#80 - Why You Need A BDC with Sara Hoagey

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Independent Dealer Podcast. We have Sarah. She is chomping at the bit. Super excited. We recorded a great, great episode. So much good information about BDC, CRMs, and all sorts of acronyms. Luke, what did we cover?

So Sarah is a friend of mine, her and her husband Todd, and she is the BDC CRM expert. She's going to go over all kind of a great questions. She's going to answer questions that I have for BDC and probably most of you out there. She's going to talk about how many leads you need before you before you need a bdc, talk about how many leads you need before a CRM, and also talk to us about how to handle those things. So thanks for being here, Sarah. Let's get into it.

You are listening to the Independent Dealer Podcast with hosts Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson. Thank you so much for tuning in. Let's do this.

All right, Sarah, thank you. Thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate your time. We know you're a super busy woman.

Thank you.

Tell us just real quick. Introduce the podcast to who you are, the service that you offer, and that can kind of set up the context for our conversation. Today we're going to be talking bdc. And I know dealers love acronyms. We love them. Acronyms.

And CRM.

Yeah, and CRM. So tell us, how did you get into this?

Let's see. So I was a little bank teller. The best way I could describe it, putting myself through college. And. And I wanted a car, but there was absolutely no way that I was going to go into a car dealership. So I went on cars.com. i think cars.com was new at the time. It was like 20 years ago. I know Botox does a lot for me. So 20 years ago, I went on cars.com, i put a lead into this dealer. They had a red Mustang. The dealer manager, I negotiated with him. I drove the car around the parking lot. I basically negotiated my entire deal with him and bought a Mustang from him. And he said, you know what? You should work for me. And I said, I couldn't get a promotion at the bank. Honestly, I was burned out. Between going to school full time and working full time, I actually got sick for a while. I said, you know, maybe I should take a break and go into the car business.

Yeah, quite the break.

Yeah. 60 hours a week later. So I started selling cars. I threw cars.com through a CRM system that nobody knew what that CRM system was. It was the computer in the corner that no one had dusted off. And I had a guy, like, really, really pick on me my first day of work. And we became the best of friends once we established that I'm not gonna back down and I'm gonna beat you. Selling cars off of the computer. This month, he really, really helped me out, and I started selling cars. Then I moved into finance, and I was a finance manager, and I had a great dealer in the Rochester area. He was John Holtz. He had eight Highline dealerships. And he said, why don't you start my bdc? I don't really know what I'm doing. So I ran his bdc, and he was very good to me. Every two years he goes, you know, I think I'm going to groom you for a gm. So he moved me into sales manager. I was a service manager, general sales manager. So I've been in every single scene of a car dealership. Then, unfortunately, I had a girlfriend of mine, she was close to me. She said, you know, you're living to work instead of living to live. And I got out of it for six months. I was so bored. It was the most boring part of my career was being out of the car business because I was so addicted to it. And the money is great. If you hustle and you want to make money, it's great to be on your own. I mean, I travel the world being in sales. So I met my husband one week after I got out of automotive.

And he sucked you right back in, right?

Pardon? You know what was funny? He and his partner tried to recruit me at the time for Auction Direct usa. That's. We're shareholders in that right now. And I said, oh, I can't do it. You know, I just. I couldn't do it. And I ended up working for a competitor directly across the street from my husband. So I would say it's hard if you. I don't know if your wives work for your better half work for you, but mine does. I will tell you now, the funny part is my husband's getting into near, like in the next few years, like three to five years, he says, you know, maybe I'll retire. And he's like, I think I'm gonna work for you. So my then boss, because I worked for Todd 20 years ago, I might be becoming his boss, which is really funny. Wouldn't that be funny?

Yeah, it would be. And he needs a boss because he's. He'd be all over the place, right?

He's good. He's A CPA by trade. So he does all of my books and he handles all of that. And I think he sees too much. I was like, don't look at the purses I just bought.

