BDR intuition is the skill to know which direction to take at the fork in the road during customer interactions. Ad and lead sourcing helps make this simple by identifying credit issues early. Being on point and having BDR intuition when speaking with a special finance customer is vital because these potential buyers are likely filling out multiple credit applications.



Once you’ve uncovered that someone has subprime credit, use…

Database mining, or organic business development, is maximizing the opportunities that are sitting in a dealer’s database uncultivated or, to be frank, being ignored.



These people are not being called; they’re not getting letters. They’re being left for the competition to call. Sure, the sales staff or BDC will call a customer in the days or weeks after they come in, but what about months or years later?



A lot of the same people…

All incoming sales calls and every lot up should be ad-sourced and leadsourced—no exceptions. Determining the source of every lead allows you to generate a report that will show you whether your dollars are being spent effectively. Without this reporting, you may wind up wasting thousands of dollars a month.



In a perfect world, dealers should monitor ROI reports for 60 to 90 days before adjusting their advertising/marketing, but many…

We can’t wait for success to come to us. We have to go after it, and technology can help in a lot of ways. Technology can enhance communication with prospects, target certain segments of past customers, locate new customers who are in the market for a vehicle and simplify certain BDC processes.



While e-mail communication was a great byproduct of the digital revolution, a customer’s perception of the message sent is limited because body…

There are plenty of dos and don’ts when working in a business development center. How often do you train and test your business development representatives (BDRs) to ensure they know the dos and don’ts and are performing to the best of their ability?



Of course, BDRs need to take comprehensive assessment exams over the first few months to see if their initial training is truly ingrained. Ongoing training and testing, which can be in a group…

In dealerships across the country, the doors of many business development centers are closed due to cost cutting. In the average dealership without a BDC or call center, the handling of phone calls is still abominable. In reality, business development is more important today than ever and cutting costs in business development can have devastating effects.



In some cases, manufacturers are putting more pressure on their dealers to focus on…

For some reason, when the word "Internet" is put in front of the word "sales," it becomes something different than car sales. But it shouldn’t; it’s still selling cars. By integrating the Internet sales department and business development center, Internet sales should become more efficient. Why would you have the two departments separate, or why would you have one without the other? I suggest configuring the two together, so all leads are properly…

Up to this point in the outsource-transition can take up to a year to-in-house-BDC transition, the bulk of the in-house preparation has been planning, along with some training. While the entire transition can take up to a year or longer, the final stage should be completed in a month or less.



By this stage, buy-in should be dealership-wide, key members of management are trained, the functions of the in-house BDC are defined, the actual BDC…

In a earlier dealerELITE blog post I covered the 40,000-foot view of implementing business development in your dealership, first as an outsource service and later transitioning to an in-house business development center (BDC). During the preparation stage, most business development efforts should be outsourced, and the dealership will assume the bulk of the business development duties in the final stage.

The preparation stage involves four…

The ramp-up process is a vital stage in the transition from an outsource business development solution to an in house BDC. Once you’re at this stage of the game, there are several aspects to cover before the final steps. During the ramp-up process, there are several tasks to complete:



•Get buy-in from the rest of the staff. It’s "grow or go time!"



•Determine the functions the in-house BDC will perform



• Get the…

Can a dealer begin business development as an outsourced service and transition to an in-house operation? My answer to that question is a resounding "yes." Of course, that "yes" comes with a few ifs. This route will work if everybody’s prepared for it, if everybody’s properly trained for it and if there’s proper communication between the outsourced module and the dealership’s management.



Since this is such a large topic, in order to explore…

While car sales and football don’t have a lot in common, right now many dealers are practicing what many football teams do when they’re trying to hold onto their lead until the end of the game—the prevent defense. A team with a solid lead will just try to protect that lead rather than going on the offensive to score more points. Unfortunately, this tactic often causes the team to lose because they were playing too carefully.



However,…

As in any department, there are best practices that can be implemented in a business development center (BDC) to help ensure success. Over the years, I’ve developed a long list of best BDC practices and here are 12 from which every BDC can benefit:



1. Daily Team Meetings – Start each day with a team meeting to monitor all goals, update everybody’s average production recap report and warm up prior to going live on the…

Skills are what will separate your dealership’s business development center (BDC) from what customers consider the stereotypical car-buying experience to be, and skills in the BDC revolve around understanding, alignment and communication. Skills can make your dealership stand out from all the other stores in your market.



A BDC should make people feel comfortable and excited about the dealership at the same time. To do that, it’s imperative…

A business development center (BDC) is a dynamic entity that needs to be able to expand and contract. Sometimes it’s necessary to expand in one area while simultaneously pulling back in another. For example, you may need to cut back one lead source and simultaneously increase the number of leads from another source.



When it comes to growth, there are different reasons to expand and several methods of expansion. When BDC ROI reports…

By the time you are at the point of considering how you want to compensate your business development center (BDC), you have committed to the

program and have decided what type of BDC you will have:



• a large, full-service BDC that includes customer service

representatives (CSR) who will team, you have committed to the

set service appointments and conduct CSI follow-up



•a small BDC that only handles sales…

I believe training should happen in every department, every day. If you have a business development center (BDC), it should be mandatory! Contrary to popular belief, training doesn’t have to be a complicated affair. Ongoing, daily training does produce results.



Why do we train our BDC personnel? Because we need to bridge the gap between the sales department and the BDC, and the easiest way to do that is by properly training both sides. The…

Before you can hire, you have to recruit and that doesn’t mean just placing an ad in the local paper. Recruiting for a business development center (BDC) is serious business because these individuals will represent your dealership to the community. They will be your voice, your first impression. If you hire the wrong people, you could inadvertently ask prospects to shop elsewhere.



I am assuming you have already hired an outstanding business…

Often, when dealers are contemplating starting a business development center (BDC) in their dealership I am asked, "Who should run the BDC?" The question I should pose to that dealer is: how good do you want your BDC to be? A business development manager (BDM) is directly responsible and accountable for maximizing sales and profitability of the BDC to agreed levels of performance. To achieve top performance, you have to hire top talent.

Before…

I am told that in the early 70's, finance offices were not in every dealership. They were just beginning to pop up here and there. Today, almost every dealership has a finance department that is responsible for their own production separate from the sales department. A similar thing started happening a few years ago with Internet departments. Now many dealerships have Internet departments separate from the traditional sales staff. Today, business…