Seeking innovative pay plan ideas for internet sales managers

[NHHarleyguy]

Doug,
Thanks for the reply. You are 100% correct btw about the gumbo, as far as us New Englanders can tell, you just throw some seafood and whatever leftovers ie: sausage, rice, hot dogs whatever in a pan and boil it?! Thanks for checking out the site, obviously still a work in progress!

As far as the pricing goes, aside from linking directly to Harley-Davidson's website (which I don't feel is an option because I am trying to do everything possible to keep potential customers on our site,) we cannot show new bike pricing on our site because of H-D advertising policy. Because no other H-D dealer can show pricing online, I don't know if that is the problem.

My feeling is that the easier that you make it to navigate through your site and solicit information, the more "non-buyer" leads you will see. Whether it is someone just curious about the bikes, a drunk guy at 3:11 A.M., someone 2,500 miles away who found our site or my competition shopping me (I know who you are!) I haven't figured out an effective way to distinguish these from legitimate buyer leads.

My real concern is that some of these leads may just not be ready to buy right now. The mind set in this industry seems to be "If the customer is not ready to buy today, don't waste anymore time and move on to the next buyer" Well this turn and burn was okay when there was little to no competition, units sold for whatever price the dealership posted due to supply and demand and before the internet changed the game.

These buyers who were months or years from buying would have to physically visit dealerships for information and would likely not do so and risk being accosted by overly-aggressive sales staff until they were a little further along in the process and closer to making a decision. Now, a customer retiring in three years can begin to gather information today to help determine which motorcycle will fit his needs when the time comes!

If we can successfully maintain contact and establish a good drip campaign to market until they are ready to go, that will at least create presence of mind when the time is right for these buyers and will hopefully become a door swing when they are ready to ride. As I said, still a work in progress!

 

[ddavis]

John, without having MSRP on new bikes, it forces customers to submit a quote just to get an idea of the price.

I'm curious if there is a difference between new and used bike customers as far as un-responsive leads. Is sticker shock a factor? Are you getting a lot of leads with either no phone number or bogus phone numbers?

Apparently, taking the low hanging fruit, is prevalent in bike sales as it is in car sales. This really comes into play when there are an abundance of leads. Are you doing regular email campaigns? What about newsletters? Have you considered adding chat to your website? What would H-D think of a new and used specials page?

I think New Englanders need to stay out of the kitchen.

 

[Matt Hopper]

I have been an Internet Sales manager for about a year now and have an opportunity to take over the Director position. Our department has built itself from nonexsistant a year ago to now rolling 50+ a month with 4 guys and averaging 3300 front and back per car since January 1st till now this year. We do around 30% of the cars for the store each month and continue to improve each month. Our lead to closing percentage hovers around the 17-20% mark each month and our appointment to close ratios are in the 50% range. I have built a new proposed set up for our Internet department from A-Z that I believe would promote a team goal rather than individual goals and compensates as such. I would love to run this by anyone who may be able to provide feedback based on their experience. I am hoping to submit this to our owner and GM fairly soon. The problem lies there where we are still frowned upon by our tower guys and it may be shot down with no sort of negotiation. Think "old school car dog" in this situation. Change is not good here most the time and the bell to bell rule still applies to our department even though we can't take floor or phone opportunities. We are limited to only what comes through the internet and we average around 280-300 leads a month. I would like to see this double but feel there are absolutely necessary changes to our site that need to be made to bump that but that's another topic. Let me know if anyone would be willing to give me feedback on my proposal and I can send it to you. Thank you!

 

[ewalraven]

I have been an Internet Sales manager for about a year now and have an opportunity to take over the Director position. Our department has built itself from nonexsistant a year ago to now rolling 50+ a month with 4 guys and averaging 3300 front and back per car since January 1st till now this year. We do around 30% of the cars for the store each month and continue to improve each month. Our lead to closing percentage hovers around the 17-20% mark each month and our appointment to close ratios are in the 50% range. I have built a new proposed set up for our Internet department from A-Z that I believe would promote a team goal rather than individual goals and compensates as such. I would love to run this by anyone who may be able to provide feedback based on their experience. I am hoping to submit this to our owner and GM fairly soon. The problem lies there where we are still frowned upon by our tower guys and it may be shot down with no sort of negotiation. Think "old school car dog" in this situation. Change is not good here most the time and the bell to bell rule still applies to our department even though we can't take floor or phone opportunities. We are limited to only what comes through the internet and we average around 280-300 leads a month. I would like to see this double but feel there are absolutely necessary changes to our site that need to be made to bump that but that's another topic. Let me know if anyone would be willing to give me feedback on my proposal and I can send it to you. Thank you!

