Best Practices for Screening, Selecting

and Hiring Dealership Employees

How important is it to hire and train the right people while building a

sales team that can convert opportunities created by marketing into

actual sales results?

Organizational development is more important than ever before…with many dealers

losing staff while cutting costs during the depths of the recession, those that are

growing their business need effective strategies, tools and tactics for attracting,

screening and hiring the best Internet sales professionals with the greatest chance of

achieving their own personal success, as well as sales productivity for the dealership.

This session will explore organizational development strategies, recruiting, screening,

hiring and training tools as well as the materials and processes that the most

successful dealers in America have been using for years, and are being used today as

a means of increasing success in the hiring process. Ralph Paglia will share the tools

and processes he has used to build some of the most successful Internet sales

departments in America while teaching attendees what the essential "must haves" are,

and how to get them when seeking to grow your sales departments into high

performance digital marketing to sales conversion engines.

Introduction and Background:

Ralph Paglia

President

Automotive Media Partners, LLC• Led build-out and development of

Tier10’s Digital Marketing, Advertising and Social

Media Strategies, Tactics and client service capabilities

• Automotive Digital Marketing Professional Community creator and Editor-in-Chief

• Generated 144,000+ leads in 22 months while working for Courtesy Chevrolet…

• Managed Courtesy Chevy Internet Sales team that sold 4,000+ Units in 2006…

• Worked w/Ford in 2007-2009 to develop first fully integrated Tier 3 Digital Marketing

Consulting and Ford Co-Op supported Digital Advertising program for Dealers…

• Ran 1st retail automotive Behavioral Targeting Digital Advertising program…

• Internet Sales & Marketing Consultant to Ford, Mercedes-Benz, GM, Honda, Toyota,

Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai and 250+ dealers & groups…

• Pioneered development of “Internet Leads” in 1988 using CompuServe ISP access

to post vehicle inventory listings on defense contractor BBS’s…

www.ADMPC.com

Growing Your Internet Staff from 10 to 300 Cars per Month

Courtesy Chevrolet in Phoenix, AZ became the

USA’s leading Internet retailer of new and certified

used Chevrolet vehicles… Human Resource

Development was the key (secret sauce) to success.

Organizational Development is the

essential stumbling block that

many dealers and ISM’s report as

the primary reason for Internet

Sales Operations failure or lack of

growth into a strategically

significant level of sales.

“This is a people business…”

Create a Video that showcases why People want to Work for Your Dealership

• Training

• Compensation

• Benefits

• Supportive Team

• People Matter

• Career Growth

Use Video Role Play Assessment

• Pre-Screen Applicants

• Identify Training Opportunities

• Invest Time with the Most Qualified Candidates

• Use as a Recruiting Tool

• Ideal for Social Media based Recruiting

• Don’t waste valuable ($$$) management interview time on applicants destined to fail!

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Hire The Winners Assessment: Accurate Results in 20 MinutesHire The Winners Report and Assessment Example

TARGET TRAINING FOR CURRENT TEAM MEMBERS

Process Execution Capabilities Drive Staffing Requirements

No dealership has unlimited process execution capabilities…

Dealer Lead

Management

Process Map

Growing Your Internet Sales Team Requires that you

Define what Your Internet Process Should Look Like…

5. New Chevrolet Internet Sales

6. Used Car Internet Sales

7. Bell Road Internet Sales

8. Commercial Internet Sales

1. New Chevrolet BDC

2. Used Car BDC

3. Wholesale Parts BDC

4. eFinance Sales Team

Courtesy Chevrolet is a single point Chevy dealer with

(at one time) 3 fully staffed BDC Team’s, an eFinance

Sales Team and 4 Internet Sales Teams. These 8 teams of

automotive sales professionals are identified as follows:

Organic Growth

Let’s Take a Look at How It Happened…

90,000+ Outbound

Phone Calls / Month

Document Roles & Responsibilities for All Positions

* July 2006 Interactive Marketing Budget

Document Pay Plan

& Bonus Structure

that reflects taller

Internet sales

funnel

Lead Volume puts pressure on response

times as a factor of staffing levels!

Top 4 Ways

to Close

More Sales

to Leads

Received

Dealer Response Attributes

Experienced by Customers within

24 hours of Submitting an Inquiry

Purchase

Respondents*

who DID

NOT

experience

the attribute

% of

Purchase*

among the

Leads who

DID

Experience

the attribute

Statistical Correlation Factor of Response attribute

with Vehicle Purchase

#1Make Direct Phone Contact with Customer

(after sending Email w/availability & prices) 17% 27% 11

#2 Send Price Quotes by Email to Customer 20% 27% 9

#3Contact Customer more than once by Email

and Telephone (within First 24 Hours) 21% 25% 5

#4Make sure Customers are either Completely or

Very Satisfied with the Lead Response 21% 24% 3

Organizational Structure Determines Process Capabilities

and Monitoring Requirements…

Customer goes online

and submits Lead

Internet Sales Specialist ISS)reviews lead, selects 4

vehicles for Price QuotesSends email with Quotes & Cars

BDC Staff makes initial phone call,

collects customer info, sets up an

appointment for the ISS

If no appointment, ISS

Contacts customer and seeks

appointment and/or agreement

Staffing Determines Process Execution Capabilities

and Monitoring Requirements…

Lead Process Maps

should be indexed to

email templates,

phone scripts and

word tracks so that

dealership employees

have a “paint by

numbers” guide to

what is expected when

a lead is received.

