Does your dealership have a call monitoring solution in place? Does your dealership consistently train phone skills? Chances are if the dealership has a large advertising budget and a proper setup for a BDC the answer is "yes". However, it is mind blowing to see how many dealerships in 2013 still do not pay attention to call monitoring. I look at websites and see local phone numbers. Even worse I see dealers doing traditional advertising and still using local phone numbers. I later talk to these dealers and they complain that they do not get enough phone calls coming in or they are not making enough appointments. I ask them if they have a call monitoring solution and all I get told is that they just have what AutoTrader and Cars.com give them in their backend tools. I am not going to get into the importance of content and optimized websites to convert more lead opportunities. I will get into the importance of call monitoring. Every business needs to have a call monitoring tool. Every business needs to have management listen to phone calls for quality control, training, and measurement of quality of advertising. I spoke about this topic at the Internet Sales 20 Group in October of 2012 as well as conducted a webinar for KPA about 8 months ago on this topic. It can be viewed here: Call Monitoring - Stan Sher (Dealer eTraining) Now here are some best practices: 1. If the dealership has a large ad budget and a very large call volume they need to hire a call monitoring company that will listen to the calls in real time and send alerts to inform managers rights away of any profit leaks. I know of many companies that provide this service. While it might be a $1500-2500 monthly investment there is a potential for an ROI of $30,000 or more when used properly. 2. Every single day a manager (BDC or Sales) needs to sit down and review reporting of all calls from the previous day and listen to 9 calls (3 morning, 3 afternoon, 3 evening). This will give an idea of what was done right and what needs training. 3. Take the good calls and the bad calls to review them in team meetings 2-3 times a week. These meetings should be 30 minutes and should be positive. Let the team listen and let them chime in with ideas for improvement. Do role playing exercises to provide quality automotive phone training. My advise is to have the team meet at 8:30 before the day gets started. 4. Some call monitoring companies send weekly and monthly recap reports. Review the missed opportunity reports and review them with the CRM to see what happened with that phone number. In the case when the call was not logged in have a process where one person gets on the phone to call those missed opportunities as a guest relations representative and see what we can make happen here. 5. AutoTrader and Cars.com reports. I love when dealers complain how little traffic they get and how expensive these sources are. Cars.com does a great job sending daily phone call reports detailing each call that came in the day before. Dealers and BDC managers that do not pay attention to them are losing out. I have been preaching this for years. Cars.com call reports show calls that come in before and after hours. I see dealers average 1-2 calls a day like this and they get missed sometimes. In some cases these callers call during hours and they are logged. But what about the calls that do not come back. They are not logged and the opportunity is missed. It is a simple 5 minute per day process that needs to be reviewed. 6. Every advertisement or campaign, digital and/or traditional, even special finance needs to be planned. A phone process needs to be created and trained a minimum of 2 days before the campaign hits. Monitor the calls daily and listen for profit leaks. Adjust accordingly by proper training. This is the most proactive way to manage a BDC or sales calls in general. The bottom line is that at Dealer eTraining we believe that every dealership no matter what size needs a call monitoring solution. There are cost effective solutions for every dealership. It is the perhaps the number one ROI measurement tool in my opinion.

Does your dealership have tools that should help your sales and business development people be more effective?

As consumer transparency becomes more important in the automotive industry dealers are hooking up with more vendors that allow for transparency.  It is no secret that some of the most effective dealers are making it easier to retail pre-owned vehicles online by employing consumer driven tools.  It is shocking to see how many people at dealerships do not even know that such tools exist.  This is a common issue where a lack of communication between decision makers (Owners/GM) and middle management (Sales Management) happens.  I am noticing this in dealerships all over the country where I review a dealership’s website, inventory, and other marketing aspects only to find tools that front line staff have no idea they can use.

For example, there are so many dealerships out there using tools like PureCars, vAuto RealDeal, or AutoVisor in order to enhance VDPs and vehicle listings.  These tools are meant for the consumer to learn more about the vehicle and see the value that they are getting.  However, the buttons to these tools are usually only found in the listing and the consumer does not always know to click on it.  At Dealer eTraining, I have recognized the importance of educating all management and front line staff to take advantage of these tools so that they can do a better job building value on the phone to secure more appointments as well as close more deals on the showroom floor.

