What is a Lost Opportunity Coordinator or LOC?
A "lost opportunity coordinator" or LOC is simply a coordinator that does NOT handle fresh leads. They ONLY handle leads that have been "deaded" by the other coordinators and leads that are from day 31-90.
If you think of a conventional coordinator ONLY handling fresh leads, and their follow up protocol is email / phone call for EVERY day for the first 31 days. This limits the amount of leads they can handle due to the reality of the methodical follow up. A lost opportunity coordinator can handle 3-5 times the amount of leads. Specifically approximately 350 - 500 leads. This is possible because they do NOT have to follow up EVERY single day as does the conventional coordinator. After the first 31 days with an email and a phone call... the next 60 days of follow up can be every 3 days or even longer. depends how many leads are there versus how many LOCs.
The Lost Opportunity Coordinators work well with the conventional coordinators.
Usually a dealership has 4-5 conventional coordinators to 1 Lost opportunity coordinator.
So a LOC handles leads in the cycle of day 31-90 BUT... LOCs also handle ALL dead leads!
We know that on the showroom floor that we believe in 100% turnover "TO". Then that reality should remain for Internet leads. The problem is usually that dealerships get so many leads and there is so much going on in an Internet department or BDC that there usually is NOT a "TO" protocol for leads. Usually the coordinator or BDC rep decides on the spot if this lead is "dead", "bogus", "changed mind" etc... and usually it NEVER gets s second look from a manager or director. If you have an LOC at your dealership it truly helps fill the holes.
Lets say for an example that your Internet department has 4 or 5 coordinators... every single time a lead is "deaded" for ANY reason. That "dead" lead now becomes a "fresh" lead for the LOC. The LOC's main job in this scenario is to identify if this lead is actually "dead", if so WHY and can they "reactive" this lead to an opportunity.
Please let me know if you have any additional questions. It would be my pleasure to further assist you.
Comments
Sean: We get about 775 to 800 internet and phone leads a month for our used car dept. I have 3 Coordinators who handle this. After we make first contact, and if we don't set an appointment, we have to turn the lead over to a salesperson to give it a try. Also, any no show appointments have to be reassigned next day to the sales team. We have to chase the sales team to follow up, and then we have to chase the customer if they don't. It's like working 1600 leads. Got any pointers for my sales managers? We have an average of 22% lead turn for the year and we do about 40% of the used car business through my BDC. But I feel we are losing ground and sales by doing this. Do you think a LOC would be beneficial? My BDC can't follow up after 2 weeks on the leads as they are focused on fresh ones everyday. Any thoughts?
Sean I think it's a brillant idea for this LOC to also work the dead deals from the showroom floor also. What do you think?
Yes, I would suggest a different pay plan... more salary, more commissions :) Same structure:
salary, appointments, shows, sales... just a little more-
I'm curious as to how a pay plan would differ (if?) for an LOC in comparison to your traditional BDC rep, when you consider the higher number of negative responses (bought elsewhere, invalid, out of area, etc). What are your thoughts on this?
Definitely an area Durran and I have been talking about for almost 2 years now. Going to need to look more into it this summer. Good advice.