This one-day course is designed to help dealership managers to produce a workable budget for their business or department by tackling the complex and different issues not routinely covered nor discussed regularly in training modules and without turning the manager into an accountant.

You will leave this workshop with the skills, tools and techniques to help you to:

• Understand budgeting models
• Understand basic accounting terms
• Understand where to source the management information available to you to produce a budget
• Have the knowledge and understanding to produce a workable budget on your return to the dealership

By the conclusion of this workshop, you will have improved and developed your financial appreciation skills, your business skills, and be able to produce a workable budget for the next 12 months.

DURATION: 1 DAY

Declining profit margins in new car sales together with the continuous extension of car life are making the performance of the service department key to the financial health of a dealership. This workshop is designed to give service managers the core knowledge needed to:

1. Increase the average hours per job card (or repair order) invoiced through the workshop
2. Increase customer satisfaction and retention
3. Increase service department profit contribution.

The content will cover:

• Understanding the bigger picture, why the performance of your service department is a critical success factor for your dealership.
• The service customer reception process; on the phone, the night, before and receiving the vehicle on the day.
• The electronic vehicle health check process; the practices, the processes and the systems to employ that deliver a duty of care charter to each and every customer.
• The customer relationship building process; at the reception desk, in the workshop, delivering the invoice and making a lasting impression
• Selling service plans and residual income products; the features, the advantages and the benefits of offering these products and services
• How to operate an effective service CRM system; the traditional and the innovative systems and processes to employ in the age of social media and digital marketing
• Understanding customer touch point’s, what they are and how to identify them to increase service revenues, labor sales, technician utilization and workshop productivity.

DURATION: 2 DAYS

The objective of this two-day Sales Management workshop is give each delegate that attends the tools, the information and the education to ensure that they make every sales opportunity in their business count. This intensive management course is designed for both the new and the experienced Sales Manager looking to upskill and improve sales team performance.

The workshop content will cover:

• A working review of the effective and profitable sales management processes that increase vehicle sales and profits
• Installing and implementing the key disciplines needed in your sales department that directly influence & increase volumes
• The management disciplines required to optimise the profit in every deal covering deal desking, value shifting and profit maximisation
• Driving sales performance by installing and implementing the core performance drivers needed to inspire exceptional sales performance from your sales team
• Dealing effectively with the digital shopper to convert more enquiries into sales by covering response approaches, tools available, online chat prompts, video follow-up, email templates and phone tips to move the enquirer to a call to action (CTA) in the critical 15-minute window of opportunity
• Key social media tools, tips and tricks to make sure you get the best results from your social media marketing covering what’s being used, who’s using it, what’s effective and whats not!
• The used car market, what’s hot and not, the market potential, the opportunities and the threats so that the sales team are best prepared to exploit the used car opportunities afforded to them
• Buying the used car at the right price by reviewing effective digital mark-up policies, etrade-in appraisals, valuation processes, pricing disciplines, price to market used car stock turn policies, pre-conditioning standards, policies and controls.

DURATION: 2 DAYS

Objective: To demonstrate to the participants in a clear manner that you do not have to rely on walk-in traffic and digital advertising to generate more customers.

The course content will help each delegate learn new practical ways to generate appointments with prospective customers from the incoming calls and digital inquiries that they receive and the outgoing calls that they make.

The key areas covered will be:

• Structuring calls (Incoming and outgoing)
• Different call approaches (outgoing)
• Targeting specific customers (outgoing)
• TNP strategy and background
• Diary management
• Telephone techniques – inbound and outbound
• Setting solid appointments from incoming calls and digital inquiries
• Email responses and templates to secure more confirmed appointments
• Influencing skills and transition management
• Generating referrals
• Prospecting for engagement using social media.

The objective of this sales development course is to focus and motivate your sales people to make sales happen. Suitable equally for new starters and experienced sales people this workshop will give them the tools needed to enable them to sell new and used cars, light commercial vehicles and additional products in volume, profitably.

The key areas covered will be:

• Developing the right attitude and focus.
• The digital customer journey, touch points to move the prospective customer to the next call to action.
• Dealing effectively with the digital shopper to convert more inquiries into sales, designed to move the enquirer to a telephone or face to face meeting in the critical window of opportunity.
• Meeting and greeting issues including body language, procedural statements, sign posting and agenda setting.
• In-depth customer qualification; to establish the customer’s specific requirements, to identify explicit needs, that develop implied and emotional needs to help the customer to buy.
• eTrade-in evaluations & appraisals skills; showing delegates how to conduct a professional appraisal of a car through an introduction to the market driven pricing grid.
• Influencing skills and demonstration techniques that will show the delegates how to positively influence customers through a static demonstration, how to conduct a test drive and how to get commitment on the vehicle of interest.
• Quoting a deal; building the quote, building the deal, delivering value and the justification of the price.
• Closing skills; objection handling techniques and closing techniques to add to the sales toolbox.
• Key social media tools, tips and tricks to make sure each salesperson gets the best results from their personal social media marketing.

