Opinions & Advice

Internet Sales Pay Plans: Back to the Drawing Board?

Alex Snyder
Posted onJan 10, 2008 at 10:02 AM
Updated onUpdated on Oct 23, 2008 at 11:59 AM

PaysignAre you an Internet Manager, an Internet Sales Director, an eCommerce
Director, an Internet Sales Consultant, a Vice President of Marketing?  I think this speaks to all of us, but let’s forget about our positions and corporate structures for a moment.  Some of you may already have your 2008 pay plan and some might not, but that doesn’t matter right now. Let’s talk about what we think is right and fair. What is fair to you and the person paying you.

I was reading the “Myth of the Dealer Web Site Conversion Ratio” article, by Mitch Turck, and started thinking deeper about Mitch and Joe Pistell ‘s rebuttals to cross-comparing site conversion ratios between industries. When Mitch posted some actions a customer might take after visiting a dealer website (call an untrackable local phone number, visit the store, etc.) it made me think: he’s right and how silly is that! We don’t give credit to some online ventures that are doing exactly what they’re supposed to do – mainly our own website. We do this because it isn’t easily track-able. Of course, we did this to the traditional medias as well, but keep reading….

If your paycheck is directly tied to what can be proved as a clear and concise contact history inside a CRM, is this fair to you? Did you send your customer an email, or a series of emails, with value proposals? Did you leave a voice-mail saying something about the latest deal on the lot? Did that customer ask for you when he or she walked in the door, but an old “Earl” salesperson gave the customer a reason why he or she should deal with him instead? Did Earl say the customer was a “drive by”?  These scenarios are also untackable. I wonder if we’re paying our Internet personnel on the wrong principles?

In that same “Myth” article, T.J. posted some advice for Joe on three methods that have helped him boost Internet sales (Instant Chat, Online Coupons, and a trade appraisal). T.J. – please don’t take offense to this, I could be on the totally wrong track here, and we’ve all done it ourselves. This got me thinking about how we are putting our customers through hoops because our pay plans are structured toward “Internet sales”. It has been my experience that customers can’t stand trade appraisals – it creates a confrontational environment before they even show up. Online Coupons are an annoying pop-up and most intelligent customers know they could have negotiated that amount off anyway, so all it does is knock another couple hundred dollars off every deal. However, I am a fan of instant chats! Anyway, our pay plans are driven to create more conversion so we have more customers to talk to. They drive us to take advantage of ventures that may upset the customer or not be in the dealer’s best interest because we’re working a pay plan.

Working a pay plan is good if you’re in a traditional position, and can be if you’re in an eCommerce position as well, but I’m not sure we’ve structured these things in everyone’s best interest yet. My point is, we are in positions to influence online advertising ventures for the dealer. The dealer has based our pay plans on track-able “Internet sales”. What advertising ventures are we influencing? Are these ventures fair to the dealer? Is your pay plan structure fair to you?

Alex Snyder
Who knew an argument with Jeff Kershner, in 2005, would lead to Alex becoming a partner with him on DealerRefresh. Where will the next argument take ...
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    Mitch
  • January 10, 2008
Alex, you want to know what really throws me for a loop? It could be argued that people like us who only get paid to generate new business through Internet Sales should be doing everything possible NOT to get good sales surveys back from our buyers.

Wrote a bit about it on the iMagicLab community:

http://community.imagiclab.com/group/ecommercedirectors/forum/topic/show?id=1633649%3ATopic%3A5581

Basically the idea is that a happy Internet buyer, while good for the dealership, is bad for Internet Sales, because it's likely that customer will just come back to the SP as a previous, and send referrals directly to the store, when all those people could otherwise be potential Internet sales, submitting third party leads or searching Google for local Nissan dealers.

