THE FUTURE OF BDC?

[Jaythematador]

Thanks ChrisR for sharing. I agree as well. With the way this industry is moving. Leads need to be tackled consistently. and as much as I hate to say it... No one is perfect. Leads will be missed, response times are not always going to be the best, and deals will be lost due to lack of engagement. I've been able to help over 120 dealerships go from 30-40% lead engagement to nothing less than 60% using Matador.ai. It simplifies the job for you. It hooks the fish for you! All you have to do is rail it in. For anyone that would like to see what I am talking about and would like to see how dealers are responding to their leads. Please let me know. Why pay a company to do something that the sales reps are supposed to be doing? Because not every sales person has the drive and attitude to do the job correctly. and at the end of the day, they just want to sell cars. I rather pay and make sure the leads I'm spending money on has a good consistent follow up process and have my agent, sales rep, etc. take over once the lead is engaged. Why have someone make 120 calls to only speak to 10??? Why not have a system in place where you can filter out the leads that are engaging with you and have your reps take over from there. It's just a smarter way to do BDC.

 

[John V.]

My thoughts on BDC vs sales floor follow up leans more toward responsiveness.

If a sales rep gets a response while working with an in-person guest, what is the procedure for not keeping the response time from getting too high? I prefer to have someone dedicated to responding, while others are dedicated to solidifying sales.

A BDC Rep or an AI is not going to be any more engaging than a Sales Agent looking for a sale - IMHO - one is a robot and one is robotic....

We can see all our open conversation in DriveCentric so if you get a text message and you don't reply a manager can jump and help you. If you consistently don't reply that same manager can just give your deal to someone else. Or another internet team member might help you out and get half the deal and have it go towards the total unit internet team goal we have in place where if you have more than 10 internet deals out and the team hits a certain number that month - everyone on the team with more than 10 out gets $500. Helps keep everyone motivated an honest.

 

[ChrisR]

A BDC Rep or an AI is not going to be any more engaging than a Sales Agent looking for a sale - IMHO - one is a robot and one is robotic....

We can see all our open conversation in DriveCentric so if you get a text message and you don't reply a manager can jump and help you. If you consistently don't reply that same manager can just give your deal to someone else. Or another internet team member might help you out and get half the deal and have it go towards the total unit internet team goal we have in place where if you have more than 10 internet deals out and the team hits a certain number that month - everyone on the team with more than 10 out gets $500. Helps keep everyone motivated an honest.

Depends on how you have your BDC set up, if they will be robotic, or engaging.

Separation of duties is great, as I have ran stores both ways, and have had much more success with BDC, than without, due to response times, engagement, and such being much improved, over sales people just super cherry picking opportunities.

 

[BillKVMotorCo]

My thoughts on BDC vs sales floor follow up leans more toward responsiveness.

If a sales rep gets a response while working with an in-person guest, what is the procedure for not keeping the response time from getting too high? I prefer to have someone dedicated to responding, while others are dedicated to solidifying sales.

We have had no issues with lead response time since switching to having sales staff handle internet leads. If the sales rep does not respond within 30 minutes it goes in the "Lead Bucket" as VIN calls it. All of the other reps then have access to it. I am also notified any time a lead goes into the bucket and then I start doing that stare down thing on the showroom floor and reps start running to their computers. Just kidding... kind of. Usually reps are very quick to snatch them up, but our initial lead rep still get the drastic majority of them in the first place. We run about 60% on response times within 15 minutes and 85% within 30 minutes.

 

[BillKVMotorCo]

BDC is a four letter word in our group.
We call, text, and video every lead* at our top performing store. Other stores in the group don't and it shows. 15% vs. 5% close rate and they still don't get it. I had to implement at 15 call, 25 texts, and 5 personal videos a day - every day - for the month to qualify for any bonuses. Floor and Internet Sales included. Your get out of jail free card is 20 units. Taking a few $1,000 segment bonuses away and some got on the program.

it all goes to engagement. You have 4 days to get engagement after that you might as well just mark the lead dead and move on. I have data to show that long term follow up on any lead that has not replied to a video, call, text, or email within 4 days has less than a 10% chance of ever talking to you.

