I recently read that today the reality is that, whether prospective buyers are in your virtual showroom or your physical showroom, they’re a buyer. Maybe not today, but statistically the Internet customer is highly likely to buy within 90 days.
94% of car buyers begin the process online, according to recent estimates, yet most dealerships attribute less than 30% of actual sales to Internet leads. Why the discrepancy? Most consumers do research online but instead of submitting a lead, they decide to call or walk into a dealership when they’re ready to buy. Because of all the research they can do on their own, though, customers today visit only 1.4 dealerships before purchasing a car, down from 4.5 in 2005, according to J.D. Power.
And, according to a recent study by CAR-Research XRM, only 25% of people leave showrooms because they are “still shopping.†The rest leave because of inventory, financing or some other issue. These customers are ready to buy, the only question is, are they buying from you?
Statistically speaking this means that you have a better than a 50/50 chance of selling 75% of customers that walk through your door. You now have the best odds for conversions than ever before.
So if you don’t have the right sales management, finance management and sales team you are losing sales. Patting people on the back is great and there isn’t anyone that doesn’t appreciate praise but if you want to have the managers and salespeople who are true leaders; that will have the right inventory; Mangers that want to get involved with every customer that drives on your lot and salespeople that know how to deal with customers to get the sale- you need to compensate them. This is the only way you are going to recruit the real talent. In other words you need seasoned people that have a solid track record of consistently exceeding goals and objectives.
Marketing:
As I stated in my blog "Take Back Your Marketing†The technology exists today for dealers to get much better results from their own website. Technology is constantly changing the marketing landscape and dealers today can use smaller more efficient marketing companies that will work for them and cut back on the1000s of dollars they are paying the big classified sites and big marketers (they don’t need anymore) in much more productive ways with much better results.
Once you have built the right sales and marketing team you should have an outside consulting company come in quarterly to audit the performance of the sales and marketing departments who can provide fresh out of the box ideas of new industry developments, potential problem areas that are not being noticed and possible solutions to ongoing problems.
This means that by putting your precious resources to work efficiently in the right areas your ROI will be higher and give you results that will drive more to the bottom line.
Posted By Bill Cosgrove
DealerNet Services
The traditional business model of the Automotive Dealership works against itself practically at every     turn and is just plain bad for business and it is time to think about change.
With all the advances in technology over the years from Marketing to DMS, CRM and diagnostics for repairs the changes have been exponential. But yet the business model which has been flaw from the beginning has been overlooked and ignanother discussion)
2. Managements commission structure at most Dealership is based on the monthly numbers which is a big mistake but a necessary one at least for the new car Department. This propagates the undesired effect of pushes at the end of the month by management to put even more into trades and often sell vehicles way below their value and often times at losses to hit those numbers. Additionally, often times deals are back dated for days into the following month in order to hit those benchmarks set by the Dealership for the payment of bonuses.ored.
There are two main points that I will touch on for this discussion but there are many other areas of concern which are fodder for other discussions to come.
1. Every department in a Dealership is a business upon itself with a budget and income expectations. This in itself causes a great deal of friction within the Dealership and most notably between the Pre-owned Department, the Service Department, the New Car Department and the BDC Departments.
A. At most Small and Medium size Dealerships any properly managed Pre-owned Department is  the Service Department´s largest customer. Â
B. The Pre-owned Department pays close to the same labor rates as the average customer who has their vehicle serviced at the Dealership.
This causes constant in-fighting over costs of repairs, turnaround times and repairs that are not necessary. Also, repairs that were needed that were not performed before they were passed on to reconditioning and end up on the lot in disrepair.
C. The New Car management is constantly putting higher than called for numbers into trades (a subject for another discussion) to hit the benchmarks set by the Manufacturer to get that back end money and hit their bonus. (And yes I understand why this is done)
D. Then it is the responsibility of the pre-owned manager to sell at a loss or a small profit or eventually take it to auction to sell at a loss. This is the cause of being mandated by the Manufacturer to move vehicles by the numbers which is where this contradiction surfaces. (Inventory control - subject for another discussion).
E. The BDC department in a lot of cases thinks of the sales Department as a bunch of narrow minded Neanderthals and in turn the sales department thinks of the BDC staff as a bunch of Computer geeks that should not be engaging the leads.
 All of these points in a lot of cases may be true caused, not by the lack of training, but by the lack of structure and proper management. Bottom line all of these things affect income potential resulting in loss of substantial amounts of profit. (a subject for
A. You can see where this can lead to management looking out more for themselves to hit their bonuses than for the Dealership they are working for. You can also see where here again is another potential loss of profit for the Dealership.
There is a better way to structure the business model easily without having to reinvent the wheel. Dealerships simply need to take the profit from all Departments and combine them and the entire management team at the Dealership is compensated with their respective percentage.
 But Dealerships also need to base the amount of managements  bonuses on the combined CSI of all Departments which will hold all accountable. This will foster more cooperation and force management to pay more attention to customer service at all levels and customer follow up.
This just covers the basic structure of the business model. There are other areas within this overall model that can be done to improve efficiencies and foster more cooperation and accountability. (Which is another subject for discussion)
Author Bill Cosgrove
DealerNet Services
