Leading an Appointment Culture – Part 4

Leading an Appointment Culture – Part 4

TRANSCRIPT: Okay, so once I have statuses on all the appointments from yesterday that were still open, I get those closed. I don’t want to have those happen again. Now, I’m going to look at the remaining appointments for today, right? I’ve already looked at the ones for the first 90 minutes of the day, but, now I’m going to look at ones scheduled for from 90 minutes after the time we open until the time we close. There are a couple of things I’m going to look for. The first thing I’m going to look for is:

Do we have adequate coverage?

What do I mean by that? Well, let’s say we have 15 appointments scheduled between noon and 2:00. That’s a lot of appointments for most car dealerships in the middle of the day, especially if it’s not a Saturday. So, do I have significant staff, for example, at the desk to be able to ‘desk’ those deals? Do I have significant managers to be able to do that? Do I have lot porters who can get those 15 vehicles clean, gassed, parked out front and ready to go and have it all done by that time?

See, I can’t wait until noon to start thinking about those appointments, I have to look at them now. And, finally, do I have the adequate number of F&I managers? Imagining, now, that we are probably going to close about 80 % of those appointments. So, what is that, 12 of those appointments that are probably going to go through to F&I? I’ve got to make sure I have adequate coverage throughout the day. This may require that we call some of these appointments and try to move them. Move them earlier, move them later, but I need to make sure that I have coverage.

And, finally, I need to ‘Plan My Confirmations.’ I need to plan my appointment prep throughout the day. Again, do I have adequate coverage for, say, lot porters to clean these vehicles? When am I going to confirm these appointments? Now, I might start confirming those that are scheduled for 10:30, 11:00, noon right now, because, maybe it’s 9, 9:30, 10:00 by now and I need to start confirming those appointments. I’m going to look ahead for appointments scheduled for 7:15 or 6:15 tonight and, maybe, I won’t confirm those until after 2:00, but I need to plan those confirmations now, otherwise, the day will get away from me. If I don’t make those confirmations, my ‘show’ rates are going to go down. And, so, I have to plan this first thing in the morning. This is after I’ve done the first two pieces.

The final thing I’m going to look at, and managers sometimes go to this first thing in the morning (and we can’t), is past due activities. Now, even though we taught you that past due activities are the enemy of process, and they absolutely are, (past due activities and freelancing are the worst). But these past due activities from yesterday can wait until I get all of my appointments lined up.

Appointments are everything.

And, so, now that I’ve done everything for the day on my appointments, now that I’ve planned out my confirmations, now that I’ve looked at everything; I’ve worked out the coverage and how we’re going to do things, I need to look at yesterday’s past due activities. Because, in my dealership I have a rule, right? If you have any past due activities from the day before, and you worked the day before, you don’t get to catch any ‘Ups’ today. The only thing you get to do is manage your own appointments and manage the phone. And, make phone calls to schedule more appointments. So, what I need to do is address these past due activities individually. I’m not going to call everybody to the sales desk and start screaming because there are 10 past due activities. I don’t need to talk to the guy who did all of his activities, He doesn’t need to hear this from me. He’s not going to be happy about it. What I need to do is call in each individual person who has any past due activities. We need to discuss these activities, the reason they couldn’t get them done and I need to do this every single day. Then I need to hold people accountable for the past due activities and, whatever my rules are, I need to stay consistent with those rules.

So, that’s how I work my CRM first thing in the morning. This may take me till 10:30 or 11:00. That’s okay, because all of these activities are going to drive an appointment culture in my dealership.