Every year this issue of ultra-specific pay plans for Internet Management gets more and more shaky, and as you said, the ironic thing is that the best way to maximize how much money you make in our position is to do things that hurt the dealer, like use a website to push emails rather than phone calls and walk-in traffic, or get back unsatisfied surveys to ensure the customer will still be in the "Internet buyer" pool the next time around.
J
The consumer has learned that the dealer's website is an extention the dealerships physical property (where all the old school "hore trading" rules apply). They were hoping for -and did not get- some new transaction machine that would shop for them and save them cash (i.e. Kayak.com, Ebay or HotWire.com, etc...).

Until someone comes along and invents a hot new method to have a shopper "reveal themselves" shoppers will contintue to collect data and kick tires incognito. ISM's need SPECIAL weapons to bring forth that sneaky and smart shopper.

I think the 'net shopper woud be more "chatty" if they were dealing with an consierge rather than a sales rep.

Speaking of chatty, Alex whats your talk on Instant Chat? I tried it 3 years ago and again 18 months ago and got no where.


T
Hi Everyone! Happy New Year!

Joe, you commented that "Until someone comes along and invents a hot new method to have a shopper "reveal themselves" shoppers will continue to collect data and kick tires incognito. ISM's need SPECIAL weapons to bring forth that sneaky and smart shopper." I wholeheartedly agree...but, look at it from the shopper's point of view. They are online for a reason, and the reason is that the Internet affords us a measure of anonymity. Do you think that the shopper will be pleased to have some "sneaky" ISM with all the tools to track that person down and back them into a car-buying corner? No, that is exactly what the average Internet shopper is trying to avoid.

It reminds me of a new concept a I learned a little about the other day: cartango www.cartango.com. Basically the concept is exactly the reverse of what you are hoping for Joe. But it seems to me like this tool will allow ISMs to better engage the online shopper and begin to develop a positive, trust based relationship BEFORE the 2 parties "reveal themselves" to the other. In other words, if I understand the concept correctly, the service will allow shoppers to submit their information anonymously and have up to 10 sellers anonymously begin to "sell" that shopper. Obviously, the seller who does the best job of gaining that shopper's trust and meeting the customer's specific needs will earn the business. Only after the shopper determines to take the next step with one or some or all of the sellers are the parties introduced to each other. The other cool thing I remember is that as a seller you get to see who else is competing for the business. It seems like a great concept from the outside in, and while I understand why it is geared ONLY for women, I wonder why the same concept could not be applied to the car-buying public as a whole (or at least the ones who are hesitant to give their personal information to some lead-aggregator)???

We all know that the reason shoppers are on the web is because they want to avoid the stereotypical car buying experience. Any service which allows the customer to do just that is a great leap ahead. Think about it, what is the difference between submitting a lead with all of your contact information online to be bombarded by phone calls and emails, and just visiting each dealer in person? The only real difference is time...with the internet, a shopper can skip right to the annoying part.


B
Great topic Alex.

Awesome post Tim. Any thoughts on how 10 dealers competing for the consumer's business might result in a positive ROI for the dealer? To make the effort worth the pursuit? Just a question, but if I was a dealer I wouldn't be jumping up and down to sign up for that.

Back to Alex's original post... very insightful... dealer websites that speak in the voice of what the Internet Manager wants...

1) Email me
2) Call me
3) NOW!

Mull on what a dealership website might look + sound like if it was written in the language of conversation that consumers would prefer to hear.

http://www.grokdotcom.com/2007/02/14/2-simple-steps-to-finding-your-websites-voice/

I posted on a related entry yesterday about sites in other industries that convert at levels unheard of in auto. It is by studying disciplines such as Persuasion Architecture + consumer profiles and consumer language of conversation that they get there.

And of course having system capabilities which consumers actually value (being able to buy online - vehicles, parts/accessories, schedule service) + not just inquire is related... the destination has to be worth the journey or even site design won't convert / result in any incremental car sales... and isn't that what it is all about?
A
Joe,

I've used an instant chat tool through three different vendors. I've actually had good experiences with all three! As long as the instant chat is not on when there isn't a person there to respond, and your dealership representative is trained appropriately, it can work very well!

I'd rather not take this thread into a conversation about instant chat services and stay on the topic of pay plans, so shoot me an email if you have questions: axsnyder at checkeredflag dot com.