Key points:
- Averaging 3300 in the front and back
- Closing ratio 17%+
- Post to sold at 50%
- Working only on 280-300 leads a month

Holy sh*************t! This is insane. The numbers do the talking here in my opinion. If you are averaging the numbers you spoke above what more are they requesting from you? Or is this where you are getting at it.

Do you currently deal with the GM/Owner (decision maker) directly? What does he/she currently look for to change anything? Do you know of any changes they recently made - or the reason they did it? Sometimes a nice powerpoint will do it with colorful charts and graphs, but sometimes they just want to hear why you want to change it and how it will help the bottom line. Maybe they are happy with the current results now. Maybe they don't think they need to grow. Sounds silly, but that's how you need to start thinking.

What benefit is it to them to change something that 'ain't broke'. Maybe you don't want to change the process right away. Put the pressure on the old school tower guys .. Are they bringing in any business? What do they do? How much are they averaging per unit? Getting the GM and/or owner on-board here is obviously key.

Kind of a ramble here, but maybe you got something out of it? If you do start to deal with this. Start and thread and document what challenge you are going through. I'm sure plenty of the guys here had seen and heard it before.

Good luck.

 

[ddavis]

I have built a new proposed set up for our Internet department from A-Z that I believe would promote a team goal rather than individual goals and compensates as such.

If you are suggesting that commissions go into a pot, this benefits the weakest link at the expense of the strongest.

I have never understood why there seems to be so much opposition from the desk. I have never been in a dealership that didn't pay the desk on internet deals.

When you say that you close 50% of appointments, is that shown appointments?

If those phone calls are coming in from the website and third party display advertising, why are they not coming to the internet? Are they sourced properly?

 

[Matt Hopper]

EWALRAVEN- the numbers are real and those are an average from all deals done from 1/1/12-9/19/12. I felt like we were hitting hard but am wondering if our grosses arent maybe hurting us in the volume department. There is a definite disconnect between tower and us since we are the "new guys" and none of them have ever worked an internet department before. Also I do wonder how much they really are willing to do to get back to the levels they used to be at in this store. The tower says they want to but shuts down all ideas no matter how graphic the numbers are to suggest it.

DDAVIS-First of all thanks for bringing the autotrader thing to my attention. I wrote it down to address tomorrow.
Secondly, Those appointments to closes are set to sold
Third, this is where I have a real problem. As internet we are not aloud to take incoming phone calls which seems insane to me. We have the info ready when the call comes in and theres an almost certainty that the client has found what they are calling on online. There is no seperate phone number for the internet department and the floor guys are taking hundreds of calls from serious buyers a month and closing roughly 8-10%.
If it were my store I would want the calls going to those who are prepared
To keep the checks and balances in place there would be a minimum standard for each salesman within the department as well to counter the possibility of the weakest pulling from the strongest.

 

[bzweifel]

tell me everything you do from asking for the appointment to sold. 50% set to sold is unheard of. What is your process?

 

[Matt Hopper]

here are my month numbers for clarification.
72 total leads-without washing for duplicates and leads for a floor guy that came to my inbox
24 appointments set
19 shows
13 sold
average response time 12 minutes

 

[ddavis]

Matt, your problem is not the process, it's the number of leads.

Looking at AutoTrader, you don't have descriptions on either your new or used cars. When customers are looking at vehicles on the Search Results Page, they want to know about the car. Those first few lines are critical. They don't want to hear your the biggest Dodge dealership in the world. That needs to be at the bottom of the description with a call to action. The Dodge certified logo blends into the page. On certified used cars, start the line "CHRYSLER CERTIFIED" Descriptions are a lot of work but it will pay dividends.

With a very large used car inventory, they need to consider moving up to premium. Your cars are being lost in the featured section.
You don't have new and used car specials on your website. It brings up a blank page. I know a source that is approved through Chrysler Digital.

 

[Matt Hopper]

I have taken this info to my current director in an attempt to try and fix some it. I shopped as a customer last night and found several other areas that need immediate improvement as a lot of things almost seem to shoot ourselves in the foot right off the bat. We are looking at our pricing on new on Cars.com specifically as we only have one 1500 Ram in the top 100 search results lowest to highest. There are dealers in the area that have nearly 80 in that same 100. When I looked at it as a customer I realized right away that I am impatient and would probably say wow this dealer has a huge inventory and go to their site directly for better filter results. I believe we are missing that boat because in Reality we have far more selection than they do.
We are only doing roughly 60 NEW a month while they do nearly double that.
The Chrysler digital page is hardly used by our store and I am not sure why. They have an amazing filter setup I have seen through a dealer in Iowa that I am trying to have our store duplicate and get rid of our other more commonly used site since it's an expense we could eliminate with a proper Chrysler Digital site.