Articles: Marketing & Sales

Improving Your Customer's Experience and Your Sales via the Phone

Jack Lintol is the Chief Operating Officer for Auto Credit Express (ACE), Sub Prime experts who help dealers satisfy the need of Sub Prime consumers through their Training, Traffic and Technology products. ACE's senior management team has delivered tens of thousand of Sub Prime deals since the early 1990's. ACE has helped dealers across the country get into the Sub Prime business or improve their existing Sub Prime business ultimately increasing car sales and profits. Jack can be reached at (248) 370-6658.

Phone skills - something we all can improve upon and hence a huge opportunity. As with any opportunity there are many issues that need to be considered that differ from dealer to dealer based on their circumstances and skills. I will discuss many of the issues you should consider and show that whether you chose to focus on this internally or get help from an outside source you can improve your customer's satisfaction and sell a lot more cars. We will take a look at why I think outsourcing has some good attributes first.

Outsourcing the inbound and outbound calling aspects of sales within the dealership is something I have thought about for the last three years. At one point I thought it could be the next big thing in the car business. In my thinking I said if there was a company that could get it to work properly and be in sync with the way each dealership runs then it would revolutionize the way dealerships operate. I will share with you some of the reasons why I thought (and still think) it could be a great opportunity, please understand that I am generalizing:

• It is tough, in a dealership environment, to set aside the time to gain the commitment, then to implement, train, manage and continuously change the process of handling calls consistently and effectively. This is due to several factors:
  
  
  1. Dealerships tend to focus on the month (you probably won't see significant results this month, but will in future months and years).
  2. Car dealers have an historical mentality of being reactive versus being proactive.
  3. In the dealership, everyone is under a lot of pressure to "hit the numbers". The reality is, it's tough enough set aside five minutes, let alone the hours that will be required to get the process in place as well as set up the training and coaching needed to have a consistent and meaningful way of handling calls.

Dealerships (again in general) are more proficient as incoming sales organizations than outgoing sales organizations. What I mean by this just reinforces #2; sales personnel are in their element when someone is sitting in front of them and, generally, have not been good at (or do not enjoy) getting people into the store. Historically, this is how they have operated. Most salespeople are either great in person or great on the phone, but not both. Most car salespeople are great face to face. Since most sales managers, general managers and dealers started out as car salespeople, they are also better at handling customers in the store and enjoy it more than working the phones. I think you get the picture.

Every dealer I talk to would like to have a consistent process that works and produces great results. However, most are not willing to spend the amount of time and resources that it will take to get the job done. It is costly, it does take time and, in the short term, it will take your managers and salespeople away from selling cars. This is what investment is all about.

Salespeople and sales managers can be phenomenal at handling customers and working deals when a customer is with them face to face. This is their core strength and where they excel.

The outsource call center can focus on one thing- handling the dealer's calls and getting customers in for an appointment. When people and companies focus, do what they are best in the world at and love what they do, they will be successful.

The outsourcing of call functions within the dealership brings the scale and professionalism that every dealership would love to have. Ultimately, it could be cheaper than if they do it themselves.

It gives you the ability to invite all customers into the dealership without prequalification.

There are many dealers who have told me they would love to have their customers' just show up for their appointment. They don't enjoy, and believe they aren't good at, the phone work that it takes to get them into the store. In other words, they want to become a delivery machine.

The outside call center can, just as easily, make dual purpose calls to existing customers for service and referrals, in addition to getting them into a new vehicle.

Lastly, dealers will be able to control and have confidence in what is being said and be able to ensure a consistent message. They would know that every customer is being talked to and handled.

