By Brian Lien
First and foremost, thank you, Andrei. Reading your book has made this role much simpler for me and with the tools and guidelines in the book, you took a guy from 8-10 units a month to a 20+ unit guy. I started in August and up to date in May I was able to pay off $7k in credit card debt, $5k in personal debt and I am now five grand away from paying off my car.
Working in the car business is like going to a university majoring in street-smarts. Within my first eight months, I have learned so many valuable things that I hope to keep for as long as I can. If you are ever seeking a work environment or career where every day is different, the car business is definitely for you.
In this article particularly, I will discuss with you what I have learned from being in the BDC department. As a BDC representative, you are the front line AND the last line of defense for the dealership. With my situation working in a small store, if traffic and sales are slow, the eyes go to BDC. If traffic and sales are great, the eyes go to BDC.
In layman’s terms, the BDC department is ultimately the internet response team that handles all incoming web leads and phone calls coming to the store. Your job is simply to sell the appointment.
Here are some skills that working in the BDC has polished for me.
- Stress management
- Negotiation
- Writing
- Speaking
- Emotional Intelligence
- Time management
- Copywriting
- Innovation
- Critical Thinking
- People Skills
Here are a few things that I have learned so far
You are in the people business.
You have to really like serving people to excel in the BDC office. You are the politician that people will trust to go invest their time in the store, you become a salesperson when there a ‘no’ comes up. You are customer service if the customer is unhappy with something, and you must be the encyclopedia for your product.
You do not have to be ‘good’ at sales.
We are living in the Internet age, you do not be a salesperson over the phone. The inventory and prices sell for themselves over the internet. As long as you can act as their guide over the phone you will do fine if you do so with transparency, honesty, and being timely. With Andrei’s email templates, it was easy to set my set myself because I am not sending generic store templates and I am not sending any 1-liners.
The fortune is in the follow-up.
Not everybody buys within 1-3 days. In fact, the car buying process can go as long as 60 days or even 6 months for some people. However, each time you touch base with your customer, you will increase the chance of them going your direction, but of course, do not spam them.
Sell dumb.
Your job is the appointment, not the car. It can become a sticky situation if you give a wrong answer on payments, financing, warranties, service. In the beginning, I would ask for down payments and desired monthly payments but I would quickly run into self-made obstacles because I am not in the finance department and I can’t provide the correct terms.
Conclusion.
In closing, being in BDC is a job that is challenging yet very rewarding once you can learn how to take care of people, know your product and set yourself apart from other stores by providing a different experience and feeling that the customer gets when they interact with you.
My best month so far has been 32 units but I am still pressing forward to become better and still striving to have a 40 car and a 50 car month in the business. Remember, you have the ability to print money just by saying that the car is here!
