Looking to make 2024 your most successful year yet?

It's not too late to plan for it!

As we all know, having a solid plan is crucial for achieving remarkable results. Without one, you're left in the dark without a clear direction or roadmap for success. Let LeadHelm help you avoid that! John Greene is joined by Aaron Barney, the co-founder of Lead Helm, and Jason Blankenship, the mastermind behind LeadHelm’s client success team. Jason not only ensures seamless onboarding and platform utilization but also conducts monthly reviews and coaching sessions backed by valuable data.

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Full Transcript:

John: Hi everybody. John Greene here with LeadHelm. Hope you are all doing well today. And as I kick off every one of these, right. I'm excited to be here. Why? Because we get to talk about more appointments and selling more vehicles in a way that customers absolutely love. So we can talk about how we do that, sell more vehicles and make people happy.

And that makes everybody on this call happy. So there's obviously going to be excitement there, but it's a big time for planning. What's what's 24 going to look like? And we just came off of Aaron and myself, Aaron and Jason. I'll introduce those guys here in a minute. We came off a board retreat yesterday with with the lead health board.

I'm actually down here in Fort Myers, Florida, which is home base for LeadHelm. And it was all about what are we doing in 24? What are the strategies? What are the tactics, input, the guidance from the board and, you know, challenges that come out of there. But optimism and I think excitement when when you get a plan in place and I always say this right.

The only thing that's worse than having a really challenging plan to achieve is having no plan at all. Right? There's no plan. I don't even know what to do. I don't know to start. Right. So we have a plan. And what we're going to talk about today is helping you craft a plan that is all about vehicle sales, most specifically in the digital space.

So that's that's today's topic. And you get you get you get a trinity of support on on this one today. So obviously I am here Aaron Barney's here, co-founder of Lead Helm. And we also have Jason Blankenship here. And Jason leads our client success team, which is all about getting clients onboarded best practices, platform use and functionality and and what's even the coolest part that a lot of our dealers take advantage of our monthly review and coaching sessions that Jason runs where we're using data and we're talking about operational insights and how do we use data to drive different behaviors and create better results.

So guys, welcome looking good today. Jay Again, we're going to have to I mean, I love my brother, but sometimes that sportswear is just counter counter to my being. But I I'll to have it today.

Jason Blankenship: We have a lot of things, a lot of a lot of lean years before there was a.

JG: That's right. That's right. We're hungry for a lot of years. And then we bet you guys were eating well last few years. So that's good. That's really good. Okay, so before we you guys can all see, I'm going to let me let me acknowledge this right up front. Right. So these podcast that we do have a video and an audio component.

So some of you are going to hear and see this. Some of you are just going to hear this. Okay. So what you're seeing on a screen right now is an Excel worksheet. That is a digital traffic locked, fully functioning operational Excel spreadsheet. And we're going to work through that today. Okay. Jason's going to drive it. I want to kind of play the role of a dealer as we think about next year.

And then Aaron's going to help fill in some of the gaps and Aaron's going to show a couple of things specific that lead him from a data access and requirements, I guess, if you will. But let's as we step back, you know, I kind of framed it a bit earlier, that planning for next year. Right. We have to have a plan.

I mean, you don't have to, but boy, I strongly would encourage you to do that. Right. Because having a prepared plan, targets that are there drives all kinds of things. What are the strategies that we have to have to execute those targets? What are the tactics that we need to actually do the things that we have to do and how do we have to staff and where do we need to spend and all those things to achieve those strategic desires that we have that ultimately lead to the statistical outcomes that that we want to have here?

And you've got a couple things that that are really critical as we think about this. And again, I think most dealers out there, most of classic will work with they are in if they're not done, they're in full budget and projection mode for next year. What are we gonna do? My department margins, volume and pay plans, expense areas, so forth, all that kind of stuff.