There is nothing more disturbing then to listen to a phone call get mishandled because the customer takes control of the situation only to put fear in the call handler (BDC or Sales Professional).  They say you do not need to know anything about the vehicle to make a solid appointment.  While that may or may not be true, one thing is true and that is that these tools provide immediate product knowledge at your fingertips.  There is no need to just rely on “old school” word tracks that get trained to every single dealership out there.  Technology is created to help us become better professionals and not to replace us. 

These same strategies are important on the showroom floor.  Why should sales people run back and forth to the desk to work the sales manager for a bigger discount when they can use these tools to sell, justify, and create value?  It is important to learn how to be a better presenter of value and incorporate the old with the new.

While the vendor might have some tools to train everyone at the dealership on how to be more effective it is very rare that management pays attention.  Just a few weeks ago I was inside a dealership training sales people in the conference room and reviewing how they can leverage DealerRater as a closing tool.  I also reviewed how they should be using AutoVisor (a tool they had).  The bottom line is that dealers need to communicate the changes in technology and train their staff on how to use it properly.   The proper use of these digital tools will increase ROI in the long run and create better sales professionals.  I encourage dealers to evaluate the tools that are in place or are being considered and communicate with your people.  It is also important to provide the proper training to inspire and motivate your people to adapt to these solutions.

Stan Sher is the founder and president of Dealer eTraining (www.dealeretraining.com), an elite automotive Internet sales and business development training/consulting firm.

Does your dealership have tools that should help your sales and business development people be more effective?

As consumer transparency becomes more important in the automotive industry dealers are hooking up with more vendors that allow for transparency.  It is no secret that some of the most effective dealers are making it easier to retail pre-owned vehicles online by employing consumer driven tools.  It is shocking to see how many people at dealerships do not even know that such tools exist.  This is a common issue where a lack of communication between decision makers (Owners/GM) and middle management (Sales Management) happens.  I am noticing this in dealerships all over the country where I review a dealership’s website, inventory, and other marketing aspects only to find tools that front line staff have no idea they can use.

For example, there are so many dealerships out there using tools like PureCars, vAuto RealDeal, or AutoVisor in order to enhance VDPs and vehicle listings.  These tools are meant for the consumer to learn more about the vehicle and see the value that they are getting.  However, the buttons to these tools are usually only found in the listing and the consumer does not always know to click on it.  At Dealer eTraining, I have recognized the importance of educating all management and front line staff to take advantage of these tools so that they can do a better job building value on the phone to secure more appointments as well as close more deals on the showroom floor.

There is nothing more disturbing then to listen to a phone call get mishandled because the customer takes control of the situation only to put fear in the call handler (BDC or Sales Professional).  They say you do not need to know anything about the vehicle to make a solid appointment.  While that may or may not be true, one thing is true and that is that these tools provide immediate product knowledge at your fingertips.  There is no need to just rely on “old school” word tracks that get trained to every single dealership out there.  Technology is created to help us become better professionals and not to replace us. 

These same strategies are important on the showroom floor.  Why should sales people run back and forth to the desk to work the sales manager for a bigger discount when they can use these tools to sell, justify, and create value?  It is important to learn how to be a better presenter of value and incorporate the old with the new.

While the vendor might have some tools to train everyone at the dealership on how to be more effective it is very rare that management pays attention.  Just a few weeks ago I was inside a dealership training sales people in the conference room and reviewing how they can leverage DealerRater as a closing tool.  I also reviewed how they should be using AutoVisor (a tool they had).  The bottom line is that dealers need to communicate the changes in technology and train their staff on how to use it properly.   The proper use of these digital tools will increase ROI in the long run and create better sales professionals.  I encourage dealers to evaluate the tools that are in place or are being considered and communicate with your people.  It is also important to provide the proper training to inspire and motivate your people to adapt to these solutions.