Yeah, yeah, that's a business deduction. So, Sarah, help us out here. For those of us that don't know, will you give us the definition of a BDC and a CRM and then we can get into more of like what they are, what they aren't.

Because I think some people get so funny. I have six pages of definitions for my dealers. So BDC is business development center. I basically call it call center. Call center. BDC for call center. Yeah, call center. And CRM is customer relationship management. So it's a software that helps you manage all of your customers in one database.

Okay. And so for dealers that a bdc, like you said, is a physical call center you're going to set up with people and phones, and they're using their CRM, which is their customer relationship or cash replicating machine, whatever you want to call it, to harvest and use those leads. And there's a million different CRMs out there, right? There's free ones, there's paid ones, there's good ones, there's bad ones.

Right. I don't use an automotive one for my own business. I use a business one because for dealers, you really should use an automotive one. They're so specific and there's a lot.

And they link into everything, right?

They link into everything. I've had a lot of dealers, I mean, I just had a call a couple weeks ago. They said, you know, I think we're gonna build our own of or use one off of Salesforce. And Salesforce is. That's a machine all in itself.

Yeah, they're kind of. The one in there is a one.

Like big business, right? Big, big business. You're going to be using Salesforce. And even CRM companies, they don't use their own. They use Salesforce.

But that's. I was going to say most automotive, like everybody who's trying to sell you something right now in the automotive industry uses Salesforce to do that.

It's not sell you their CRM.

You know what's so funny? I just asked a CR company last week. He was talking about artificial intelligence and AI And I said, do you use AI for your own business? Do you use your own AI for your business? He goes, no, I don't know. We don't. And I said, that's why I'm just not sold on it yet. When your own CRM company doesn't use AI for their own business. It's questionable. And AI is artificial intelligence, in case anybody doesn't know.

So, Sarah, let's kind of, let's start at the top. Who needs a BDC and who needs a CRM? When we talk about car dealers, what do you see? The best size. I told everybody last week that if you didn't have a CRM, you should get one right now. No matter if it's just one person. Can you talk about that? And let's talk about who needs what.

So I just, I mean, I just came out, you guys know the size of my business and I have a CRM for my customers. When you get to the point where you can't manage what you have coming in for traffic, when you can't get back to your customers on time, and when you can't remember who to call and a spreadsheet isn't working, or like your Rolodex isn't working, it's time I find people. If they are in a market and they have a ton of family and a ton of friends, you're going to need a CRM even if you have a five car lot, because you're going to have to call all these people all the time to keep in touch with them. I usually see the breaking point for small independent dealers is that 10 to 20 mark, you got 10 to 20 cars on your lot, they suddenly go, you know what? I had so much traffic coming in from Facebook, from Craigslist, car gurus, maybe they're like, I can't keep up with this and I don't know what to do. They hit their emotional and mental breaking point. And that's really when you need a CRM. If you're doing like five car sales a year, you probably don't need one. But if you have like a 10 car, 10 to 20 car lot, that's where the mental breakdown, I see people going, oh my gosh, I have too much going on and I can't keep it together.

And how about a bdc?

I mean, who needs that when you're averaging. So salesperson, a salesperson beginning to end, who does not take any floor traffic, okay, they should be handling about 80 leads a month. That means they don't take any walk in traffic. They can take telephone and Internet lead traffic. Their breaking point for sanity is around 80 leads a month. If you're getting in that 200 range, that's when you need to contact the people. From 30, 60, 90 days ago, you probably, if you're buy here, pay here, or you're used cars. You have some equity in some of those clients. You have to start doing some effort and database mining. Hey, all of a sudden, you know, they're in an equity situation. Let's take them out and flip them into a different car. When you get to that 200 range, that's when you're really starting to sweat and you need. I laugh because people like, I only need two people when you really almost need three. Because at any given time someone's out sick, someone's on vacation. So if you're, if, if you get one and you're like, I'm gonna get two, don't get to go from one right to three.

