From 80-100. My store's journey to 100 units a month

[Tberndt]

Happy end of the month! I think we've got a new process for making sure we have one picture of every vehicle on the lot! Time to stick to it and hope it works!

The next topic, being a store without a BDC. Can anyone share with me what their internet lead sales process is? I'm using a pretty generic Vin process and my sales team is getting plastered with tasks. I'm thinking of changing it to the following vs what is attached in the picture. Thoughts? I hate the idea of my team becoming "that annoying sales guy"

• SALES Text, call, and email day 1
• Sales Email Day 2
• Sales Call Day 3
• I call and email on day 5 and shoot a text message if opted in
• Sales Day 10 call and email, updating them on a “special on the car”
• Sales Day 15 Shoot an email
• Sales day 21 call/email.
• I check in through an email, on day 25
• Manager day 30 last ditch effort email,
• Create a task for sales and me to connect and see if we have had any contact.
• Day 35 mark lost

 

[BillKVMotorCo]

We're probably one of the more low-key dealers out there for internet lead responses. We text first, call if they don't opt-in within 30 minutes and call again after about 4-5 hours on day one and day 2. One attempt after that for the next 5 days. Dead if no response. We don't follow up any more than that. With email only it's 2 emails the first two days. After 5 days with no contact we kill it.

Happy end of the month! I think we've got a new process for making sure we have one picture of every vehicle on the lot! Time to stick to it and hope it works!

The next topic, being a store without a BDC. Can anyone share with me what their internet lead sales process is? I'm using a pretty generic Vin process and my sales team is getting plastered with tasks. I'm thinking of changing it to the following vs what is attached in the picture. Thoughts? I hate the idea of my team becoming "that annoying sales guy"

• SALES Text, call, and email day 1
• Sales Email Day 2
• Sales Call Day 3
• I call and email on day 5 and shoot a text message if opted in
• Sales Day 10 call and email, updating them on a “special on the car”
• Sales Day 15 Shoot an email
• Sales day 21 call/email.
• I check in through an email, on day 25
• Manager day 30 last ditch effort email,
• Create a task for sales and me to connect and see if we have had any contact.
• Day 35 mark lost

 

[Todd Thompson]

I'm kind of surprised to hear that you have this take. I think I would have guessed that you were on the other side of that debate. I remember some debate on this a few years ago on here and it seemed the majority hated it. I remember there was some data provided showing much less interaction with what customers might have perceived as "stock photos." I would be interested to see more current data to see if customers have gotten used to them and interact with them more.

Been back and forth over this with our own stores. In the end, colour correct and trim correct images provided by the service for new car is the way to go for us generally. Prefer 'take our own' but we have snow to contend with. Hard to take photos if they are always being buried in snow. For our dealers who may lack the manpower, have weather to contend with and no indoor photo spot... the supplied images are great overlaid on the store image.

 

[Tallcool1]

We're probably one of the more low-key dealers out there for internet lead responses. We text first, call if they don't opt-in within 30 minutes and call again after about 4-5 hours on day one and day 2. One attempt after that for the next 5 days. Dead if no response. We don't follow up any more than that. With email only it's 2 emails the first two days. After 5 days with no contact we kill it.

Every time I see you talk about this Bill, I migrate a little closer to your process.

I started out chasing the hell out of these people for 45 days. What a waste of time and focus. Right now I am down to Days 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 30. The difference is that we don't mark them Lost. We put them in Long Term Follow Up and will check in every 6 months.

 

[Marc Lavoie]

Every time I see you talk about this Bill, I migrate a little closer to your process.

I started out chasing the hell out of these people for 45 days. What a waste of time and focus. Right now I am down to Days 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 30. The difference is that we don't mark them Lost. We put them in Long Term Follow Up and will check in every 6 months.

That's probably because you're doing everything manually. By leveraging the correct amount of tech, you can automate 95% of this and take high-intent customers of the autopilot when the timing is right.

It's not hard nowadays, we're just so freaking impatient in auto.

Most dealers are missing the mark on long-term follow-up simply because it's not made correctly in the first place.

It's not really about the # of times you follow-up, but what you do during that period.

This is exactly why I've been building my in-house CDP to supplement my external BDC so we don't miss any customers.

Game changer.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Every time I see you talk about this Bill, I migrate a little closer to your process.

I started out chasing the hell out of these people for 45 days. What a waste of time and focus. Right now I am down to Days 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 30. The difference is that we don't mark them Lost. We put them in Long Term Follow Up and will check in every 6 months.

What channel are you using when following up? As in: email, text, phone call? Or a combo of all 3?

If it's email, are you including alternative inventory selection?

 

[Tallcool1]

What channel are you using when following up? As in: email, text, phone call? Or a combo of all 3?

