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IS20G New York ToniAnne Fardette Day 2 The 3 Keys
- 1. The 3 Keys to Building a BDC that Produces
- 2. 1.Hire the Right People 2.Train Right 3.Hold Accountable Right
- 3. Hire the right people
- 4. Hire Right 1- Write a thorough job description 2- Interview Phone Skills- Conduct a phone interview with your customer’s experience in mind 3- In-Person Interview tips that vet out the best employee 4- Phase II of the Interview- Role Play 5- Check References
- 6. Get the BEST candidates interested!!! What’s great about your dealership or dealer group?
- 8. In-Person Interview Tips ✔ A solid interview should last an hour. ✔ Don’t make the mistake of speaking about your part first. If their part does not take approximately half hour because their answers are short and clipped BEWARE. In almost all of the positions we have available, the candidate should be able to articulate themselves clearly and in words. This is a people business. 3- The In-Person Interview.
- 9. 4- Phase II :Personal interview
- 11. Final thoughts about the Hiring Phase
- 12. Train Right
- 22. Sales Management and GM Connection-Asking the right questions
Editor's Notes
- Hire right-starts with the job description. Write a thorough one. Ask yourself what this employee should be expected to do to get the job done. Focus on the productive tasks being emphasized. Think which if these tasks will generate sales and profit for the dealership. Include some of the exciting reasons to work for your particular dealership or dealer group
- Next, ad copy. Headline should be attention grabbing and truly describe the job function. Copy should make the candidate feel it is a privilege to work there. Ask yourself what would be appealing to you as a candidate if you were applying for this position. Video testimonials of other appointment coordinators explaining why they love working for you are great and more believable than just you trying to sell your dealership through ad copy alone. DO include salary and commission and the required experience. Setting these expectations up front is essential to receiving the right types of applicants. I generally try to select applicants without previous bdc experience, and go with those who have at least two years retail, server or customer service over the phone or telemarketing experience. These people are easily trainable in this area and if trained right generally excel in this department.
- 10 min phone interview-Remember these appointment coordinators will spend 99% of their day on the phone handling YOUR customers often as the first point of contact. It is so important that they present well over the phone. This 10 min interview can save you countless hours of wasted interview time with the wrong people. Create a 10 minute interview sheet with questions you will fill in the answers to as you have this initial conversation with the candidate. Some important questions you should probably ask a candidate for an appointment coordinator position are: Are you currently employed? What's the name of the company? What was/is your title/position? Give me a brief description of what the position entailed/entails. Why are you currently seeking employment? Do you know anyone who works for us? Tell me some of your strengths, professionally. What motivates you at work? What frustrates you at work? What does great customer service mean to you? If a customer provides you with severely negative feedback about your service, how would you take it? Why do you consider yourself a suitable candidate for this position? Tell me something about yourself?(Hobbies) Are you ok with being on the phones 8 hours a day? On a scale of 1-10, how detail oriented are you? Do you have reliable transportation? When are you available to begin working? How long can you commit to working with us? What hours are you available? What is your expected salary? How much customer service experience do you have? Would you be willing to submit to a background check and drug Screening Do you have a Facebook account? If so may we check out your account? Computer Skills: scale of 1-10 You may also want to develop some sort of true /false questionnaire with questions relevant to the BDC or internet department process in your store. Judgment call statements to see how they would react to certain customer situations that are bound to come up.
- In-Person Interview Tips ✔A solid interview should last an hour. A half hour of the candidate answering your questions A half hour of the interviewer explaining what is expected, reviewing the job description, speaking about the group expectations, etc. ✔ Don’t make the mistake of speaking about your part first. Otherwise, you have fed the candidate all the answers to your questions, if they already know what you expect, and have reviewed the job description with you. If their part does not take approximately half hour because their answers are short and clipped, beware. In almost all of the positions we have available, the candidate should be able to articulate themselves clearly and in words. This is a people business. Ask in advance if they are okay with the background check and drug test and if there is anything we should be aware of. These tests are expensive and we need to stop wasting time with candidates that ultimately fail one or the other. There will be exceptions, but asking this question will reduce issues in these areas. Tell me about yourself. (You want both business and personal, but remember we can’t ask personal questions, so ask things like, hobbies, likes, dislikes, etc.) (Generally without asking questions we cannot, the candidate will typically open up here and offer age, marital status, children, things like that.) 2. Describe your typical day from start to finish at your last position. 3. Why did you leave ( or are considering leaving if still employed there 4. What would your previous (or current) employer say if I called and asked about you? 5. What would you say is your biggest strength and why? 6. What about a weakness or rather, something you would like to improve on? ( Remember, often times the strength is the weakness. For example, if a biller says their biggest strength is their attention to detail, we want to make sure there is a happy medium here and that attention to detail does not slow them down to a pace we cannot sustain.) 7. Discuss and ask about last (or current) compensation. 8. For a management or supervisory position. What do you think makes a good leader and why? 9. If the candidate has previous auto sales experience or any sales experience, ask for their most recent stats. (A person who has BDC experience for example should be able to answer how many leads, appointments set, showed and sold they averaged. If they cannot easily provide you this info, consider whether or not you want someone to work for you who does not track their productivity in a sales and commission based environment. What does that say about their drive and their need to be successful?)