Stan Sher is the founder and president of Dealer eTraining (www.dealeretraining.com), an elite automotive Internet sales and business development training/consulting firm.

The automotive industry is always evolving and with that evolution we must constantly adapt to the changes.

Question: When is the last time you thoroughly reviewed your CRM processes in your dealership?

Think about it.  A CRM in the dealership is generally setup for sales people to enter an UP and follow up with sold/unsold customers by scheduling phone calls and email actions.  The CRM is sometimes setup to properly follow up with internet leads.  However, not many CRM systems are setup to follow up with lease retention, equity mining, service, birthdays, and other events that can enhance the guest experience of doing business with the dealership.

Now if the proper processes have been setup for he dealership, when is the last time they were updated?  Do you continue to send the same old message month after month?  It is amazing how most of the time I walk into a dealership to setup and train processes only to find that the dealership is relying solely on what the CRM company had installed during installation.  Every dealership needs to have an effective action plan for proper CRM management.  This includes templates, action plans, and reporting.  A large dealer group needs to employ a CRM administrator to work the CRM a full 45 hours a week while smaller operations need to have proactive management.

The bottom line is that it is very important to manage and maintain the CRM system in dealerships on a daily basis.  In many cases, the proper use of merging can clean duplicates.  When a CRM is used properly there should never be a need for excel spreadsheets to measure performance.

by Stan Sher
www.dealeretraining.com
Practices and viewpoints expressed on this blog are my own

The automotive industry is always evolving and with that evolution we must constantly adapt to the changes.

Question: When is the last time you thoroughly reviewed your CRM processes in your dealership?

Think about it.  A CRM in the dealership is generally setup for sales people to enter an UP and follow up with sold/unsold customers by scheduling phone calls and email actions.  The CRM is sometimes setup to properly follow up with internet leads.  However, not many CRM systems are setup to follow up with lease retention, equity mining, service, birthdays, and other events that can enhance the guest experience of doing business with the dealership.

Now if the proper processes have been setup for he dealership, when is the last time they were updated?  Do you continue to send the same old message month after month?  It is amazing how most of the time I walk into a dealership to setup and train processes only to find that the dealership is relying solely on what the CRM company had installed during installation.  Every dealership needs to have an effective action plan for proper CRM management.  This includes templates, action plans, and reporting.  A large dealer group needs to employ a CRM administrator to work the CRM a full 45 hours a week while smaller operations need to have proactive management.

The bottom line is that it is very important to manage and maintain the CRM system in dealerships on a daily basis.  In many cases, the proper use of merging can clean duplicates.  When a CRM is used properly there should never be a need for excel spreadsheets to measure performance.

by Stan Sher
www.dealeretraining.com
Practices and viewpoints expressed on this blog are my own

There has been plenty of controversy about cars.com and other vendors taking dealers inventory and feeding them to some really nasty anti-dealer sites such as cargurus.com. I believe that Jim Ziegler has done a great job standing up for the automotive retail community by fighting for what is right. I am seeing dealers cancel cars.com left and right while others just stay neutral about it and ignore the drama.

The question is “should you cancel cars.com?”

I have a very open minded thinking pattern about this topic. While I personally do not like what they were doing with sending customers other dealer’s inventory for less price and the fact that they have been pushing inventory without authorization to other third party sites I have to question dealers how they are monitoring these sources. Gone are the days where you can just “set it and forget it” with the service that third party vendors are providing. This needs to be proactively managed on a daily basis. Internet Managers must have a process for tracking their email leads, phone calls, conversations with customers for individual sources.

Every morning, you should be getting emails from cars.com with a call tracking report of the previous day’s phone traffic. How do you use it? Check the CRM and make sure the calls were logged. Listen to the calls. Make sure your people are doing their jobs so you can monitor your ROI. Do the same for email leads. Also, look at how much traffic these third parties drive to your site as well as how long these visitors stick with your site. This is in essence like “Mad Science” but this will tell you if you need to fire your third party vendors. It maybe a painstaking task that you spend 1 hour a day on but it is important to scientifically know how it working with you.