In my days of running inside and outside sales organizations for companies, there have been many organizations that approached me to outsource my sales function. I tried it once (I used agents to help sell our products) and it worked for awhile, then eventually the process died off as the agents obtained new priorities. Luckily, I was still building out my own sales force. The other times I flat out said "no". Sounds a little inconsistent with my thinking above, right? Well, times do change and I try to stay open to new ideas. Let me share with you some questions I would ask myself about outsourcing any of my sales function:

• Do I really want someone else talking with my customers?
• Is someone else going to treat and handle the customer the way I want them to be treated?
• Will someone outside of my organization have a vested interest in this customer aside from them showing up for an appointment? Will the call center be asking about others in the household or other family members who might be in the market for a car? Will they be asking for referrals from every customer they talk to? If they do create referral business will they direct them to my store?
• Will the call center representative be able to handle non scripted objections or questions?
• What is the caliber of people that are working for the outsource company? Do they know anything about me, my dealership or how I want the customer handled? Do they know anything about our sales process?
• Will they have a good communication system with us?
• There are many disconnects where things can go wrong. I have a hard enough time getting my employees to handle objections, control conversations and answer questions. How will someone else do it?
• Will I really have control of my customers and their information?
• How will the call center work my database and will they keep it confidential?
• It is still going to take work on the dealership's part to get the project off the ground, how much more would it take for me to do it myself?

Now that we have looked at both sides of this issue, where do we go from here? It depends on you. The first thing you have to do is acknowledge that there is an opportunity in improving how all of your phone calls are handled - we all should be able to do that. How much opportunity do you think exists? How much do you need to increase your appointment set and show percentages to warrant the investment in either an outsourced call center or a better way to handle calls within your dealership?

The second thing that needs to be done is to look at all of your options, both internal and external. Outsourcing will work for some, but not all, dealers. Get the outsource companies in to give you a presentation. See what they have to offer. Talk to the BDC training companies to see what they have to offer. Talk to their references. This is the easy stuff - the hard things happen when you actually commit yourself to improving the way calls are handled for your dealership.

The best sub prime stores in the country, which I know of, handle their own calls - some through a call center or business development center (BDC) and others through their salespeople. One thing they have in common is the commitment to a process that includes continuous training, management of the process and people as well as continuous change and innovation. They watch their metrics on an hourly basis and pounce when they see a problem. Sales management must be a part of the equation. "Do as I Do" is crucial. Your managers have to be able to make and take calls so that they can train their salespeople or phone specialists. Anytime an appointment is made, whether in an outsource situation or when calls are handled at the dealership, it should be assigned to the manager on duty. The manager must meet and greet every customer. How would you feel, as a customer, if the manager came out from behind his desk and said "hello"? The key to selling appointments is to make sure that a manager "touches" every customer that visits the dealership. When the sales manager "touches" every customer that calls in for the first time or talks to every "be-back" that visited the showroom, you will have more appointments that show and you will sell more cars.

The internal BDC concept has worked well for us. In one of our businesses, we have our employees run sub prime departments throughout the Midwest. For that business we utilize a central BDC located in our office to set and follow up all the appointments for each of the dealers we handle. Our closing percentage on internet leads has increased dramatically and is 33.2% above what we hear from stores that are doing a great job with sub prime leads. How did we do it? We committed ourselves to doing it, hired a great manager, set up an awesome process, then trained and coached our people. We now continuously manage the process, look at the numbers hourly then change and improve the process based on what we learn from those numbers. It's not rocket science - it just takes time and commitment.

So with all that what are you to do? There isn't a dealership across the country that can't improve how they are handling calls. The real question is how much opportunity do you have. If you are in the top 10% of the dealer's who are outstanding at handling the calls, you already do what we discussed and more. If you are however in the lower 90%, you need to do something more. There is a huge opportunity in handling your calls better. Don't try and take it on all at once. Look at the whole process and break it down into bit size chunks - "How do you eat an elephant - one bite at a time". Your appointment set ratio, appointment show ratio and sales will do nothing but go up with a concentrated effort on improving your phone calls, whether through a virtual BDC or improving it yourself. Get it off your to do list and take action. Feel free to give me a call and I can walk you through some of the things we have gone through in setting up our "Virtual BDC". Good Luck.

Published in the Special Finance Insider
April Issue 2008