagine the internet as a huge public library and search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing as the card catalog. The search engines will provide results that they believe are most relevant to the search terms.

These results are based off indexing and scraping of websites, as well as taking into consideration a user’s geographic location and previous searches.

So how will potential customers find your “book” in that vast library? Give them high-quality web content in these five areas.

TEXT

Include articles or blog entries related to the types of vehicles you sell and services you offer, tying both into the local marketplace by using city names, zip codes, etc.

Utilize correct page names and meta descriptions and have text on each page related to the page name and descriptions. Detailed HTML and XML sitemaps are also extremely powerful because this is how search engines crawl your website.

IMAGES

Ever done a Google image search? Leverage the power of images by having good-looking photos with detailed alt descriptions on all your vehicles, and link these images to appropriate content pages on your site or other websites. Use slideshow offers, logos and images that spark emotion.

However, make sure the images are compressed in size, so they do not slow down your dealer website’s load times, especially on your homepage.

VIDEO

People love videos and so do the search engines! If possible, feature video walkarounds for every vehicle offered on your website. If you host the videos on YouTube, you can write content in the title and description that relates to that vehicle and the local search area.

In addition, include a page on your website that has all your current and past TV commercials. With each video, include a title and text description, along with dates.

ADVERTISEMENTS

That slideshow on your dealership website is there for one thing and one thing only: special offers. Don’t just throw an image of a car in that space. Create slides with a call to action that will help you convert more customers.

When creating advertisements, include descriptions for each offer and a landing page where customers can arrive. Make sure those landing pages have relevant content on them along with contact forms to collect leads.

VEHICLE DATA

To boost vehicle-specific traffic, feature custom comments on vehicle detail pages and provide links to vehicle-specific articles. These comments should contain tech specs, MPG data, and equipment lists.

For example, if you provide the towing capacities on all your full-size trucks, a customer who types “trucks that can tow a 7,500-pound boat” will be linked to your website.

In the long run, updating and adding website content doesn’t require you to be an expert; you simply have to do it.

By the way, those same experts say that adding just a page or article every two weeks is a great way to stay ahead of your competitors. And you will – as long as you put your customers first.

We had a great time at NADA 2019 and we hope you did too! We saw a lot of you in the booth, and the weather was definitely better than back home in the Midwest!

We also had the good fortune to win a DrivingSales Dealer Satisfaction Award: ProMax Desking won "Top Rated" honors.

Thanks to all of our dealers who voted for us in the Dealer Satisfaction Awards. 

-Shane Born, Chief Operating Officer at ProMax

Americans are obsessed with happiness.

In 2000, only 50 books were published on the topic. That number skyrocketed to 4,000 by 2008, according to Psychology Today . Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, even attributed much of his professional success to the pursuit of happiness.

“Happiness is smiles minus frowns,” he said at a keynote address I recently attended.

But is our nationwide pursuit of happiness leading us down a dead-end road? Consider some recent statistics.

• More Americans are committing suicide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rate jumped from 10.5 per 100,000 people in 1999 to 13 in 2014. More Americans show symptoms of depression, such as trouble sleeping and concentrating, than they did in the 1980s, according to a study reported in the website ScienceDaily. Americans are the least healthy of any of 17 developed countries, according to a study reported in the website Mercola.

I’m known as a person who is always smiling, but quite honestly, doing this research was depressing. Those statistical trends are symptoms of a bigger problem, which I believe is primarily caused by two things – increased stress and an absence of meaningful relationships.

We’ve all heard the term "stress is a killer," and research has shown conclusively that stress leads to health problems. Yet research also reveals the best antidote. “Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period,” said the director of a 75-year Harvard study on happiness reported in the website Inc.

“It's not just the number of friends you have, and it's not whether you're in a committed relationship,” the director also said in the article. “It's the quality of your close relationships that matters.” Genuine relationships have lost significant value in today’s age. I’m not talking about how many Facebook friends you have, but rather quality friendships. I see three of these relationships as the most important.

Spouses

Sheryl Sandburg, chief operating officer of Facebook, says, "Who you marry is the single most important career decision you make."