Okay, I'm at that position right now, Sarah. And it's so interesting what you're talking about because Alexa and I, we've been talking this over for a while and we Even sitting in 20 groups, I've said this to people, I said, well, you know, I don't think you have enough leads yet for bdc. And I kind of been arguing that. But we're right at that 200. Right, at 200 lead a month situation. And when you get there, we have two full time salespeople. And honestly, people fall behind. We can work the new leads, but it's hard to stay current on the old leads. And that mining process would really bring us probably another 10 cars a month, I would think. So we are, we're in the process of trying to hire or talking about promoting someone within to be another salesperson. And it's almost like I need to maybe move one to BDC responsibilities, taking a lot of income and leads. That's, that's very interesting. I'm glad you, you said that number.

So let me recut that, Sarah. So, so you were saying 80 inbound leads per this for a salesperson, for a sale.

Agree to the grave. They do everything from beginning to end.

So that was my. I've always kind of had that same issue as Luke is, I think, well, you know, you could have one or two salespeople and you're getting 200 leads, but all they're able to do is those. The ones that are right in the face, their face. The ones that are throwing their money at them. They've got a mattress strapped to their back and they come down and they're like, sell me this car, this one right here. I've done all the paperwork for you, you know, and so I don't think dealers realize that it's those marginal sales that they're missing because they're not giving them attention either in a timely manner or, or in a consistent follow up type manner. We're letting so many fall through the cracks because our guys are just busy with the sales that are right in front of their face.

And I'm going to tell you, I was an Internet salesperson the minute that you gave me 125 or more leads. So I was cradle to grave. I was showing customer cars. I wasn't your 20 unit a month lady. I was 12 to 15. I mean I was working 60 hours a week. I had to hustle. There was a lot that was going in at that time just to get 15 deals a month. The minute that you handed me more than that, I couldn't get back to my customers by phone or by email, answer new leads. I was exploding. I think the difference is a BDC agent can handle 150 to 200 leads. I like to see new car dealers, I like to see them cut back because they have lease renewals. So they have a different dynamic. But used cars, I mean you're comfortable at 150 to 200. And the used car buying cycle is much faster than the new car buying cycle. I mean, if you have someone in front of you, it's two to four weeks.

So help me out here. I was thinking, go ahead, what, what do you do? Help me reconcile. So a BDC is not a salesman. A BDC rep is a call center. It's an appointment setter. A salesman is a salesman, but it's also an appointment setter. So when do you decide that you're gonna split those responsibilities apart? And if you have a BDC person and all they're doing is setting appointments for the salesman, I mean it seems like the salesman compensation is gonna change because now they're just being fed appointments and leads. But also, I guess I've never been able to wrap my head around the fact like if you're a good BDC agent and you're selling and setting appointments, you're probably also a pretty darn good salesman. So how do you not have that person out on the floor?

Amen. So everyone says, like, what's the difference between the two? A BDC agent not only sells, I don't know if you guys have service departments. I don't think, I don't think you have parts. But a BDC agent doesn't just sell the car, they sell the dealership. They sell the experience. They sell your value propositions. If you have a service point system, they Mention that to the customers so they go over the entire business of your business. Now, I've been a salesperson. I know you guys have been sales people. You want to hurry up and get that customer. And your focus is the commission, the sales, the sale of the car. A BDC agent will sell your experience because they're on the phone. They have the extra five to 10 minutes to spend with a customer to go over all of that. Your salesperson wants to sell the car almost over the phone, right?

Yeah.

And you can tell. So your CRM system can do different things for you depending on how you configure it. It will let you know when to text a customer, call a customer, customer, email a customer what to say. You can fill phone scripts in there. If you're like, oh my gosh, I don't even know what to say or how to overcome these objections. Your CRM system can have all of these items for you right at your fingertips to make you. Even if you don't know what you're saying, to make you sound like you know what you're saying. When you will know when you need something. When your salespeople, your response time goes up. You should be getting back to Internet leads. I like to see 15 minutes. I know people are like five minutes. I'm like, you didn't even thoroughly research that lead in five minutes. I like to say 15 minutes. When it gets to like an hour, two hours, three hours, and they can't respond in an appropriate time fashion, then it's time to move over to a BDC agent. If you go into the lead itself and the tasks are dismissed or only emails and text messages went out and there's no phone calls, they're gaming your system. Or if you see that they've done 30 tasks in one minute, like that just doesn't happen. I laughed. I had someone told me that they did like 50 tasks in one hour. And I said, according to this system, you did five tasks in one minute. And I'm pretty good. So I know that you didn't do that.

