Dealerships are always struggling with the decision on whether they need a BDC or not. Some try and succeed, but others try and fail. Why does this happen? How is one dealership’s BDC succeeding when other BDCs are failing and returning to status quo after a significant investment? The following are four reasons BDCs fail and solutions for making your BDC a success.

1. Is your team struggling with accurately entering data into your CRM? Do you always feel like a “Data Entry Cop”?

This is a super common problem when salespeople’s goals aren’t aligning with the those of the dealership. This struggle point isn’t uncommon in the dealership. The dealership wants data in order to track and measure ROI on marketing expenses, and the salespeople just want to just sell cars. This problem can be fixed through a couple of ways. The first way is that dealerships can use a pay-plan driven strategy to get the salespeople to do what the dealership wants by connecting their pay plans to showed appointments. By doing this, you are aligning behavior to money which can be a powerful motivator. Unfortunately, this strategy is just a band aid. Dealerships are treating the symptoms but aren’t addressing the root cause of the illness. Let’s ask a different question. Why aren’t salespeople entering information correctly into CRMs? If you step back and evaluate, the answer is clear. The salespeople don’t see the true benefit. The average salesperson doesn’t look at the people they sell with a personal LTV (Life Time Value). Instead, they are just a short-term sale and immediate income source. This philosophy is at the core of what separates the best salespeople in the nation from the masses. If the average salesperson looked at selling cars like an insurance agent looks at selling insurance, data entry issues would be a thing of the past.   

2. Does your dealership set a lot of appointments but lacks a proportionality high level of showroom visits?

This is an issue that is rooted in a few potential areas. The first could be pay plan structure; the second could be in the quality of the appointment conversation and, finally, the third could be in the lack of management involvement in this part of the shopper’s journey. Any or all of these could be affecting the outcome. Let’s break these down in a little more depth in order to extract some insight and potential action steps. The first is pay plan and how much financial weight is put on the appointment compared to how much the rep receives for the actual sale, if any. Appointment setting really sets the pace for the transaction, so it is critical that dealerships get their pay plan formula in order to drive results. Paying BDC reps to just set appointments uncovers the age old saying: people work their pay plans. Design a pay plan that gives the BDC rep skin in the complete game and holds them accountable for too many missed appointments.

Second is the quality of the appointment-setting conversation. Selling a customer on an appointment is not only selling an opportunity to drive the vehicle but also to learn about all the features in a personalized experience for the shopper. I really like something Mitch Gallant, GM of Capital Ford Lincoln, is doing. His method personalizes the test drive experience for the shopper by enabling them to select their drink of choice for when they arrive for the test drive. This creates commitment between the shopper and the appointment setter for a minimum investment. Mitch is leveraging psychology at its best.

Finally, another opportunity is always the management appointment confirmation call. This allows a couple critical things to take place. First, it establishes a relationship between a manager and the shopper which begins a relationship that will come in handy during negotiations. Second, it provides the manager with the opportunity to ask a few questions in order to really understand the shopper’s needs and make sure that the appointment is aligned correctly for a sale. Managers need to get involved early and stay involved. By doing so, they can remove friction points along the shopper’s experience and be more effective in increasing the chance that the shopper shows up for their appointment.

3. Do you find yourself constantly saying the same things to your team to help keep them on pace each month?

Welcome to management, folks. This is a core fundamental part of management: the constant reinforcement of behavior. At no point in time is your sales team going to wake up and just get it. They will need constant direction and leadership to continue to drive the direction of your BDC. I label this job security. Instead of it being a struggle in your management responsibilities, turn it into the best aspect. Train your staff on one aspect of the department duties. Let’s say it is “Overcoming Objections” during an initial phone call. Lay out a simple 10-minute training plan that outlines the “Top 3” shopper objections that your sales team are hearing from shoppers. Deliver the training then reverse the script on your team. Elect one of the team members to create the same training outline that you just delivered but with three other objections and then have them deliver it to the whole team in a week. Keep doing this until everyone has them down then move on to the next topic. You will find that you get tons of new insights from your team and the conversations become much more open. The team will get to learn from different voices which will be reinforced over time. This is how you make an amazing team that works together and that delivers results.