And we're going to really drill into just really sales and digital sales piece of that today on this. So I think I think Jason, let's let's talk about this right week. Ideally you're going to have some historic data in some of these areas. So we know kind of how we've performed in certain segments. Okay. So we're going to take that.

And then we're also going to have to have some assumptions about next year. And those are some assumptions are, you know, I don't want to call them guesses, but the future's unknown. So we're going to we're going to make our what we believe has the highest probability of happening. We're going to put that in as an assumption, right.

Is it is volume going up or down? Are you going to have the right amount of product from the manufacturers? What do we think is going to happen with margin? Right. Some thoughts, interest rates, What might they do? Where's my finance F and I numbers going to be? How many people do I need on staff to achieve these things?

So we're thinking a little bit through these assumptions. And again, these are educated guesses. The better you do at it, the longer you do them, the better that guess gets. But we have to start somewhere and we'll talk at another time. There's always or there should be reforecast that occur during the year. So we're going to set this plan right now on December 3rd, November 30th.

Okay. When I get to the end of January or maybe the end of the first quarter, first end of Q1 at the latest, I'm going to go back in and I'm going to start to reforecast, right? This is my original plan. This is my actual I'm trending. Do I need to make some adjustments in the numbers or in the systems, the process, the procedure, the people, all those different kinds of things.

So anyway. All right, Jason, let's let's let's dive into this. So I'm going to go into my into my dealer my dealer role mode. And why don't you walk me through if you were coaching me on setting this up for next year, how do we go about it?

JB: Well, first, you kind of touched on a big part of that already. It would be like laying out that roadmap where you want to go based on your past performances, your data, you know, and hopefully you know those things, you know, So, you know, typically what your overall traffic in and opportunities look like in each month. You know, if you don't know how January's typically are, then it's hard to set a number that you can realistically get to.

But it's also important, like you said, for the re for refocusing on adjustments. If you if you set a number and you want to live by that number and you're not hitting that number, you know, what are you doing to change it? So so first, that's exactly where I would start. I'd be like, you know, so we're looking at, you know, 20, 24 typically, you know, on your annual targets by month, how many do you anticipate you see moving on on January, including, you know, all sales, showroom digital.

What's that number for you for January.

So total vehicle sales for January. So I do have that stuff. So January, I'm at 50.

Okay. And then same thing for February. Where do you anticipate, you know, where you want to be at 454 total vehicle sales in February.

JG: February goes to 60. And so for those of you that are just listening to this, right, all he's doing is he's going in and he's just put me into those total raw numbers by month. So right in that sell January, I got 50 and Favre's got 60. And we're going to do that over the course of of the year.

So March we jump up to 80 weather starts to get good.

JG: Okay And then April.

April is 90.

JB: And May.

JG: May, June and July are all at 100.

JB: May, June, July at 100. Okay, then August.

JG: And then August we go 90. September is 70. October, October is 55, November 50.

JB: And December next year.

JG: 4545.

JB: Okay. So what I would do next is, okay, we've set our target that brings your total units out the door for 2024 at about 890. Yeah. Is that the realistic target for, for 2024 for you.

JG: I think based on. Yes. Looking back at some historical numbers, we kind of have to we we try to I think like most you've got that pandemic time frame that's a little bit wonky, right? A little bit anomalous from a numbers standpoint. So we kind of went back into 18 and 19 and what we've done in 23 and this would be for me, this this would be realistic, right?

It's it's it's flat, but it's a bit of an increase.

JB: Okay. So when you look at that total number 890, that's going to incorporate again, it's all your opportunities. That's the people that are walking in your showroom and the people that's inquiring through your through your website, your digital showroom. So the next thing I would go over is taking that divide and I would look at just digital sales targets.

And that's where we break down on the digital traffic log. The next step is specific towards digital. So historically, you know, if you were, you know, a brand new client and we didn't know from past, you know, relationship, typically I would ask, where do you see that percentage from digital coming? Are you at 10% of your overall sales?