Thanks to those of you who have posted so far. Mitch - thanks for sharing the link to the iMagiclab community. I hadn't seen your post on there yet.
T
Hey Brian,

Good point, re: ROI, competition, etc. But I will take a stab at it. Here goes: Because the particular service I cited actually takes steps to ensure that the shopper has a level of control over the experience, she might feel more comfortable sharing some additional information that will help the savvy ISM help to differentiate him/herself from the (up to) 9 other sellers on more than simply a better price. I know it sounds funny, but I still believe that a high percentage of shoppers will pay a higher price to someone who they feel they can trust. That is where the anonymous nature of this type of service comes in...because a relationship is being built on more than the standard "give me your best price" price quote lead (which, by nature sets the tone for an adversarial relationship about price alone), the shopper is actually looking for someone they feel comfortable dealing with. Otherwise they would not use that service, they would submit a lead through any of the other traditional lead providers.

Beyond that, relationship selling aside, several industries find a way to operate profitably even though "compete for your business" websites have popped up: SelectQuote for insurance, LendingTree for mortgages (maybe not such a good example!!! LOL) and other loan products, etc.

I definitely see your point...but I would jump at anything has the potential to get me out of the daily grind of sending my "best price" and hoping that its better than everyone else's.


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    Gerald
  • January 12, 2008
Great topic- always near and dear!

My experience has been pretty varied. Initially, my first dealer wanted to pay me ONLY on emails (what he called "true" Internet customers) and not phone pops. I asked what the difference between and email and a phone call from Autotrader, and he said by emailing, that makes it an Internet customer. "What if I remove the phone number from our websites? They would HAVE to email us, right?" "Yeah, but I would fire you" he says. "Exactly! When the customer emails us, you LOSE money because all I can do is give them a drop-dead quote. I would rather compel them to see a car on the web and call me or better yet, drive in and say 'I must have that car'. The only way to do that is on the phone." He agreed and all Internet-generated calls were counted as Internet sales, though ISMs weren't always the sales person of record.

The one thing I ran into, and continue to is the "we would have sold them any way." At my current store, small town, family owned for 75 years, they are looking to me for incremental sales. Last month, we sold 53 new vehicles, 12 of which I substantiated an Internet history. New car director guy says, "well, our baseline is 40-50, but what we need are incremental sales." I'm sorry, being a History major, I'm not up on math, but 53 seems to have incremented past 40 somehow.

Just out of curiosity, if ISMs are not paid on their return customers or the stores' existing customers who research online and come in to buy, why would the new/used directors get paid on be-back business? Wouldn't we have sold them anyway?
T
You know, this topic is very closely related to the reason I got out of the retail side of the business. Most dealers and GMs always seem to want to find a way to NOT pay their employees, like the problem Gerald is having. Then they wonder why they have 200% turnover and can't keep good people in their stores. Hmm...what could it be???
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    Sharon
  • January 13, 2008
"Most dealers and GMs always seem to want to find a way to NOT pay their employees..." Agreed. I've just left the retail side of the biz also as an ISM for a luxury brand dealership for the same reasoning. It's enough to properly "market" vehicles with excellent photos, great copy, competitive pricing, etc. making goals & objectives, only to experience the end of the month "shell game" as to your income for all the effort. IMHO a fundemental shift is going to have to occur in this industry before ISM/BDC Managers, etc. are fairly compensated for the contributions they bring to the dealerships bottom line, otherwise the turnover is just going to continue at 200%. "we would have sold them anyway" not if your competitor is doing a significantly better job of marketing the vehicles online in the first place and manages to generate a call or better yet a showroom visit on the vehicle. Too much antiquated stupid logic is still prevelant with owners/GM's at the dealership level these days. If your competitor is doing it better the customer will beat a path to the phone or their showroom first, that much is a given.
W
The other end is, my owner wants to see me sell more cars and make more money, yet he's tying my hands to sign up for Cars.com over $300 a month on the monthly bill! Please, an extra probably 6-8 trackable sales and $300 a month is a problem?