4. Are you spending hours and hours per month compiling reports trying to make sense of departmental data?

This is what I like to call “TPS Report” HELL! This is the one area that seems to be getting more and more complicated as we consume increasing data points within the dealership. Even though we have the potential to track everything within the dealership, you have to ask yourself what are your true “Vital Signs.” Basically, what are the top five most critical data points you want to measure and analyze in order to run your BDC correctly? I would have this mastered first before ever layering on more complexity. After speaking with so many stores, I find many dealerships living in data hell. Take a deep breath. Step back and truly grasp the most important things for you and your BDC.

By truly evaluating and adopting these four practices, dealerships will be well on their way to seeing a successful BDC that increases revenue rather than one that fails to provide the revenue it was expected to. 

In the first part of this series, I shared why Facebook Marketplace can help dealers sell more cars, the ways in which they can get started, and the questions they should be asking their vendors when getting this set up.

 Now that your dealership’s inventory is live on Facebook Marketplace, there’s no doubt that consumers will find vehicles they're interested in and reach out to your dealership with questions. As I mentioned in part 1 of the series, how you handle these interactions will directly impact the success you have. Dealers are used to automating responses and processes to follow up with the leads coming into their CRM. Yet, while dealers spend a bunch of money to turn those interactions into to sales, the industry is still seeing close ratios as low as 12%!

Winning Over a Customer is About More than Simply Communicating

The same goes for phone “ups.” Salespeople are rarely trained on how to talk to customers on the phone and can, at times, turn customers off by simply not providing the information requested. Those customers who took the time to call the dealership end up frustrated that their needs weren’t satisfied.

Text-based communication is no different except in one area: the customer has complete control. If the people you empower to interact with customers via live text-based communication don’t know how to communicate properly, you’ll simply see customers cancel the chat and disappear into the ether.

Customers intuitively know when the e-mails they are receiving are automated. The same thing goes for scripted text-based conversations or the new thing, chatbots. When customers reach out to your dealership via any form of test-based communication, they are expecting to communicate with a real person and will quickly learn whether the “person” on the other end of the chat is a live person or not.

Responding Quickly and Properly Will Increase Sales

If you’re going to utilize Marketplace to increase sales, customers can only interact with the dealership via Facebook Messenger. The dealership, of course, can choose to utilize an approved chat service to have conversations on Marketplace. Regardless of which means of text-based communication a dealer chooses, prompt communication is vital. Imagine a customer calling into your dealership and nobody answering the phone. When a customer reaches out to your dealership via Messenger or chat and nobody responds, you end up with the same… exact… result.

Customers don’t want to be met by a voicemail, robot or, even worse, silence. The mere fact that they are reaching out to you should indicate that they are low-funnel shoppers ready to buy. And those are exactly the people that you want to talk to. Facebook Marketplace is no different than a customer calling in on a VDP from a third-party website or your own website. Dealerships who choose to list their inventory on Facebook Marketplace need to be aware that potential customers will be reaching out to them and the best part? The only reason that they are reaching out is that they are interested in a vehicle that you have in stock. Marketplace customers aren’t people reaching out inquiring about dealership hours, service appointments or other issues. Those individuals will go directly to your website. These are car shoppers that are interested in buying a vehicle. And you have to admit that those are the most attractive conversations that your dealership could have with a customer. On top of that, these are customers interacting with you LIVE, not email addresses or phone numbers that don’t work so it’s especially important that whomever you charge at your dealership to handle live chats is trained to maximize opportunities.

Potential customers want information. Period. If your salespeople or BDC is not equipped to give them the information that they want, they will simply discontinue the chat and seek the information elsewhere. Consumers on Facebook Marketplace want to be able to communicate with your dealership, but they still expect a prompt response that satisfies their needs and answers their questions. Failure to do so can easily jeopardize the chances that your dealership builds rapport with the customer and, ultimately, the sale. 