You can't leave a message in one minute.

Yeah. So when things get out of hand, that's when it's time. And here's the other thing. Salespeople are going to go on vacation. They're going to need a break and time off. Who does that fall on when they're not there?

So, Sarah, how does this work? So the BDC takes the incoming lead and they work to the appointment is the. Are the appointments round robin, I guess would be My question at that point, and what is the sales person doing when they're not taking inbound leads?

Okay. For salespeople, my. This is my position. There's plenty that a salesperson should be doing a look at the appointment board, see if the car's ready to be shown. Do a video for the BDC. If you guys are using QuickPage or BombBomb, BDC agents won't have time to go out and really do a video of the car. Get them out there doing a video of themselves, a video of the car. Let them know that the car's ready for their appointment. I don't have salespeople. This is just me. I don't have them. Appointments go into a salesperson's name because you never really. I wait. I have them really go to the manager until that customer walks in. That's just because salespeople are like, I'm gonna go out to lunch at that time. Or I have a delivery at that time. And the BDC doesn't know that I have a delivery at that time. So I don't give appointments to newbies. I give them to your gold heavy hitters that show up early. To me, early's on time. On time is late. And late doesn't happen. So they show up early. They're dedicated, they're loyal. You might have to. You'll see that the BDC is bringing in a lot of appointments. They should be setting five a day, and out of five a day, three should be showing. You might have to go, hey, you know, my flat was eight deliveries a month or six deliveries a month. But now I have this BDC that's crushing it. I'm going to move up my volume bonus to 10 to compensate for the two additional people that I had to put into my BDC. You might have to do a little bit of restructuring.

Yeah. Because you're at this point, you're paying your BDC per appointment show, or how are we working that sales when people.

Pay for appointments that. If you follow me in my forum, I have a little BDC and CRM form, if you follow me in there. We discuss compensation a lot. I don't believe when I see compensation paid on sets, I cringe. I'm like, why are you paying a set? Because they're redeeming the system.

It's the show.

They should be paid on show. I like to see them paid on a delivery. But I really believe that their whole purpose is to get people in the door. It's your salesperson's position to really Sell the car and your dealership, once they're in, they've done their job, you can pay that. A lot of dealers are like, I want to pay them if the car sells. So you can, I just recommend a little bit higher on the show than I do on the delivery. I have dealers that they do like $10 on a show and 50 on a delivery. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. You're penalizing them if that delivery or show goes to a green pea that doesn't even know how to handle a customer. If they show they did their job.

I agree with that. The delivery is out of their hands at that point. So, yeah, I agree. What do you see people paying? What's the going rate for paying for a show?

Okay, I have my own structure, so my paying dealers get that. But I give you a range. Your BDC agents, when you start them off at minimum wage, you can plan on them leaving. And I'm going to tell you a few reasons why. Right now. What are we at, like a 2 and 2.8% unemployment rate? You're gonna have a hard time finding some quality people. Two, I'm partnered into outsourced call centers. Outsourced call centers are who you are up against when you're hiring a BDC agent. We pay our staff really, really well, whether it's collections or call center or for our dealers, it's chat. You don't even start in an outsourced call center unless you're like 17, 18, up to $22 an hour. The training is fantastic. And I'm going to tell you, the health benefits and the overall benefits of a call center are very, very good. So if those are the people that you're competing against. So if you're going to start them off at a small hourly minimum wage, you're going to get what you pay for. You're going to have high turnover. So I like to see BDC agents to 45,000 when they're hitting that 45,000 mark. Consider your BDC, your training center. They start there, they move into sales, you get somebody new. You should not have to go out on the street to get a salesperson because I'm sure that you guys have some turnover in sales right now. This will bring their confidence up because they know your dealership, they know your CRM. They know how the lot kind of works. They know if they like their boss. At this point, that is your recruiting center. I love to see people move up after a year.