My counterpart at our Chrysler store is salary-paid not commision paid, and he doesn't plan on ever leaving. He does a good job, too. Anyone else gone to salary? What kind of salary can an ISM/director make salary?
A
We can all talk about how owners/managers want us to sell more cars and pay less for it, and I think those stories are going to be more prevalent over the next year or so, but we're trying to answer the question:

What is a fair pay plan to the dealer and you?

Maybe the question cannot be easily answered. Maybe the question spins off into other areas that must be defined first:

What is an "Internet" deal? What is an "Internet" department?

Maybe recent economic changes are going to force us to answer questions we haven't had to answer before. Here are some simple questions to, maybe, get us thinking in the spirit of this thread:

1. What is your sales/service/parts (the whole dealership) direction? Where do you want to be 5 years from now, 3 years from now, next year? Be honest and realistic.

2. How does your current Internet department function? Does it actually bring in bonus business, or is it just stopping your same old customers from going to your competition?

3. In order to make #2 work better, you need a good answer to #1 and a way to include your eCommerce efforts in that same vision.

4. Is your CRM reliable enough to pay people based on its output (reports). Or are you still using Excel Spreadsheets and Outlook? If the latter, is your Internet department trustworthy enough?

5. How do you make your CRM work with your vision (#1)?

6. Does it make more sense to look at your Internet department as a marketing department? If not, what is an "Internet Deal" - is it just any lead that buys, is it an appointment, is it an email reply from the customer....what is it?

7. How do you pay based off your direction/vision?
J
Alex,
I can tell by your probing questions, you're a General, you see the battle seen from 60,000 feet. You see a disturbing trend that threatens "the business model as we all know it". IMO you wont find any solutions from soldiers on the ground (unless he's been taking baloon rides on his time off).

Here's my the way I see it.
ISM model exists because the OE sites wanted the buyer and seller to meet (factory has the model info, dealer has the price). Without this marketing sponsorship from the OE, there is no ISM email model. Proof is in the used marketplace, email quotes don't exist in the used car market.

Problem:
Customers are finding little value (read: leverage) from the Email RFQ model. 2nd, 3rd & 4th generation Internet buyers are hitting the web sites like they're brochures rather than places to initiate a purchase.

Example:
Our post sale survey says, 90-95% of customers who buy a used car, visit our web site. Yet only 1% willingly reveal themselves before they buy. ISM's must battle for the 1% while 95% of customers remain incognito and stick to old school and become walk-ins or phone ups.

Question: The ISM's audience is 1% of the sites overall traffic, wouldn't the dealer find more ROI working the audience rather than the 1%? Is the dedicated Internet employee at the dealership needed in sales or marketing?

I say marketing.

Joe
p.s. I do have a used car view of the world, so I could be all washed up... but I don't think so! ;-)
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    Brad K
  • January 16, 2008
"Customers are finding little value (read: leverage) from the Email RFQ model. 2nd, 3rd & 4th generation Internet buyers are hitting the web sites like they're brochures rather than places to initiate a purchase" Hence the vital importance of accurately tracking floor traffic and the source from it. This sounds easier than it is since so many sales people take the "source" check box as "Walk In" on most tracking systems. Walking In because of what? The balloons on the front lot? I highly doubt it. Owners/GM's don't take this as seriously as they need to which in turn devalues the impact of the ISM/BDC's role in effective marketing of the vehicles in the first place. It seems a vicious circle.

J
Brad knows:

Rule #1).
"what dosen't get measured, dosen't get paid".

Rule #2).
Brad also knows:
"...sales reps always check "walk in" grrr...

Rule #3).
Brad ALSO knows:
Shoppers will play every game in the book to remain anonymous (to improve their opportunities). It's important to not offend the already defensive shopper. Heck, I hate it when Home Depot asks me my zip code at check out!

Brad's p*ssed at the lack of value the BDC/ISM shows because he's caught in a vise. To make matters WORSE, most CRM's use a single choice as the cause for the shoppers purchase. How idiotic is that?

