Best Practices

Benefiting from your reports

Jennifer Schrader is the Internet sales and BDC manager at Williams KIA in Traverse City, MI. We were on the subject of reports and how crucial it is for Internet sales managers / BDC managers to track their performance. So I asked her if she would write a quick article on how she came about tracking her performance and how it has benefited her and her department.

Here it is:

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Benefiting from your Reports

Starting in the Internet Sales department for a small buy-here-pay-here dealership with 5 locations I had quickly gained knowledge on how to sell to internet leads. I then moved onto a volume dealership with an increased flow of internet traffic and leads. I had done very well working with the increased volume of leads and was successful with setting appointments and closing sales.

After setting a few sales records for the dealership; I felt the need to track my performance; number of appointments made, shown appointments to customers sold. I decided throw down what was floating in my head into a spreadsheet. Within a short time I had a resourceful report for tracking my MONTH END and a YEAR END SUMMARY results.

I quickly found that tracking; total internet leads to scheduled appointments, kept appointments to appointments sold provide huge benefits and enable you to track your strong and weak key performance areas.

Here are some of the benefits that have been very useful to me and my department.

  • Keeps yourself and your team on track
  • Quicker buy-in from General Management
  • Measuring your success
  • Allows you to set obtainable goals
  • Determines where improvements are needed:
    1. Appointments are down (follow-up needs to improve)
    2. Kept appointments down (follow-up and more accurate appointment confirmation)
    3. High shows ~ Low Sales (closing the customer needs improved)

The number 1 benefit of tracking your performance is receiving acknowledgement from upper management while being prepared to answer “the questions”. How many times has your GM or GSM asked you for a number off the top of your head regarding status of your Internet sales performance? With this report there are no questions to be asked; everything is there!

My spread sheet reports have been a huge asset for myself and my BDC. I thought I would share them with whoever is interested. If you’re not already tracking your appointment to sales performance, maybe these will help.

Excel_icon_small Jennifer’s MTD summary report

Excel_icon_small_2 Jennifer’s YTD summary report

Guest Posting by Jennifer Schrader
Business Development Center Director for Williams KIA

J
  • J
  • March 16, 2007
Tracking is extremely important, not only as a measure of your success or your sales team success, but also in terms of return on investment. Tracking on the individual level by management is essentially tracking the dealerships ROI from the sales reps, and taking it a step further is important too. As a "numbers guy" myself I'm usually obsessed with percentages, growth, and every other metric you can think of. I know a lot of people are not like this, but I still find it amazing that quite often when I walk into an independent dealership not a single person can give me an accurate idea of where their sales are originating from. Tracking, especially with respect to the internet, is almost effortless and can provide valuable insight into patterns you might not otherwise see. Whether you're evaluating your sales rep performance or the cost-effectiveness of your third party sites, it can only help.

Kudos to Jennifer and everyone else who puts tracking into practice. I would bet these are the people who run the most efficiently.
G
It sounds like you are on the right track, Jennifer. Your spreadhseets seem to be very clean and straight forward. The next step I would encourage you to consider is to track the ROI of your department. What is your cost/lead? Which lead provider is providing the highest closing ratios? Which has best gross profit? I have a couple of spreadsheets I use that track all information and more, broken down by salesperson, warranty penetration, etc. I will get a clean version up here in the next few days.

In the mean time, if you are already tracking your success with this or another method- keep it up! If you aren't, I encourage you to do so. Nothing like being able to go to the boss and show you are getting them a 10 fold ROI!

Gerald Hand
Internet Director
Toyota of Irving
J
Thank you Gerald! I am glad you are looking at the greatness of the tracking progress! It is very important and at times very urgent too.
Again thank you

Jennifer Schrader

S
Jennifer,
I have downloaded your reports and the other report in this blog. I want to put them to work for me. What I want to know is how do you (or anyone else) gather this information on a day to day basis?

Do you have a form of some kind that you fill out at the end of the day?

Do you fill out something as the day goes on?

My problem is finding the time to do all this. I am the only person handling our internet and of course we all know that means I do alot of things that aren't directly related to SELLING a car.

In general I need help with time management and process.

I would love for someone to just walk me through setting this up so I can handle it all with a measure of success.

Please help me.

Thanks.
J
Scott

Is there a contact # for you to be reached at?

Please email me at [email protected] and I can also give you another sheet to down load that records the day to day basis of tracking the information.


Thank you

Jennifer Schrader

J
Scott

Is there a contact # for you to be reached at?

Please email me at [email protected] and I can also give you another sheet to down load that records the day to day basis of tracking the information.


Thank you

Jennifer Schrader

C
Jennifer,

When you say you "quickly gained knowledge on how to sell to internet leads", I'd like some help on figuring that out myself. We seem to be all over the board on our success and we have not landed on the best method to ensure we capture the most results from these opportunities. I think we have the tracking and reporting figured out, we just need help on the execution across multiple franchises. That said, I'd like to learn more about what has worked for you as well as your input on what pitfalls to avoid.
J
Charles
Is there a way to get into touch with you to help you with getting to help with you with selling more leads? I look forward to helping you with your success!

Thank you
M
We take it one step further, and created a "pace setter", that calculates front, back-end, and aftermarket gross. We have this for the whole dealership, as well as the internet sales department and each internet sales rep. ROI reports, closing ratios, appointment/sold, etc.

This "pace setter" allows everyone to watch the entire week, month, even year unfold mathematically.
We also use excel spreadsheets for outbound calls, emails, total contacts, appointments, calls/sale, contact/sale, etc. This allows us to focus on each specific "weakness" to improve on.
M