If you are an owner or general manager and aren’t seeing top-tier results from your Internet department, look at this list and see how many of these points are ‘in play’ at your dealership.

Internet departments fail because:

1. Leads are not handled in a timely and consistent manner. 

2. There is a lack of a consistent and known process throughout your dealership that all staff follow on each and every lead.

3. Internet customers are treated differently than your retail customers.

4. Internet sales staff offer discounts before customer ever asks about price. 

5. Sales staff try to sell cars through emails. .

6. There is a lack of essential sales training and constant evaluation of each employee.

7. An Internet Director leaves your dealership, taking his customers, staff, and process with him/her.

8. Internet sales reports do not show accurate E-Commerce sales numbers. What are your true Internet Sales percentages?   

9. Dealerships spend careless money on additional leads, search engine placement, and/or a new CRM when, in actuality, all that is lacking is a proven process, sales training, and staff accountability.

10. The Internet Director’s time is wasted. Your Internet Director’s time is best spent selling cars and assisting employees in selling. 

Do any of these issues sound familiar to you? Turning your back on the tremendous revenues that an Internet department can bring is a sure way to lose your place in today’s competitive market. In 2008, the Internet is a substantial part of any dealership’s bottom line profit.

I am always looking for interesting dialogue regarding dealerships and how they are working to Drive Sales!

Bill Phillips
Founder
Automotive Internet Management, Inc.
bill@aimdealer.com
(949)716-7716

Is your Bank getting robbed??

By William Phillips, Automotive Internet Management Inc.

Why is it dealers allow their Internet sales department to disregard valuable leads?   

Ask yourself: Do you know what the process is in your Internet department for each lead that comes in?  Is each and every lead being handled in a proper and timely manner?

Internet departments benefit when Internet leads are treated by employees like a mini-dealership lot itself and manage this aspect of the business as if the lead where an actual customer walking onto the lot.  Think about this: Eighty percent of all consumers refer to the Internet before coming onto an actual dealer’s lot.  Therefore, it is crucial that dealers are able to handle these leads with efficiency.  Internet customers are simply customers coming to you electronically.

The fact is that many dealerships are unaware of the disorganization and inefficiency found internally in most Internet departments.  Without proper supervision and training, Internet leads are similar to a UP aimlessly wandering the lot with no help.  The basic sales process and management techniques apply to the Internet department as well.

Without constant oversight, dealerships are being robbed of potential profits.  Just like a bank, the tellers must be supervised to monitor potential problems, such as cash exchange problems, employee theft, and even worse- a robbery. 

Would you paint the sales desk window and outside windows of your dealership black?  Sales managers would not be able to monitor the sales activity on the floor, and sales would be lost.  You may be doing the same with your Internet department.  What dealers need is an Accountability Monitoring Service (no cameras) that is proven to dramatically increase sales and thus profits. Because if their current staff was capable of doing this, wouldn’t they be doing it already? 

Today, Internet leads are the most cost effective way of bringing people to the showroom floor.  Newspaper Ads and other forms of advertising are expensive and just aren’t working like they used to. Because of that they cannot net you the same returns they used to.  The way your sales staff manages leads indicates the success of gaining consumer profits.  Many sales managers think that buying more or different leads is the cure.  Unfortunately, this method tends to be more damaging.

The key to success is Process, Sales Training, and Accountability.

• There must be a consistent and known process that you adhere to on every lead you receive.

• Internet sales staff must be consistently monitored to maintain a high level of performance and to assess any future and ongoing training.

• The Internet department is not capable of running without management oversight.

• Internet sales staff must provoke a buying response from consumer and not quote numbers!

Times change, and lucky for us, the Internet has created a new and exciting way to bring customers to your showroom floor from miles around.  Dealerships that don’t make the Internet a substantial part of their bottom line are being left behind. 

Don’t get robbed!  Put money in the bank!

I wish you a prosperous 2009. 

Bill Phillips,

Automotive Internet Management, Inc.

www.aimdealer.com

For a free evaluation please e-mail me at: bill@aimdealer.com

What do you have to Loose??

If You Want to Change the Job Your People Do, Change the Job You Hire Them to Perform

By William Phillips, Automotive Internet Management Inc.

