Latest activity

Dec 26, 2011

Either a TrueCar employee or a salesperson with no vision who prefers to take orders versus creating his own leads.

Dec 25, 2011

Thank you for bringing the negative to the holidays! You all bitch & we will continue to sell cars. We will gladly take your customers. Thank you!

Dec 25, 2011

Very creative! Merry Christmas, Jeff!

Dec 25, 2011

Merry Christmas to all my friends and customers on Dealer Refresh! Looking forward to a great 2012!

Dec 25, 2011

This poem is perfect..Bravo!

Dec 25, 2011

Merry Christmas Jeff, Alex, and Joe and the entire DealerRefresh Community.

Oct 20, 2013

Im a BDC agent, and I finf my job to be very important and rewarding. I love talking to people. Our job is to get people who are unsure about purchasing a vehicle interested! We answer their questions, give them advice, and do everything towards them purchasing. Its worth it.

mhilger · Mar 3, 2012

Whether to go Cradle to Grave or two tier sales process is really dependent on the dealership. However in my opinion if it is good enough for Microsoft, Salesforce.com, and many companies that use an engineered sales process, it is good enough for me.

Here is one major pain point I see with cradle to grave on internet leads in with our clients, the person that got the lead in the door is invested and often times committed. True often this is due to lack of or not following procedures but we still see it as a pain point.

Of course we/I don't get do BDC consulting, other than to suggest to our clients they check into one so I would defer to others.

Jan 29, 2012

Disagree. BDC's are horrible and I've seen them fail over and over. I say eliminate the internet department. All sales are internet involved these days. BDC is old school and so are internet sales people. Look at JD powers studies about consumers and contact with dealers prior to purchase. It keeps going down and down year after year. I believe we are at 80% for 2012 of consumers having no contact prior to arriving at the dealership. You need great mandatory dealership processes, excellent merchandising and if anything chat to text. Maybe you need a text department rather than a BDC.

Jan 10, 2012

Take a look at Better Car People, home of Overnight BDC. We are a 24/7/365/ lead management service for your sales and service leads.

Dec 26, 2011

We run a BDC department, and they are considered appointment setters. This BDC set up has historically shown stronger gross profits. Reason being is cradle to grave salesman will get complacent once the customer shows and they have already spent so much energy with the customer. They will go ahead and deliver that $200 deal. However, when you turn it to a fresh NEW face, that salesperson is motivated and hopefully can get the customer to switch trim levels and models. No difference why we don't have salesman do Finance.

In addition, I think 25 emails and 25 calls a day is light. We get well over 50 calls a day out of our Internet sales staff.

Dec 23, 2011

I have to add this. If I had to go back to be a sales person for myself I would prefer cradle to grave. Give me 120 leads per month and I will work them and sell them. It was how I got into internet sales to begin with. The phone skills were there and the process was there for me. All I had to do was work hard and multi-task and I was successful. But not everyone can do that.

Dec 23, 2011

I have worked with stores where Cradle to grave works well but there are opportunities still missing. It took me a long time to adjust to a BDC. In fact, I did not get into until late 2007 when I started running one. Now I am a BDC advocate all day long. I learned how to make a BDC rock and I even experimented with processes. The key here is to have a dealer invest in it and want to make it work. Some dealers do not want to justify the expense while others are all over it. I think that with an open mind that the decision to have a BDC should depend on various variables. I look at what product is being sold and consider the volume that the product (not the store) generally moves. I also look at location and setup of the store. Let's face it. It a dealer is only getting 100 leads per month and has no care in the world to try to grow to 300 leads per month they do not need a BDC. Chances are they are landlocked and can only do so much. I have clients that are like that. Now a city store or a high traffic store that generates 1000s of leads per month needs a BDC. It is all about setup and location.

Dec 22, 2011

Cradle to grave can work really well when the right people are doing it. Unfortunately, there aren't many of the "right people" around. I think that's most of your point Jennifer.

We started with a BDC in 1998, but it failed around 2000 due to splitting commissions with sales agents. We were cradle to grave from that time till 2004 and had great success with the BDC until October of 2008 when it was dismantled to save on costs during the recession. The dismantling only lasted a few short months as it was almost immediately clear just how much was lost by not having a BDC. I should mention this is a 12-franchise dealer group serving a population around 1,000,000.

The problem with cradle to grave isn't just in having the "right people" it also has a lot to do with lead volume. One GOOD cradle to grave sales person can probably handle about 75 leads a month. I say 75 because they stack-up in later follow-up. Not all Internet lead-submitters buy within 7 days of dropping the lead. A full time BDC agent, on a good process with the right CRM, can handle around 200 leads a month.

Let's do the math. 75 leads for a cradle to grave agent at around a 12% closing ratio (generous national average) equals 9 sales a month. 200 leads for a good BDC agent at a 20% closing ratio (Kershner average) equals 40 sales a month. Can anyone say "duuuuuh?"

