How an Automotive Business Development Center Can Help Support Your Sales Team

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The sales team at a car dealership is comprised of multiple positions and multiple duties throughout the company. Some positions you may find at a dealership that have some part in the sales process include the Salesperson, Assistant Sales Manager, Sales Manager, and the General Manager. Being able to move customer service activities away from the sales team can create more time for them to tend to the sales process and develop a truly seamless transition between the Salespeople, Managers, Customer, and Customer Service teams. 

Dealership Sales Team

The Salesperson is generally your first point of contact when you arrive at a dealership. They are the ones on the floor, talking with customers, and going along for test drives. They need to be super knowledgeable and be up to date on car makes, models, trends, and price points to negotiate appropriately. 

The Assistant Sales Manager is usually the next person up the ladder from the salesperson. They come in to talk numbers and seal the deal. In terms of the work they do, they don’t do as many managerial duties, as they do sales, but are there to represent the dealership as a whole and ensure they get the deal. They will fill out all the paperwork with the customer, talk incentives, future appointments, and terms of the purchase. 

The Sales Manager works more behind the scenes, and really don’t get any face to face interaction with the customer. They pre-approve prices and strategy and encourage the Salespeople and Assistant Sales Managers to hold firm in their negotiations to get the cars sold at the price they agreed upon and that the dealership is willing to settle on.

The General Manager is the one who heads all of the sales team, and the rest of the dealership including receptionists, service teams, vehicle delivery specialists – you name it. 

Where a BDC Comes in

Business Development Centers can allow the dealership sales team to make even more sales, and focus on the sales process in the dealership. The Business Development Centers can help with customer service appointments, customer retention and satisfaction surveys, and handling call volume. By removing those things out of the dealership, and out of the hands of the sales team, it’s likely sales could increase just by salespeople and managers having more time and energy to devote to sales. The BDC can essentially become an extension of the sales team, supporting them with day-to-day tasks and follows up with customers. 

Answering Calls to Alleviate High Call Volume

The BDC can help alleviate heavy call volume by answering calls that otherwise could pull salespeople, and sales managers away from the floor. BDCs like Customer Traac become masters on the subject matter so they can answer questions, resolve inquiries, and know specific details regarding car service needs and timelines. This removes a lot of the time spent in the dealership on customer service issues that can pull focus away from the selling of cars, which in-turn opens up availability to make more sales and keep moving inventory. When your dealership sales team or in-house customer service are getting high volumes of calls for questions on top of inquiries, it can get messy. There’s also a few times of year, mostly in December around the holidays, or right before the new year, that there is an increase in people purchasing cars. These high volumes of calls can be a lot to handle, and outsourcing to a team that is equipped to handle these seasonal shifts in call volume can help aid your dealership in this busy season. They can take those calls and turn them into a schedule for the sales team that keeps everyone busy, but not overloaded during a busy time of year. 

Follow-up Calls

Following up with customers about their purchase, their vehicle’s maintenance schedule, returning calls with issues, and other customer service tasks can be left for the BDC to handle in a timely, and efficient manner. The salespeople don’t have to worry about keeping track of customer voicemails, emails, or disrupting sales efforts to make follow-up calls. Follow-up calls can bring a lot of recurring business to the dealership as well. It is a tactic that can easily fall by the wayside if salespeople aren’t getting responses or calls back after a week or so, they may give up on that customer. A customer service team that remains diligent in reaching out to existing or potential customers have a very high chance of turning that call around into a service appointment, a future trade-in, or even a good review. 

Scheduling Service Appointments

BDCs will know a car’s suggested service maintenance schedule based on the make, model, year, and when the customer purchased the vehicle. This means they can make and maintain a full schedule of service appointments that ensures customer retention and a full service schedule for the service team, all based on the sale made by the salesperson. 

Outsourcing your Business Development Center helps create a ripple effect from the initial sale, and takes care of all the supporting activities associated with it. Customer Traac starts at once after a sale and can start outbound campaigns, pre-schedule service appointments, and alleviate call volume from the dealership. 

Customer Traac proves having an Automotive Business Development Center can help support your sales team in more ways than one. More time, means more sales, and having a specific BDC focused on the automotive industry can truly create a curated customer service experience for your dealership that goes above and beyond for your customers.