FOLLOW UP QUESTIONS
Todd Friedman
Founder | The Kiraly Group | Building Reliable & Scalable Business Growth Systems | Apex
Today, I want to speak to car dealership management and ownership. Let’s have a word about your BDC reps/ appointment coordinators. For those who keep a close watch on their BDC, do you notice this happening; the rep goes to follow up a prospect who hasn’t booked an appointment and all they ask the prospect is, "Do you have any questions that I can answer?” If so, they’ve likely already lost the prospect’s interest, and here’s why.
But first, it's not their fault. You see when most appointment coordinators and BDC reps are first trained, they're trained to booked an appointment and not much else. So if they can’t accomplish that one goal, they can only do so much with the training they have been provided.
Some other typical questions a prospect is asked consist of, "Are you going to lease or maybe finance this new vehicle?” “Do you have a trade-in that will need an appraisal?” and my personal favorite, “Can you come in today or is tomorrow better?"
These are not engaging questions. These types of questions only provide value to dealership staff for prospects who are at the bottom of the funnel and ready to come in. So if a BDC rep is asking those same kinds of questions to someone who isn’t ready to buy it puts them in a weak position from the start and also a weak position during follow up.
Why? They are weak questions for those not ready to visit yet. It also implies the BDC rep didn't put the work in upfront to understand what the prospect's needs are. Therefore the BDC rep’s follow up is weak.
Thus, making the prospect feel like just another number, not a valued potential customer. And now the BDC rep gets stuck in an ineffective, time-consuming feedback loop trying to follow up the prospect. It’s something we’ve dubbed the “Do You Have Any Questions Purgatory.
The BDC rep keeps calling, texting, and emailing the prospect with that exact same question over and over again (do you have any questions I can answer?) to the point they disappear. So what to do instead? Well, instead of going right for the kill, ask engaging questions, find out more about what they're looking for and why.
This way, if the prospect is not ready to book right away, the BDC rep can effectively follow up with the prospect and provide value to them so that when it’s time to come to the dealership, they're choosing yours, not someone else's.
President at Academic Language Solutions
9 个月A few days ago, I saw a post from The Wall Street Journal about electronic communication vs. telephone. Does calling people interrupt their "moment," and they're annoyed, so it hurts what you're trying to do even more? As you might expect, a lot of people weighed in, one way or the other. What the post didn't mention is face-to-face communication. The fact that you get in your car and deliver a jar of peanuts says a lot about your belief in your company and what you're doing. Just the fact that you "show up" will open doors, either on the spot or, as you say in your post, when you call and remind the person who received the peanuts that you're that guy. Your post reminded me of how hard it is to keep going, and the fuel each day comes from the belief that you're on to something different and helpful to people. If you walk into my office with that mindset, I'll stop what I'm doing and have a chat. That just doesn't come across electronically. Good for you!