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Salary for Internet Sales Manager or Director

Lurked for the last couple of weeks, had to join as so far this is about the only place I've found that seems at least relatively active and full of solid information.

I wanted to throw in my two cents as far as pay structure is concerned, and how we've tried to get the issue handled at our own dealerships.

When I started here two years go, we were two people (myself and an hourly employee) cutting and pasting pre-formatted word documents into our CRM (the former internet manager was... not very tech inclined). We've since changed websites twice, CRM once, moved to a mixture of automated and manual tasks for email/phone, graduated to selling on eBay (after a four year hiatus from it), dug into Google and other search efforts with both spurs, upgraded our photo process with a dedicated booth and on-staff photographer (handy to have around), changed inventory "push" providers... a lot has changed in just two years.

I have sales experience if you count selling TV's for three years (I can sell the hell out of them, too) and I'm amiable on the phone. My real background is in IT and networking/systems management, but I'm absolutely and utterly self-taught and thankfully they were willing to take a chance on me (plus I worked cheap for a while; still better than hourly somewhere else).

I am currently on a weekly salary, plus monthly bonus based on a percentage of YTD gross variable ops at two of our three franchises. The pay plan is written so that as my work duties spread, the percentage payed or where it is from (our third franchise or fixed ops, or both) can be adjusted to better control incentive. My job is to make everyone sell more cars, and thankfully our GM is very forward thinking and we have been grooming the position towards that more and more frequently as we progress. I am still, however, in the "under $60,000" bracket mentioned in the poll thread regarding this topic, but that won't last forever.

Coming from an IT background, I don't look at the process the same way our established management does, and I think (as do they) this is absolutely vital to our continued growth. They took a chance on a 24 year old kid two years ago and some change, and so far it appears to have worked for the better. We survived the Carpocalypse (we are GM and Chrysler at our core) and even gained some franchises in the shakedown; August 2008 was a really risky time to join the car industry, but I did anyway.

I'd like to pose a question at the end of all that tripe; how have you coped with a growing department? We're already wearing pants way too big for our skinny little legs, so what qualities have you found important in your existing and prospective employees? We're constantly stressing phone skills when we hire, but where have you found success in the search for people who are fearless on the phone?
 
Neal, thanks for joining us. We're excited to have your onboard and no longer "lurking".

You have you sight set on the right target. It's all about phone skills (though I also believe great persuasive writing skills can be a very valuable asset as well and one that gets over looked)!! Funny you bring this up. My one dealer just hired someone part time to make follow-up phone calls. After meeting her for a few minutes I thought to myself, she's not going to work out. She has bad posture, no energy and came across "lazy". It's only been a week - I give her another week before she's gone. This got me thinking as well - where can you find these phone up ninjas that posses great phone skills? I'm not sure you can unless you get someone from a call center but even then great PR skills on the phone is not what drives appointments.

Find some young spirited individuals with great posture with a lot of personality. You can teach personality BUT you can teach phone skills!
 
Neal, thanks for joining us. We're excited to have your onboard and no longer "lurking".

You have you sight set on the right target. It's all about phone skills (though I also believe great persuasive writing skills can be a very valuable asset as well and one that gets over looked)!! Funny you bring this up. My one dealer just hired someone part time to make follow-up phone calls. After meeting her for a few minutes I thought to myself, she's not going to work out. She has bad posture, no energy and came across "lazy". It's only been a week - I give her another week before she's gone. This got me thinking as well - where can you find these phone up ninjas that posses great phone skills? I'm not sure you can unless you get someone from a call center but even then great PR skills on the phone is not what drives appointments.

Find some young spirited individuals with great posture with a lot of personality. You can teach personality BUT you can teach phone skills!

Just read the 4 hour work week.... Elance??? Just jokin...kind of
 
I'd like to pose a question at the end of all that tripe; how have you coped with a growing department? We're already wearing pants way too big for our skinny little legs, so what qualities have you found important in your existing and prospective employees? We're constantly stressing phone skills when we hire, but where have you found success in the search for people who are fearless on the phone?

I don't know if you've ever come across me saying a BDC is a workaround in your lurking, but it is. However, a BDC is one workaround I am a fan of. The reason I like BDC's solely revolves around the phone. Sales Agents and Sales Managers, for the most part, are afraid of the phone. They were never properly trained on how to use it and even when they are that training is one of the simplest to forget. At its core a BDC is a dedicated call center of professional inbound and outbound phone talkers. That's all they do. A good BDC will handle a call properly 90% of the time while the sales floor it supports handles a call well about 10% of the time.

Every market is different on where the best BDC people come from. I had the best luck at two colleges and advertising the position on our dealership website. After a few years, when the rest of the dealership started to understand and see the benefits of the BDC, almost all new BDC employees were family referrals or transfers.

It isn't just the phone though. I was lucky to have an employee who was an insanely fast and accurate typist. He also grasped the idea that all emails should be short and end in a question. With him on board we rarely ever saw an average month's response time above 14 minutes. The key to keeping him fast was making sure he didn't get bogged down in the details. There is no need to spend 20 minutes researching a customer's history before picking up a phone or sending an email - just go!

It is a team effort. Go into your interviews for the "people who are fearless on the phone" looking at every candidate as a position to fill on the baseball diamond. Who's your starting pitcher, who's going to reach over the fence to stop the homerun, who's going to take some spikes in the shin for the out?

Figure that the average Internet Sales Rep can handle 100 to 150 Internet Leads a month. To start, this would be more like 75 as the follow-up compounds on top of one another over time. Divide the number of Internet leads you currently have by 75 and that will give you the number of people you should have just on Internet Leads. If you've been tracking phone calls then apply that same formula. Over time your people will get better at handling more and more volume so the initial investment will always be the highest. Eventually your job should be to find more leads and phone calls for your BDC to work while making sure their skills are continuously improving.....or you could become more of an online marketer while finding another person to manage the BDC.
 
During your first interview you should give them a phone script and tell them to learn it because it will be part of their job function if you decide to hire them. Tell them you'll be conducting second interviews and that you'll be calling them if interested. When you call and invite them in for an interview, ask them to brush up on the script since you'll be testing them. If during the interview they have not prepared, I'd thank them for their time and send them packing. If they can't learn the script to get the job, they certainly won't learn the script if they get the job.

Wish such a high unemployment rate, you would think people would be jumping through hoops to land a job. It just baffles me that people think they are entitled to a paycheck because they just showed up. I don't think it would hurt to have a few more people spend the night out in the cold and go without a meal for a few days. This might motivate people to work a little harder when they do land a job.
 
I have a crew of 5 ISM and I started six months ago. Getting a little under 400 leads per month. Before me with same amount of leads they where averageing 30-35 cars sold per month. We average now 68 sold and running about a 1550 per copy, wich is about a 45% of there total business. This includes new and used in a 60/40 ratio.
As a Internet Director in charge of this department, doing what we do: answering phone ups & leads setting appointments etc...How much should I be making? anyone? I need to put a pay plan together.
 
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