As the old adage goes – you can’t improve what you can’t measure. In part 2 of our series, we will focus on the problems that disconnected steps in the process run on different software systems make measuring your sales process difficult.
The mentality of measuring a process has unique attributes as compared to the sales performance of a store. Measuring the sales process is accounting for the cause. Measuring sales performance is accounting for the effect.
Most software in the sales process in automotive provides metrics on the effect exclusively. The disconnected nature of the traditional software tools in the sales process dictates that this will be a blind spot in measuring the sales process.
Minimizing the number of software tools in the sales process is the first step in addressing the problem of measuring the cause and unlocking the power of dialing in a consistent and predictable sales process within your store. When you account for multiple stores having the same measurable process these metrics become even more powerful as you are able to benchmark high-performing stores and understand how “cause” elements of their sales process are leading to higher “effect” outcomes.
To give an example. One store at an automotive group may be seeing higher than desired time presenting the first pencil to the guest. When the VP of Operations studies the sales process they realize that the test drive agreement step in the process was below standard in that store.
Because the store was off the process of having a sales manager check out the license plate for a test drive they were not establishing a complete address from the driver’s license in the software at that step.
The effect of that was a clumsy moment down the line when the sales associate was asking for the address when presenting the first pencil when it should have already been available.
The faster process is having the sales manager load and verify the tax rate of the guest while they were out for a test drive and have the first pencil already established when the guest returned.
Many cause metrics within the sales process are focused on ratios and time. Ratios articulate the rate at which the steps in the process are successfully completed. Time is a measure of the efficiency of that process.
Having these metrics on hand is essential to understanding where your process is excelling and where it needs work.
Stores that have a firm handle on these metrics are able to confidently make staffing decisions because they know their capacity and what their possible throughput is. In fact, many of our clients that make the choice of going to a single point-of-contact sales model are highly interested in increasing the throughput of their sales process because they have measured their efficiency and need more professionals to be able to take a guest from the start to finish to increase their total process throughput.
The A2Z Dealership Experience Platform (DXP) centralizes the essential last-mile transaction steps in the sales process. It provides sales leaders with an omnipresent awareness of what step every deal is at within the store in one single interface. Book a demo with our team to see how our DXP empowers your sales process to be predictable, measurable, and efficient