So interesting. So. So from a staffing standpoint Sarah, would you say if a dealer, like a small dealer like myself or similar, if we have, say, anywhere from two to five salesmen, would you recommend that we rearrange that have one to two BDC wraps and two to three salesmen? I mean, is that you're gonna advantageous or.

No, you're gonna. If your salespeople are not busy right now, if they're averaging, like, if they're not hitting their minimum, minimum unit mark, then maybe you want to get there. I like to see salespeople prospecting for you. So they're like waiting for an Internet lead to come in. You take that off the table now those appointments are gonna go to your goal team. Now your salespeople have time to get on Facebook, prospect, bring in their own business. It's up to them. It's not up to you anymore. It's up to them to get to work and start hustling. So I like to say people are like, oh, I'm just gonna reduce my staff. I'm like, no, now you're gonna put them to work and have them do what they should have been doing all along.

I have, I have that discussion. It seems like monthly with my sales staff that you can't always rely on me to bring you leads. That's not the way it works. You've got to do it. So, yeah, it's just. It's hard, though. I mean, and. And I don't even understand because I have millennials, I don't understand why it's hard for them to prospect, but it is. How do you. How do you engage those salespeople? Sarah, what do you do?

I gotta tell you, I think one of the biggest things that's lacking in automotive in general mean I went, I'm giving you just a little bit. I'm in this position because a two of my brothers are teachers for a living and all of my friends and family are teachers. I think I missed my calling. I should have been a teacher. Maybe I would have had to take a pay cut. But anyways, there's training that is severely lacking in this industry. That's why, I mean, I have a book. You should see it, a huge book of everything that I compiled so that I could help be a trainer and help people learn. Some people have it, some people don't. If they don't have it, they need to go. You need to have a fire in you that says, I want to make money, and this is what I'm going to do. If you have people waiting around, they're not the right people.

I agree with that.

And I do have to say, I have a lot of dealers where it works better. If they have a small salary base, and that could be minimum wage or even a draw, I think that works a little bit better. I don't know where you guys are located, but in New York, you pretty much starve. December, January, February, like, you better be hustling if you want to make some money in the middle of two feet of snow. You better get out there and brush off your cars. I think you guys, one's in a T shirt or one's in a polo, so maybe it's a little bit warmer where you're at.

I'm in South Carolina, so we got the same climate. You do? Yeah. You know, you don't have to worry about that. But it. I mean, when it gets hot outside, it's. You kind of get the same situation. It's harder for people to come out. And salespeople, they just. They expect too much of the dealer, I think, a lot of times.

And I think the harder part is if you're going from cradle to grave and they're so used to everything coming to them, that's going to be a large challenge for them when nothing is coming in. But I'll send you guys both a copy of Sean's book, and it's, this is how you're going to prospect. This is where you're going to start. This is what you need to do. And I'm a great example of that myself. I was very private on Facebook. I think I was friends. I was definitely friends with you, Luke. Like, I probably had 300 friends. That's it. I probably had, at the time, 500 requests. Who knows what it was from? I mean, Todd is out there. He's, you know, I'm not. I mean, I do have blonde hair. So you just don't know what it's from. And then I saw Shannon's video, and I said, you know what? It's time our fourth child's going to school. I really want to be. I'm very, very passionate about BDC and CRM and helping dealers. I see that strain on their face when they're like, I just don't know what to do and I need your help. I've always worked at night when the kids are sleeping. And I said, it's time. Well, I opened up everything. I started a group. Now, this is only. The group started in November. There's 1700 people in there. I opened up my Facebook account. I'm almost Maxed out. I'm busy. I mean, my business has grown five times since. So if I can do this for myself, this is what your salespeople need to do. And they need to be very passionate about it, and they need to care about it. This is my career. They'll know quickly if they can't do it. This isn't their career, and they just don't have it.