My strategy is simple, “if your pricing your inventory right and your getting good hits then your lead management process should work hand in hand with that to get more of these leads in the door”. However, if the dealer is not being competitive in the market place then this strategy will hurt them.

I have watched some of these leads come in recently where the consumer mentions they were on cargurus.com but they still come in. I am in no way saying cargurus.com is a good thing as I personally have a had a run in with an internet lead from them that they claimed the car was priced unfairly but yet we still sold the car to that same lead because we built value and worked it. If I am a dealer and I will allow them to exist I will aggressively work to make sure I am competitive and gaining market share.

If you are not getting the traffic you need and getting beat by the competition on these sites then it is time to fire these inventory listing companies because they are not doing anything to help you. I believe that cars.com is not going to go away because of how they positioned themselves in the market. I have found that most dealers believe that they need them and that will always keep them afloat. So my suggestion is that cars.com and these other companies position themselves as being equally friendly to their dealers and their consumers. “Stop biting the hand that feeds you!” Meanwhile, dealers need to properly manage their vendors and hold them accountable. At the end of the day most vendors are true partners if the relationship is being managed properly.

There has been plenty of controversy about cars.com and other vendors taking dealers inventory and feeding them to some really nasty anti-dealer sites such as cargurus.com. I believe that Jim Ziegler has done a great job standing up for the automotive retail community by fighting for what is right. I am seeing dealers cancel cars.com left and right while others just stay neutral about it and ignore the drama.

The question is “should you cancel cars.com?”

I have a very open minded thinking pattern about this topic. While I personally do not like what they were doing with sending customers other dealer’s inventory for less price and the fact that they have been pushing inventory without authorization to other third party sites I have to question dealers how they are monitoring these sources. Gone are the days where you can just “set it and forget it” with the service that third party vendors are providing. This needs to be proactively managed on a daily basis. Internet Managers must have a process for tracking their email leads, phone calls, conversations with customers for individual sources.

Every morning, you should be getting emails from cars.com with a call tracking report of the previous day’s phone traffic. How do you use it? Check the CRM and make sure the calls were logged. Listen to the calls. Make sure your people are doing their jobs so you can monitor your ROI. Do the same for email leads. Also, look at how much traffic these third parties drive to your site as well as how long these visitors stick with your site. This is in essence like “Mad Science” but this will tell you if you need to fire your third party vendors. It maybe a painstaking task that you spend 1 hour a day on but it is important to scientifically know how it working with you.

My strategy is simple, “if your pricing your inventory right and your getting good hits then your lead management process should work hand in hand with that to get more of these leads in the door”. However, if the dealer is not being competitive in the market place then this strategy will hurt them.

I have watched some of these leads come in recently where the consumer mentions they were on cargurus.com but they still come in. I am in no way saying cargurus.com is a good thing as I personally have a had a run in with an internet lead from them that they claimed the car was priced unfairly but yet we still sold the car to that same lead because we built value and worked it. If I am a dealer and I will allow them to exist I will aggressively work to make sure I am competitive and gaining market share.

If you are not getting the traffic you need and getting beat by the competition on these sites then it is time to fire these inventory listing companies because they are not doing anything to help you. I believe that cars.com is not going to go away because of how they positioned themselves in the market. I have found that most dealers believe that they need them and that will always keep them afloat. So my suggestion is that cars.com and these other companies position themselves as being equally friendly to their dealers and their consumers. “Stop biting the hand that feeds you!” Meanwhile, dealers need to properly manage their vendors and hold them accountable. At the end of the day most vendors are true partners if the relationship is being managed properly.

The other day I was in a dealership speaking with an owner.  He said to me "I have 315,000 VDPs" to which I responded "wow, that it is great".  He then said to me "however, VDPs do not cash checks, sales do".  I was so happy to hear that because here is someone that really gets it.  I am not saying that focusing on VDPs is not important.  In fact it is one of the most important things to look that.  I believe that internet managers need to focus on that very heavily to ensure that there are plenty of VDPs in order to convert them into real leads.  

