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You don’t need a BDC, for sales or for service, so get rid of it. Instead, you need a fully-staffed TDC. Traffic Development Center.

What?? Why?

Because we forgot something in all these years of confusing "BDC, what kind of BDC??" mishmash: Traffic--floor and also service lane traffic--rules our business. Traffic. Period.

And this is proven in a very simple way. Ask a room full of GMs and owners this question:  If they had $4,500 to spend on ONLY one of two things this month, training their staff or getting more store traffic, which will they choose? Inevitably, the crushing majority will say “get more store traffic”.

And repeat this experiment once or 100 times, and it is always that same answer. Store Traffic.

Advertising, location, reputation, Yelp, Internet, websites, leads, pay-per-click, SEO, direct mail, tent sales, and so on and so on. ALL these are about traffic. And thus the TDC.

Sean V. Bradley is absolutely right about the importance of the BDC in the way he means that term, so why a new thing like “TDC”? Because as Sean points out it is not, nor has it ever been, “business development” in a single, successful meaning in far too many “BDCs”.

Not only is “BDC” a very tired acronym, what exactly it means is very fragmented: Does BDC mean salespeople trapped in cubicles an hour a day, rowing through their contacts with the flat mind set of galley slaves? Does it mean sales only and not service? Does it mean actual BDC reps who take calls and leads and convert them to appointments? All? None? A mix of all this? What? This confusion is a strong part of the problem with many dealerships and their "BDCs", because it means so many things. And some of them not as successful as others..

Well, Traffic Development Center means only ONE thing, which is proven successful: Trained TDC reps (NOT salespeople) in place during open hours, taking and making calls, getting and responding to leads, and making the strongest floor traffic and service lane traffic ever happen in a totally accountable way.

Which leaves YOU with just one thing for your sales people to really do: Sell the ups from the floor traffic. Something they are very good at, and something they can now better achieve for themselves and for your sales.

Realize that any other arrangement makes salespeople schizophrenic: Answer the phone? A lead? Sell the customer in front of them? Answer a call or text on a test drive? Make an appointment? Make a follow-up? Which BDC? What BDC? Is there a BDC? Does it matter? What is the best way for success??

The TDC is your answer. TDC reps in your store gather all the inbound inquiries (phone, form, lead, email, etc.) for sales and service, and also make unsold follow-ups and declined service calls, for just one reason: Getting more traffic for sales and service. That’s what you wanted from your BDC, anyway. If you knew which one you had. Or knew what it really did.

Keith Shetterly is Vice President of the Engage Call Center Division of Autoloop, LLC (www.autoloop.com). He has ten years of retail and auto group eCommerce Director experience, and is a former BDC and Internet Consultant for Dealerships. Keith may be contacted via keithshetterly@gmail.com or by cell/text 281-229-5887.