I can vouch for that. Without Stef, my wife of 17 years, I would simply lack balance. She is kind, nurturing, and loves me unconditionally.

Unfortunately, each successive generation is less likely to tie the knot, a 2014 Pew Research Center poll revealed. Only 26 percent of Millennials (ages 18-33) are now married. At a similar junction in time, 36 percent of those in Generation X were married, compared to 48 percent of Baby Boomers.

Granted, marriage doesn’t guarantee happiness, and we all know people who were much happier after they were no longer married. Even so, being committed to experiencing life’s journey with the right person is good for the soul.

Colleagues

People are not staying at their jobs as long as they used to, according to recent studies. You spend over 50 percent of your waking hours working, so if you don’t like your colleagues at work, it’s very difficult to be happy. Sometimes your best bet is to find something you can feel fulfilled with and excited to be doing.

Job hopping isn’t the answer, though. Not only does it impact your financial stability, but you also miss out on the incredible bonds created working side by side with people over time. Many of my strongest relationships are with co-workers, whom I have worked with for 14 years. Together, we came through the 2008 financial crisis that rocked the auto industry, and now those bonds of trust are virtually unbreakable.

Close friends and family

I have grouped these two together because they both have a significant impact on your overall health and happiness. Having said that, you get to choose your friends, so choose wisely.

One Michigan State University study found that "having healthy relations with family and friends were determinants of good health and happiness in general," the website StudyFinds reported, "but friendship alone was seen to be a solid predictor of positive overall health at later ages."

A second study shows the flip side of the coin. It revealed that "participants who had stress-inducing friends were likely to experience chronic illness, while those who had more supportive friends were happier," the article said. Stress-inducing friends, what a great description! Ever known someone like that?

The drama those friends bring into our lives creates heartache and stress, negatively affecting our health and happiness. I still remember my father’s sage advice about choosing friends. "If you are an eagle surrounded by pigeons, you’re probably a pigeon," he cautioned.

It’s so important for us to discern between good and bad relationships. That way, we can focus our energy on the positive relationships and minimize the damage caused by the negative ones. So how do we do that?

Every genuine relationship has at its foundation two important qualities: mutual respect and appreciation. Whether it’s a family member, spouse, co-worker, or close friend, the relationship will not be mutually beneficial unless both of these cornerstones are in place.

Have you ever had a colleague who didn’t respect you, or vice versa? It causes friction and stress. If you and your spouse don’t appreciate each other, it’s impossible to maintain a loving relationship in the face of life’s challenges.

An ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu, is well known for his proverb, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." At the same time, that journey can be much harder if we go it alone. That’s why another piece of advice from Lao Tzu seems so appropriate. "Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength while loving someone deeply gives you courage," he said. Strength and courage come in pretty handy when life throws you a curveball.

Genuine friends lift each other up when adversity strikes. A good example is my billiards playing partner, Jason. Recently, our team lost an 8 Ball world qualifier to the same team that knocked us out the last two years in the championships. Had I beat their captain, we would've advanced and, in our opinion, won the championships, heading back to Las Vegas for the first time since 2014. I felt defeated, angry, and awful that I let the team down. Jason would have none of it, telling me I played well. "Everyone in the building would've lost that match, he said."

Jason could have taken my place in that match since we were equally ranked, but he said he would confidently put me up against that same captain if the match-up ever occurred again. Jason is as ultra-competitive as I am. We've competed together for a dozen years, and losing is not in our vocabulary. After the defeat, what did he do? Did he allow his anger or disappointment to display? No, he lifted his friend up.

As I stated initially, many people would describe me as always happy. However, I would be a very different person if it weren’t for my perfect wife of 17 years, my incredible 16-year-old son, and my best friend of 15 years.

At work, I am equally blessed. I have had great relationships with my co-workers for the last 14 years, most notably my amazing executive assistant, Jen, who has worked for ProMax even longer than I have and keeps my head on straight. Fortunately, I recognize and value those blessings. I will do my best to never take them for granted. I urge you to evaluate your own relationships using the simple litmus test above.

Anyone can be happy – it is your choice – but it really helps to be surrounded by people for whom you share a mutual respect and appreciation.