June was the beginning of the end for some of us in the
retail automotive industry. As I have said many times
dealerships in the next few years will evolve to become more
efficient or DIE! We as a dealer body cannot continue this
trend of buying more customers in the media and the
manufacturers cannot continue to artificially prop up the
market with higher and higher incentives. You will have to
become more efficient with the customers you have and you
will need to look for more ways to supplement dwindling
profits in F&I and vehicle margins due to outside attack.
Unlike a politician I am not going to just tell you what you
need, you already know that, I am however going to tell you
that you will need to make a conscious decision to change
the way you think and what we as an industry have inbred in
our personnel over the last 10 years.
The answer lies both in the past and the future, now I know
that sounds like a gypsy fortune teller but it is true it is
a term I like to call "Back to the basics on steroids". The
basics are the thing we know to be right but due the
overwhelming number of ups over the last few years it has
become easy to just bury our heads in the sand and go play
golf in hopes we can will it never to end (didn't work).
First Get rid of Desk Managers and Hire or Grow Sales
Managers again. All to often I see the alleged sales manager
(desk guy) sitting behind a desk waiting for a deal and just
like the salesperson who is waiting for an up the sales
managers spend the majority of their time WAIT'N, quit-it
use the technology of the present day to get in touch with
every deal any CRM system you have should allow you in a
matter of seconds to get a salesperson into the sales office
and call a customer and persuade them back to the dealership
for another chance at the sale. Have daily warm up meetings
with the salespeople help them to get more out of the
customers they talk with and see every customer as a buyer,
it is just a matter of time. Use automated email and
triggers in your CRM system to follow up on customers
automatically that night after they leave the dealership and
to sell service and products ongoing long after the sales is
made, these things should be in you CRM system and happen
with out you having to think about them or telling the
system to do it, it should just happen we have the
technology.
Stop trying to do what you are not good at or is not your
core competency. You are a car dealer not a call center or a
database management company. Why would you use precious
resources to try and be something you are not? Out source
these things let the people who do that for a living do
that. Use BDC personnel to be your eyes and ears on the
floor to help you inspect what you expect from your
salespeople and your CRM system. Your CRM provider is also
not with out responsibility here they should help you with
best practices and implementation, they should be a partner
with you dealership and not just a provider of technology,
poor implementation is the key reason for CRM failure in any
dealership.
TRAINING, TRAINING, TRAINING, CRM is a journey not a
destination you will be on it forever the rewards are great
but no great reward ever came without hard work. The
training will have to come from your CRM provider and needs
to be free your turnover is to great and your sales managers
are poor teachers, the technology is available to allow this
to happen I know we're using it at AIMData.
Unfortunately there isn't enough space in this newsletter
for me to write down all the basics that technology can
supercharge in your dealership, I hope what is here has
helped some.
I will leave you with this; you will do these things it is
just a matter of time because, it is a matter of survival.
Don't wait start now a very smart man once said "If you want
a change in your life it will have to be sudden and
dramatic" ironically this guy is pretty smart and not even
in the car business.... go figure.
Larry Bruce is President/CEO of Aim Data
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