Andrew - we have a similar situation at our Nissan store. There is one ISM, too many leads, and management wants to expand the department. Our ISM is amazing at what he does, but he is letting some of the more time consuming leads fall through the cracks.
Currently, we are about to hire an assistant to handle a lot of the admin work - first response emails, tracking/confirming appointments, deliveries, following up with sold customers, etc. So, we will see how that goes...
I actually posted a thread about this topic earlier this week - might not have been approved. The gist of it was about the long term viability of the Internet Department. My question regarded the basic qualifications of a dealership's sales' staff - shouldn't every salesman possess the abilities and skills to write an email, make a phone call and talk to a customer face-to-face? If so, shouldn't Internet leads be distributed to the sales staff - tracked, monitored, and managed just like any other prospect in a CRM?
I see salesmen working Internet customers everyday - almost every person that comes into the dealership has been online researching the car, its features, and prices. The difference is that these "fresh ups" didn't type their contact info in online and hit the "request a quote" button.
Anyways, I'm also interested to hear how other dealers are structuring their departments
