Before the pandemic, Jamie Tilley looked closely at the business development centers at Modern Automotive Group’s 14 dealerships in North Carolina.
Some of the business development representatives were excelling, said Tilley, director of BDC operations for the Winston-Salem- based retailer. Others were struggling. Even with training and coaching, he said, there came a point at which the group would part ways with some BDC employees because of poor performance.
It cost tens of thousands of dollars each time Modern Automotive Group needed to recruit, hire and train a new BDC employee, Tilley said. That was on top of the costs associated with spreading leads across fewer employees and closing fewer sales while short-staffed. Because the centers play an important role in completing deals, the group needed to ensure that the people in those roles were working to their maximum potential.
One store in particular — a Chevrolet dealership in Winston-Salem — had one of the weakest deal-closing ratios across the entire group and, conversely, the biggest opportunity to grow, he said.
Tilley had an idea to create specialized training to improve performance. Starting in January 2020, Modern — which sold about 16,000 new and used vehicles last year — began to collect data on the performance of each BDC staffer and followed up with customized training based on each employee’s needs.
That customized training began at the Chevrolet store, where BDC employees were given focus areas based on their strengths, Tilley said. For instance, an employee who wasn’t as strong on the phone might instead handle Internet leads.
“Each one of those seats are so important that you’ve got to make sure that you’ve got the right person there and you’re training and coaching and doing all that stuff, or you’re going to be letting people go because their percentages aren’t that good,” he said. “And then you never get any momentum.”
Modern focused on improving BDC representatives’ individual abilities, Tilley said. The group partnered with DSI360, a North Carolina company that provides tools and services for business development centers, and consultant David Kain, who provides training.
DSI360 conducted mystery-shopping events starting last January to evaluate how well employees handled different types of leads, Tilley said. The vendor also created data dashboards that helped the group quickly digest real-time metrics on sales, appointments set and closing rates by store and across the group and then gain insight into how each BDC rep was performing.
Without that visibility, scenarios could exist in which some representatives were setting appointments at far higher rates than others, DSI360 CEO Stephen McGee said. Modern can set goals for individual BDC agents within DSI360’s system, and it can flag when an employee is falling short of a goal and recommend training.
The tailored approach sets up employees for success, McGee said, which translates to additional earning potential and better retention.
“One of the things we always talk about is you have to inspect what you expect,” he said, adding that success requires both collecting information and acting on it.
Tilley said Modern Automotive Group now can adjust if performance is not meeting expectations before too much of the sales month has passed. Rather than reviewing month-end reports for what could have been done differently, Tilley said he holds weekly calls to go through the data and talk about changes that could be made to achieve sales goals.
The effort has shown results. In 2018, the Winston-Salem Chevrolet store’s BDC had a 10.9 percent closing rate for Internet and phone leads. In 2019, that slid to 8.9 percent, Tilley said, adding that it was the only store in the group that didn’t improve.
After the training focus began last January, the closing rate inched upward throughout the year — amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic — to 12.9 percent in December. This year, the BDC closed on 15.3 percent of Internet and phone leads in February, Tilley said, and as of last week was tracking at about 20 percent so far in April, the highest-ever point.
The group has only let a few BDC employees go over the past year, he added. Some moved into other roles at the dealership.
“For me, probably the biggest takeaway is: Invest in your people, and you’re going to get the greatest returns,” Tilley said. “We’ve seen that in all areas.”