IT's Not Going to Change!
It is my opinion that WE'VE ARRIVED to that magical place where total dealership sales and the internet are 99.9% interconnected AND because Shoppers NEED to remain incognigto, shoppers won't stand up and be counted.

The onus is on the shoulders of the GM to recognize the current payplan is like a Web1.0 application. The web is moving and this communication/comission method is falling out of favor (and maybe costing them opportunities).

THE ISM BRINGS VALUE TO THE DEALERS INTERNET MARKETING PLATFORM THAT CANNOT BE MEASURED.

Does the Hilton Hotel count the number of ups the Concierge gets? No. Does the Concierge bring value to the HIGH PROFIT clientele? YES. The value is measured in client retention. Return visits. When are we going to realize that we're not selling to a up, but to a FAMILY that has 2.7 cars per household.

I say if someone were daring, they may find more ROI by out efforting his competition with personalized content and services.

For the sake of argument...
If you sell 200 units per month and you have 2,000 unique visitors per month, that means 1,800 BOUGHT somewhere else.

Mr. General Manager, can you tell me where the dry gun powder lies?

Sorry aboout the rant, I am in one of those moods!
Joe
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    Chris
  • January 17, 2008
Hi everyone! I think it's fair to say the more you sell, the better your pay plan gets. Here's how I am crushing numbers and making more sales than my competition who get the same leads: QUOTING AND COMMITTING TO SELLING ALL INVENTORY FOR $100 UNDER INVOICE. Even if your savviest prospect shops your price (which you should give them - even if you never talk), they will see that $100 under REAL invoice is usually as good as it gets. If your dealer is not behind you 100% on this, then you are spinning your wheels and need to find a dealer that will be 100% behind the internet. Bottom line: Quote less than everyone else - see more people come in - make more sales - make more money - dealer notices - then everything falls into place.
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    jason
  • January 17, 2008
I've been ranting about just this topic for ever :) Jeff nailed everything.

1) Dealers will get what they reward.
2) It's not internet sales - it's internet marketing.

The sales staff needs to get with the program. If they can't work an internet lead (whether phone or email), then they are going to become extinct. This reluctance to get with the times is why we ended up with a seperate 'internet guy' - everyone including management simply wanted to keep doing what they always did for the past 20 years and not accept the fundemental shift in their industry. So they sent someone off to a corner to 'do the internet thing', and it's grown from there.

I get a flat salary (since i do everything in house - web development, computer programming, sem, seo, etc), and a bonus at the end of the month. I also ended up doing a lot of our display ads in trader pubs, etc, using insight from what worked for us on the web. Heck - when a simple change of a single word in a PPC add can double it's click through, thats usefull to know!

I don't set appointments, I don't sell cars. I generate phone-ups, drive-ups, and 'email-ups' from people on the internet. And yes, have most employees wonder "what exactly does he do?" :)

My bonus is based on how many customers put a check mark next to "internet" when asked "what brought you in today?" when filling out our survey while in F&I.. I have an entirely seperate question that asks if they visited our site first before coming in - this identifies those who would have come in anyways (well, sort of). IE, they will checkmark 'referral' for what brought them in instead of 'internet', and checkmark 'yes' when asked if they visited or website before coming in. I don't usually lay claim to generating this sale. Now that we have a crm tool in place, I'm going to try and lay claim to repeat and referrals..

This approach seems to work for us - after a year of doing this, our total sales have doubled because of the internet. Unfortunately, I left the actual computation of that bonus discretionary, and once sales took off it quickly plummeted from the original agreement :(

J
Jason,
What's your URL ?
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    jason
  • January 17, 2008
Chris:

My competitors are all buying leads and doing the 'under invoice' thing for thier internet sales, yet we're selling more then they are and keeping full grosse. Plus - they are WELL KNOWN and heavily marketed dealerships, where as we were relative nobodies a year ago and are located out in the country (we still do hardly any traditional advertising and the bulk of our customers never even heard of us prior to shopping for their new car).

