Sales & Marketing
All Business Development Centers Are Not Alike
By Forrest Scott
For many, the Business Develop-ment Center (BDC) has become a confusing term. Simply put, the BDC should be what you want, and need, it to be. There is no one set definition. The needs and culture of your dealership should be carefully examined and considered prior to installing your BDC. When installing the BDC, the goal should be to create a center designed to both perform for and assist the dealership departments with the least amount of confusion and confrontation, and to do so cost effectively. To accomplish this, a dealership must have a comprehensive plan for implementation. In my opinion, the plan should always be developed with the involvement of the necessary department heads.
The best way to develop your plan is to meet with your department managers to determine their needs and areas of concern, as well as those issues they would like help or assistance with. Typically the sales department managers are looking for help with showroom follow-up (both sold and unsold), incoming phone-up follow-up, Internet lead follow-up, owner follow-up, orphan owner follow-up, referral follow-up and prospecting. Additionally, the sales managers look for the BDC to contact those customers who purchase vehicles elsewhere yet service with your dealership. Aside from the natural goal of winning them over to your dealership, you would like to know why they elected to purchase elsewhere. Was there something you could have done that would have resulted in a sale for your dealership? Are there any other drivers in the household? If so, who's next? Let's face it-most households have more than one vehicle/opportunity.
Service department managers generally look for a comprehensive follow-up system for the customers who have serviced with them. However, when offered, they usually like the thought of having the BDC prospecting for new business. This can come from a variety of sources. As an example, the sales department works with numerous customers each day that did not service with the dealership. Additionally, registration lists are a great source of leads for the service department. The BDC can assist the service department by contacting these customers and attempting to convince them to service their vehicle at your dealership. Generally, both the sales and service managers look to the BDC to assist their departments with regard to database management and items such as new owner clinics.
In some dealerships, the incoming telephone traffic for the sales and/or service departments is of major concern. There are a wide variety of solutions for this and while each should be explored it should be recognized that this area is the most difficult to manage and implement. Issues such as, who should take the calls (salespeople, service-writers for inbound service calls or newly hired staff) and where the calls should be taken are of major concern. If salespeople and/or service writers will be taking the calls, should they be stationed in the BDC? Which leads to the question, does your dealership need a separate room just for the BDC? Many dealerships do, but not all. Should your salespeople be required to work in the BDC? Some dealerships have found that assigning their salespeople to work specific times slots in the BDC works well for them but in some cases this has not worked very well. I was recently asked to review a BDC that had the salespeople assigned to work the BDC at specific intervals. In this dealership over 80 percent of the salespeople renamed the Business Development Center as the "Business Detention Center." Was this the fault of the salespeople, sales manager, business development center manager or the consulting firm that installed the BDC? Perhaps none, perhaps all. Most importantly, they had a problem. The salespeople viewed the new system as punishment. Management was baffled by the fact that the BDC had great reports (boy were they pretty, colorful graphs too) and took credit for a lot of deals, and yet overall sales really hadn't improved when compared to the same time period of the previous year.
I used the above example to point out that any number of problems can develop when installing a BDC. The reason for this is that you are affecting the culture of your dealership. It should not be taken lightly, and in my opinion, it should never be as simple as taking a cookie cutter approach. Each dealership is different. They take on the personality of their leader. Perhaps this is why so many newcomers to the retail world are having so much trouble. I believe the BDC functions best when it is planned and tailored to the dealership that it is going to be installed in.
Additionally, I would caution you to be careful when evaluating software and computer systems. I see many companies advertising that they can download, integrate or fully integrate with ADP or Reynolds and Reynolds. I suggest you speak with your mainframe provider, to see if they interpret the interface the same way you do. Additionally, it would be wise to see if the integration affects your current agreement. Who pays for what, should the integration fail and/or damage the mainframe. It's rather ironic that so many people are criticizing the mainframes for the quality of data and yet so many are lured by the thought of integration. I do believe the mainframes are seriously in need of updates. However, I believe they are coming very soon.
Reynolds and Reynolds has not returned my calls to see their latest version. I did get a brief look at NADA and it is much better than before. From what I could see it still needs improvement. ADP has been extremely open and has shown me what they currently have and also what they are working on. For that I thank them. Based on what I have seen they are on the right track. While, in my opinion, they have a ways to go to get it totally there, they do appear to be on track. As I look at the products ADP is working on, I believe the need for BDC computer solutions is temporary. With this in mind I would not run off spending a fortune with another computer company.
Please note this is not an endorsement for any computer company. It's simply facing the fact that ADP and R&R are the consistent survivors. Anyone who has had to live through the changeover from a non-surviving computer company knows the nightmare it can be.
Before you make the decision to put in a BDC, first decide what type of BDC will suit your needs. Plan it properly and definitely involve your management team. Remember the BDC is about relationships as well as basic communication.
Forrest Scott is president of Dynamic Marketing Strategies Inc. fscott@dealeronline.com