Yeah, I think so. So often that salespeople or people that get into the car sales, it's. It's almost like a downgrade in life, and it's not. There's so much money to be made in sales. And starting as a car salesperson, you can. I mean, it advances you to all kind of sales. And people really need to focus when they get these jobs because they are really. They can be really lucrative careers. Anyway, I got a quick question. If I'm a buy here, pay air dealer, and I am, and there's probably a lot out there, is there something where you could see a mix between a BDC and a collections office all in one or not?

I'm gonna say the best BDC people that I have started off in collections.

Okay.

Because they can beat the heck out of these people to get them to pay. And I think most. Well, I don't know about yours in particular. Sorry if they're watching or listening, but they can. They usually get a cut of some of the income coming in. So collections agents, I'll say. What was your collection rate? What was your connection rate? How much were you able to get? Like, we talked about that all the time. If they can beat them up on the phone to make a payment, they're going to be your best people for bdc. BDC is going to seem like a walk in the park. Yeah.

Because you're talking to happy people a lot of times. And that is so interesting that you could. And I'm just seeing a way to.

Almost utilize that person's time.

Yeah.

They're gonna say, please, can I please call a customer to come by a car? Because it's gonna be better than me hounding this guy for his, like, seven.

That might be your issue, Luke, is they're gonna spend a lot more time on the prospect team than on the collection calls.

Well, we can look at that, but if you. Oh, man. I just totally lost track of what I was thinking.

Don't worry. The other thing I'm gonna tell you is some people that are bdc, they prefer to behind the scenes. They have a really, really hard time. You get them in front of a customer and everything starts shaking and falling apart. I call it. This is a horrible thing to say as a Christian. I call it like phone and email balls. Like, they can do stuff that's great on the phone and they can do things that are great by email, but you get them in front of someone and they start breaking a sweat. They're your BDC people.

And yeah, I mean, over time they.

Have a totally different personality, but over.

Time they'd probably get used to it.

Over. Over time they get used to it. They just get into a role. They know it's expected for the day. They get fired up when they get. I call it the hat trick for the day. When you get five appointments set and all five show like, that's. That's your total, like, dream. So.

So, Sarah, help me out.

Where.

Where is the dealer? Where do we get started? If we're looking at this and we're saying, hey, I would like to make some moves or rearrange person or just restructure the way my leads come into my dealership, how do we. Where would we even start? Where would we look?

The first thing that you need is you can't measure what you can't manage. You can't manage what you can't measure. You don't have a CRM, then you need one. If you're a small dealer. I'm going to put some names out there with things that I think work. I was just working with a dealer that has VIN Solutions. They're on an independent package that's like 695 to me. You're gonna get that paid in one car deal. Like that system will pay for itself in month one.

We love that analogy.

Yep.

Then if you're like, I'm not a VIN Solutions fan. You're unsure of what you're gonna do with call center because there's outsourced call center too. And I'm gonna tell you, if you don't plan on growing your business. How do I want to word this? If you don't plan on any progression with people and you just want like an easy fix and you just have too much going on, you have a hard area to recruit in. Like New York is hard to recruit in right now. More people are leaving than coming in and the people that are staying aren't very quality. So that's when you want to consider, like an outsourced call center. So a. The first thing that you need is the CRM so that you can effectively manage and measure what you have coming.

In and some of those would be VIN solutions. Promax, we used Autoraptor for a while. They're fairly cheap and dealer socket, super simple and easy to use. Very easy to use. And I switched over to Blackbird in dealer socket and it's like learning Greek. So it's a little bit.

I'm gonna tell you that's one of the hardest systems for people to use. Just so that you know it's hard.

But it's good when you.

It's hard and good.

Yeah, it's. It's hard.

