Form AJ Ager, Finance Director of Al Serra Chevrolet in Colorado Springs

Let me pick your brain on a couple of things

With BDC shit

How do you feel about auto responders?

How often do you follow up on internet leads?

How much do you like templates?

Here you go AJ:

How do you feel about auto responders? It is an absolute necessity. Customers are looking for instant gratification. Now it is important to have as much information in your emails to be written in HTML so the auto responders can be as personal as possible. We have actually have a guy on staff that does copyright work and then we turn them over to out IT guy to write the HTML for our clients.

How often do you follow up on internet leads? You call them 3 times per day for the first three days (only leave one voicemail), 2 times per day for the next four days, 1 time per days for the next 8 days, every other day till day 45, and then every third day until day 90. Then, you want to email them every day for the first seven days (have different messages each time) and then every third day.

Here are some stats from when I was in Houston. I wanted to know how much work it took my BDC to get in a customer that eventually sold. I studied about 300 sold deals to gather this information. It was very interesting.

17.6 days old – average age of a lead when they walked in our dealership

9.2 phone calls – average number of calls it took to get someone in the dealership

4.9 emails – average number of personalized (does not include auto responders) emails it took to get someone to visit the dealership

22% – percent of sold customers that started off with only an email address and no phone number….some people like to communicate by email first and you have to earn their trust before they will take the next step

One other thing about this study, it was only information on sold customers but that was not the only thing I tracked. It is important to track contact, appointments, shows, and sold to get a full picture. If any number drops, you know what your team needs to work on.

Contact rate gets low – not enough dials by the BDC….they need to work harder

Appointment rate low – not asking enough, not demonstrating a sense of urgency, not controlling the conversation, maybe losing customers with tone…this is a broad area. I have a report that I make the BDR’s fill out if they have a low appointment rate until it returns to standard. The report has them fill out the reasons an appointment was not set anytime they make contact but no appointment. You will start to notice trends and know where you need to train.

Show rate low – not setting real appointments, not answering any of the customers concerns (many scripts are designed to keep the customer in the dark and this will hurt your show rate….have a script that asks for customer participation and train your people to answer the customers concerns), not resetting appointments (if a customer is not there in an hour from the time they are supposed to be, BDR’s need to be calling them. REAL IMPORTANT: They need to call and not badger the customer by asking why they didn’t show. They need to call and say “I am so sorry I was busy but I wanted to call you up and see how you are enjoying your new ride?” This customer who was scared of being turned down is now regretting now showing since it is obvious by that statement that your dealership gets a lot of people in cars. They will reset appointments and show.), asking for too many stips (this will overwhelm people….most information can be found online these days)

Sale rate low – this not a BDC thing but it is a way to manage your overall department

How much do you like templates? Templates are okay if they are written right. A lot of them are not and use a lot of words that trigger a negative subconscious response from the customer….for instance, every time you say dealership, customers subconscious travels back to past negative car buying experiences of theirs or friends…You need to eliminate certain words to keep people’s minds in Present Time. This is the only way they can receive the information you are relaying to them. Another example, ever hear a commercial for Ditech? They used to always say we can have an answer back for you in an hour…..what does this mean? That there is a possibility you could be turned down….Listen to their commercials now, they say we will have your approval request back to you in an hour….This shit works!!!!!!