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Every partner we talk to is looking to improve the efficiency of their Internet department. Really, who wouldn’t? The problem is that most people actually have no idea how proficient they currently are in this area, they just know that “they’re not where they need to be.” And yes, there is a difference between “selling more online” and “becoming more efficient”. a big difference.
It is absolutely critical to establish a baseline of efficiency (or even ROI) against which to measure future improvement efforts.
Forgetting the key source analysis aspect of becoming efficient, let’s focus on the process side of the equation for this article. Most dealers will track general placements, shows and sales and base their improvements from those three main buckets. While nice in theory, there’s one big piece of the puzzle they’re missing.
Contact
We need to be very clear on the definition of “link” as it pertains to the Internet Department.
Contact – two-way communication. Feedback from your follow-up prospect due to their initial lead.
Getting in touch may take 5 minutes or 5 months but without contact, you can’t set up an appointment, make sure a customer comes for that appointment or sell a vehicle to that customer. The hardest part of an Internet Associate’s job is the contacts. For anything to happen in this department, there must be contact.
We cannot stress enough how important it is to track this information. Which raises another concern, how do we track the contact?
Most CRM/ILMs are able to quickly generate a report that will show Appointments, Shows and Sales (if you are using your software fully); Very few will allow you to easily track down a contact.
We imagine that more progressive CRM providers will start allowing you to track contacts effectively in future releases, but in the meantime, this data point is too important to ignore or wait until you can easily access it. Can’t track.
The good news is that you have a few options for tracking a contact:
- Custom Fields Within CRM – Have you been able to create a custom field within your CRM? Many CRM providers allow this (HireGear for one). So make a contact field as a “Y/N” field and just flip it to “Y” when contacted.
- Unused Fields in CRM – Are there any common fields in your CRM that you are not currently using? If so, use it.
- Manual Tracking – The good old stand by. Yellow sticky note on the side of your monitor. Whenever a contact is made, BAM – mark that thing. Add to them weekly and refer to your other reports.
The idea here is to start tracking it. You have to If you really have any plans to improve the efficiency of your Internet department, you need to establish a baseline. Even if that baseline is bad, it’s important, you know what it is. As you start building plans with internal sources or with a vendor, you’ll be able to track those changes and see how it improves your department. You’ll be setting new baselines again and again as things improve.
Any plan you put in place should be pushing the needle in a positive direction. If your plan doesn’t show positive growth, go back to what was working, your baseline, and try again.
Process improvement tracking starts with all contacts. Once the contact is tracked, you can proceed with the rest of the process improvement tracking metrics.
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