And the other thing is you need to have it. The way that these CRM systems come is they come cookie cutter. So if you don't get in there, you don't take all those admin classes and you don't have templates set up, you don't have. They're made for the standard dealership. So if they're not custom to you, they're not going to sound like you. You have to fix that. So it's your workflow, your process. It sounds like you, it sounds like your people, they know your value propositions. They know why they should buy from you versus why they should buy from your competitor. You can automate a lot of that. So if you're going to get a CRM system, get a CRM system but then have it professionally set up. I do it. The CRM companies do not do it. So I can do that for you.

I'm very surprised that they don't do it. That just blows my brain. Nor do they even send me a list of people that would set it up for me.

Well, it's funny because Promax and I are in chats right now.

So yeah, just give me a list of preferred people that are smarter than me because for to me to take 20 hours of classes to figure out how to set up an email campaign. It's just brain damage to me when someone could do it in 10 minutes.

And Sarah, you know, there's such a need for someone like you. And I know some other people that do it that, that need to come in and set you up because. And Promax is great. I've always heard great things about them. And it's funny that they seem to be on the front line of a lot of innovative things when it comes to CRM.

And I just have to say their system is easy but they've done things right. They have their own outsourced call center. That doesn't mean that you don't have to use the CRM. The thing is just because you get it doesn't mean that you don't use it. Like I have dealers, like I got a CRM and then they're like, they put the blinders on and they don't go in there. And you can set up reports to automatically come to you so that you're set for the day. You know how many appointments are set, you know how many deliveries are going on, you know how many sales, you know what your gross is, you know any Internet leads. And you didn't even open your CRM. Like automate those scheduled reports to go to you. So you look intelligent when you walk in as the owner for the day.

Yeah. And I thought a couple weeks ago about this that we were having a slow November, December. And I said, well, I'm just going to dig through the CRM real quick. And we got like out of, out of what my salespeople had mark lost. I went back over those and we, we got like three or four deals and we made that month because of that. And I wish, wish I did that all the time, but it's hard. I guess that's what a sales manager would do.

You can turn that off. So if you don't want them marking customers lost, you can use a manager. You'll have to say, you can come to me if you want to mark that loss. Or B, you can leave it on, but then go have an alert set to you to go, okay, now I gotta look this over. Now I'm gonna tell you that's really micromanaging and you hate when you get to that point. But it sounds like, it kind of sounds like you're there. So the first thing is CRM. And then once you get a CRM, I go, okay, this is what you need. You have 10 leads coming in. You don't need anything. You have 5,000. What are you doing? So I go in and I help you structure. Do you want in house? Do you want outsourced? These are your prices. I do request for proposals. I go in and tell you everything you're going to need. This is your cost if you outsource. This is your cost if you do it in house. I'll give you an example. My husband at the time when he, so he was CEO, he was like all C levels of Auction Direct. They had a bdc and I was a very hands off wife because your marriage is the most important thing. And I'm very boisterous. So I'm going to take a back seat. So I took a backseat. I didn't help out it didn't work out for them. I was working at a competitor at the time. So five years go by, he goes, I think we need your help. Okay. I think we don't know what we're doing here. Leads were going to the salespeople. Phone calls weren't getting answered. I look and I'm like, do you know with your traffic, your traffic alone, just for Internet leads, you need like 15 people between your two stores. I said, and that's on. Like, I can't reduce it anymore. Like, that's like, you're gonna sweat it out. So we, I looked at him and I said, I would do a hybrid. I would have half of this outsourced and I would leave half of it in house. And that was the most cost effective way that they could balance out. Because, let's face it, 35 to 45,000 with 15 people, people don't think, oh, that's gonna be a profit. They look at that. That's gonna be a large liability. A large. Exactly. So you have to. You have to know, like, I teach people how to build a BDC profit report so they know if their departments are profitable or if it's not.

Can you do us. Can you do a hybrid between inside your store, where sales takes a certain amount of leads, and the BDC takes another? I'm just thinking here you can, but.

