John, as our stores move to the final stages of "one-touch" it has presented an interesting challenge. Before "one-touch" when there was a finance office, the sales person was with the customer for only a portion of the process. This meant they could jump back into leads and follow-up in those gaps of time. In "one-touch" they are glued to the hip of a customer for the entire duration including finance presentation and paperwork, etc. During this same transition period, our leads, chats, and phone calls exploded to the point where having enough sales people for those initial points of contact are strained, not to mention the follow-up required in the following days. We run a cradle-to-grave sales-team-that-handles-all-channel approach currently. The pursuit and work needed for the early stages of an unresponded web lead is an exercise in time management that seems to be a pain point for us. This is where a BDC that would take on the quality initial pursuit and first request for next steps would come in handy. If the objection to next steps (store visit, etc) can't be overcome by the BDC, then it comes to the store to handle then on. I think this strategy, for us, would be interesting. How to structure that BDC solution is my challenge. To your point of how to pay, I've heard a number of options and each has benefit and drawback. Do you have a suggestion?
