The Five MUST HAVES for Creating a Successful Automotive BDC – PART 4

The 5 Must Haves for Creating a Successful Automotive BDC – PART 4

TRANSCRIPT: Alright, ‘must have’ number 3 – BDC’s must be managed like call centers. See, this is not a floor sales team, it is a BDC. It is a call center and that’s how they need to be managed. Now, many dealers I know, created their BDC’s by staffing them with a few of their existing floor sales people and then paying them like floor sales people (generally on sold units). Their argument was that they needed knowledgeable people to be able to answer the customers questions on the phone and that they should only pay when this department sold a car.

I get that that makes sense. Why would I want to pay a BDC on an appointment that shows? I should pay them on sold units, right? That’s what we’re all about, right?

It’s wrong and it’s wrong.

It’s wrong that you think you need top sales people answering the phone and it’s wrong that you think you should pay these people on a sold unit. The truth is, your BDC is more like a bank call center than it is a traditional sales team. You don’t need seasoned sales people to be successful with a BDC and you should never expect them to sell a thing. Their job is to set appointments that show. Period.

When you compensate a BDC agent on a sold unit you are encouraging them to start selling on the phone, something that’s just not possible. It’s a bad idea and it’s counter-productive. You’ll end up selling fewer units to appointments this way because your BDC ends up over qualifying every prospect. I said it earlier: you cannot sell an empty seat. Your BDC’s only job is to get bodies in the door and then you begin to sell them.

Moreover, when you begin to employ car guys in the BDC roll you often end up with a group spending way too much time answering questions and almost no time setting appointments that show. Like a bank call center, your BDC should be driven by metrics and talk tracks, not by selling and not product knowledge. In fact, and this is going to sound counter-intuitive, but it’s absolutely true, the less product knowledge a BDC agent has, the better. It means they can only stick to your approved talk track, and, it means they will spend all of their time setting appointments that show and buy.