Transforming The Dealership Part 1 - A Live Week By Week Case Study (Dealer eTraining)

Welcome to Part 1 of what will be a major real live hands on case study.  Less than 2 weeks ago, I was contacted by a dealer principal of a dealership within an hour from my home.  The owner is a female and a real entrepreneur that is a partner in two other dealerships and also owns a wireless retail business with multiple locations.  The store is a family environment and has been in business for over 30 years under her control.

She was looking for someone to come in and really help the dealership with all of the marketing efforts.  This includes communications, vendor relationship, and advertising budget and oversees the internet sales operations of the store.  This was because she wanted to get a better grasp on things and make improvements.  The person in this role would also be in charge of events for the store as well as local events.

As we make progress in the dealership, I think it would be great to document and write out the changes on a weekly basis.  Consider it like a new chapter of a book to entertain yourself and learn how you can make positive changes in a dealership that bring improvements on many levels including profitability, accountability, a better brand for the OEM, and a better image for the dealership as a whole.  This will include helping to create more proactive employees.

We will not be disclosing names of employees, or the dealership for various reasons.  I want to keep it exciting and new.  When the time is right all will be revealed.

So let's get started...

It has been five days since I got involved with working with the dealership.  Here is what I gathered so far.

The sales department:

1 General Sales Manager (3 Years longevity))

1 Sales Manager (9 years longevity)

1 Finance Manager (few years longevity)

8 Sales Consultants (1-5 years longevity)

1 Internet Coordinator (was 2 but 1 quit during the week) - Here for over 1 year,

The dealership sells around 100 units per month with 60-65 being new and 30-40 being used at around a $2,000 average per car.

Website: Dealer.com (OEM Mandated)
Digital Marketing: OEM Mandated
Social Media Presence: Facebook and Twitter with limited engagement
CRM: A test pilot CRM for this dealership.  The CRM is a new product that comes as an add on to the DMS.  The DMS is not a well known common company.  The DMS works great but the CRM gives nothing but trouble.  It is missing more than 50% of the features that it needs to be fully functional.  In addition, it is server based.

Process: No set process.  No tracking of phone calls, internet leads, appointments, set, show.
Sales Process: Sales works well as the GSM does a great job putting deals

The Service Department

1 Service Manager (over 13 years here)

3 Service Advisors

1 Parts Manager

2 Parts Counter Reps

 

The first order of business:

1) Fix and properly optimize Website

2) Fix and properly optimize CRM

3) Get involved in all marketing and advertising initiatives (meet the vendors)

4) Create plan to measure advertising activity

5) Get sales department on board with reputation management and video testimonial strategy

 

What have we accomplished in the first 5 days?

Website: We did a full scope of the website and communicated with the Dealer.com rep.  We started to make plans to make certain changes and additions based on some best practices that we found from other dealers on a national level.  Right now we are creating content to be approved by the owner of the dealership before we push it to get setup and go live.

CRM: We discovered that the CRM has been holding the dealership back for over 1 year now.  Everyone in the store complains about it and for the first time we see why.  We had internet leads not coming through.  We had server crashes.  The tool does not allow for certain functions to happen.  I was able to convince the owner to look at options.  We started evaluating other options and will soon come an agreement.  Meanwhile, a major conference call with the current CRM Company included the development team and key executives.  This call allowed me to tell them everything that I need; I used examples from VinSolutions, iMagic, eLead, HigherGear, WebControl AVV, and a few others.  I was told that they will build it for me and within months I will see changes while other changes will take place within a days.

Advertising: Had numerous conference calls with OEM, local newspaper representative, cars.com, Digital "Behavioral" Marketing services reps, and CRM to review and learn analytic reports.

Management: Work closely with General Sales Manager to help take his mind off of a lot of advertising issues.  Create a plan to work together and help each other in building the success of the dealership further.  The GSM is fully on board with everything and is also a key decision maker in the store.

Owner: Very open minded and over worked.  She is involved in tell me what she wants to accomplish.  When trying to setup proven email templates and process she got involved and made opinions of her own where some of the templates she was not fond of and others we made changes together as a team.  As the relationship grows she will relinquish more power when she feels comfortable.  Based on our conversations and my actions with vendors she is starting to understand that I am the real deal and I know what I am doing.

Internet Department: Once the CRM situation stabilizes we will be able to get processes in place and know what we are dealing with in terms of lead count, tracking, and performance.  We will then try to build up the department accordingly.  The current Internet Coordinator explains his views and hope for better changes,

Sales People: They are excited to see a marketing initiative come into place that will help them market themselves at a level they never thought possible.  It is an easy going environment and when it is slow no one is being proactive.  As we implement digital strategies and train them on effective prospecting techniques we should see them become better modern sales professionals.  Eventually we will train them to use their digital tools in order to be better.

Social Media: We are creating video channels on various networks (YouTube, daily motion, metacafe, video).  We are also starting to gather images and create a flick account.  The twitter and facebook page is being managed by our graphic designer.  We met and will be creating neat logos and advertising campaigns.  We will soon take over managing the facebook and twitter while planning on creating syndicated blogs in the next few days.

