Day 5

More Autobase training today. I think I'm just about done with it for now. I have a fairly good grasp of the concept. I just need to concentrate on the things the strictly relate to the Internet and BDC. I'll be meeting with the Special Finance Manager on Monday to discuss those tasks I need to be doing right now.

The individual who used to do the CRM (Customer Relationship Managment) portion of this job was fired before she had a chance to sit down with me and go through all her current tasks. Unfortunately, there was no written process to pass along, and the management allowed her to create the process on her own. So they don't know where everything is, or how to get to it. So we'll have to spend time figuring it out.

I met with the Who's Calling rep. For those unfamiliar with this, Who's Calling monitors all the incoming calls to the dealership. It's a nice program when it's used to train those individuals who do not answer the calls properly. From what I've seen, most dealerships don't handle incoming sales and service calls properly. A lot of money is lost in dealerships just in this area. And many dealerships who have Who's Calling installed don't take the time to monitor the calls on a daily basis, so the program becomes another waste of money. I'll be monitoring the calls from now on since I'm going to be responsible for helping to increase phone-up sales.

I now have over 100 resumes for the Appointment Coordinator position. Next week I'll email all the applicants to leave a voice mail message based on a small script and choose those whose telephone demeanor meets my standards. Then I'll setup the personal interviews for next week.

One of the tasks the past CRM person did was to explain the CSI survey to all the deliveries. It was determined by Management that this was just one more person the customer had to see in an already long sales and delivery process, so we're going to let the salespeople complete this task. I'm going to hold a sales meeting on Monday to do some training for how we want it done.

I also started preparing for the Managers meeting on Tuesday to begin discussions on how we want the BDC to begin. It's a ways down the road yet, but we should start thinking about it so in case I find some people in this current hiring process, we may be able to start it now on a small scale. The BDC is nothing you want to start big right from the start. Build slow and small, and you'll have a better chance of making it work.

Well, I'm off for the weekend, which is a welcome thought. See you next week.