Built to Last!
The Building Blocks of a Profitable BDC
By Greg Wells
Are you thinking of starting a BDC? Maybe your current BDC needs to hit the restart button. In any case, a profitable BDC begins with a foundation of people, processes and basic benchmark performance. Building your BDC on such solid ground will ensure a healthy ROI and incremental sales.
The first step is to determine what exactly you want your BDC to do. Certainly handling Internet leads and phone ups, but that just plugs a hole, capturing sales that might otherwise be lost. The greatest ROI comes from creating incremental sales by calling back showroom visitors, prospecting, database mining and marketing. Do you want a Service BDC as well? Like the sales side, the BDC service processes capture inbound appointments, follow up and market to your service and dealership database, creating quality service traffic and increasing business.
The foundation for any size BDC begins with the people, or more accurately, a person. No single decision in building your BDC is as important as choosing the right manager. Your BDC manager needs to understand the showroom process, have a positive working relationship with the managers in the dealership and possess great coaching abilities. I have found the best BDM’s are usually car people, but there are some great BDM’s who have come from other industries and adapted to the car business.
Always work towards right sizing the workload for your appointment setters. A good BDC Rep can usually manage 125-150 Internet leads plus phone ups. Our clients have taught us too many tasks leads to hurried work and the more effective, personalized quality approach does not exist.
You should expect a 15% to 20% overall close on your phone and Internet leads. A good target is to convert 25% to 35% of your leads to a showroom visitor and a 50% to 70% close rate on kept appointments. Sold follow up should focus on satisfaction, concerns, due bill fulfilment and the first service appointment.
The car business is performance based. Measure everything and manage by the numbers. By keeping the individuals performing at bench mark level your BDC will perform at benchmark level too. Managing by the numbers means holding your team accountable for the benchmark. Your team members each may need help with different elements of their job. By measuring the process at each point, (lead volume, appointment conversion, kept appointments and close rates), you can take a focused training approach to the team members and experience great results.
These building blocks will set the stage for production. The BDC is a high maintenance initiative and building from a solid foundation improves your chance for success.
Greg Wells, of Kain Automotive, can be reached at 859 983 0370 or Greg@KainAutomotive.com. Click here to read this article in its entirety. 
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