Many successful businesses utilize a strategic sales BDC to capture leads. Inbound leads are the foundation of customer relationships, and they are only nourished and sustained through top-quality care and organization.
Strolid builds effective customer relationships through quick and personalized responses, a helpful attitude, and a smile you can hear through the phone. Premium customer service is still a critical component of scaling your business, so when you partner with Strolid for your sales BDC, you’ll already have an advantage.
What Is BDC Sales?
“BDC” stands for “Business Development Center.” Businesses in a variety of industries hire third-party Business Development Centers to manage tasks that encourage sales and maintain positive relationships with their customers. BDC auto sales teams specialize in caring for Automotive, RV, and Powersports businesses.
BDC sales are all about taking a strategic approach to developing new business opportunities for a car dealership, with a focus on enhancing sales. A BDC like Strolid uses dedicated resources, data, and personnel to create a more proactive and organized method of reaching potential customers on behalf of their clients, thereby boosting sales efficiency and effectiveness.
The organization, flow, and consistency of the BDC sales process are crucial to modern car dealership operations, especially for dealers looking to increase sales and improve customer satisfaction. Are you curious how a BDC partner could refresh your business’ customer relations? Have you ever wondered, “What is BDC in car sales?” without fully understanding how it can improve your lead captures?
The Strolid team compiled this complete BDC guide to answer all of your questions, give you industry insights so you’ll know what type of BDC to look for, and provide you with the supportive solutions you need.
How Can Sales BDC Improve My Bottom Line?
Sales BDC works in two specific avenues to improve a dealership’s overall profit: lead generation and lead nurturing. We’ll go over both to provide a more thorough understanding of how sales BDC can work for you.
Lead Generation
All sales start with a lead. While BDC can cover both sales and after-sales support, the sales BDC zeroes in on creating and managing sales opportunities. There are many ways a BDC can generate leads, with the most common being consistent lead follow-ups, email campaigns, and mining a dealership’s customer base to message potential buyers at the right time.
Another way a BDC can generate leads is to create a call-and-schedule process for customers that need auto service – this is called a Service to Sales strategy. These calls can involve setting appointments for potential buyers to visit the dealership, get a demonstration, test-drive vehicles, value a trade-in, and discuss financing options. The goal is to streamline the sales process, making it more efficient and customer-friendly.
Lead Nurturing
Once potential customers have been identified and contacted, these leads must be nurtured to develop a relationship that leads to a sale. At this point, a BDC sales specialist or team provides information about a dealer’s products and promotions to guide leads through the sales pipeline until they are ready to purchase.
BDC auto sales strategies aim to improve a dealership’s sales performance by systematically managing customer interactions and ensuring that every potential buyer stays engaged and well-informed. The BDC sales team uses various tools and platforms, such as phone calls, emails, social media, and online chat services, to follow up with prospects.
Why Should Your Auto, RV, or Powersports Dealer Consider an Outsourced BDC?
There are several advantages to partnering with a BDC like Strolid, especially in terms of balancing cost efficiencies with the need to maintain high-quality customer interactions. Here are nine key reasons to consider outsourcing your Business Development Center (BDC):
- Create More Sales and Service Opportunities: Free up your sales and service team to sell more while we handle the calls and leads. We will escalate all hot prospects to your team seamlessly and proactively to help make the most of every opportunity.
- Cost Efficiency: From a cost-benefit standpoint, outsourcing your BDC could be more cost-effective than maintaining an in-house team. Consider the overhead costs of keeping full-time employees, including salaries, benefits, training, and workspace, and you’ll immediately notice the potential to save by hiring an external BDC that can provide the same services at a lower cost.
- Recruiting, Hiring, Training, and Replacing: One of the most challenging aspects of running an internal BDC is recruiting and hiring the right people. Solve this problem by hiring a high-quality outsourced BDC company that can provide comprehensive customer service training and the right amount of staff to cover your hours of operation.
- Transparency and Trust: Most reputable Business Development Centers work within your existing technology platforms, which is crucial to maintaining good communication and accountability. Your dealership should continue to have access to phone recordings, task completion status, and robust reporting to track important KPIs. Lastly, ensure that your outsourced BDC can escalate all customers who need immediate attention so you never miss a sales opportunity.
- Advanced Technology: Outsourced BDCs specialize in customer service and sales support, meaning they bring a level of expertise and experience that can be hard to match in-house. Additionally, they often utilize the latest technologies for customer relationship management (CRM), lead tracking, and communication, making the entire lead generation and nurturing processes more efficient.
- Scalability: Outsourcing gives you more flexibility to scale your BDC operations up or down based on seasonal demand, market trends, or business growth, since you won’t need to hire or lay off employees every time your situation changes. This scalability can help your dealership manage lead generation and campaign costs more effectively and respond quickly to market changes.
- Extended Coverage: A BDC partner like Strolid can extend your dealership’s hours of operation so you can capture and respond to leads around the clock, including evenings and weekends. This extra availability can greatly improve lead conversion rates and customer satisfaction without upsetting your current employees’ work-life balance.