- Be sure you are sending this candidate home with a basic phone script for their primary function. Maybe it’s your basic internet lead script, or a phone up script, or an off lease call script. It should be whatever you plan to have them primarily handle. Schedule a time right then and there before the conclusion of the interview to have this 5 minute role play over the phone. This role play allows that person 24 hours to really study this script and the results of this roleplay will tell you how bad they really want this position. That same day right after the interview send them the two email questions we talked about and ask that they reply to them prior to the role play so you can discuss their written reply after the role play. If this person’s two most important functions are to call and email YOUR customers, how is this not part of your interview process? Again in most of our positions, the candidate will be replying to your customers via email and they need to have excellent written skills, or at the very least good. What gets sent from your store is representative of you. I suggest always having 3-5 candidates reach this phase of the interview-even if you are only hiring one person that way you have something to judge from and you can choose the one who performs best in both areas.
- Check references. We, all too often, do not do this. There are sample questions at the end of this sheet. Make sure they are business, not personal, and check at least two. Verify the title of the person you are checking with. We want to make sure this a supervisor or manager, and not just someone they may have been friendly with that works there Reference questions (get a reply in writing if possible via email or fax, as well as you should always do the same when providing a reference for someone for security and employee personal information safeguard)
- I suggest always having 3-5 candidates reach the final phase of the interview-even if you are only hiring one person that way you have something to judge from and you can choose the one who performs best in both areas. · Making the interview process more thorough may mean it takes longer to fill the position, but consider how much wasted time and expense there is when you hire someone just to have a body in a chair. Ultimately, you fire them or they quit, now you spend more money on ads, training, and let’s not forget the money we lose when we need to take a productive and capable person, usually a manager or senior rep to train numerous candidates until you find the right one. Also consider how much money you lose on your customers that an incapable and untrained employee has contact with ( lost sales)
- It is extremely important that the new hire spend a week in store in the actual environment to observe the mechanical logistics of the BDC department. The first day should be a compilation of the following things: All necessary website access Major third parties like cars.com, autotrader.com, kbb.com, edmunds.com. Awards and accolades sites like JD Power, Car and Driver, OEM sites. 3-4 of your competitor sites It is super important that this first day be spent not only making sure they have quick and easy access to these sites (favorites or desktop saved items) but that they fully understand how they work and why consumers visit them. They should be encouraged to submit “ leads” or “mystery shop” the competitors and for their “homework” that first night, write a brief evaluation of their findings to be reviewed with you the following morning.) If at all possible, vendors/contacts from any of these sites should be on site and available to assist with this training on the new hire start date.
- Day 2 should include full training on the CRM tool including but not limited to: How to properly reply to an internet lead Review of all templates that are part of your internet process Review of the flow of the internet follow up campaign How to properly enter a phone up How to properly label a customer in store Any other templates or campaigns they will be responsible for handling The candidate should be sent home with all basic scripts that night and their day 2 “homework” is to memorize as much of them as possible. The most basic ones you will want to include are: New and used car internet lead scripts New and used car phone up scripts Off Lease Handling/Lease Equity Appraisal on Trade Trade in Handling Common rebuttals for credit and price You should have “perfect” recorded calls of each of these types to email to them beforehand as well so they can listen to what they SHOULD sound like before practicing and memorizing.
- Day 3 A.M. should be spent by starting with a role play of the scripts they were sent home with the night before followed by the new hire “shadowing” a senior appointment coordinator all day on day 3 listening to these real situations play out. Make sure this day starts out with the senior coordinator reviewing whatever metrics type sheet (Google Doc recommended) you require your coordinators to use to track and measure production and accountability. P.M. The second half of this day should include the new hire doing the“driving” in the CRM tool to get a feel for what they learned the day before. Additional scripts should be sent home with new hire that night so they can begin memorizing.
- Day 4 should be spent with the new hire making “live” calls under the BDC manager’s supervision. They should start out with older internet leads (aged days 60-90 with no prior contact.) This should be a coaching and counseling day and MUST be done by the BDC manager not another appointment coordinator. The BDC manager must be ready and willing to take over and call necessary if “live” contact is made with the customer.
- NTV 2 separate slides Day 5 A.M. morning should be a continution of “live calls with BDC manager like the day before. P.M. By afternoon the new hire should be getting their new work space all set up, and at this time all department or company policies should be reviewed incuding a recap of the job description and all expectations. A written evaluation similar to this one should be reviewed and signed off on by both the new hire, the BDC manager and the General Manager. The evaluation should definitley include the new hire’s feedback and thoughts as well. A “mini” follow up training plan should be created based on the BDC manager’s evaluation and the new hire’s feedback.
