What are the key measurement criteria that you use to guide your focus in the dealership’s Internet Sales operations? I am attaching numerous spreadsheets and reports that show some examples of what I have tracked in the past but would love to get both input and feedback on new items as well as the spreadsheet templates I have uploaded to this forum…
I have removed the Courtesy Chevrolet examples at the store’s request and added in a few templated spreadsheets as both tools and discussion starters.
You can’t manage what you don’t know, and today’s website back-end analytics provide the most comprehensive tools to measure ROI ever available from any media ever used to sell cars – period! The charts, facts/figures, and computations that you provided are excellent examples of relevant information needed to direct SEM investments and assign accountability to individuals for their performance in the internet department. If all departments in a dealership, and every media or marketing investment, were managed using comparable data we would all be enjoying record sales and profits.
That said, I think the most important point I can add to the issue that your question surfaces are that the problem with many provided statistics is that they are often skewed to fit the website host and their SEO and/or SEM programs rather than to benefit the dealer. Conversion rates, for example, often include raw data from landing pages and/or 800 numbers that rarely translate into workable leads or usable contacts. The ability to qualify data – rather than quantify data – is often abused in self-serving conclusions that mislead dealers into thinking that they are doing a great job when in fact the criteria for the statistics are selected to impress the dealer rather than sell more cars or insure a real ROI.
The key is not the raw data, but how it is interpreted and applied to improve selling processes and individual productivity. The bottom line is still built on money out vs. money in and the combination of art and science needed to properly select relevant statistics and assign them in a problem/solution format is the real solution needed by dealers.
Another intentional re-direction often used by Internet “experts” is that they have created their own language when describing standard selling statistics – like closing ratios vs. conversion rates – much like leasing agents transformed interest rates into money factors and residuals to confuse their customers.
I would agree generally with everything you said. “Data dump” is running rampant in our industry. Dealers make sooo many decisions based on the bottom line on a statement, with little regard to the intangibles that get affected, underlying causation, etc, ie turnover or pay plan changes.
It is clear that certain statistics, or benchmarks, and Best Practices, which are true “measurements” of success or failure, must be monitored, ie response time, follow up, process process process leads converted to appointments, appoints set to show, show to sold, ROI of lead providers, as many people make the mistake of signing up for 6-8 lead providers, when 2-3 solid ones, plus a path to pushing more to their own site, is all that is needed.