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800.801.0018 | info@automotiveMastermind.com ©2021 automotiveMastermind ® . All rights reserved. | A business unit of IHS Markit™ LEARN MORE automotiveMastermind.com CALCULATE THE COST OF NOT COMMUNICATING WITH YOUR AUDIENCE In today's competitive market, staying in communication with your existing customer base is just as important as engaging new prospects. Missing an opportunity to engage your audience could mean losing a customer for good – which quickly becomes costly. To put customer defection into perspective, dealers need to understand and calculate the cost of not communicating with their audience. For example, if a dealer with a 55% loyalty rate sells 1,000 cars per year, or 550 loyalty cars per year, a 10-point drop in loyalty would mean selling 100 fewer vehicles per year, or around eight cars lost per month. At an average of $4,000 gross profit, that's an approximate loss of $400,000 in gross revenue every year just from not communicating and losing loyalty customers. To proactively prevent defection, dealers need to consistently engage their loyalty audience – a job perfect for the BDC. By staying in consistent communication with loyalty audiences, the BDC can help ensure your dealership is top-of-mind when your customers return to market. Every communication and touchpoint should build on the last in a useful manner, meeting your customers where they are in their ownership journey and keeping them engaged through the years. CREATE EFFICIENCIES WHEREVER POSSIBLE As dealers are increasingly looking to "do more with less," leveraging an effective, efficient BDC empowers dealers to maximize their operations and revenue. This means ensuring your BDC has access to clear and comprehensive customer data to go past cold-calling with a data-driven approach. With insights like household and vehicle ownership information for online shoppers in front of them, BDC agents can be more effective and efficient in customizing touchpoints and sales scripts to move prospects toward scheduling an appointment. Comprehensive insights also improve the accuracy of your BDCs efforts by helping reduce the likelihood of duplicate outreach, improving the hand-off from department-to-department and aiding in the automation of manual, tedious tasks like sifting through leads. Finally, by serving as a main point of customer contact, a well-connected BDC can provide value far past the sales department, supporting your service department, F&I efforts, vehicle acquisitions and more. Assess how well your BDC is connected to the rest of your dealership, asking questions such as: • How does your BDC communicate and collaborate with other teams? • How do they communicate on topics like new programs or models? • How can the hand-off between your BDC and sales staff be improved? What details are being shared between departments? By taking a data-driven approach, the BDC is empowered to improve the efficiency and efficacy of their efforts, engaging the best prospects before they start shopping with the right information that guides the rest of the customer's journey – from buyer to service customer and back to buyer once more. Interested in learning how automotiveMastermind can help your BDC maximize its efforts and support your dealership's operations? Contact us for a free demo.