The biggest concern is how should the leads be handled properly?  Is there a proper phone, email, and CRM process?  Are your people trained to sell the sizzle on the phone and build urgency in making that appointment?  Are you creatively working on your marketing (BDC) department to ensure that the leads are being handled with a proper response time?  This is the real concern that dealers have.  While all of the analytics and reports are important in measuring lead generation the need is still there to confirm how many leads came in, how many leads were connected with, how many connections became app

ointments, how many appointments came in, and how many sold.  At the end of the day it is the sale that cuts checks and pays the bills.  My advise is to prioritize what is important and place the main focus on what generates the revenue.  Everything else is just a statistic that can be tweaked on the backend.

As a matter of fact, when being concerned about the Vehicle Detail Page (VDP), automotive marketers need to ensure that not only is the information properly displayed and the images are properly displayed but also to make sure that the proper call to actions are simply to find (email lead submission, chat pop up, toll free number in large font).  This will assist in improving lead generation.

Again, "VDPs do not pay the bills, sales does".

The other day I was in a dealership speaking with an owner.  He said to me "I have 315,000 VDPs" to which I responded "wow, that it is great".  He then said to me "however, VDPs do not cash checks, sales do".  I was so happy to hear that because here is someone that really gets it.  I am not saying that focusing on VDPs is not important.  In fact it is one of the most important things to look that.  I believe that internet managers need to focus on that very heavily to ensure that there are plenty of VDPs in order to convert them into real leads.  

The biggest concern is how should the leads be handled properly?  Is there a proper phone, email, and CRM process?  Are your people trained to sell the sizzle on the phone and build urgency in making that appointment?  Are you creatively working on your marketing (BDC) department to ensure that the leads are being handled with a proper response time?  This is the real concern that dealers have.  While all of the analytics and reports are important in measuring lead generation the need is still there to confirm how many leads came in, how many leads were connected with, how many connections became app

ointments, how many appointments came in, and how many sold.  At the end of the day it is the sale that cuts checks and pays the bills.  My advise is to prioritize what is important and place the main focus on what generates the revenue.  Everything else is just a statistic that can be tweaked on the backend.

As a matter of fact, when being concerned about the Vehicle Detail Page (VDP), automotive marketers need to ensure that not only is the information properly displayed and the images are properly displayed but also to make sure that the proper call to actions are simply to find (email lead submission, chat pop up, toll free number in large font).  This will assist in improving lead generation.

Again, "VDPs do not pay the bills, sales does".

It is no surprise that automotive dealers are being bombarded with vendors creating new products (solutions) all of the time.  In some ways automotive retailers are feeling like they are being hurt and their profits are being taken over.  I was at an Acura dealership the other day when the owner mentioned that cars.com sent a 30 day noticed explaining a price increase.  He was complaining about it and his words were "there is no reason to be a dealer anymore when all you have to do is start a software company".  Does this sound familiar?

The reality is that no one can stop an entrepreneur from taking a dream and turning it into reality.  The other reality is that even in the competitive market there needs to be a solution to fit different needs of automotive dealers.  I think that some vendors need to consider looking at creating quality inexpensive solutions for independent dealerships with low budgets as well.  It seems as all of these technology customers are chasing the same business and competition has become fierce.  While I believe that competition is a beautiful thing I often wonder what dealers reactions are when they get solicited more then five times in a single day.

The bottom line is that companies will be popping up and offering solutions.  There will be companies that dominate and others that fail.  There will also be mergers and acquisitions in the industry where companies will grow drastically.  However, the automotive retailing business does not need to lose profits.  The fact is that dealers need to set a budget and work that budget.  Some vendors will make price increases and if the price increase does not justify the ROI then there are solutions to cut tie and move to their competitor.  This happens with website and CRM companies sometimes.  My point is that dealers need to find ways to make the technology work so that they can maximize opportunity and create a better experience for the customer.  Also, stop looking for the silver bullet or the shiny object because in reality the shiny object is all in the performance of management and your people.

I welcome thoughts and comments.  Thank you.