I recommend to all my dealer clients I do consulting with that they hire a company to do formal mystery shops and do it quarterly. If you think email response is bad try listening to phone calls and in most cases it’s even worse. Covid “order taking”made bad habits even worse then they already were.
In my opinion, I never understood the concept of 'secret shopping'
my own stores for Phone and Internet when we have a complete real-time log and recording of all in the CRM. Stores should be reviewing these in real-time throughout the day with correction and coaching coming just as fast (not waiting a QTR). It's been a minute since I secret shopped a competitor because we don't have our own process locked down let alone need to second guess whether our process works by hearing someone else's magic one-liner. If I don't have access to their
real conversion metrics, why would I put stock in their process?
"Comparison is the thief of joy." - Mom
If I did secret shop someone else all it did was reinforce they may have faked their Internet composite numbers input in a NADA 20Group that a GM or principal attended. "These guys are killing it, let's see what they're doing..." Uhm, they be fudging number to get to the top of the page is what they're doing. Even with that, I still had no bearing whether the rep was following the stores process or going rogue. I've found the best way to find if they're real is just call the store and talk to the "internet" manager. You'll know pretty quick what the reality is.
I have guys running 18-22% on Internet and I have guys running at 3-6%. I don't need to secret shop to start the process of re-directing leads and finding where the holes are with managers and reps. There is no silver bullet. Review leads daily to find the bad actors and if they're coachable, and they have the capacity, send them in the right direction. If they're not, PIP then promote them to customer.