Long Term Follow up is dead and pointless.

*mostly

I still don't understanding the thinking behind responding to unresponsive leads for more than (in our case) 7 days. We did a trial run with responding up to 45 days and nothing changed. The people that didn't open the emails never opened them. The people that read and didn't respond still kept reading and not responding. Sure, I get that you might get a few here or there to pop, but at what cost? Annoying the hell out of the 99 other customers for that one?

Here is another question: Why the hell won't these people reading and not responding just tell us to leave them alone. After about our third correspondence, we start basically BEGGING them to tell us to leave them alone. We even tell them the option of literally just sending the words "Yes" or "No." Nope. They just keep reading and not responding. It's baffling.

 

[ChrisR]

We have had no issues with lead response time since switching to having sales staff handle internet leads. If the sales rep does not respond within 30 minutes it goes in the "Lead Bucket" as VIN calls it. All of the other reps then have access to it. I am also notified any time a lead goes into the bucket and then I start doing that stare down thing on the showroom floor and reps start running to their computers. Just kidding... kind of. Usually reps are very quick to snatch them up, but our initial lead rep still get the drastic majority of them in the first place. We run about 60% on response times within 15 minutes and 85% within 30 minutes.

For initial responses, I get there being a quick response, going for the low hanging fruit. How is the follow up for people who don't come right in on the first attempt? What are the average response times for responses to messages/emails sent by the staff? Those are the ones I am most concerned with going unresponded to, and overlooked, if the sales rep is with a different guest.

 

[BillKVMotorCo]

For initial responses, I get there being a quick response, going for the low hanging fruit. How is the follow up for people who don't come right in on the first attempt? What are the average response times for responses to messages/emails sent by the staff? Those are the ones I am most concerned with going unresponded to, and overlooked, if the sales rep is with a different guest.

I don't think this is a question that I have seen posed. What is an acceptable response time to a response from a customer? I honestly don't have any data on what ours would be on that, but I don't think response times are any worse than with any other lead source. One thing VIN added to the face of their dashboard recently that I like is "Unanswered Communications." I don't often find many issues in there.

 

[ChrisR]

I don't think this is a question that I have seen posed. What is an acceptable response time to a response from a customer? I honestly don't have any data on what ours would be on that, but I don't think response times are any worse than with any other lead source. One thing VIN added to the face of their dashboard recently that I like is "Unanswered Communications." I don't often find many issues in there.

I was really happy to see that, as well. It's a good start, compared to having to just watch inbound communications counts.

As soon as humanly possible, is my ideal metric. If an email comes in, just as a rep starts the process, they better not stop mid-concept conversation to respond to an email. I don't know there is a specific report to view those response times, will dive in and see if there is one.

 

[James Fleming]

I still don't understanding the thinking behind responding to unresponsive leads for more than (in our case) 7 days. We did a trial run with responding up to 45 days and nothing changed. The people that didn't open the emails never opened them. The people that read and didn't respond still kept reading and not responding. Sure, I get that you might get a few here or there to pop, but at what cost? Annoying the hell out of the 99 other customers for that one?

Here is another question: Why the hell won't these people reading and not responding just tell us to leave them alone. After about our third correspondence, we start basically BEGGING them to tell us to leave them alone. We even tell them the option of literally just sending the words "Yes" or "No." Nope. They just keep reading and not responding. It's baffling.

We have found that dormant, inactive, or bad leads provide plenty of opportunities for more sales. On average, myautoIQ customers see 5% of their monthly sales coming from their dormant leads in the CRM. One of our Hyundai dealers in central PA sold 18 vehicles in May from dormant leads; this was 16% of their monthly sales. The real key is leveraging lead intelligence and retargeting these leads through automation.

 

[Jaythematador]

THAT'S AMAZING JAMES! Which automation platform is your Hyundai store currently using? @James Fleming