CallSource^® Aim Higher

Economic Tough Times - Efficiency & Proficiency Rule

by Jeff Ward, December 5 2008

To survive in these demanding economic times, companies must do everything in their power to cut costs, continue selling and weather the economic storm. There's nothing like an economic downturn to motivate businesses to focus on becoming leaner while still maintaining a high level of efficiency.

What are some immediate actions a business can take right now to survive?

Here are three tips that can help you take advantage of opportunities in the current economy by leveraging the call measurement, monitoring and tracking technologies.

1) Inspect what you expect. It's more important than ever now to ensure that your call-handlers are at peak performance. Peak performance means

• 50% - 70% appointments set (Expect 40% - 50% of set appointments to show up)
• 10% - 17% sales ultimately result from calls from potential car buyers (30% - 50% of your appointment-shows should become buyers)

In a recent, broad-based study, dealers, on average, were shown to have a closing ratio of less than 4%. For a small fraction of a store's advertising budget, dealerships can achieve and maintain call-handling skills at peak performance through ongoing monitoring and assessment. This can mean a realistic increase of 5 to 20 unit sales per month for a store with average proficiencies that is selling 150 units per month.

Knowing your store's ratio of ad-response calls to appointments set and appointment shows to closed deals can help your store achieve the sales numbers you need.

2) Measure what matters. It is critical to know what media is working, how well it is working and at what cost per lead.

If it takes 10 calls (and it may take 20 - see tip #1) to generate one sale and the cost per call is $50, then the "bird dog" fee for the sale of a vehicle is $500. It's important to continually measure true cost per call-lead and not invest in media that does not produce expected and meaningful returns. Name branding is good, but there is no need to sacrifice ad-response calls and sales from that media while building your brand. Make name-branding media pay for itself along the way.

Do you know your cost per lead for all of your media and advertisements? This information is almost always eye-opening, and can often lead to huge increases in advertising effectiveness and ROI. I have personally witnessed stores that stringently measured their media, improved their call-handling and cut their media expenditures in half while increasing sales by 100% to 200%.

3) Educate yourself. Technology is changing rapidly. Knowledge is power - so learn what new technologies are available to help you generate and capture more leads, accurately measure your media ROI, and empower you to reach your store's ultimate proficiencies.

Companies that can't adapt to today's fast-changing market will see their sales and client bases lost to more proactive and progressive companies. Don't be the one who brings a knife to a gun fight.

Your future holds increased sales, lowered costs, eliminated waste, improved appointment-setting and a business that achieves its full potential. There are affordable technologies available right now that can get you to where you need to be - even in this tough economy. The future is now. There is no time like today to dive into your future and achieve greater success.

Jeff Ward is a CallSource Regional Sales Manager and CallSource consultant, President of Rhino Advantage, Inc. For more information please call 888-496-1162 or email Jeff Ward