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We have posed this month's question to Sean V. Bradley the CEO of Dealer Synergy, a nationally recognized Internet Sales Trainer.
We are considering outsourcing our inbound phone handling, what are your thoughts on this solution?
There is no right or wrong solution to this challenge, and the right answer depends on your situation, budget and location. It goes without saying that training is essential for your call center and all employees who handle your inbound phone calls. While some dealerships have chosen to use third party companies for this function, I am not a big fan of outsourcing your call center for several reasons.
- I view it as a short term solution
- The team that you outsource to may not have the same commitment as a traditional in-house solution.
- Outsource teams do not understand and appreciate the true value of your dealership. Therefore it is not realistic for them to convey your unique value proposition to a prospect.
An outsourcing solution may make sense if there were an internal crisis or business was so good your in-house staff could not handle the volume. Then it might be a necessity. Or, you wanted assistance with your long term follow-up, leads and or "aged" prospects. Outsourcing is a great way of gaining incremental business without tying up your front line people with long term (lower closing) opportunities.
I truly believe that you will create greater value and do much better with a trained in-house team. Remember your internal folks have more skin in the game. Investing in your own people almost always pays big dividends in the long run for your store.
Many stores are very busy and dealerships just don't invest time, energy or money into training. The average dealership spends about $50,000 in advertising a month and the average store has 10 sales consultants. That's $5,000 a piece in advertising with little or no training what so ever. Does that make sense to you? On behalf of our dealer clients, our company conducts thousands of mystery shopper calls and performs call monitoring for inbound calls. Here are some highlights of what we have observed:
( Read More )
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Mom, Apple Pie & Selling Online in the Mid-West
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Bryan Hopkins | Internet Sales Director at Hare Auto Group
In the heartland of Indiana, domestic vehicles rule. The challenge is what to do for customers looking to trade out of trucks and SUVs in order to cut their monthly gas expense. Bryan Hopkins the Internet Sales Director for Hare Auto Group has to get creative to keep customers buying their Chevy's, Pontiac's, Buick's and GMC's these days. Lucky for him his dealer group is well prepared. The Hare Auto Group, considered to be America's Oldest Transportation Company and their Chevrolet store in Noblesville, Indiana is the #1 volume GM store in the state of Indiana.
AutoUSA: Tell us a little bit about your background in the industry?
Bryan: I started in the business while in high school in Newnan, Georgia working as a porter at a local Chevy dealership. After graduating from the University of Alabama I went to work as the Internet Manager for Jay Wolfe Automotive in Kansas and Missouri. After two years I took a position with Ted Britt Automotive which is just outside of Washington DC. While at Ted Britt I won Ford Directs Internet Dealer of the Year in both 2005 and 2006. I have been with Hare almost two years now, and am working hard to maintain our fast pace. Last year our Chevrolet store was #20 in Internet Pre-Owned Sales and #51 in overall Internet Sales as ranked by AutoDealer Monthly Magazine.
AutoUSA: What is the size and structure of your Internet Department?
Bryan: We have four folks in our Internet Department and another four in our BDC. The people in our Internet Department are appointment setters and their total focus is to set the appointment and get the customer in the door. When the customer arrives at the dealership we assign specific sales people to work with these customers. By allowing our team to concentrate on setting appointments and not selling the cars they are able to handle large amounts of leads, phone calls, chats, as well as follow up on all these prospects to provide a fast and high quality response.
AutoUSA: What do you do that is different from your competition?
Bryan: I think it starts with the response time on all the leads that are received by our department. We utilize over one hundred toll-free numbers on our various marketing programs for both online and traditional channels. All these lines ring straight to the Internet department so there is no wait time for the customer plus we are well prepared to properly handle each call. We also have a chat feature on our website and we average around 20 leads per day from this functionality.
Another big thing that separates us from our competition is our Customer Rewards Program through Visible Customer. We have three levels of reward levels with three different rewards cards and anyone who does business with us whether sales or service gets a card. This card gives the customer discounts on services and the ability to earn points for money off of their next vehicle purchase. It is a great tool for customer retention plus it is one of our points on our Online Value Package that our customers will receive.
AutoUSA: How do lead providers figure into your strategy?
Bryan: We have two sources of lead providers. The first is where we acquire leads from other sites. An example of this kind of lead would be AutoUSA, whose leads we have been using for quite awhile now. We maintain a high ROI on our AutoUSA leads. Additionally, AutoUSA leads allow us to keep our PPC costs down and focus more on SEO and Video SEO where we get a great response. Second, we have functionality on our site provided by other companies who provide vehicle and trade-in pricing and other methods to generate traffic and leads from the site.
AutoUSA: What types of marketing and advertising do you do to increase web traffic?
Bryan: We have a video SEO initiative and it has generated over 20,000 views. With more people looking for video online this has been invaluable to us. We also use our Intellisweeps program which is our free vehicle giveaway that takes place at the NADA Convention each February. We ask prospects a few short questions and when they submit their info to us it make them eligible for the sweepstakes. In May 2008 our Intellisweeps program generated 550 leads on our website.
Website: http://www.hareauto.com
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