It gets really sloppy. And the reason why is because your customers all of a sudden really so used to talking to somebody, then you shuffle them off to somebody else and there's some dialogue that's missing in between. Sometimes you can. So I mean, that's a band aid. I call that. That's the band aid approach, where you know that you need help, but you just don't know how to do it. So you're gonna try that, right?

Does your BDC agent have to be in your dealership or could you outsource your own in house person?

Yeah, and I'm gonna. Because with technology, you'll get some great people. You could say, you know what, work two days from the office and work three days from home. You'll get some great. All outsourced companies. I mean, there's no overhead. You can use your own computer. You can work on it with their phone to figure out their phone situation, how you're going to transfer back and forth. You got to use your own headset, use all your stuff. You're not taking up prime real estate, which is your dealership, and they work from home.

That would be my biggest benefit. I look at it I'm restricted with space for salesmen. I can't add another desk. But what I can do is outsource to someone. And my phones are all voiceover IP and everything's over the Internet. So they could just set up in their kitchen.

You got it.

And I think that would be. My issue is how do you make sure that those are all. I guess that you're making sure they're all covered. Because if you only have one BDC and they go to lunch now, those things aren't being handled. So I guess that's to work my brain around actually setting that up is, I guess my.

Yeah. Or your lunchtime is 12 to 1 every day. That's it. I won't plan on you answering anything from 12 to one every day.

And that's when your salesman could.

And I think it's great to. There's sometimes a disconnect. It works really great if you can say, hey, just stop in. I want you to see the 10 cars that I purchased last week. Just communicate with maybe some new salespeople that just arrived. Here's my number. Like, put. Just blend that relationship a little bit better so they get along. But you can get some great people who are like. Like, look at half the moms out there. They have. I don't know about you guys, but I moved to Florida and found out there weren't any buses. I was like, what, you get to go pick up your kid and drop them off every day because you live. Exactly. Far away enough from the school. I'm like, how in the heck am I going to work this out? So this, like, working at a call center would be a great environment for someone like me.

How do you get around if. If. If a lead comes in and that BDC has worked that lead and really developed a good relationship. And they've set the appointment and they go, okay. And by the way, you won't be speaking to me at the appointment. How do you. How do you get around that?

Just like an outsourced call center was. You don't have them. You don't do a sales consultant introduction. I want you to personally meet Luke Godwin. He hired me. I work directly for him. I feel like he's part of my family. He's going to want to personally meet you when he comes in. I really should not be the person showing you the car because I just don't know that much about that part of the process. He's going to go through paperwork and figures with you. That's really not part of my Wheelhouse. So when you come in, Luke has asked to specifically meet with you when you come in. So always the manager.

That's great.

Okay.

That's great. Awesome. Jeff, you got anything else?

I think that's great. Sarah, how can we get ahold of you? If those listening want some input, advice, can they join your group? Can they contact you directly? And of course, you know, how do we get ahold of you?

So I'll put my phone number right out there. 585-329-0538 is my phone number. I'm huge into texting. If you need to reach me, like, right now, I have, like, texting, text messages all going off right now. I don't have a website, and I don't have a website because social media, for me, has been incredibly busy that my actually put my website on the back burner. It's almost there. But I'm so busy through social media. So elite. Bdc. E L, I, T, E, B as in boy, D as in David, C as in Charles. That's the name of my business on all social media. LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook. You can reach me there. And then I started a Facebook group. You have to be an automotive. You have to answer the three questions. It's Automotive, BDC and CRM forum. And the. And is like the. And sign members in there. Every Friday, I do a question and answer. I do hot topics from the week. I probably get on the average, like, 20 to 25 questions a week. And I'm like, which ones am I gonna add to my Friday discussion? So feel free to follow me on Fridays, I leave it open for anyone to ask questions at the end. And I have three people, so if I don't get back to you, one of my assistants will get back to you.

Awesome.

Thank you for being here. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for having me at very, very last minute. But I was like, yes. I never say no to anything. I'm like, yes, I'm gonna do that today.

We'll probably have you back then.

All right.

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