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Salary for Internet Sales Manager or Director

I just came into a group (as a new Internet Director) with 7 stores in three cities and every store is doing things different. One store has two ISM's that work the lead beginning to end and are paid salary plus flat rate per. One store has an "ISM" that works the lead from beginning to appointment then hands it off to the floor and then splits the commission with the floor guy. One store has an "ISM" that does the same but recieves a base plus per unit flat bonus. One store just has the sales manager hand out the lead round-robin to the floor(!). Three other locations have ISM's that handle leads beginning to end but handle floor traffic as well and are paid regular commission on everything. What to do, what to do...

I'm tempted to create a corporate "BDC", but with experienced sales people, and then have in-store ISM's that can take the appointments. Pay the BDC's base plus appointments/sold bonuses and pay the ISM's a salary plus flat rate commission for sold units. I would also be tiering both structures to incentivise volume. What do you think?
 
I'm tempted to create a corporate "BDC", but with experienced sales people, and then have in-store ISM's that can take the appointments. Pay the BDC's base plus appointments/sold bonuses and pay the ISM's a salary plus flat rate commission for sold units. I would also be tiering both structures to incentivise volume. What do you think?

I think your idea isn't a bad one. I'm just giving you the way our dealership did it as another scenario.

1) Paid the ISM a base salary plus a set amount on each vehicle the department sells.

2) Pay the BDC rep a base salary and then pay on a tier system - $x appointment / $x show / $x Sale.

--another route for the BDC reps is the "Sales x Sales" approach. I.E. 10 sales for the month, 10x10=$100. Or, 21 sales, 21x21=$441.

Just a few other possibilities to explore.
 
I'm tempted to create a corporate "BDC", but with experienced sales people, and then have in-store ISM's that can take the appointments. Pay the BDC's base plus appointments/sold bonuses and pay the ISM's a salary plus flat rate commission for sold units. I would also be tiering both structures to incentivise volume. What do you think?

That is precisely how we started our BDC and it was a disaster. Granted, we did this at a time when the floor was in opposition to the Internet, so things could be very different today. I have found that staffing the BDC with sales agents brings all the bad habits of the sales floor to the BDC. The old sales agents are so accustomed to only working 15 minutes here, 20 minutes there, maybe 2 hours straight here, that the rest of the time they're wandering off or playing around. I had one true BDC person amongst 6 "previous" sales agents and I recall walking into the BDC to find only that BDC person there on a few occasions. I have fired every single sales agent we've ever brought into the BDC. I absolutely refuse to do it now.

I am a HUGE advocate of a BDC for a dealer group, but I am also an advocate of hiring a BDC off the street.

That has been my experience - your mileage may vary.

As for pay in a BDC, we have found the most effective way to go is to base it off of the number of outbound phone calls made per hour plus a bonus for the number of appointments created. No more, no less.
 
As for pay in a BDC, we have found the most effective way to go is to base it off of the number of outbound phone calls made per hour plus a bonus for the number of appointments created. No more, no less.

:iagree: Glad to hear phone calls made is part of your incentive package now. Keep in mind I would take that a level deeper and only pay on calls where contact is made.


Alex, I like your thinking on this. What have you found to be the best way to track the outbound numbers?

CRM Mitch. Alex is using a CRM tool (IML) which has nice reports to show you how many phone calls each rep makes in the course of the day. They use a click-to-call feature which is basically an auto dialer that will record and keep track of the number of calls made.

The average automotive sales person has a 7-8% appointment ratio on outbound calls. The BDC reps at Checkered Flag are a lot higher than that. I hear them nailing appointment after appointment , so turning up the call volume was the key to making them more productive. When I first started working with them they would consider it a good appointment day if they got to 8 or 10. They now have days where they hit that number by lunch time.

With Tony at your store, he's getting very good at securing the appointment, we just need to get him making more dials.
 
The average automotive sales person has a 7-8% appointment ratio on outbound calls.

It dawned on me that I should explain where I got these numbers. Back when I worked for iMagicLab, I once spent two weeks compiling a report in which to measure how effectively clients were using the CRM. Appointments and phone calls were a big part of this. So when looking at all outbound calls for any customer type, the average dealership was in the 7 - 8 percent range when scheduling appointments on outbound phone calls.

One of the key factors in a higher appointment percentage was the number of attempts made per customer. The dealers with averages over 4 per customer did amazingly better than those below 4. I am amazed at how so many in our industry will make one or maybe two attempts and then give up.
 
You are lucky to get 1 attempt out of 90% of sales people. Then they and their managers wonder what's going on. Of course it's always due to advertising :)

I remember reading that it takes on average 9 calls to get a customer on the phone.

It's a combination of 2 things. Laziness and not knowing what to say when they call; lack of training.
 
Our CRM is a dog, it would be outstanding to have a click to call feature. We have a couple BDC agents that work out of the call center of the CRM we use which has us welded in. As an ILM it blows but is better then nothing. Any vendors offer light contracts based on users? We'd have 1-3 internet BDC reps...

As far as payplan for the ISM or Director it's tough to generalize because the job descriptions seem to vary tons. I personally think it would be a win win to put together a plan with a base ontop of a sales manager payplan... add in an extra 2000-4000 for administrative/support and a % of production. Anyone have a payplan in place like this?
 
In any environment incentive-based compensation MUST be tied to the objective. Sales Coordinators MUST make PHONE CALLS to get APPOINTMENTS. That's what they're responsible for. At Checkered Flag, I created a pay plan which focused on the elements of the Service Coordinators performance which they control, or substantially influenced - OUTBOUND CALLS and APPOINTMENTS MADE. In addition to a low hourly rate, of course. The 'per' commission is tiered to incentivize volume. As Alex mentioned, there wasn't always a continuity between the BDC and the sales floor however, with the help of Jerry's training (Phone-Up Ninjas), the foundation was laid to continue the appointment through a confirmation call (Sales Manager) to drive a high show rate. This would be the next step to that compensation program - adding show rate as a commisionable element. An added "bonus" to this type of pay plan is it automatically keeps everyone focused on the hourly, daily, weekly and monthly objectives as opposed to just the month-end results. No more having to light fires to get the machine started at the beginning of every month.