Website / Inventory Manager pay plan questions

[supton]

I'm hoping that somebody here can help. When I first started at the dealership, I was in sales. Overtime, as the owner and management discovered that I was good with technology, I was transitioned into a hybrid website / inventory manager position that works alongside the BDC Director. I am responsible for website design (utilizing vendor's site-builder tool and some custom html coding), some video editing, graphic design (banners, logos, etc), configuring pricing rules to display multi-tiered price fields, pricing maintenance, photographing all new/used inventory (25 photo average), window stickers, comments, troubleshooting for crm, hardware, etc, and really much more. Truly stretched thin for all the work, but enjoy the job. I deal with the inventory for the dealership listed below, but I'm the webmaster for the entire autogroup (5 websites).



Anyways, we’ve been searching for some bar to gauge my pay plan. As I’ve drifted away from sales into this position, we are in uncharted territory. Nothing we’ve found on here or elsewhere gives a good idea for what I should be paid. Right now, we know that I’m well underpaid and want make the compensation more competitive. What should be the average yearly pay for this type of position?

Thanks for the help.

Scott Upton
Website-Inventory Manager
Dry Ridge Toyota
www.dryridgetoyota.com

 

[Chris Cachor]

Anyways, we’ve been searching for some bar to gauge my pay plan. As I’ve drifted away from sales into this position, we are in uncharted territory. Nothing we’ve found on here or elsewhere gives a good idea for what I should be paid. Right now, we know that I’m well underpaid and want make the compensation more competitive. What should be the average yearly pay for this type of position?

It sounds much more like you've ventured into the web marketing/interactive design field more and that market is pretty hot. I wouldn't say exclusively as Dealer.com still develops the site, but, something in the 55-65k range in a major metro market. Outside of that, perhaps 50-57k. Do you handle the PPC? SEO? The more you handle technically, the more you're worth. If you do PPC, SEO, and the interactive media, I think you're looking around the 65-75k range. More importantly, what do you feel you're worth to the group? I've seen some eCommerce Director roles in the six figure range but those are for some larger groups (15+ stores).

 

[yagoparamo]

Scott,

No matter how technical you think it is from the owner's POV still is admin work and that actually has pretty well defined pay plans across many industries. Lets put it this way; the systems that we use in the auto industry can nowadays be learned by most 20 something year old as they are used to deal with technology. What your job may require is perhaps a little bit more creativity and common sense than others, but that still is not a highly paid skill nowadays as it is easily available.

From my POV I would look for the 45-55K range so you don;t price yourself out of a job, however I would use the position to learn as much as possible and find a similar gig at a 8+ store. There is where you can find a more challenging spot that also has more potential to grow in the long run.

 

[Alex Snyder]

I've seen some eCommerce Director roles in the six figure range but those are for some larger groups (15+ stores).

That title gets thrown around quite loosely. So does Internet Manager and BDC Manager. Manager implies managing a staff. Director implies strategist and decision maker.

A lot of the times I see these titles it is 1 employee in a single store answering Internet leads and handling the advertising aspects of the dealership website. You'd never see a sales manager who doesn't desk deals, appraise vehicles, or manage some sales people. And you'd never see a GM who doesn't manage a store. Those are well-defined roles whose job descriptions are known. The fact that we have a BDC Manager who is the only person in the BDC and eCommerce Directors who handle Internet leads cradle to grave just shows that, as an industry, we still don't know what we're doing here.

I wanted to make this point when trying to compare dollars to job titles. It is misleading to those who don't understand the chasm of differences in the job descriptions despite the similarities in the titles.

 

[Chris Cachor]

That title gets thrown around quite loosely.

You're right, especially when comparing titles to dollars. Titles in general IMO are being thrown around a little bit too loosely these days.

 

[mcampo2501]

A lot of good information here already. If you're going to be paid in the 6 figure range you should be managing BOTH the BDC (not working in it) and all digital marketing efforts. By this I mean you should be staying on top of trending technologies and advising your GSM/Dealer Principal as to what they should or should not be spending their money on. You should be managing the dealerships digital ROI. You should have your eye on all the incoming leads, and constantly instructing your BDC personnel (whom you should be responsible for hiring and firing) on ways to improve their response rate, appt set rate, appt show rate, and the process with which the sales staff will handle internet leads once they are turned over. If you are on the other side of most of, if not all of, these tasks then you are probably looking at something in the 50K range. How are you being paid now?

 

[supton]

I appreciate all the responses here and you’ve all given me much to consider. I would probably say that we are selling an average of 140-160 units through our Toyota location, but we are also opening a used vehicle outlet across the street next month that will hopefully see a significant increase in units sold. I say this because I’m in charge of the inventory at these stores (pictures, window stickers, comments, tracking, etc.) and get paid $6/vehicle that I photograph. Our markets are primarily the Cincinnati and Lexington areas, with us located just 30 minutes south of downtown Cincinnati.

