The five core Internet structures for dealerships
The three main pillars essential to dealership success are marketing, process and structure. I’d like to spend some time focusing on structure, as it is the number one killer of Internet departments throughout dealerships today.
Structure’s main goal is to put scalability to your process. Today, there are five core structures that dealership are using. There seems to be an evolution within these structures, so it’s entirely possible that a store might be utilizing one core system now, which is different from one they’ve had before.
But let’s think about where we’re headed. If your store quadrupled the number of Internet leads tomorrow, could you handle it? As structure dictates scalability, it’s the number one factor in determining if your store is in the position to handle more business.
Single Internet sales manager
This is where many of us started in the industry. We realized there was business to be had online and that there were Internet leads coming in from our manufacturers and third-party sources. We grabbed the person in the store who we thought was the best on the computer and put them on the Internet.
Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks to this model is that we tended to grab the person who didn’t do so well in sales. But, of course, not being good in sales shouldn’t be your first requisite for an Internet sales manager. This person needs to be both incredibly dynamic and a wonderful sales person.
This position is particularly difficult to hire for because the individual needs to be both right-brained and left-brained. They must be great with people and great with process. They have to great on the phone and great on the computer.
Another drawback to this model is that it’s not scalable. It won’t take long before you realize that you have more Internet business than one Internet sales manager can handle. This leads us to the next core structure involving multiple people.
Multi-team internet sales department
This might include two, three, five or maybe even 10 people all housed in one department. These people work the leads, set up and show appointments, help customers, close deals, get customers to finance and do the long-term follow up. This structure tends to results in a showroom sales team separate from an Internet sales team.
The drawback here is that there is a division between your retail floor and your Internet department, and we’ve all seen the ramifications of this on a Saturday morning when your top Internet guy is having kangaroo court with your top sales guy over a split deal.
The fact is, you can’t tell an Internet customer from any other type of customer, so managing this division becomes complicated, and a primary reason why we need to have a more integrated approach.
Business development centres
Some dealers have seen the Internet department model and decided that even if they have a growing sales team in this department, there is a lot of follow up to be made and a lot of phone skills to nail. Instead, they create a phone center, or business development centre, where they filter all of their leads into and where the people with great phone skills can answer the calls and email leads, and set appointments. When those appointments come in, they pass them onto their best sales people.
The BDC model thrives on the philosophy that some people are better tasked to phone and email while others have strengths in selling and closing, and that those strengths are mutually exclusive.
Reverse BDCs
Some people argue that a BDC isn’t the most appropriate model because they worry about putting their most valuable asset, the customer, in the hands of a $12 an hour call centre employee.
In this case, they’d rather have their sales people, who are trained to handle leads, set appointments and close the deals, to be at the forefront. A reverse BDC works on the premise that the sales people get the sales up front and have a specified amount of time to set an appointment or sell the car.
If those goals aren’t met in the given time frame, the salesperson is assisted by the BDC, who helps with follow up and appointment setting, and once the appointment is set, the BDC passes it back to the sales person.
Internet stores
There are some stores that understand that 90 per cent of their customers are online and only 10 per cent of their staff is trained to handle them. The solution? Train everyone in the dealership to handle Internet leads. The Internet is simply a communication preference, and if a sales person can meet and greet and overcome objections with a phone customer and a walk-in customer, why can’t they do the same for an Internet customer?
We are heading to a place where all dealerships will one day be Internet stores. Many people think that’s radical or even wrong, but let me be clear: I’m not insisting that every store needs to be like that now, nor am I saying that we need to do away with call centers in dealerships. I simply believe that the division between Internet and retail is going away. We don’t have newspaper departments; we don’t have TV departments; so, why do we have Internet departments.
