Your new business development center is finally up and running! You’ve hired a great manager, and they’re already making a big impact on key metrics like lead generation, appointment set rate, and monthly sales numbers.
Implementing this new strategy has been the best decision you ever made, but your BDC manager is not a miracle worker. They’re going to need the right support and tools to keep your BDC operating at peak efficiency and driving your bottom line.
Unfortunately, for many owners, BDCs are unknown territory, and ideally, they need to run without your direct supervision. That means knowing how to support your BDC manager so they can do the job on their own—and at Phone Ninjas, we’re experts at keeping these business-generating powerhouses burning clean and efficiently. Here’s everything you need to know.
Empower Your BDC Manager to Hire the Right People
It’s easy to look at your BDC as little more than a re-branded customer service department. And while this is part of its mission, it misses the real point which is to bring in customers and maximize your revenue opportunities.
To do this, your BDC manager must have the freedom and authority to hire the right people for their new team. It can be tempting to become overly involved in the process or water down priorities by bringing in other departments, but a great BDC needs to be narrowly focused on its role. They’re going to be routing traffic and coordinating important business opportunities to your team—and it’s their job to figure out the best way to do it.
Of course, this support includes the budget necessary to hire an appropriate number of agents to do the job effectively. BDCs are rapidly becoming the beating heart of a successful dealership, pumping leads and money to every branch of your business. If you’re not sure what it’s going to take to operate at peak efficiency, definitely speak to your automotive training consultant to get the details.
Give Them the Right Tools
Because they are new additions to dealerships, BDCs are often shoved into whatever space is available and given leftover equipment from other departments. This may seem like an efficient repurposing of your resources, but the truth is you’re just handcuffing your BDC manager from the get-go.
Successful BDCs require these basic items:
- Clean, safe, comfortable workspace that is separate from other departments. (It doesn’t even need to be on site!)
- High-quality, reliable internet access.
- Computers and other technology that are powerful enough to easily handle the reams of data that will be flowing through them.
- Data backup services, either local or outsourced.
- Adequate office equipment to do their job well.
These resources are non-negotiable. After all, your BDC manager is focused on delivering the biggest return on your investment possible, so skimping on these is being penny smart but dollar foolish.
Reward Their Team for Their Contributions
Your BDC manager and their team will be the primary driver of sales going forward. It’s important to keep them hungry, and the best way to ensure high productivity from employees is to pay them for their performance! In other words, you’ll get their best by setting up a common-sense commission structure.
What should those numbers be? That’s a great question for your training partner. These professionals have a deep knowledge of what makes a BDC tick, as well as a solid understanding of industry standards and regional trends.
In general, it’s smart to structure pay packages in ways that compensate BDC agents beyond just their sales. Examples would include:
- Commission for setting valid appointments that actually show. That’s how you know their phone scripts are well-written and the team is properly prepared by the BDC manager.
- Base salary or hourly wage that is a draw against commission.
- Bonuses on reaching appointment volume benchmarks.
By properly rewarding your BDC manager and their team for their efforts, not only will they become fabulously productive, but you’ll have solid data to qualify just how critical their contributions are to your bottom line.
Utilize Great Training Resources
Well-trained employees are productive employees, and BDCs are no exception. If you expect your BDC manager to deliver the goods, they need to have access to high-quality training programs and partners that ensure their team members are set up for success.
What does a great training program look like? It should include every one of these four components:
- Provides high-quality initial instruction that is engaging and effective.
- Prioritizes mentoring employees individually over time to fully integrate new skills.
- Uses mystery shoppers to accurately measure the efficacy of the training.
- Delivers a long-term relationship that helps adapt to changing market conditions.
It sounds like a lot, but the best training teams can achieve all these goals with a surprisingly small investment of time. Typically, a few key examples shared with the team and short 20-minute touchup sessions are enough to address BDC manager concerns and keep the team on point.
Phone Ninjas Will Get Your BDC Up and Running Fast
Getting your people great training is the most basic thing you can do to support your BDC manager. We founded Phone Ninjas specifically to empower your team to deliver maximum ROI, and we’ve designed our comprehensive training program with the best research-led strategies to impart all critical skills to your new business development center employees.
Our active coaching model partners a talented Phone Ninja with each team member, and they work together in one-on-one weekly sessions to build skills using real-life BDC calls they’ve been taking to best implement our training and scripts. Our clients are shocked to see their appointment-from-call rate skyrocket from the industry average of 20% to 60%, or even 80% and beyond. This is exactly what you want your BDC manager to bring into your business, and this is what Phone Ninjas’ hard-working coaches deliver.
There’s no time like the present to join the top dealerships with a modern BDC strategy. We’d love to show you how we’ll make this happen with a free demo and mystery shops—but we can only help once you reach out. Call us today to get started!
As the COO | Partner of Phone Ninjas, Chris delivers leadership, coaching, and mentorship to 55 team members providing software sales and phone skills coaching. He fosters powerful partnerships and collaborations with leaders across various business sectors, establishing expectations, communicating vision, and escalating performance to maximize productivity and effectiveness.
Chris is an innovation-driven business executive with over 25 years of experience delivering leadership to teams of up to 75 overseeing development, launch, and sale of website lead acquisition, reconditioning process software systems, and technology that support automotive dealerships across the U.S., Canada, and Europe.
