Until recently, dealers have expected salespeople to be the default ambassadors of the dealership - to prospect, follow-up showroom traffic, eagerly address orphan owners, regularly stay in contact with customers they have sold vehicles to, maintain accurate information on every person they come in contact with, send birthday and anniversary cards or letters and finally, share all of their information with the dealership because they understand the customer actually belongs to the dealership. This system works wellin theory. Reality is, salespeople rarely do these things. I often hear dealers and managers vent their frustration in this regard. The typical statement is, "What's wrong with these salespeople, can't they see it's costing them a fortune by not following up their customers?" My response has always been the same, "Do you feel they truly believe follow-up works? Do you feel the dealership has set the right example?" Most dealerships tell salespeople to do these thingstell them how important it is. However, the salesperson may possibly be following the lead of management. If management truly believes these processes will help closing ratios and average grosses, won't they make sure it gets done?
With advertising costs skyrocketing, it is more important now than ever for a dealership to have a dedicated Business Development Center. Consider the fact that a dealership delivering 100 units a month typically works roughly 400 ups. In all likelihood, 300 of these ups will never hear from the dealership again. What is amazing is that dealers who spend small fortunes hoping to create an awareness of their dealership discard seventy-five percent of those people who walk through their doors. Ponder this; if you have 400 ups a month you will see 4800 ups a year, 24,000 ups in five years. If you had a Business Development Center gathering information regarding these people, how many advertising dollars could you save?
Unfortunately, there appears to be much confusion regarding the real mission and what, in fact, a Business Development Center is. For starters, it's not a phone room. If managed properly, the Business Development Center can actually provide extremely valuable information to the sales and service departments as well as the parts and body shop. Information such as when the customer intends to make his or her next purchase, what their hot buttons are and what influenced them to buy from their last dealer. Also important is how many drivers and vehicles there are in the household and who will be the next to purchase.
The mission of a dedicated Business Development Center personnel should be to acquire, maintain and develop relationships with clients of the dealership, regardless of their previous purchase decision.
Why is a Business Development Center necessary? Perhaps the single most important reason may be the competitive advantage a dealership gains. Consider the advantage you would have knowing and having in-depth personal information regarding the buying habits of customers and potential customers in your market. Another example would be for those dealerships that are in states that do not allow the purchase of registration data. States that do not allow the purchase of names based on vehicle registration data create a challenge for dealerships in those states. Those dealers are forced either to mail to their own database or to mail to generalized guess lists. If a dealership located in a restricted state had a Business Development Center, they would be able to build a high quality list of real prospects and owners, which compared to their competition, would certainly give them a significant advantage.
Starting a Business Development Center is not as hard or as expensive as you may think. Perhaps the most important aspect is to establish a plan which allows for the development of the department in steps rather than a massive roll out all at once. Yes, it will take work and commitment to create the Business Development Center. The dealership of the future that wishes to truly control their market will do so by having and utilizing the knowledge acquired by their Business Development Center in a dynamically proactive manner.