It’s early October, and I’m just leaving the J.D. Power and Associates Automotive Internet Roundtable in Las Vegas, where a wealth of great information was presented. The best thing I learned from this conference was that the work environment within a dealership is changing faster than anyone realizes. Technology is changing the face of who now works in this environment, and the industry is unprepared for or unaware of the change at hand.   

In the opening session, the folks from J.D. Power brought together several manufacturer representatives to discuss the results of a recently completed mystery-shopping study. This survey showed without a doubt why dealers are struggling: response times to customer inquiries that exceed 12 hours and next to no follow up of any kind. J.D. Power then brought out a panel of dealer representatives. For the next 30 minutes, this group of well-meaning, intelligent people discussed little of this problem – though for good reason. With all due respect to the smart people who participated, I don’t believe that anyone addressed the issues that needed to be addressed. Why? They can’t.

To be fair, the current landscape is changing very quickly – for dealers, manufacturers and even industry observers such as J.D. Power. Job descriptions within today’s dealerships, for example, did not exist as recently as five years ago and have failed to keep pace with the challenges confronting dealers on a daily basis. Even as we bring talented professionals into our stores to solve these issues, the sad truth is this: The skill set needed to tackle them isn’t in their job description and often extends beyond their job duties. In practical terms, consider your marketing director who understands SEO, website metrics and ROI calculations. Is this the person who has the ability or the time to fix your broken advertising and sales processes? What about process engineering-minded sales leaders who can manage staff and hold old-school car people accountable? Will they have the time – or the expertise – to do anything else?

What I’m suggesting is that you separate these distinctly different jobs and fill them with the distinctly different types of people they require. This point was proved in the J.D. Power panel discussion. One dealer representative proudly proclaimed that her staff is responding to all leads within 26 minutes: How could the manufacturer’s numbers possibly be true? (Unknown to another panelist of one of the larger dealership groups in the United States was the fact that, at the time, I’d been waiting three days for a call from one of his stores following a mystery-shop of my own). I don’t believe that one person on this panel isn’t doing his or her job. Rather, I contend that the issues J.D. Power presented as the problem lie outside their ability or job title to fix. You can know everything about Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 ecommerce marketing and still not know how to correctly fix process issues in a store.

Manufacturers and dealers need to be more committed to training and less willing to throw money at a problem. In this economy, you can’t back your way into profitability. You have to put your head down and focus on the basics. If you’re not sure what they are anymore, take this opportunity to relearn them. Your consumer is now placing boundaries between you and a sale that requires proactive methods to make contact. This business climate tests even the best managers; the ones who traditionally have operated on the basis of their feelings and their theories about what works must now get in tune with managing this new area of business that’s more about the numbers.

According to J.D. Power, car sales in the next year will fall more than they have in the past seven. The decisions about process control and dollars spent on marketing, as well as who makes these decisions, can’t wait until tomorrow. In case you think this is a sales pitch by a consultant to hock his services, let me be clear: Don’t hire one. Instead, hire somebody who can properly manage your marketing and someone for the sales process. Or, as I’m suggesting, hire two some bodies.

Hire someone who understands the data we need to manage in automotive retail and who knows how to work around the limitations of software tools currently available to us. This management-level position will involve spending advertising dollars that, in the past, may have been directed by the general manager.

You also need to hire a strong process manager, a role previously known as a sales manager. These individuals are not deal managers who stand around waiting for something to manage; they follow and enforce the process. They know how many emails and calls your customers receive, and they know the contact patterns your salespeople follow. They know that driving showroom traffic requires action – and that action is not developing an advertising concept or scripting a radio/TV spot. Their daily activities have changed the most of any position within a dealership, and there will be some sales managers who can’t adapt. As an owner or GM, you need to be ready to change the person if that person can’t change.

The good news is that, even in this market, dealers who work both hard and smart can thrive and flourish. Instead of worrying about who moved the cheese, focus instead on moving toward the cheese, and you can be among them.

I have worked for over 15 years in the automotive sales industry – my formal education includes a Bachelor’s in engineering and a Masters in marketing. That stated, I in no way intend to demean the intelligence or ability of any of the hard-working people in this business by the title or contents of this article.  I consider this business to be challenging, exciting and extremely dynamic given all of the market forces driving change in the traditional business model.  Personally, I am privileged to have been able to build a career doing something I love for so long. 