Communication is vital to business, that’s a given. In retail, businesses must be responsive, provide a great customer experience and stand by their products or services. But what happens when businesses fail at that? They get complaints.

A customer ordered some copper from a business that promised it to be of the highest quality. When the customer’s representatives received the merchandise, they discovered that the copper was not the quality that was ordered. What did the business say? “Take it or leave it!” Of course, the customer that ordered it was furious and sent a message to the businessman promising to not do business with them on their word of the quality of the merchandise and, further, asked for a refund.

Sound familiar? Every retail business in existence has encountered this situation at one point in time. An unhappy customer complains via a message. And, for certain, tells their network.

Why is this story different?

Because it happened 3,800 years ago. On a stone tablet that was almost 5 inches wide and 3cm thick. Then delivered, in person, after a voyage from Mesopotamia across the Persian Gulf. It is thought to be the world’s first complaint (albeit in writing). Some customer was so upset that he not only sent his messengers to collect the merchandise, which they returned empty-handed, but then carved into stone a complaint and sent the messengers back to deliver that message. A voyage that was about 1,220 miles. Sounds like a pretty unhappy customer. And while Yelp didn’t exist at that time, the complaint has endured quite a while. Don’t forget, however, that the customer had to deliver a message that distance to buy the copper in the first place.

Fast forward to today.

Customers can now communicate with businesses immediately. Regardless of whether that communication is to complain, buy something or get questions answered. Technology has rapidly given consumers faster ways in which to communicate and consumers have gotten more used to this speed and convenience. First, telegrams, then phones, then email and now chat and text messages.

The tech community, however, is trying to take it to the “next level.” One that is automated and doesn’t have human involvement. Efficiency and speed are that technology’s selling points. But are consumers biting? No.

But why?

While efficiency in communication is a key factor in customer experience, transactional success and increased revenue, humans still want to deal with humans. No consumer wants to converse with a phone tree or an AI system. Have you ever gotten frustrated trying to get an answer from Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Home or Apple’s Siri which either don’t understand, misunderstand or give you irrelevant answers?

Now, we have chatbots. AI-driven customer service. But how do customers feel about them?

According to this article in Forbes, people aren’t thrilled, and chatbots are killing customer service. At the end of August 2018, the Global Consumer Customer Service Report specifically asked consumers how they felt about chatbots. What did they discover? Humans still prefer to deal with humans. In fact, while chatbots may be sufficient for a quick automated answer, complex and detailed customer inquiries were preferred (and recommended) to be handled by humans.

Human beings orchestrating customer service needs can react and respond to complex situations better than any chatbot. And believe me when I say that consumers know when they are talking to a “bot” just as quickly as they know that the email your dealership just sent was automated and not actually sent by a person.

For consumers, a live support agent is preferable to chatbots every time. Chatbots aren’t capable of adapting outside of their programming. Just think about the conversations that car shoppers have with your salespeople. I bet you beat your head against the wall just listening to the recorded conversations between salespeople and phone calls with customers on your call tracking service.

It’s much more difficult to communicate via the written word (e-mails, chat, text, etc.) than it is when speaking in person. Structure and vocal tone dominate those conversations and can change the meaning when communicating whereas that option isn’t available in written form.

When a human chat agent is involved, however, “…half of the respondents ranked chat as their top channel for quick customer service. Yet, they still prefer a human because bots are less helpful, and their answers are less detailed.” The article goes on to say that the survey does believe that chatbots are killing customer service and that while companies are adopting chatbots in order to save money and human resources “in the short term… [they] will eventually send customers running for the hills.” And lose revenue rather than saving money.

Whether you are considering using chatbots in your dealership through a technology company, managing chat in-house, using a fully managed service or some hybrid of all of the above, just keep in mind that consumers prefer interacting with humans. It’s not the speed at which the customer can get answers that matter… but the quality of those answers that will provide them with the customer experience that will keep have them (or keep) them coming to your dealership.