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One of the toughest decisions I think dealers have to make is When Is It Time to take away the Sales & Service Calls, When Is It Time to consolidate your BDC and Internet departments and When Is It Time to allow all appointments to be scheduled through your Business Development Centers - BDC. Many dealerships and large dealer groups have already opted in to what has become known as Consolidated BDC’s or E-commerce Centers. Many dealerships have already created the position of a E-commerce Director, yet there was no initial set-up of the E-commerce Department. The E-commerce Department or consolidated BDC's are quickly growing to become an important element of every dealership, whether large or small, and yet many dealers have entered into this venture through the wrong door.

I want to take a moment of your time and share with you what to do before you hire the E-commerce Director to build a department he/she may know nothing about. Many dealers already have the right people, the right processes and procedures….but missing the correct elements or knowledge on how to consolidate the processes and procedures they already have and make it work. E-commerce departments consist of a consolidated venture of Sales-Service-Internet-Customer Retention and now Social Media, the reason any dealership in my opinion should invest in an E-commerce Department is to increase and manage OTB’s better (Opportunities To Do Business) The first few questions I would ask any dealer who wanted to start an E-commerce department would include the following;

• How many calls does your dealership have?
• How many are service/parts calls?
• How many are sales calls?
• How many are personal calls?
• Does your dealership call all un-sold traffic from the previous day?
• How many daily prospecting calls are made?

The first phase in knowing When Is It Time is knowing your phone traffic and properly managing the calls, if your dealership still pages for sales calls, transfers service calls and utilize the position of a receptionist there is no true call management within your dealership and you are losing OTB’s (Opportunities To Do Business) every day. The second group of questions I would present to the dealer would include the following;

• How many internet leads does your dealership receive?
• How many are sales leads?
• How many are service/parts/body shop leads?
• How many are customer service leads?
• How many from your website?
• How many from the manufacture?
• How many from third party (Paid For Leads)?
• How many from social sites?

The second phase in knowing When Is It Time, is knowing your virtual traffic and what your online dealership is doing. Ask yourself the question, is every part of my dealership represented online and if so, who manages those online departments? This is important information for any E-commerce Director to know, since part of his/her position is to act as an online General or Executive Manger for the Dealer Principal or GM. Don’t make the common mistake of expecting an Internet Sales Manager to produce this type of information….that would be like expecting a Sales Manager to do the job of a GM. Setting up the E-commerce Department is crucial to the success of your dealership, increased traffic on the sales floor and in the service lane.

The third phase is Fixed Operations, how are you handling your OTB’s through service, parts and body shop if applicable? Most dealers, even those with a BDC still transfer service calls to the service writer, only for most of those calls to end up in a voice mail….does your dealership live on voice mail? On any given morning, service can start receiving calls as early as 7:00 am, and can go strong until 11:00 am. How many calls in those four hours does your dealership receive and how many have turned into appointments and/or same day business. The third group of questions I would present to the dealer and some of the most important would include the following;

• What is your process for Service & Parts Calls?
• Who schedules the service and body shop appointments?
• How many appointments does your dealership have per hour?
• How many service calls get handled the first time?
• Are your guests calling twice or even three time to get through to a busy service writer?
• Who calls all of your service customers after each visit?
• Who handles customer service calls

I have only presented the first three phases of When Is It Time to start a E-commerce Department for your dealership. You may already have some or all of those things we spoke about, then ask yourself;

• How are we doing?
• what are we tracking?
• what am I investing?

It just may be that time for you, but before you do I would suggest a focus group be formed for your dealership, that would include the GM, Service Director, Parts Director, Sales Manager, Internet Manager, BDC Manager or Phone Operator……some of the key people who either make the decision or have first impression on your guest. This focus group would share what they currently do, their success, their failures and any vacant processes the dealership may be experiencing.

Food For Thought
Harold, The Internet Guy