In other words, hardly anybody outisde our rural area is predisposed to buying from us - yet we are pulling a lot of new customers away from the very well known and well entrenched metro dealers - even though they almost all use invoice-related fixed-price quotes well under our average gross.

Here's a quote from a friend of mine who now works as an ISM at one of those dealerships:
"We lost 6 deals to you guys last week!" - and they quoted $500 under invoice! He used to work for us so he knows we weren't undercutting them - even though his boss is convinced we are.

I would say we are not spinning our wheels by not getting into price wars. We just go after a different part of the market. I concentrate on getting people to my website, and then selling them on our dealership. That's what I consider the other 98% of the internet traffic - the ones who are not shopping for price quotes since they don't even know exactly what it is they want yet :)

A
I apologize for being so quiet over the last few days - I've been out of town.

Chris,

That is an excellent short-term solution if you have other areas making the profit. Profit is king, and I'd rather be a part of the profit center. There is a myth in this business that selling cars for invoice or less will keep a dealership healthy. Sell it for less than cost and volume you're way into a profit - isn't that how it works? What happens when your competition wakes up? What happens when the economy dips and volume isn't happening? Yes, there is a healthy balance between volume and gross, but how are you finding it? That's a whole other subject.

Chris - I'm probably being a little hard on you. I'm sure you're doing other things and it isn't all about who can sell the car the cheapest.

As for pay plans, I don't think there are a whole bunch of dealerships with never-ending pockets out there, so let's hop back on finding that fair balance for you (paycheck) and the dealer (profit).
A
Jason,

Awesome setup! I like how you've separated yourself from the traditional "Internet-guy" model. Of course, retail is retail, but every market is different - meaning, your exact setup probably wouldn't have the same success around the nation, but there is something to learn from it. I'm glad to hear there is a business model like yours thriving. I've felt for a long time the Internet department should be more of a creative marketing department than a one to one sales generating department. Thanks for sharing! Mind giving Joe and me a site to check out?
W
Alex,

I love your "Make a Deal". That's the right path. ;)

Wayne
P
I have returned to my position as an ISM due to my families health insurance premiums tripling and the dealership I was working for having a profitable department turning into an shell. Two very different situations able to meet to fill mutual voids.

Of course the first thing we discussed was a pay plan and expectations and there was a lot of mutual give and take and a good compromise resulted, both parties were happy with the outcome.

Of course the biggest pitfalls to a "transactional payplan" when marketing the dealership online is that not every sale can be measured, but this can also be said about any other traditional advertising platform.

I believe your marketing efforts should be tied directly to how you are paid. If you are paid transactional you need to give your customers a reason to do business with you via the web and your marketing efforts should be to brand you and your service give them a substantially unique reason to contact the internet department head on.

I cringe when I see things like this:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Basically the idea is that a happy Internet buyer, while good for the dealership, is bad for Internet Sales, because it's likely that customer will just come back to the SP as a previous, and send referrals directly to the store, when all those people could otherwise be potential Internet sales, submitting third party leads or searching Google for local Nissan dealers.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
That may possibly where dealerships, salespeople and managers will never have a true meeting of the mind, but that is where an internet department can shine and separate themselves and provide easily trackable results.

Remember the road to the sale the last step is follow-up. That is where technology can outshine traditional methods. Make the web part of the follow up process and give people reasons to to initiate a new transaction and send referrals via the net. You have these customers on your list make the best use of it. Create a unique web delivered proposition or promotion. There is money in the list, but the fortune is in the follow up!!

While there may not a perfect answer to this problem keep in mind internet marketing is wholly transactional based. A good example are the books in left side bar here. Jeff will earn a commission if you purchase directly from amazon by clicking on one of them and looses it all if you buy it a local Barnes and Noble because you saw it on his blog. You win some and you lose some. Amazon wants you to buy from Jeff's link at amazon.com or even better buy from amazon because you typed in amazon.com in your browser and searched for it then bought it. They will make 4-8% more that way.