Anyone who has spent time working in a retail automotive environment knows that what we focus on is what produces results. The most common gaffe I observe in almost every dealership I visit is upper management’s lack of oversight of their internet departments. While these managers know how many ups came into their store and how those shoppers were handled on the floor, few, if any, are equally in tune with their online prospects. Let’s look at how taking a top-down view of your internet department will increase both your understanding of day-to-day operations and the success your team achieves.

Focus on the Right Things

For dealers who want to improve the performance and accountability of their internet departments, a solution has been proved in store after store by dealers with successful e-commerce operations. Simply put, your upper management staff, midlevel management staff and anyone getting paid on internet sales must be involved, on a daily basis, with the business from which they collect money. Running reports and asking general questions like “How many appointments do you have?” is not involvement. The process must be started, inspected and managed every day by those who profit from it. I have successfully worked retail for quite a few years, and I am a car guy who understands that you think I’m asking for more of your time. Actually, I’m not. I’m telling you that you need to reprioritize how you spend your time every day: Your business model is changing, and you need to change your activity to match.

Focus on Building Your Own Team, Processes

I refer to the “savior complex” as the method by which dealers and managers believe that, when they find the right person, all their problems will be fixed and their internet departments properly managed. These individuals will bring in their own process and, sometimes, their own crew or followers. They will work for you as long as they are happy or don’t have a better offer – at which time they will take what they came with and leave with it, leaving you back where you started. Sound familiar? In an industry with a higher-than-average turnover rate, this situation is reality. I am about managing reality; if you are reading this and I’ve touched a nerve, so are you.

These saviors often pack the numbers and feed management results that are not real. Prospects brought in from brokers, Costco, Sam’s Club, AAA and referrals are not e-commerce business. And, to complete this point, neither is a consumer who walks on to the lot and says he or she saw or found you via the internet. You will often find leads attributed at the point of sale to the dealer’s or the manufacturer’s website to create a closed deal from this source. For those of you who challenge this behavior, you have probably never checked to see the gap between suspect leads and DMS entry times or even phone monitoring logs. (For internet managers without talent who are reading this article, you now have a new way to fool your employers.)

Hopefully, dealership owners and upper managers will now have at least a small understanding of why many third-party providers scream foul at the claim that their leads are of lesser quality and close at ratios below your own. What I am attempting to do in this article is shake the dust from the current, antiquated perception that you don’t have to inspect what you expect from your e-commerce business. I have just barely touched the surface of what must be managed in the e-commerce business process. You must change your thinking on who manages your internet department and what is being managed. More managers must be involved because the business issues that currently are being overlooked compromise your results more than you may realize.

Focus on Results

On a positive note, it is possible to get your internet department under control. Regaining control will give you a handle on where your business is headed and help you put into place a management staff that is more in control and less reliant on a savior to tell you that you are. I want to encourage you to realign your staff to pay closer attention to the process aspects of your business. Managing the end results of a poor process has led many in this industry to see with blinders. You can get control of a process in your store. You can make decent gross profit on e-commerce-originated consumers. Managers do have time to manage it because their floor traffic is dying without it. Your dealership can either plan for the future or be left struggling in what is shaping up to be a difficult year. A saying we have all heard seems appropriate: Failing to plan is planning to fail.
Many trainers in today’s market focus on the development of specific internet sales skill sets. While this isn’t a bad thing to get in line, it is, by far, not the first thing that needs attention to bring your e-commerce business under control. Emails blasted or personally sent do not sell cars: People still sell cars. Phone scripts memorized or read do not sell cars: Personality and skill sells vehicles. In fact, managers are most always the ones selling the cars. Unpleasant as it can be when you’re busy, if you’re a manager, you and a few others in your store touch almost all the deals and actually cause them to happen. For this reason, managers must get involved at a whole new level, one that may be much lower than they may want to bend. Find a training company that can teach your managers who have a full plate to utilize their time effectively so they properly monitor both your e-commerce process and floor traffic.

Focus on Profits

You will find gold at the end of this journey. It’s worth the work, and you might be surprised to find that even those who resisted find it fun. Wouldn’t it be great to have fun selling cars again? Because we all know that is when the real profit is made.

Bill Phillips

Automotive Internet Management, Inc.

www.aimdealer.com

350 Goddard

Irvine, CA 92618

949-716-7716