DURATION: 2 DAYS

What benefit is there to a car market to register in excess of 50% of its monthly registrations in the last 10 days of the month? I have been trying to figure this out all year and it doesn’t make any sense to me for the motor industry in Ireland to continue to do this. June 2012 saw 4178 units registered in the last 10 days, a massive 65% of the month’s units! Our year to date report is at this link INSIGHT JULY 2012

With the seasonally adjusted sales rate (SAR) at just 77,000 units for the year the market is suffering from a savage beating at the moment. Retail sales are falling, and with the availability of credit tightening the prospect of more sales through finance doesn’t look good. Nor does the prospect of another scrappage scheme look likely even though some manufacturers are calling for them across Europe Crisis in Europe.

In fact things could get much worse before there is any sign of them getting better. The government have called for a review of VRT in Ireland and whilst this shouldn’t bode badly for the industry it needs to be very carefully managed.

When it was last reviewed in 2008 the timing couldn’t have been worse with the new scheme coming in on the 1^st July that year. Effectively it killed sales in the first 6 months and the industry welcomed in the recession way before it should have done. This can’t be allowed to happen again.Click here for the VRT detail

IS THE DEALER’S VOICE BEING HEARD?

The reality is that the government needs to generate more revenue from the industry as their tax receipts are back 72% on 2007 from €1.4 billion to under €400 million last year. It’s highly likely that they will change the rates around the CO2 emission band and the rumour is that this will be in place for the budget. I don’t want to tread on any toes with this as I know that the livelihoods of a lot of people depend on the manufacturers, the industry bodies and the government getting it right this time.

However I do have concerns, concerns about the government not listening as well as it could do to what is happening at the coalface. To do that they need to listen to another voice, not as loud or as well represented as it could be for a myriad of reasons. That body is the dealerships, the people that own the dealerships, that run them and that work in them. They are seeing first-hand what is happening.

WHAT IS THE GOVERNMENT HEARING?

The most immediate issue and the most pressing is the one that I have started the article with, the pre-registrations that are happening at the end of the month. With the exception of cash rich dealerships (a declining species), which can avail of manufacturer incentives and buy pre-registrations at reduced prices, there is absolutely no benefit to these dealers to self-register. The pre-registered cars will be sold, however they will push down the price on used cars, cars in stock that the dealers are having to absorb (this reality is happening now).

4 year comparison

At the very same time the government must be hearing a very different message, a message that is confusing unless you have the full picture. This message is one that says we are getting our revenue at the end of each month as the new cars get registered so everything must be OK. Sure they would like new car sales to increase and therefore earn increased review from the tax. But they are not absorbing any pain, they are not absorbing direct losses for these cars and therefore these losses have no direct consequence to them.

BROKEN RIB

Pain is a funny thing. I broke my rib just 3 weeks ago and I have to say it’s really uncomfortable. For the first week it was awful pain and I couldn’t sleep, the second week a little less and this week a little less again. But the pain is still there and I’m taking pain killers daily. Everybody around me has forgotten I’m in pain of course; the reality is they don’t care and I get that, however it’s hurting me and I’m having to make a lot of changes to how I do things because of it.

It’s the same for the government but they just don’t know it. The dealers out there are really hurting and they are in a lot of pain, but its a pain that the government aren’t feeling which they need to.  34,493 cars have been registered in the last 10 days of six months to June this year so far, 50% of the total cars registered year to date. If I conservatively suggested that 33% of these cars were self-registrations then the government has taken around €45million in revenue this year over and above what they really should have done. THAT WOULD BE A PAINFUL HOLE IN REVENUE TO PLUG.

REAL MARKET

My belief is that the real retail market is sitting at around 60,000 units this year and as such the likely revenue from VRT should be around €240 million and not the €310 million that they will likely get paid. If that revenue was €240 million perhaps they would sit up and take notice, €70 million that’s a big hole in revenue to fill. Its a truer picture of what’s really happening in the market on which to gauge their decisions on the VRT review. AND IT DOESN’T INCLUDE ANY OF THE VAT REVENUE THAT WILL BE GENERATED.

Getting back to the dealerships pain though; 5 dealers have closed their doors within the last 3 weeks and it is rumoured that there are manufacturers who are actively shoring up others. The reality is that there are still too many dealers for the size of the current market and more will go. What can be done to avert this?

There are therefore only two things that can be done, either somehow the market has to see a lift in volumes or more dealers have to close their doors. Anything the government can do to lift sales will be a welcome boost for the dealers as with this option there is a chance for the government to earn more revenue in VRT, VAT, PRSI and Corporation Tax. The second option guarantees a drop in taxation revenue and will result in more dealers closing their doors. The dealers need this message to be heard loud and clear.

My belief is that this argument, that any increase in taxation will hurt the other side of the revenue coin is not being discussed as much as it could be. Whilst the government picks up VRT revenue from decisions made to pre-register cars not required, the true story will not be told. 

My genuine concern is that unless it is discussed in more depth with dealers it will lead to a decision on VRT that, like a broken rib, will be really painful and will take much longer to heal that is avoidable.

If the government increases VRT in whatever way, in a depressed market, it will have major adverse consequences for car dealers, jobs and tax revenues. The industry needs to avoid a repeat of what happened in 2008 by getting this debate on the table now and getting their voice heard loud and clear.

