Best Practices

Reports Yield Support

Jeff Kershner
Posted onOct 12, 2005 at 11:34 PM
Updated onUpdated on Oct 23, 2008 at 12:13 PM

Reports_icon If you’re an ISM at the average dealership, then you know too well you usually need all the help and support you can get. Especially when it comes to getting upper management to swing a few dollars (from the thousands they spends each month for ineffective print media) over to the internet department for additional leads, online advertising or even a lead management tool.

I’ve found there is nothing that speaks more volume then the hard NUMBERS. As an ISM, it’s your DUTY to keep track of the performance and progress of your Internet marketing efforts. Tracking your ROI will ultimately yield support from upper management and will keep your department heading in the right direction.

These reports are in an Excel Spreadsheet. Fill in the “0’s” with your departments numbers and the spreadsheets will calculate your results.

Feel free to leave some feedback, comments or ideas.

Internet Lead Performance Report:
This report will track of the Cost Per Lead, Cost Per Sale and Closing Ratio of your individual lead sources. Track EVERY LEAD; email leads, phone calls, even showroom ups that came in to see that car they saw on AutoTrader.

DOWNLOAD my Internet Lead Performance Report

I’ll be adding more reports throughout the next few weeks.

Jeff Kershner
Founder of DealerRefresh - 20+ Years of dealership Sales, Management, Training, Marketing and Leadership.
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Following is a copy of the post I put in the "Spreadsheet Reports" category. I feel that I need assistance in more than one area so I will put it here too.
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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.
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I know that the best of ISM's are very busy, so I am probably asking for alot.

But can someone simply "break it all down" to help me set up a process.

My strength is closing (in person - working the numbers, budget etc), and service with a touch of internet "know how". Basically I am a little above average (if you count customer service, and actually caring about the customer) in sales, and would do better (financially) if I went back to the floor (but I want to make the Internet "thing" work at my dealership. I use iCarMagic, but never have the time to actually customize it so that the reports and follow up help me remember certain things.

My weakness (es) are time management, doing so much that I literally forget (I need something in place to flag these for me) to "gather that data" for the customer looking for specifics, or any number of things similar to this.

If someone would "Mentor" me, then you would be doing a service not only to me, but my wife and 5 children, plus all the customers who really want to deal with a person who cares about them.
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    Tina
  • November 1, 2007
Something doesnt seem right about this spreadsheet. I am no where near an excel expert but shouldnt leads cell and the cost/leads calculate in the total cost cell when you place in the number for example i put it i received 22 leads at 24.00 a peice and when i tab over to the total cost it says 0 when you do the math it should come to 528.00

thanks
tina
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I need some advice.

I need the sales force to do a MUCH better job collecting info from ups and sales and inputting into CRM.

Ups don't want to be harassed & I can appreciate the reps position. I am entertaining a monthly drawing for filling out a survey.

Can anyone offer up some sucess stories?

Joe

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Joe,

One of the biggest fights of anyone working for an Internet department (in any capacity) is your own showroom floor. Salespeople and Salesmanagers all mean well, but when a customer is in front of them they lose their minds on process....always opting for the path of least resistance. On top of that they're profession is selling people on things, and they're very good at selling coworkers on why the path of least resistance is always the way to go. The truth of the matter is you have to force salespeople to do something - either in pay or through a CRM process. If you're dealing with a group of stores, you really need to do both.

Design your ad source portions of the CRM tool to make each ad source just as easy to select as another. Don't have subsets like Internet - then - Edmunds, KBB, Dealer Website, etc. Have a list like TV Commercial, KBB, Edmunds, Previous Customer, Dealer Website, Radio Ad, Newspaper Ad, etc. Mix it up. Put the least likely things a salesperson would choose at the top and the ones they always choose, like "Drive by" all the way at the bottom. If your CRM tool is worth it's salt, they should have people in support who can help you with this.

You can also give surveys to customers to fill out in the finance office, or other slower points in the sales process, to see in their own words what really brought them to you. Again, you need to be careful how you position/frame your questions.

The positive approach is to constantly (every other day) show salespeople how collecting this data puts money in their pockets. This is tougher to do. If you don't do it every other day, they forget.



On a side note, I know this post sounds anti-salesperson, but I speak from experience. I sold cars for years and am guilty of every salesperson sin in the book. I chose the path of least resistance, I marked over 80% of my customers as "drive-by's" (CRM's were just starting at the end of my selling days though), I believed every word a customer told me, I made deals with customers before talking to my salesmanager....then put my manager together - that was me. I know how to motivate me, so that is where I'm coming from in this post.
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