What are the Most Important Metrics you Track?

[CarlosSousa]

As we get into the new year, a lot of the metrics and benchmarks have changed. As such, wanted to bring two questions up to dealership managers:

What metrics matter most to you in your organization?

And how did you get to that conclusion?

Looking forward to a good discussion on this topic!

Carlos

 

[joe.pistell]

Off the top of my head...

SALES:

• How many cars did we sell?
• How efficient were our reps (& managers)?
• Did our training and merchandising promos work?

SHOPPERS

• What % were repeat buyers?
• How long were they in market?
• What's the aggregate credit score (see the trend)

INVENTORY

• What was the sales mix like
• WAS the inventory in balance with the internet shoppers needs (i.e. lost sale report)

and on and on...

 

[dentman333]

It depends on your position. If I were an owner or GM my top line metric would be pre-tax net $ as a % of gross revenue. After that market share both current and historical then employee turnover.

After that focus on marketing effectiveness and ROI. A good E-commerce manager should be looking at website performance and activity and compare against industry benchmarks which are becoming more reliable. If your not maximizing your digital efforts you will waste a lot of cash and have to depend on past customers and locals which will never be enough.

Operational metrics are Time to Market, % Cost to Market & Price to Market especially new, average days in inventory, average inventory cost, aged over xx days, trades vs sales %, sales reps needed vs the number active and their tenure.

There is so much more that can be measured but be careful, too much data can be worse than not enough.

 

[CarlosSousa]

SALES:
Did our training and merchandising promos work?

Joe, this is great input. Thank you - I am curious on the two metrics above.

Are you looking at overall volumes before vs. after your promos / merchandising as the indicator of whether those worked? Or are you looking at lead sources in your CRM?

Maybe you're hinting at Marketing / Sales Attribution which seems to be the holy grail? (i.e. being able to tie offline sales to online behavior)

Just wondering what the most effective way to measure that today would be in your opinion.

There is so much more that can be measured but be careful, too much data can be worse than not enough.

This is a great point, Steve. You want to achieve the right balance and be able to laser-focus on what is important. However, I do believe it is also critical for managers to have the ability to deep-dive and find out specifically why a metric is behaving a certain way.

A good analogy is the Check Engine light in your car. If you only knew that there is a Check Engine light on, you couldn't do anything about it. Having the ability to go beyond the light and into the specific parameters in the diagnostic module is what enables you to solve the issue.

I do agree completely on maximizing digital efforts. Maintaining your focus on the right lead sources is critical!

 

[Alexander Lau]

It depends on your position. If I were an owner or GM my top line metric would be pre-tax net $ as a % of gross revenue. After that market share both current and historical then employee turnover.

After that focus on marketing effectiveness and ROI. A good E-commerce manager should be looking at website performance and activity and compare against industry benchmarks which are becoming more reliable. If your not maximizing your digital efforts you will waste a lot of cash and have to depend on past customers and locals which will never be enough.

Operational metrics are Time to Market, % Cost to Market & Price to Market especially new, average days in inventory, average inventory cost, aged over xx days, trades vs sales %, sales reps needed vs the number active and their tenure.

There is so much more that can be measured but be careful, too much data can be worse than not enough.

+1, I was just going to say that. Depends on where your positioned and what your requirements are at a dealership.

 

[Alexander Lau]

As @dentman333 alluded to, it depends on your position.

As a digital marketer, I tend to focus on KPI metrics such as Quality Score (http://www.wordstream.com/quality-score, taking into account CTR and Keyword Relevance, etc.) for PPC. How are organic searches converting for me? How are social media ads converting for me? Etc., etc., etc.

Ultimately, Cost Per Lead (CPL) and Cost Per Acquisition / Sale (CPA) are vital to understand, across any digital marketing channel. Attribution is where it's at these days. Don't pay for things that fail to work or are a rip-off (there are plenty). Albeit, what works in one demographic isn't going to necessarily work in another (that's been proven time and time again). Understand every touch point = First, Multi and Last along a customer's journey. https://www.transparency.ai and http://www.clarivoy.com (auto-focused) do a great job at the aforementioned strategy.

 

[Alexander Lau]

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