If it's email, are you including alternative inventory selection?

We are using all 3. If the Vehicle of Interest is sold, we always include alternative inventory. I honestly can't say that we do that in all instances. That is something I need to look at closely especially on Facebook Paid leads. Those leads are never on my website so only see one vehicle.

Thank you!

 

[MarcyMMDealerAdvocates]

Hello Everyone-

Figured I'd have everyone follow along to see what things are working and what aren't when trying to take a rural Midwest GM dealership up to 100 Units on average per month. Currently, we've been hovering at around 79 units with the largest month this year at 90 and the lowest at 69 units. I'm open to ideas of what you all are finding is works best for all of you!

These are the current tools at my disposal on the front end of the dealership.

• CRM: VinSolutions, we have the equity tool and texting through them
• DMS: Automate
• SEO/SEM Advertising: Reynolds & Reynolds the old "Naked Lime"
• Warranty / Sales Training / Reinsurance: ETHOS Group
• Merchandising tool: VAuto with Profit Time
• Internet listing sites: Autotrader, CarGurus, Carfax Online Listings, Carsforsale.com, GM’s Shop Click Drive
• Website: DealerOn
• Sales Consultants: Three 20+ year guys, one 10+ and two that are 5+ years for a total of 6 sales consultants.
• Finance: One Main finance guy, myself as backup and a title clerk.

Improvement area's

• Sales/myself respond to internet leads, no BDC
• Takes an average of 10 days to get vehicles on the lot
• Takes an average of 13 days to get vehicles pictured.
• No Firm Desking process
• Not E-Signing yet. (The goal is 100% by the first of the year)

Things we do well

• Gross, for the most part, our team can gross, we are still hovering selling at Sticker, and we are doing great at holding on used and selling from sticker.
• CSI scores are GREAT!
• F/I is at 1100 a car at 50% finance.
• The average days to the sale is at 45 days.
• Super strong repeat business percentage
• Constantly a top OnStar performing store.
• Finding a niche in selling new/used Corvettes before C8’s we were selling 1-2 a year and now 10-12 a year new and about that used.

Goals

• Getting us to under 30 minutes adjusted response time
• Finding 20 more sales
• Rebuilding Used inventory levels higher

Hey there! Sounds like you guys are doing a great job. We work with dealerships throughout the county to help them implement/optimize digital tools/marketing/organic lead gen (SEO) etc. Couple suggestions- Use a more specialized SEM/SEO agency. With Reynolds being so big and bit specialized, we have not found their SEM to be effective compared to other providers. SEO- very important often minimized way to optimize your organic traffic. It is often an ‘add on’ fee for providers and then nothing is done for dealer. An active (good!) SEO agency will help to ensure that your organic traffic Is optimized, new content created, current content refreshed and grow your organic traffic. Do you have an after hours managed chat? So many people shop online after hours and having a good managed chat to answer questions/input leads will increase your lead count. Those are good starters )

 

[Tallcool1]

That's probably because you're doing everything manually. By leveraging the correct amount of tech, you can automate 95% of this and take high-intent customers of the autopilot when the timing is right.

It's not hard nowadays, we're just so freaking impatient in auto.

Most dealers are missing the mark on long-term follow-up simply because it's not made correctly in the first place.

It's not really about the # of times you follow-up, but what you do during that period.

This is exactly why I've been building my in-house CDP to supplement my external BDC so we don't miss any customers.

Game changer.

What is a CDP?

 

[BillKVMotorCo]

Every time I see you talk about this Bill, I migrate a little closer to your process.

I started out chasing the hell out of these people for 45 days. What a waste of time and focus. Right now I am down to Days 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 30. The difference is that we don't mark them Lost. We put them in Long Term Follow Up and will check in every 6 months.

We've just always taken the opinion that, whether it's automated or not, it's not worth annoying 100 customers to maybe get one out of it. I'm not saying I'm right. It's just a preference in how we don't like to abuse having customer's information. If I saw strong data showing that they interacted heavily with long-term follow-up, I'd do it. But if they never answered the phone, opted-in, opened, or responded to an email what are the chances they ever will? When I looked back at the data back in the day, extremely few did. I would just rather my reps be focused on quality leads instead of wasting their time on unresponsive or dormant ones. We know that when they are handling too many leads at once the quality of response goes down as well. I also think my market matters. I'm an hour and a half away from the nearest lot that is comparable in size to mine. If I was surrounded by heavy competition, I might think differently. Customers in larger markets are probably more numb to email blasts. In small market, Northern Missouri they think Big Brother is on em'. A funny side note: Every once in a while, our sales managers, including myself, take over internet leads for a period. When we do, I actually scrap leads far faster than I will allow our staff.