This process map

focuses on the first 12

hours after a new lead

is received.

Lead Process Maps

should contain brief

explanations for the logic

and execution tips for

employees to review

before actually using the

email templates, phone

scripts and word tracks.

Actual template

illustrations make it easy

for dealership employees

to recognize the right

template or document

when they see it in their

CRM tool.

When Lead

Process Maps are indexed to

correspondingly numbered

email templates, phone

scripts and word tracks, the

dealership is far more likely to

execute the repetitious tasks

that create customer

experiences which correlate

with higher sales closing

ratios. The best process

maps break down email and

phone contact processes into

separate flows so that they

can be executed by different

resources when scaling up

lead volumes and

organization structures.

Although many car guys will say they believe in the concept of following up until

prospects either buy or die… Large scale lead generation through highly effective

marketing practices requires that scarce resources be allocated to where they will

generate the most sales. Outsourcing followup on leads that have reached a

designated status (dormant) or assigning them to alternate resources such as a BDC

will allow ISS’s to stay focused on the 50% of the leads that buy, and do so within the

first 10 days

Have a defined process for “closing out” unsold leads

LMP Scoring Index

Objective Review of

Dealership Employee Lead

responses encourages

consistency and creates a

numeric accountability –

an LMP Report Card for

Dealer or GM review…

Nothing has more impact on results

than phone contact with the customer!

Outbound phone calls, ongoing phone follow-up and

responding to emails requires adequate staffing and skill levels

Telephone Process

• 85% of Web visitors who contact the dealership

before coming into the showroom, use the phone

• Direct Phone contact (after responding to an

Internet lead by email), has the greatest impact on

increasing sales closing ratios

Phone Follow-Up Sales Strategy:

• Focus on having a set of objectives in front of us,

each time we make an email follow-up call

• Word Track Forms (scripts) are used for training

and collecting customer information during each call

that is made immediately after sending personalized

email response

Top 10 Reasons To Use “Hire The Winners”1. Find out why your lowest producers aren't producing.

2. Learn what the potential is of every sales consultant on your team.

3. Discover opportunities for improvement for each sales consultant and how you can

focus your training for immediate improvement.

4. HTW can show you how to find and recruit excellent talent to grow and improve your

sales team.

5. HTW has tools to help make informed hiring decisions and get best talent available.

6. HTW provides you with tools that allow your sales team to practice on the simulator

not the public (Lost sales from poorly trained sales consultants are killing us).

7. HTW provides you with a hiring process and support to strengthen your

management teams interviewing skills and, if used correctly, will provide you with

information you need to bring on the best talent available.

8. HTW provides you with tools that show you what the sales applicant can and can't

do when put into the automotive sales situation. You will know in 20-30 minutes the

potential of every candidate.

9. Tools that will assist you in creating customers in a challenging market (What you can

do to cause more customers to visit your store without raising your advertising budget).

10. (see link below)

Free DMSC Trial: www.hirethewinners.com/adm

AutoMax Recruiting & Training

Recruiting 2.0◦ Place job opening on 100’s of job boards including Monster, Career Builder, Indeed, Simply Hired,

Zip Recruiter, Craigslist, Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, LinkedIn, Google+ and MORE. Nobody used more resources than AutoMax!

◦ Schedule & conduct ALL interviews & screen applicants using The Car Sales Simulator. (We have a team of people that interact with and schedule interviews with thousands of potential hires each week) The Car Sales Simulator Uses interactive video to present potential salespeople with a set of

decisions that will either lead to the sale or the GSM’s office for a “talking to.”◦ For those that make it through the interview & screening process either we’ll conduct the training

or you can. (We have multiple packages)◦ From porters to presidents, we will interview, screen and train internet sales managers, BDC reps,

social media managers, sales people, sales managers, service advisors, general managers and more!

Low Fee, Turn Key, With A Satisfaction Guarantee! 25% discount for all attendees present!

Video From Craig

AutoMaxRecruitingAndTraining.com | 800-878-5090

Actual Graduate Class

Questions and Answers…

Ralph PagliaCell: 505-301-6369

RPaglia@gmail.com www.RalphPaglia.com

Reference Links:http://www.ADMPC.com

http://slideshare.net/RalphPaglia

http://www.hirethewinners.com/adm

http://www.Automax.com