- Professional Training and Management: Reputable Business Development Centers invest in extensive training to ensure that their staff members are briefed on the latest sales techniques, product knowledge, and customer service skills. They also have dedicated management teams focused on optimizing BDC operations to reduce your dealership’s management burden.
- Consistent Performance Monitoring: Outsourced providers typically have robust performance monitoring and reporting systems in place so the dealerships that hire them can always access clear insights into how well their BDC functions are performing. Strolid will keep track of your lead conversion rates, customer satisfaction scores, and other key performance indicators.
- Risk Mitigation: Outsourcing your sales BDC can also help mitigate risks associated with employee turnover, training, and operational inefficiencies. The outsourced provider assumes responsibility for these risks, ensuring continuity and quality of service.
Does a Sales Team Serve the Same Function as a BDC?
Although a sales team can initiate and maintain Business Development Center functions, this is a massive undertaking for an internal department. Customer lead generation and nurturing requires careful planning, training, and potential restructuring, and many dealership teams just aren’t equipped to handle this type or size of ongoing project.
A more successful approach tends to be a merger of an outsourced BDC partner with an internal sales team’s responsibilities. Outsourcing can often be more cost-effective than handling every aspect of customer service in-house, and the joint BDC/dealership effort can lead to a more streamlined service process, increased efficiency, and improved customer relationships.
Preparing for a Successful BDC Partnership
Are you ready to dive in and add a sales BDC to your dealership? The most effective way to start your new BDC partnership is by preparing your staff and processes ahead of time. There are several factors and strategies to consider to make the integration successful, including:
- Training and Skill Development: Train your sales staff in the full spectrum of lead generation and nurturing responsibilities, from sales techniques and customer service to communication skills and using digital tools. This training should cover handling inquiries via phone, email, and online platforms, as well as managing CRM software to track customer interactions and follow-ups.
- Technology and Tools: Equip and train the sales team with the right technology and tools to efficiently handle the increased workload. Provide ample instruction on CRM software, auto-dialers, email marketing platforms, and chatbots to assist with routine inquiries, which allow your sales personnel to focus on more complex customer interactions.
- Role Specialization: Consider creating specialized roles within your sales team to handle different BDC functions. For example, some team members might focus on inbound lead management, while others specialize in outbound calls or digital communication. This approach helps maintain high levels of expertise and efficiency in handling diverse customer interactions.
- Time Management: Integrating BDC functions can significantly increase the workload for sales personnel, making time management crucial. Implementing efficient scheduling and ensuring that your staff has enough time to focus on both sales and customer development tasks is essential for maintaining productivity and preventing burnout.
- Performance Metrics: Redefine performance metrics to reflect the expanded role of the sales team. Alongside traditional sales targets, include metrics related to customer engagement, follow-up timeliness, and satisfaction scores to encourage a holistic approach to customer relationships. Don’t give your salespeople too many leads to handle!
- Customer Experience Focus: Keeping your customer experience goals front and center for your sales team makes sure the integration of the BDC functions into their responsibilities serves to enhance the customer experience and doesn’t just get lost in the daily workload.
- Continuous Feedback and Improvement: Establish a system for encouraging continuous feedback from both customers and sales team members on the effectiveness of the integrated approach. Use this feedback to make iterative improvements to processes, training, and resource allocation.
- Scalability: Consider the scalability of this model as the dealership grows. The integrated BDC approach should be able to adapt to increasing customer volumes and changing market dynamics without sacrificing the quality of customer service or sales performance.
Make Strolid Your BDC Auto Sales Partner
The ultimate goal of a BDC is to enhance sales performance and customer experience through targeted business development activities. While a dealership’s internal sales team could attempt to handle BDC functions, this approach requires such a thorough consideration of training, technology, role specialization, and process management that many dealerships find they don’t have the time or resources to execute this plan effectively.
If your dealership needs a more personalized and streamlined customer experience that doesn’t put more stress on your sales associates, take a moment to explore how Strolid and our service solutions can complement your core sales functions.
We specialize in BDC sales, meaning we deeply understand the key functions and responsibilities of a BDC partner. Our solutions handle everything from customer communication and appointment scheduling to database management and performance analysis, seamlessly bridging the gap between dealerships and potential customers. Reach out to us today to see how Strolid can help your auto sales soar!
We Make it Easy
Keep the Main Thing The Main Thing
Keep your salespeople focused on the sales; we will keep filling your showroom with buyers.
End the Hiring Headaches
Our recruiting and training programs are second to none. Our ongoing training and agent screening keep our skills sharp and your prospects showing up.
Technology where it Matters
You can’t automate a relationship or a conversation, but you can automate workflow. Our proprietary platform connects into most industry leading CRMs, including Reynolds, Tekion, Dealersocket, eLeads and VinSolutions.
Car Guys
Strolid employees are real car guys. Our founder, managers and agents have all worked in Dealerships. From Sales to General Manager