Make Every Opportunity Count

The DBJ theme this month is marketing and advertising. I thought about writing about the various ways to advertise a buy here-pay here dealership and kept coming back to the same conclusion. One of the best ways to improve the marketing results of our efforts is to take far better care of the opportunities we already have. It seems that every time I moderate one of my Twenty Group meetings there are ideas to market, promote or advertise the dealership, the vehicles or the finance opportunity. Most of the ideas are evolutionary, not revolutionary.

Whether we use traditional marketing channels and advertising mediums such as print radio or television or go to direct marketing via mail, e-mail, social networks or the use of the Internet and Web sites, we typically fail at the most important aspect of the marketing process. We fail to turn leads into sales.

A few years ago, we conducted an experiment with our buy here-pay here dealers in our Twenty Groups. We offered each member a free 800 number to be used any way they desired. We would track, record and grade the sales call effort on 20 calls and report back to the members at the following meeting.

What struck me first is that many of the dealers chose not to participate in the FREE experiment. The second stunning event was the grades of the calls that were recorded. Over 1,600 calls were recorded and based on some very elementary grading criteria; over 90 percent of the calls were graded as a D or an F.

I actually had one dealer comment only one day after the group replay of the calls that he needed a better advertising campaign/marketing program because he was not selling enough cars.

This dealer had reached our 20 call limit in less time than any other of the 80 dealers who participated, but his team “killed” every single sales opportunity. They got no information from the customer, they did not set appointments, they told the caller the car requested was sold or they gave out so much information there was no reason to come the lot.

After playing all these calls, the dealer still didn’t see how wasteful his advertising dollars were if this was how calls were handled. So what is the point of this story? Why would you pay for more leads and what would you do with them if you don’t take care of the ones you already have?

More and more of my dealers are turning to a Business Development Center philosophy. They are reducing the “sales associate” position to appointment setters or meet and greeters. They are doing so with the intent to improve closing ratios and sell MORE cars with fewer advertising dollars. It is curious that an hourly wage appointment setter is far more effective than a sale professional. Some BDC experts have told us that is precisely that reason (the appointment setter is not a sales person nor do they discuss sales) and that is why they are so effective. I personally don’t care how we get them; we just need to get them in the door. We still sell cars to people in person, and I’ve yet to see that reality change. We must do whatever it takes to set the appointment, get the appointment to show and sell the car when they do show.

So here’s the deal. You can use whatever advertising method you feel makes the phone ring. If it’s TV, print or radio — great. If its direct mail, awesome. If it’s an electronic delivery method such as Web sites, e-mail, social networking, perfect. The policies and procedures and strategy you employ to track, record, and follow up on all sales leads and prospects is where you can make the biggest and

most-effective change in your results.

It doesn’t even matter if you track your leads electronically using a CRM system or create old-fashioned handwritten logs; you must track every lead, follow up on every call and even continue to follow up after the consumer has made a purchase. This responsibility falls on management and ownership so make it happen!