Using Pay Plans to Boost Agent Productivity

Kim, hello. How are you today?

I am wonderful. Scott, how are you doing?

Well, about as good as I was 10 minutes ago when we started this call and we talked about getting this lined up. But I'm really excited for everyone watching today. Kim is one of the OGs in Valley and a great BDC manager. And we have a topic today called pay plans. Kim, you recently, well, last year you remade your pay plans. Tell me, tell me what you did in the impact.

I did whenever I had first started the BDC here at our auto group and centralized for fixed, I really didn't. I was winging it a little bit as far as how do I compensate everybody? Well, what I was wanting was appointments. And so all my pay plan consisted of was show rate and two different tiers of how many appointments you created for that month. And I'm going to be honest, we had our first 20 grant meeting and I listened to some other people talking about compensation and I realized I wasn't setting my compensation up so that my team was achieving what I needed my department to achieve. Plus I wasn't giving them enough opportunity to boost their own paycheck. So what I did is I looked at what was important to me in the auto group and it's not created appointments in the month, it's the number of scheduled appointments for the month. And so I changed my pay plan to reflect that we still do show rate. What I started doing is once I got the call management software that allowed us to not have to get out of the inbound call queues to do outbound, I started making outbound a huge part of my pay plans, how many calls I expected them to make each day and month, what their goal was, what their goal for appointments was. And I compensated that heavily too, because for me, the calls are going to come in. It's just natural, it's going to happen. People need service. But what I wanted to focus on were those people that needed service that didn't realize it yet because maybe the manufacturer OEM hadn't sent their car the little ding yet. But I had that list and I was calling to remind them that the car was telling us it was time and then reaching out to those customers that hadn't been in it a little bit. That was my goal, is to be a big shrimp net for the auto group and go collect all these customers that maybe had trickled by the wayside that just needed to be shown a little bit of attention. And so I wanted to focus more on outbound and that worked immensely. Well, once I Changed that pay plan. Our outbound performance increased by almost 50% within 90 days. And also. Yeah, yeah. And once I changed my pay plan, our productivity went up 30%. Now what's happened is because I've got more coming out of each individual that we have added other rooftops, three more rooftops, and I haven't had to add any additional staff. So I'm A, keeping costs low for my auto group and B, paying these people what they're worth because they are worth gold when they're good at this. They're a commodity that you just can't go find. Truly and honestly, recently I wanted to. What I found is I was running out of outbound calls every month and then all of a sudden I got some new resources and now my outbound calls weren't getting completed. So this is our first trial month that I'm bonusing them on outbound calls and I'm doubling their compensation if their conversion rate is above the national norm, I'm compensating them an additional if their contact rate is above the norm. So what I'm trying to do is to get better quality messages being left. And I think I saw something that you were just talking about this. If you leave a great message and don't rush through it because you have to, that person's going to call back. And when I looked at the fact that of the callbacks from these outbound calls, 50% book an appointment. So let's leave a great message and make them want to call back. So what I've technically done is I'm paying my people more because I want that longevity in the job and I have very little turnover. And if they do a great job, they get paid great. If they do just the subs that, you know, just a standard job, they still get paid pretty well. But those that are going over and above get bonused very, very well. And that has just made our department thrive and they help each other to achieve things.

You know, I, I, you have a great culture in this bdc. And yes, your turnover is, I mean, you should be really proud of that. I think the most extraordinary thing about what you said is that these are very seasoned people. When, when I was there a couple weeks ago, one of them had been there three and a half years. One had been there seven years, the other one was two years. They love it. They're not going anywhere. And the pay plan motivated them to change. Where most people would say, oh, Kim stuck in her ways, she's not going to change. The pay plan motivated him to change, didn't it?

Absolutely. You know, you can get to where you're comfortable. And even myself, I'll get comfortable with results. And then when I just get a little glimpse of what could be possible, maybe we hit something one time and then all of a sudden it becomes normal and we're out of that comfort zone and we're pushing ourselves. I had my. She's my assistant and she's been with me since the very beginning. She came into me yesterday and she said, you know, what with this new conversion and contact rate and thing objective, she said, if we can make four times as much per outbound appointment, that's amazing. However, you know, I remember when we used to think 200 outbound appointments a month was good. Now individuals are achieving 200 outbound appointments a month. And she said, you know, when you bumped us up to from 40 outbound calls a day was our goal to 50, and now we're at 60. And yesterday you put a challenge out there of 80 and it's not that hard when you realize that you can do it. She said, it's not that hard. It just sounded big. And I said, that's the thing, it sounds big till you do it and then it becomes minute.

What percentage of an agent's salary do you think should be fixed? And what should be variable? What should be commission?

I think commission should be 40%.

Yeah, I do too. And that's. With a decent base, people can schedule 50, 60 outbound appointments a week at $300 an RO. And everyone who's listening to this, remember, every outbound appointment you make, either they weren't coming in or they weren't coming in as fast as. And by the way, when they call, they want to come in at 8 o' clock the next morning and they want a loaner car. So, Kim, you're scheduling four times more outbound appointments than you were three years ago, right?

Absolutely.

And. And I'm certain there's going to be great growth because good habits combined with consistency, they've done. Joe Cooper Auto Group has done a great job of speeding up their database. So you get people to come in faster, you fill in the spots that are convenient for you and. And then it compounds anything else with the pay plan today that, that you want to share.

Just to kind of just give you guys a little. Overall, I do have two tiers. I have one set of. This is what I would like to see. But the outbound always remains the same. It's basically appointments scheduled. Some people work at a different pace than others. And I had to keep that in mind. I didn't want someone who isn't quite as quick and talks as fast and not to get the opportunity for a bonus. So I have the tier one and then once that's achieved, I have tier two which goes on into another different compensation where some things are doubled, some things are just a lump sum is added. And then I have a team goal. If we hit what we want to hit as a team, everyone that went over and above and achieved tier 2 gets to split a set amount every month and it's a thousand dollars. I had three people hit tier two this past month. So each of them got an additional $333 in bonus just because, because of their efforts. We went over what we wanted to do and they know that and it just makes them excited and I'm just proud of them. They're absolute go getters and I give them a challenge and they rise to meet it every time.

I do want, I want, I wanted to end it, but now you've got me. You've got me. One question I want to close with. With unpaid plans, most of the people before they sign up with volley, they just log check marks. All I care about is shows. But you focused on team goals, you focused on the behaviors that, you know, the effort they put in, the conversion rate which will lead to more appointments. But talk about that a bit of how just not focusing on shows has really amped things up for you.

Well, I'm going to tell you, whenever I started making these objectives a little bit more granular, maybe I wasn't hearing the voicemails being left. I didn't. Those weren't how I wanted them to sound. They were too rushed. They sounded fabricated. They didn't sound like a real person. Well, now I'm hearing a lot better quality voicemails and messages, which is what I was looking for. You know, it's when they realize that so much compensation can come from their efforts instead of just answering and following a process. Then they decide how much effort am I going to put into this? And it's my job to make sure that they feel rewarded and boosted to make that effort. And that's what getting more granular instead of just looking at check marks has done for my department. I'm hearing process. I'm hearing things that I want to hear. I'm hearing things being done the way that I wanted them to be done, which everybody starts off great but then we get used to a certain thing and maybe we fall off here. And fall off there. This is keeping everybody on that straight and narrow, and I love it.

Yeah, well, great stuff. Thanks, Kim. I hope everyone thought this was helpful. Have a good day.