Seth Godin on the other hand could care less where you buy the book and is glad that Jeff is merchandising it for him. He will make money no matter where you buy your "Meatball Sundae" from.

The end result is a transaction....

Excellent book by the way and a must read if you are serious about selling anything online.
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    Jeff Larsen
  • January 21, 2008
What is the secret to a successful, sales producing Internet Department?

Delivering the online shopper from behind the computer to the dealerships doorsteps, in my opinion.

Sure there are many ingredients inbetween that assist; websites, SEO/SEM, CRM/ILM, and online advertisers. None of the above have I yet been able to fully maximize at a dealership I worked at because of the time consumption involved. For example...

I only get paid on the vehicles I sell via commission, taking the consumer from lead to delivery. Not for taking photos, writing the descriptions, or troubleshooting vehicle feeds for accurate information that benefits the entire dealer group, not just my "Internet Sales". We carry 10 manufacturers across 5 rooftops; 400 new and over 130 used cars in stock at all times.

If at any one time, the above ingredients lack, it directly affects my sales. But all that matters is 'What were my internet sales/gross' at the end of month, not taking into consideration other variables. I have offerred assistance/coached those between myself and owner that there are better proccess's to sell more cars from the Internet Department, but only get the deer in headlights look.

Adding to Alex's article on this subject: Are there many or just a few other's in the same position as myself; sales, IT, website maintenance that only get paid on performance?

Side note Joe Pistell, there is a company now that reveals shoppers true identity and/or corrects false lead information before arriving to the dealership ILM/CRM tool. Contact me through Mr. Kershner and I will get back to you.
A
Wayne - thanks!
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    Reis Hauser
  • January 21, 2008
I just want to let Jeff know he is not the only one who get's paid the way he does. I do have to say that I have a manager and owner that is probably more progressive than most and is willing to listen to the idea's I have and spend money on internet advertising. However I am only still paid on my direct sales and gross. As internet manager's across the nation i think know. Gross is not the best via internet sales. Maybe I'm wrong thinking that. IF so I would to know how the other manager's making large grosses are doing so. Anyway that is one of the biggest problems I have is getting shopped and having another dealer cut my legs off at the knee. I think that I have a fairly good pay plan going but there is really no recognition on how many customer's I personally am driving to the dealership doing exactly what Jeff has been saying, from taking pictures, maintaining the website, making contacts from not only autotrader and cars.com but many other sources. From all the research I've read that nearly 90% of customer's at least look online before visiting a dealership now and days, I have a tough time believing my 12-15 personal sales per mo is all our sites are bringing to the dealership. How do you convince the big man signing the paychecks to increase or realize the actual profit being brought to the dealership with no hard facts saying this many people came in from my hard work????? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated
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    jason
  • January 21, 2008
Joe: the url is http://www.libertyauto.com
nothing will really jump out at you with it, and the used car side just got written over by some old templates this weekend :( Basicly, I found a few things to try to set us apart from other dealers, and try to get it accross to the prospect without them having to read any copy (people were ignoring the copy and contextual links - maybe we have a lot of ADD shoppers!). The site is always in a state of flux, as I always test new things (example, i recently removed the chat feature, changed color schemes, etc). My goal with it is this: when someone comes to our site, I want them to think "hmm, I should go check these guys out".
Note: Against my recommendations, the owner and sales manager insisted on doing an invoice sale this month on our hottest product (wranglers). business is slow this month, and they're sweating it some I guess since we have 30 of them sitting here .. I pointed out that we still were on target with our wrangler sales this month, and that we didn't even have 60 days supply on hand..

alex: I think our set-up evolved this way because I was a hard-core techie and our staff had serious issues with the idea of hiring dedicated ISM's! Of course, none of them were willing to give up floor traffic, etc :) Since my father owns the place, I could have actually done the traditional ISM if I wanted too, but by then our internet sales had broke 30 a month and I thought it would be counter-productive.
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    jason
  • January 21, 2008
reis: I guarantee you more then 50% of your true internet sales are going under the radar as drive-ups... simply having the customer themself fill out a simple multiple chioce survey in finance will reveal the truth (it did for us). Last month we sold 10 cars from autotrader - and 8 of them never called or emailed, they saw us online and just drove out. I had some initial resistance to the survey from the staff, but I simply asked "why are we afraid to know what marketing actually works"