Dec 22, 2011

just hired an appointment setter for our internet leads. we need to make a little headway on converting these internet prospects -- historical conversion rates for us have been pretty low for us

Dec 22, 2011

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It's not easy to watch a Dealer who is the true sense of an Entrepreneur, look and feel defeated. It was painstaking to see.

Why was he feeling this way?

Because he was faced with the reality that his sales team was incapable of responding to internet leads.

I know what you are thinking. Incapable?

Equally as painstaking is watching people who simply do not use a computer for their personal lives let alone work. Just locating an area to type a document or retrieving an email or even making changes to an existing email template, was hard to wait for and watch.

Believe me, I was wondering the same thing you probably are...what world are these guys living in?

Salespeople that work internet leads today must be capable and willing to send over 25 emails and place over 25 calls per day in order to get the minimum amount of sales from the lead pool. But what would you do if you were in this situation? Fire em' all?

You see it's situations like these are reminders that every dealership will not and should not have the same business model at converting internet leads to showroom sales.

Allow me add the icing to the cake in this real story.

Between the two stores, this dealer will make over $3 million dollars selling Kia's this year. That does not include any internet sales. Most salespeople had never even sent an email to a customer in years of their employment here. With average grosses of $3300 a copy, your eyebrow may have just raised. On average, they see 30-50 people on a Saturday. Ups.

Does this bus still really exist? Holy S@!*%, right? SO what is a dealer to do in this situation? The stores aren't broken. The lowest paid salesperson makes $60K/year. I saw 40 obvious deals waiting there. What would 40 more deals a month do to this bottom line?

Does this dealer need them? ..or does he want them?

I recommended a dealership BDC Department. A BDC with an objective to set appointments. Their role is to respond to internet leads, follow up by phone and email until they buy or die. BDC departments serve a real purpose for many dealerships. Yet I still see plenty of dealerships that have dedicated salespeople handling the internet prospects and converting at a much higher ratio than a BDC department.

It will always be a challenge to find an entire sales team that have the abilities, capabilities, desire and motivation to handle the most challenging prospect around, the internet prospect.

This poses a thereat to 21st century dealerships. Interviewing skills and approaches must change drastically.. The skill sets of today's salesman must include rockin' phone and email skills.

If you know this aspect is not your best skill set, I suggest you get out and make it your best skill set! No one is born with this, remember, it is a learned quality. You, just like me, can achieve anything with determination and desire.

Do your sales people have the ROCKIN' skill sets to be effective with today's consumer - from Internet Lead to Sale?

amhills · Dec 23, 2011

Received yesterday a warning from Mass State Auto Dealers regarding TrueCar advertising and the violations of the Attorney General regulations. See below:
There is now an additional wrinkle to TrueCar’s relationship with Massachusetts
dealers – vehicle price advertisements. These advertisements include text, for
example, that put consumers on notice that Dealer X has the consumer’s vehicle
at some amount “below invoice”. Under the Massachusetts Attorney General’s
regulations, dealers may not use terms such as “dealer’s cost”, “wholesale”,
“invoice price”, “factory billing” or other similar terms unless the cost or
price standard represents the total consideration paid by the dealer to the
manufacturer, where no hold back or rebate has been or will be paid and the
advertisement discloses the exact figure of the standard. Plus, if advertising
price, the advertisement must include all charges necessary or usual prior to
delivery (e.g. freight, handling, vehicle prep, and documentary prep.) Under
the AG’s advertising regulations there are a number of other requirements that
apply concerning terminology and font size, which have been discussed in other
bulletins and educational materials made available to dealers in recent
years.The TrueCar price advertisements have dealers' names attached to
them with the prohibited language. Such third-party vendor agreements that you
may have executed do not excuse you from potential liability, and it can be
rather expensive as the last round of AG advertising enforcements proved.
It appears that TrueCar's existence in its current form is limited.

amhills · Dec 22, 2011

Forwarding the info to Massachusetts AG's office.
Same violations exist in Massachusetts regarding invoice advertising, etc, etc.
Expect a similar response from Massachusetts.
Wish I had thought of this.

Dec 22, 2011

Good looking out Kevin.

Dec 22, 2011

I spoke to OADA this am, GCADA (Cleveland) already told their dealers to avoid. OADA sees potential issues with Ohio Bird-dog laws as well

Dec 22, 2011

Looking into it. I called OADA. I'll let you know.

Dec 22, 2011

Hey Blake, is Ohio looking at this?

Dec 21, 2011

I hope more states and OEM's get on the bandwagon. We need it!

Has anyone check their web stats lately? Not looking good for us boys.

They are going through the roof.

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/truecar.com/

tomwhitejr · Dec 19, 2011

Kansas too!!! : )

James A. Ziegler · Dec 19, 2011

There's more on the way...watch Louisiana and Maryland

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