- A written evaluation similar to this one should be reviewed and signed off on by both the new hire, the BDC manager and the General Manager. The evaluation should definitley include the new hire’s feedback and thoughts as well. A “mini” follow up training plan should be created based on the BDC manager’s evaluation and the new hire’s feedback.
- So now you have hopefully hired the right person, invested time in training them properly. So we deposited into the production bank account, so now what do we expect out of it? Inspect what expected is the only way to be successful and continue to take your people to the next level. How can you know where you are going if you have no idea where you are at?
- You need to have a shared Google Doc that tracks basics like call attempts, call connections, appointments made, confirmed, showed and sold for the day as well as WTD and MTD. Why is the Google doc so important, because if it is not a shared file, all too often the BDC manager becomes the “chaser of the metrics” and before you know it all you have is overpaid data collector. PLEASE do not waste a truly talented BDC manager’s by making them the data chaser, collector and keeper for your store. It is also very important that the appointment coordinator is aware of these metrics for his or herself. It helps keep their mind on the goal or objective, keeps them motivated and focused on what they need to do today to get them that much closer to their m onth end goals. All too often, I see stores review this at the end of the month for the whole month. What good is that? The month is over. You can coach and counsel your staff on what they could have done to improve but already lost that month and you can’t get it back. This is why daily for the BDC manager and at least weekly for sales management and GM’s is super important.
- So what should a sales manager or a GM be asking? All too often, I hear the stories about the sales manager calling the BDC manager in a frantic panic on Friday afternoon at 3pm asking how we only have 10 appointments from BDC for a Saturday, or throughout the week telling them to “push” for Saturday appointments. But here is the thing-if you have a solid plan in place to hold them accountable daily all week long and you are monitoring this, the appointments will fall will they need to and you will have a steady flow of car sales from BDC appointments all week long not just on saturday. So what’s the formula?
- Each full time appointment coordinator should be making an average of 120 outbound calls per day. You need them to do this in order for them to average 10-14 CONTACTS (phone conversations/actual opportunities to set an appointment each day. And they need to make this many connections to schedule 5 appointments per coordinator per day. So follow me here:
- if the average month has 30 days and your coordinator has two days off a week, their avergae working days are 22 days per month. That means at 5 appointments per working day, each full time coordinator should be scheduling 110 appointments per month. If you have 4 full time coordinators, that is 440 appointments per month for that department. We expect a 60% show ratio, so in this example, that would be 264 shows. And your management should be closing at least 60% of those shows for a total of 159 sales in this example from your BDC department.
- So what management should be looking at and asking daily AFTER reviewing the shared Google Doc starts with the outbound phone calls attempts. Ex: Why did John not make 120 calls today? Or why is it 2pm and John has only made 20 outbound calls and leaves at 6pm? If the calls are there-look at connections next. Look, we can’t control who answers the phone. but look at your CRM. Is John calling this person at the same time every day? Maybe the morning? When clearly that is not working if we have been unable to make a connection so this customer should be called in the evening. Is John leaving a compelling reason on the message for the customer to call him back? Listen to the call recording. Is that not the case? Are the connections there but John is not scheduling 5 appointments per day. Listen to these calls. My money says John needs some serious script training, coaching and/or counseling so provide it. Is the BDC manager TO’ing these connections with no appintments over the phone preferably immediately or at least same day? If not, why?? Are the appointments being made, but the show ratio is under 60%? Listen to the calls. Are solid appointments being set? Are they being confirmed? Is a manager confirming them? I require my BDC managers to confirm all appointments and call all no shows personally. Do you? Lastly, are these customers showing up but the desk can’t close a door? Time to put all shows on a trackable spreadsheet and begin tracking the 3rd party unsold follow up calls made to these people so we can pinpoint trends and fix them. Is all of this easy? No. Is it time consuming? Absolutely. But if you want to build a successful department that lasts and actually DEVELOPS additional business for your store. This is the only way.
- I tell my people all the time. You are not called the business maintenance center. I do not need you here to simply MAINTAIN the level of business we already have. I need you here to DEVELOP business we would not have without you. But this requires that the entire sales management staff including the GM fully understands how to hire right, train right and hold accountable right. Otherwise, it becomes an endless cycle of build bdc, dismantle it, don’t have one for awhile, we don’t need it, wait we do need it, rebuild, dismantle..repeat process. It’s a disaster and it costs you time and money.
- Vince Lombardi, former head coach of the Green Bay Packers said this-”The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have.” I live by this when leading and managing. At the end of the day I encourage you to ask yourself this-Do you want to be part of the problem or part of the solution?