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What ALL GM’s GSM’s should be doing so they don’t get complacent.
Complacent: showing smug or uncritical satisfaction with oneself or one’s achievements
Now we’ve all seen the “5 year manager” or the manager who has done a great job, but like with every work out you have to change in order not to plateau.
Inspect what you expect. This is key in order to not go backwards or plateau. I always look at the following year over year comparisons in total customers vs close ratios in order not to fall in this pitfall. It’s part of knowing your numbers.
Market Reports – how big is the pie and is someone taking your market share. I tend to believe everyone’s fighting for your customers so you need to work just as hard everyday. There are a lot of resources to find out how many vehicles are selling in your market. Don’t just compare yourself with the Franchise your with… how do you stack up against all the dealers in your market.
Web Traffic – how are your conversions from website visits to lead forms.
Phone call engagement – Don’t just look at the calls your sales staff has deemed a sales call. Look at all the calls. What are your calls to conversions to your CRM look like. I haven’t seen 1 store yet that no matter how good they are cannot do better on the phones.
Lead Response time – Are you inspecting this or are your internet managers too busy trying to switch customers out of “internet lead” to another source to make their response time look better. The first Sales Professional that gets in contact with the customer first usually wins the customer. Remember the customer isn’t just filling out a lead with your dealer they are shopping everyone.
Lead handling – Do you have a performing sales funnel? Are there real engagement with the emails your sending out? Is your sales staff utilizing all forms of contact, ie. Phone, Video messages, Email Messenger Facebook etc.
Walk-in engagements – Generally most everyone will tell you that we “dealers” as an industry only log about half of our customers who walk in. My buddy has a software that can tell you how many customers actually walked in so you can compare how many were actually logged. (Of course your customers who are walking in must have a cell phone on them for it to work?)
Service Retention – Are you building your infrastructure to be able to take in more business or are you relying on walk-in traffic alone.
Sales Retention – Do you have a long term strategy in place to continue to bring your customers in the door or are you just relying on the traditional methods.
If your down in any of these categories get with your marketing and sales team to shore up these areas. Stick to these basic fundamentals and you’ll continue to win in the Game of Cars.