Like I implied in my first post, I know I’m grossly underpaid for what I do (actually I will barely clear $32k (including picture fees) for a year at my current rate). I’ve been doing this for about 8 months now and we went into this as uncharted territory in the hopes for a major improvement in our website and inventory. Fortunately, these improvement goals have been met and exceeded, but the pay will definitely need to be made competitive or I might be better off going back to the sales floor to make some money (which I don’t look forward to plus there is no way they would let me).

Additionally, at the time of the initial posting I was hoping that we were going to be working on my compensation, but I was just informed yesterday that the owner is seeking cost-saving measures from all departments, including freezing all pay.

As Yagoparamo suggest, for the time being I am learning as much as I can while I can. The BDC Director is also wanting to train me some more on the BDC side of things, but I don't know if he'll actually get to it. In the coming years, I figure that many of the skills and systems that I’m learning will be highly desirable to dealerships seeking to take more advantage of eCommerce.

Thanks,
Scott

 

[Stephen Hill]

Everyone has posted a general salary range for the "inet marketing/webmaster." Is anyone currently in this position or have someone at the dealership that does this and has a pay plan with incentives? Any ideas on how you would incentivize someone in this position that has zero to do with the sales process?

 

[subi101]

Everyone has posted a general salary range for the "inet marketing/webmaster." Is anyone currently in this position or have someone at the dealership that does this and has a pay plan with incentives? Any ideas on how you would incentivize someone in this position that has zero to do with the sales process?

I've structured many people with this type of role and I've also been lucky with DPs/Owners who are understanding of the changing needs for the dealership.

Here is what I have done in the past and it has worked well for the goals we were pushing. I think it is a change in mentality of how important your online merchandising is. I personally think it is a difficult case to make, because for so long we have been assessed by the units we sell and this role like many others now in our industry... isn't trackable through units sold.

600/wk (31,200/yr)
500 bonus for incentives (6,000/yr)
1. 85% of active available (on the ground and through PDI) inventory with completed pictures/videos/window stickers/descriptions
2. 1 non vehicle walkaround video per week (VSEO purposes. Should be fun, dealership related, or educational)
3. Inventory accuracy sheet complete (assessing if all online marketing is showing the right number of vehicles, pictures are accurate, etc.)
5 per unit sold (9,000 - 15,000/yr)
(assuming they continue to sell 150/mo = 750) (9000)
(assuming they sell 250/mo = 1250) (15,000/yr)
Because if you think about it, the efforts of marketing online is what is selling these cars and driving the traffic.

So the range would be anywhere from (46,200 - 52,200)

You would adjust it based on your market, goals, and unit cost based on how many units you sell.

And Scott, your efforts are bringing in the traffic. I see nothing wrong in pointing out your case. Especially if you took a pay cut to essentially do more. I understand the need to cut back, but if you were to not do what you are doing, they would be paying significantly more per car, just to get a window sticker and pictures online.

Just my two cents.

Good Luck!

 

[mcampo2501]

Everyone has posted a general salary range for the "inet marketing/webmaster." Is anyone currently in this position or have someone at the dealership that does this and has a pay plan with incentives? Any ideas on how you would incentivize someone in this position that has zero to do with the sales process?

Stephen,

You're crazy if you think that internet marketing has zero to do with the sales process. If that's the way you feel, you shouldn't be paying him/her anything at all. I have worked in many different capacities within an internet department and am currently running the department. Salary depends a lot on your market, but know that you will always get what you pay for in this industry and a payplan should be structured around the results you want to get. Subi has created a great skeletal structure for how a "marketing manager" should be paid. Alex makes a great point in that we really haven't made clear how an internet department should run, what responsibility everyone should have, and what the people within it should get paid. That makes most of these compensation conversations moot, as every dealer will approach it differently.

This might sound like a lot of work, but the best way for a dealership to work out an internet pay plan is to go to the person that is managing the entire internet process and presence, and set up some goals and expectations. If this person does not exist, you know where to start. Once you know what your goals are, take a baseline snapshot of each metric you intend to improve, and ask yourself the following questions and consider for each position you are trying to fill. How many more cars will you be selling if you are meeting your goals? How much money are you averaging per copy? Do the math and that is how much money you should be spending on improving your internet department.

Lets try one out! Having a marketing manager would improve our intenet presence and provide a greater click through rate for our current advertising efforts. Our current internet process allows for a 10% close rate. If the goal is to increase traffic to the website by 1000 visitors, and your current conversion rate is...lets just say 3%, then you will be gaining 3 cars per month if you meet your objective. If your averaging $2000 a copy, thats $72,000/yr. In this instance, I would create a pay plan that would allow for a salary around $48K and allow for up to $2000 in bonus money each month if objectives are being met. If a year goes by and the objectives aren't getting met, you hired the wrong guy. All to often a dealer wants to give up on the internet department because the desired results weren't met. Would a grocery store stop selling meat if the deli was operating at a loss? No. You hire a new deli manager, as it would be impractical to not sell meat at the grocery.