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Dealer Group’s ‘Digital Army’ Amazes
Three stand-out car dealerships are different but share certain positive traits.
2 Min Read
“Opportunities went from 40,000 to 90,000 leads,” Winder says.
LOS ANGELES – The technology whiz kids do their work well at Larry H. Miller Dealerships. Then it’s up to individual dealerships to finish the job. That's sometimes an issue.
The technology staff used website enhancements, search-engine optimization and other digital means to more than double the number of leads sent to the Sandy, UT-based group’s 53 dealerships.
“Our digital army has done an amazing job,” says Jerry Winder, the group’s vice president-digital operations. “They are 16 people, mostly Millennials, who have become very important to us.”
It thereupon becomes the stores’ job to convert leads to sales, but that isn’t always a consequence.
“We went from 40,000 to 90,000 leads provided, but our business growth wasn’t on the same graphic increase,” Winder says here at the annual Automotive Customer Centricity Summit during a presentation entitled “Are Your Opportunities Dying at the Front Door?”
Some Miller stores convert sales leads better than others did. The group, No.10 on the WardsAuto Megadealer 100, identified 16 dealerships making the right moves. It then looked at three in particular.
“I started studying them from a business standpoint,” Winder says. “Then I went to each one to watch what they were doing.”
They differ from each other in brand, store size and geographical locations. The general managers don’t know each other. Yet the standout dealerships share three positive traits, he says.
They do a good job in hiring and retaining employees. “Turnover probably is a No.1 inhibitor in the dealership space.” The three stores also keep adequate staffing levels, and hire seasonal employees when necessary to handle customer-traffic increases.
They avidly use customer-relationship management systems to register, track and follow up leads. “If it isn’t in the CRM, it didn’t happen. No exceptions. The general manager manages out of CRM.”
They adhere to a process. “The most important thing about a process is that you have one. Everyone uses it, and there’s accountability, because we spend a lot of money for leads.” Reporting to the general manager is a designated process director, a sort of enforcement officer. That person may be the sales manager or Internet director.
Leads are vital, but no technology just converts them to sales. That takes more.
“Until further notice, this is still a people business,” Winder says. “Despite all the talk about technology, it is a business of one person selling one vehicle to another person.”
Because of the way the Miller group is structured, the home office balks at insisting on a companywide adaptation of doing things.
“We are so entrepreneurial we wouldn’t mandate these things to the other stores,” Winder tells WardsAuto.
Some stores like the way they do things, and point to healthy sales and profits to justify their particular practices. “But we’re happy to work with the ones that just don’t quite get it.”
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