I was talking with a GSM today and he had no idea how many calls his coordinators were making per day. Equally relevant, is that I talk with people that have positions of authority in the dealership all the time and it's unfortunate to see the majority have no clue when it comes to their E-Commerce Dept. The E-Commerce Dept is the heart of your sales dept and the sales staff are the body i.e. without a heart the body will die. We also talked about a store that they have a few miles away and the GSM mentioned that at that store the leads are given to sales people. WOW!!! As we know the sales staff are not going to consistently follow up with the leads and unless the consumer buys within 5-7 days most salespeople are never going to call again.
Now the purpose of this blog is to spend some time talking about the importance of your coordinators making 120 calls per day. As you know you have a 11-14% connection ratio when making phone calls. In other words per day if you make or take 120 calls you will get 13 to 16 people on the phone per day. The thing that blows my mind is that I know of stores that have coordinators that make 50 calls per day. When you look at your connection ratio that's only 5-7 people per day!! I speak from experience in regard to coordinators making every excuse for why they can't make 120 calls per day. I've been told "I don't have anybody else to call" and when you check their leads in the ILM they have people that haven't been contacted in days. Even better I've been told that "I don't want want to bug the customer."
The key to success in your E-Commerce Dept boils down to the coordinator's pounding the phones!! 50 calls per coordinator is not got going to get the results that the owners/GM/GSM are wanting to see. Demand excellence and put spiffs in place for the coordinator's like you have for the sales staff and watch your E-Commerce dept grow to the point where it's generating a major percentage of total sales.