Reputation Management: Created Quality Control Survey that every customer in Sales needs to read and fill out.  The Survey has 7 questions that includes rating dealership experience, commenting on it, recommending the sales professional, and learning what they liked the most about their experience.  In addition, we ask for permission to take a photograph of them with their new car to be emailed to them and used in social media.  We also ask for permission to take a video testimonial.  It comes with a disclaimer notice which the customer will sign.  Afterwards, we will either take a picture and video or we will not based on the customer's permission.  I had explained to the sales consultants how some of the most successful sales people in the business do it and they were very much excited.

So far...that is all we have for the first week.  Stay tuned as we make forward strides in the dealership.

http://dealeretraining.com/

https://www.facebook.com/dealeretraining

http://www.drivingsales.com/ratings/companies/dealer-etraining

The New Road To The Sale - Greater New York Automobile Dealers Association - September 27, 2012 - Stan Sher (Dealer eTraining)

http://www.dealeretraining.com

http://www.automotivebdctraining.com

It's that time again.  Another powerful workshop at the Greater New York Automobile Dealers Association (GNYADA).  Stan Sher of Dealer eTraining will be teaching BDC and Sales consultants how an appropriate road to the sale should be in today's market.

The BDC or business development center works with prospects over the phone and brings them in for an appointment.  However, the ball gets dropped because sales consultants are not prepared to handle the customer needs.  This happens because they do not use the dealership's CRM system properly and do not follow proper protocol.  The goal of this workshop is to train dealership personnel the importance of using a CRM and what to look for in the CRM to build a better rapport with the prospect.  In addition, we will be discussing the use of mobile tools that sales consultants can use to help their prospects have a better car buying experience while also helping make their jobs as sales consultants more efficient.

If you are an automotive dealership in the Greater New York area please sign your sales and BDC staff to this powerful workshop on September 27, 2012.  This will be the most powerful 3 hours of that day for your staff.  The "New" Road to the Sale is a session where I will teach your staff how to properly handle today's savvy consumer by knowing the resources that the consumer will use when shopping for vehicle.  Attendees will learn how to properly handle customers that come in from appointments that derive from the BDC.  Attendees will also learn how to properly use modern technology and tools to better interact with and follow up with customers both when they are in the showroom and when they are not.  To view more information and to register please visit http://autoedcenter.com/education/seminars/12-09-27-new.php

CRM Manipulation: Get the Most Out of Your CRM

http://automotivebdctraining.com/

https://www.facebook.com/dealeretraining

As I travel and work with dealerships all over the country I am constantly amazed at how often I find that the CRM in dealerships is not functions properly.  It is pretty scary that when I ask dealers and managers to tell me how well it is being used and they tell me how it is being utilized properly.  However, when I log in I see no process for anything.  I see showroom customers not being logged, closing ratios not making sense, no processes installed (making sales and BDC people work backwards).  Basically everyone is just “winging” it and using what they can.

The other day I was talking about how whenever I ran or sometimes still run the Internet, BDC, or sales department in a dealership that my CRM is clean, updated, and easy to manage.  I never let anything slip through the cracks.  I know every customer that walked in was logged.  I also know that sales people and sales managers typically do a bad job of updating information or resulting out what happened in the sales processes.  This is where I lay down the hammer and question everything.  The key here is to monitor to everything like a hawk and be able to fix what mess gets created.  The other key ingredient is getting on sales staff and managers to do what they need to do.  In some cases, utilize the receptionist to help keep proper traffic count just like Eric Nichols does at Apple Honda in Riverhead, NY.

They say that reports generated by the CRM are non functional and can provide improper data.  Well I got news for you.  The data provides misinformation as the people that misuse the CRM are ultimately responsible for creating the misinformation.  Depending on the size of the dealership operation there might be a need to have a CRM master specialist to make sure that all data is correct from sourcing, to usage, to accountability of management, in many cases the Internet manager is in that role as they battle to prove to the dealer why they need to get paid on this deal or that deal.

So how do we have a grasp on our CRM?  Well it is really easy but requires a lot of work and management.  This is why we call it “Customer Relationship Management”.  Find someone in the dealership that will master the system and use it the proper way.  I am talking about installing proper processes (follow up, internet leads, phone calls, showroom traffic, etc…), managing how the system is being used by sales and management (this includes manually cleaning up the mess that is created at times), and measure proper reports according to the proper data.  Yes, it takes work and it requires someone that is very sharp to be on top of the game.  However, at the end of the day all of your results can be properly accounted for one you calibrate the system right.  My advice is to set it up right the right time and manage it on a very high level.  I cannot tell you how many times dealerships have contracted me to come in for 1-2 days and just fix their CRM system.  It becomes difficult work when you are fixing years and years worth of errors.  While there are CRM systems that are way better than others, it still all comes down to how you use it.

Dealers looking to improve on how to use their CRM should reach out to me directly so that I can help them come up with an effective strategy.