The Business Development Center, or BDC, is the heart of the dealership. Every other BDC website or article you read these days contains that statement. What does that mean? Basically, when it’s running properly like the heart pumps blood to all the organs of the body, a BDC pumps business and strength to every department of the dealership.
The BDC has many moving parts, and it is imperative that all those parts work efficiently together to maximize the potential and performance of its team members. From proper staffing to mindset to process to ongoing coaching to accountability, make sure that your BDC is utilizing all of the tools at its disposal to attain the desired result of CRUSHING industry benchmarks and providing a professional, streamlined customer experience for each and every person who comes in contact with the dealership.
One of the most important of the tools mentioned above is coaching. Is your team getting the daily, ongoing, constant coaching that they need to fuel their fire, keep them consistent, competitive, motivated, appreciated, performing? Let’s look at the types of coaching and what they may provide.
BDM – My favorite and most important. You went through a lot to get a strong leader for your BDC. Are you burying your BDM in analytics and reports to the point where he/she is not spending the time coaching that is needed to keep your BDRs on point? One of her main tasks should be to motivate, inspire, and coach her team to new heights each day. She should be reviewing calls, conducting team role play exercises, reviewing CRM process/performance, reviewing and revising scripts, email templates, videos, text snippets. Set an attainable goal. Have her spend one hour a day on this all-important task, coaching.
OEM or CRM Performance Coaches – Just now becoming widespread in the last year or so, but vitally important and overdue. We have had vendor representatives that have provided us with monthly reporting that they discuss with the GM or BDM, but the addition of OEM and CRM performance coaches is helping keep your BDM and the other leaders in your dealership more accountable and aware of where they stand in comparison to their peers with regard to industry benchmarks and performance. However, are they simply providing reports and other data to the BDM and where, based on the data collected, there should be change or improvement OR are they coaching the BDMs and GMs on HOW to make that change take place?!
Corporate and Industry Trainers – Likely comparable, depending on the length to which both go to stay on top of the latest trends and best practices in the industry. Corporate trainers will ensure that corporate policy is maintained across the board and may potentially meet regularly with BDMs to ensure that process review, call review, and CRM review takes place. Or they may not. The benefit of a third-party trainer is that there is no bias, and the third-party trainer can evaluate, and report based on current industry benchmarks, and provide coaching to the BDM on how they should be coaching their teams. If you have gone to the trouble of installing a BDC and a process via a trainer or otherwise, protect your investment. Ensure that your BDC is performing consistently by performing call review, process review, role play, and CRM review. If you cannot do it, then make sure your trainer is doing that for you. If you do not do this, you may show a brief rise after the training is over, only to be followed by complacency and a return to the “old normal” versus adopting a “new normal” based on the training.
My favorite acronym for BDC is the following:
B- Bring It
D- Daily …….and…….
C- Consistently
That is how to keep your BDC profitable. In order to do all those things, make sure your team is getting the coaching that it needs, each day.
Wendy Reeves
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