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What Everybody Ought To Know:
The foundation for OCM (Online Customer Management) was laid in 1989 as the result of some probing questions asked
by the owners of our Toyota dealership. "How many phone ups do we really receive? How many customers actually set foot on our lot?
Does selling more cars truly mean increased bottom line profitability or just more work and expense? "Do any of these questions
sound familiar?
Do you make these mistakes?
To answer some of these questions for ourselves, one Saturday, two of our owners set about the task of physically
conducting their own count of how many people visited the store that day. They found that their count exceeded the floor log count
by 250%!!!
New practices were developed to account for all phone and floor traffic. From that new data we could determine how
many prospects were appointed, how many showed up for the appointment and how many sold. With lead control in place, we called this
practice Managed Floor . Do we do a perfect job? No. On a good weekday we function at about 90% and on the weekends we will drop to
70% effectiveness. Let's face it, there is no such thing as 100% in real life. The plain truth is if you can't measure it, how can
you manage it?
Greater control of every lead coming in gave us the opportunity for improved customer follow up. Organized follow
up enabled us to convert more and more of our unsold floor traffic into car sales. Follow up on previously sold customers brought
them back to our store for their next auto purchase, typically giving us first opportunity to earn their business. We now close
70-80% of this customer group. Additionally, improved training coupled with computer-aided organization has increased the number of
cars sold to referrals each month.
Some of the benefits we've experienced over the years include reducing our monthly media expense from $180,000 per
month to $70,000. That cost reduction goes in our pocket. We used to sell 350-400 cars per month with 40 sales people with one
location. Those 40 people now staff four additional sales lots and produce 600-700 sales per month. We have reduced our employee
turnover rate, put more fun back into our business and have substantially improved bottom line profitability.
When we started our Customer Development Center 14 years ago, there was no software available to help us manage our
prospect and customer data in a simple yet powerful manner so we developed our own. Built by car guys, for car guys! Did we make
mistakes along the way? Yes and some big ones. Did we waste money as we were learning? Yes, but we found many ways to improve our
business practices. Through the years we have overcome the challenges, refined our Customer Relationship Management tool (OCM) and
have helped other forward thinking dealers move toward higher profitability. This is particularly important at a time when profit
margins are slimmer than ever.
The productivity of our sales and management teams has been greatly improved. Getting more out of all our
opportunities is critical for increasing profits. The days of hanging around waiting for UP's are gone, and non-performing dealers
will vanish from the marketplace. Don't be one of those dealers asleep at the wheel; get involved with a good, solid, organized
customer follow up system.
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"How many phone ups do we really receive? How many customers actually set foot on our lot?"
"We could determine how many prospects were appointed, how many showed up for the appointment and how many sold ..."
"Organized follow up enabled us to convert more and more of our unsold floor traffic into car sales ..."
"Some of the benefits we've experienced over the years include reducing our monthly media expense from $180,000 per month to $70,000 ..."
"The productivity of our sales and management teams has been greatly improved ..."
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