Holding Your Salespeople Accountable

I am always surprised the answer I get when I ask a dealership about how many more cars they think they could sell a month if they improved their follow-up process.  This missed opportunity can often be fixed by implement a CRM technology, which is great for processes and campaigns. However, it is ultimately up to the salespeople to do what they are supposed to do. I have found that what you may think is being done in the dealership, often isn’t.

When I sold cars, I remember multiple times when the sales manager would tell a salesperson to make his daily follow-up calls and the salesperson would simply respond that he had already completed his calls.  It became a constant battle.  Apart from not making the calls, salespeople are notorious at finding ways to cut corners and cheat the system.  This not only hurts the salesperson but, the dealership and even the customers.

The first suggestion I have is to utilize reports in your CRM that track the number of new opportunities that your salespeople are entering into the CRM.  Nothing is worse than seeing someone take multiple ups and not having any of the customers entered into the CRM.  This can throw off your marketing and ROI reports.

The 2nd key metric is phone calls.  It is important that your CRM is integrated with your phone system in order to track outbound phone calls.  Having your salespeople mark all of their calls completed is one thing, but its better if there is proof that they actually made the call and how long they were on the call.  You can actually step this up and record their outbound calls.  This is great for managing quality and training.  Looking at the data that I have compiled, the top salespeople are constantly those that make the most calls.

Email and weblead tracking is also important.  You need to know how many emails they are receiving and sending out, as well as how long it is taking them to respond to their webleads.  (On a side note, a dealership recently told me they were going to be pulling the plug on their AutoTrader leads because they weren’t selling as many as they wanted.  I looked at some reports and noticed that all of the AutoTrader leads were being sent to one person and that person took an average of over 2 hours to respond to a lead.  It wasn’t the lead provider’s fault, it was the salesperson.)

Pipeline Management is also important.  Salespeople love people that come in and buy, but what about those that don’t buy or those that they talk to but are hard to get in touch with afterward?  Are they reaching out to them?  Make sure you are looking at reports that reflect this data.

Salespeople also love to move people to Lost. This is a way to get the follow-up to stop.  Do you have a review process in place for a manager to look at each lost deal and try to “save a deal”?

Another suggestion I have to improve accountability is to use a checkout system.  Some CRM tools have a daily activity report or check out report that shows everything the salesperson has done for the day (Ups, Appointments, Calls, Talk Time, E-mails).  One dealership that I was working with that had a problem with accountability, instituted a process that before a salesperson left for the day they would print out a report and give it to their manager to check out.  The report told the manager everything they had done as well as all of their calls (Daily To Dos) that they didn’t do.

Quickly, Managers were able to see what had been done and what had not been done. Often, the manager would send the salesperson back to make more calls before they left.  Salespeople began to feel ashamed when they handed a manager their sheet that said they didn’t do anything which motivated them to make more calls.  The dealership drastically improved their follow up process and began to see an immediate increase in their sales.

These are my suggestions. 

What do you do to make sure that your salespeople are doing what you want them to do?

About Hunter Swift

Hunter Swift is the Director of Sales Development at DealerSocket and has been with the company since 2005. In addition to his current role, he has fulfilled the responsibilities of customer support, consulting, training, and sales. Hunter specializes in helping dealerships improve sales and follow-up processes through the use of CRM technology. He is known for his ability to connect with people and demonstrate his knowledge to help others solve their problems. Hunter honed his dealership skills as a salesperson prior to joining DealerSocket. He has earned a Business Degree from Pepperdine University. Hunter can be reached at hswift@dealersocket.com and on social media at @HunterSwift.