Dealerships looking to increase their profits in their sales department have traditionally focused on two key areas – increasing the prospect conversion rate, and increasing gross profit per sale. But there is only so far you can go with that.

There is undoubtedly some potential to improve the prospect conversion ratio in most dealerships.   The true industry average is probably no more than 10% or so.  Many dealerships believe their figure to be higher, but they often fail to take account of selective logging in the showroom.  The top performers are probably achieving 20%.  But even with a tightly-controlled sales process in place it is hard to get beyond the 20% level – not least because of the quality of people employed in the industry, and the prevailing salary/commission structures.

Increasing the profit per sale is even tougher.  In a mature, competitive market, raising your prices is often not an option.  And raising your gross profit by a significant amount without raising prices is extremely hard work – even before you take into account the increasing costs of holding a franchise in the post-Block Exemption environment.  You don’t just have to sell better, you have to buy better as well.

One alternative is to sell more accessories, or more finance.  F&I has long been seen as a way to increase profits, but that too is under increasing pressure, not least from the legislative authorities.  And if you look at the trends in the USA, with the controls they now have coming in such as the disclosure of finance commission that pressure seems certain to increase.

During the past ten years or so the industry has focused more on increasing the customer’s repurchasing frequency as a way of increasing profits.  Ford set the ball rolling when it brought out the Options PCP.  It was designed to increase the frequency with which customers change their cars, and to make sure they came back to the dealership they bought them from in the first place.  When they saw how successful it was, the rest of the industry soon followed.  But because PCPs are linked to residual values there is a risk involved, as the industry found to its cost on both sides of the Atlantic.

Now that residual values appear to have stabilised, the PCP is regaining popularity.  But there’s a clear need for the industry to develop new products that lock customers in and drive them back to the dealership, which are not tied to residual value risks.

We’re seeing some of those products being developed in the USA today, in the form of tyres-for-life and engines-for-life programs.  Dealers who have embraced them are achieving some success in terms of getting customers to come back to the dealership more often – or even at all!

The tyres-for-life guarantee is not sold as an add-on product, it is built into the selling price of the car and customers have to come back to the dealership every three months or 3,000 miles for a quick tyre inspection.  The engine-for-life package requires customers to keep coming back to the dealership in line with the manufacturer’s service intervals.

With tyres for life, the warranty company that funds the program can buy the tyres in bulk, which keeps the cost down and makes the programs viable.  It is based on the fact that the average customer changes car every 27 months, which typically equates to one set of tyres (it also helps the used car department, because every used car that goes out has a new set of tyres on it).

Customers who keep their cars for longer than that are more likely to come back to the dealership when their tyres need replacing – where else can they get them for free?  And that gives the dealership an opportunity to sell other products and services if it is handled in the right way by the service advisor.  If not, it may be perceived as a rip-off.  The customer may feel you are simply loading as much as you can onto the invoice.

Increasingly, US dealerships are putting more of their marketing budget into activities like these, and reducing the amount they spend on traditional advertising.  That represents something of a sea-change.

The motor trade is less good than some other industries – companies like Apple, Dell, EasyJet and Ryanair spring to mind – at marketing additional products to their customer base.  On a regular basis these companies will come back to you offering additional products and services.  If you buy a computer from Dell, for example, they will continue to offer you consumables, or a new laptop 12 months after you’ve bought one, or an upgrade to your home system 12 months after you’ve bought one. Easyjet and Ryanair sell travel insurance, hotel bookings and car hire, plus of course their in-flight services.

For the motor trade your used car stock offers you a considerable opportunity.  A dealership database is perfect for marketing to.  Who’s to say that of the 5,000 or so customers you have on your database, 200 aren’t going to be interested in a new used car right now? It is good CRM.

The key of course is a clean, up to date database. If you have that in place you can market additional service products, you can market to lapsed service customers, you can market to lost sales prospects….. the list goes on.

But the next generation of CRM strategies will encompass products that lock customers in to the dealership – because if you have got your customers locked in, once you start to tweak their repurchase frequency through your marketing activities you can start to see serious growth in your profits.

We have facilitated the recruitment of 20 new sales people through our GROUP SELECTION ASSESSMENT CENTRE in 2014 and 2015, a new recruitment process for the group, now bedded in and managed internally.

Full sales process implementation encompassing Sales Process Training, Sales Management Training, Business Management Training & Dealer Principal Training over a 9 month period through 14 dealerships in the Sultanate of Oman. F&I penetrations increased on average to 60% across the city dealerships with F&I profit contribution by 400%. Sales volumes increased from 8000 units to 13000 units the following year, increasing sales department revenue by RO9million (euro €18Million, USD $24million).

We were approached by BTC in to help them to softly launch AUTOVHC into the Irish market in 2007. Initially the product was show to a 20 Group of dealers, six of whom trialed the system. The trials were resoundingly successful. Following on from the trials AUTOVHC needed an on the ground support company for the system, we facilitated the introduction of BTC to Avonbrook Software in Dublin. AUTOVHC® is installed in over 100 dealerships in Ireland and over 1000 worldwide.