Amazing - when we no longer relied on the sales staff to identify what was driving our floor traffic, but simply asked the customer, we went from 70% 'local - drive by', to just 5%!! LOL Oh, and the internet went from 5% to 70% of our prospects :)
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    jason
  • January 21, 2008
alex: I like your "make my deal" :)
J
Jason,
Be sure the sales reps don't fill out the forms "on behalf" of the customer. I had some reps whos customers always had the same answers and funny as it sounds, all his customers were from cold calling or referals! hahaha...


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    Jason
  • January 22, 2008
JOE:
lol - too funny because I have that exact problem! Particularly with a new sales rep. Ive learned to recognize eash sales person writing/style :) The first clue for me is when someone has a lot of local drive by's.
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  • January 15, 2009

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    J-DOG
  • May 7, 2009
Same for me brothers!!! I have been in Internet Sales for almost 4 years now and I have always been paid as a typical salesperson. I have always been lured into the position with promotion statements, etc, only to find out I am just another floor-guy. Oh well, what are you going to do???
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    Diltese
  • June 23, 2009
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    Mike B
  • June 23, 2009
Talk about feeling right at home! I am ripping my hair out just trying to figure out who I got in the door! We have a CRM in place, but the salesman never log their leads and the GM will not enforce it. I am the ISM at a dealership with on avg about 300 used cars in inventory. I take the pictures ( about 2o per car), I am responsible for comments on all of them. I answer all of the incoming Internet phone leads, and Email leads. I am building a new secondary website from the ground up- meaning I taught myself web design, and how to use Photoshop for the graphics. I set up a facebook page that is driving more click thru's to our website than Cars.com. Also I brought the amount of "trackable" deals from 5-10 a month to 50+! With all this in order to find out how many deals I got I have developed the most insane process.

First: I take pictures of our desk logs for the previous week.

second: I record all customer info into an excel file.

Third: I download my incoming call history from my cell phone provider into another excel file.

Fourth: I export my inbound internet leads (customer names and phone #'s) into another excel file.

Fifth: I then use a formula in excel to cross refrence all of this data to find out who ive communicated with.

Once I have a list of all the names I then stare at the sales board to find out if they sold.

This takes hours even now when I have it down to a science. Not to mention all the customers whos names are not recorded on the logs correctly (one letter off and they fall through the cracks), End up buying under a different name than the original lead name, or call me from a different phone than they record in F&amp;I - if they give one at all! I am not complaining about how much I make because I do better than the other ISM's in my autogroup with similar pay plans, but how much time is wasted on this when I could be working on simply driving in more floor traffic?

Jason's pay structure just blew my mind! I am going to appoarch the GM tomorrow morning with this idea!
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    Mike B
  • June 23, 2009
If anyone has any idea's on how to convert from my current pay plan to this new one it would be appreciated. I want to get paid for my efforts but I don't want the owner to think hes getting ripped either!
Alex Snyder
Mike - that sounds really familiar. Importing various things into Excel is a great idea though! I never thought about getting the call history from a cell phone for comparison purposes.

I am currently working with Dealer.com to do some database-meshing strictly for reporting purposes. This month-end-customer-comparing-waste-of-time has been the worst part of my job for about 8 years now (try it for an entire auto group). If we can pull off what DDC and I are trying to do, this report could reduce a lot of that wasted time and probably open some eyes on various reporting metrics. I think it will take us a few months to get it to a point where it is as robust and accurate as I'd like, and when it gets there I will definitely be talking about it on Dealer Refresh.
M
I would love to hear about any systems people have to compare data like that or just share idea's - [email protected]
T
Hi

Dudes &amp; Dudettes,

Just thought i would say Hi :) i hope to contribute more in future :)

cheers

T

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