20, 30, 40? Where do you where do you think you fall at on your deliveries just from digital?

JG: What we've typically because we we typically are in the 20%, 20% of our total business is digital. And I'd like to for me, I want to see that increase. I tend to think and again, I'm playing dealer but I'll I'll, I'll share an opinion here in general we believe. Right. Some of our assumptions are LeadHelm is the percentage of dealers overall sales that are coming from digital is going to continue to increase.

And we just we know shoppers trends more are going online. That's where they're starting. We've talked about this a lot, right? 95% of the people who end up in your store start their journey online. If we can do better in that digital space, we start to get a bigger percentage of our business is coming from there. So we've typically been there.

I would really like to target 30% for, well, for 24.

JB: Into and to your point to even your showroom, customers are online at some point. So they may not have inquired with you, but they may have somewhere else and just popped in. So you have to remember they have experience online. You have to keep that in mind for your showroom customers as well. Yes. So real quick, I would show the next step would be that those two options.

So if you look, I've updated the digital traffic log to a 20% sales conversion. 890 is still our annual overall target. So just looking at January, for example, for one month right now, if you got 20% of your digital sales to to 20%, your January sales numbers would be ten deals, ten sales if you change it to 30.

JG: Let's try 30.

JB: You're going to get the extra five. So 15 sales you're selling me? No, Mr. Dealer, that you really want to get, you know, increase there. So to me, an extra five deals. Do you think your sales team, you know working in your digital doorway can squeeze five more deals out? Sounds like you do. So I think that's a strong target and that's where we want to set is go ahead and set the increase.

Let's go ahead and push for 30% out of our digital arena because that's five extra units. And then I would kind of talk about, you know, what what processes would need to be in place to get there. And no, we're not going to go that deep on this session, but really making sure they have a digital sales process that will allow them to be successful, to get those other five mikes or overall units.

JG: Yeah, and you got something there.

AB: I'm going to jump in. Yeah, Yeah. I want to jump in because I think, you know, you know, in some people are watching and listening and some people are just listening is, you know, you back up and you say, hey, because you said at the very beginning, John, having that proactive versus reactive kind of stance here. You know, in so far you said, okay, hey, I want to sell 890 units, okay.

In the month of 2024. And, you know, that's the first step in the game, right? You broke it down and you're realistic. You didn't just flatline that across the board. You looked at some historic data, you looked at some seasonality. But I think one of the big key metrics that you guys both just talked about is how many of your overall sales are contributed through digital, and that's okay.

If the dealers listening in, they may say, Man, gosh, I wish I knew that. And so for sometimes just getting a baseline or, you know, working off some benchmarks of share and just kind of a benchmark and you said a, John, you know, we're seeing, you know, kind of a benchmark around 30%. We're seeing dealers, some in north of 40, 50%.

And it's important to know that that's just going to increase. And you're listening to this. I hope you're you are you're more than just a believer like us using some data to say, hey, more and more of your opportunities, your total overall sales are going to come from the behaviors of how digital leads are handled in your business.

So I think I think that's a good number. If you don't know, I think 30% is a good number to go off, you know, and and like Jason, you just mentioned the behaviors that you, you know, that comes that whole nother conversation. Right. Where do we get deep deeper on that and another another one of these sessions. But when you go from there and you kind of pivot, a big component as Jason, I think talk about, is those key KPIs of how many of those leads get through the process, meeting appointments, set appointments capped, and ultimately converting because that historic data that you have, we'll talk a little bit how you can pull that data

and maybe how lead home can help there. But when you know those targets, it really does help you kind of determine some of those other steps. And one of the things around that is we look at as lean home and having so much data and be able to work with and case study and other dealers and so forth.

We look we look at it that way, out of all your leads that you get in a month, the year we're looking at this in an annual perspective that 40% of your leads should convert to a set appointment. Now, this is the biggest headwind dealers have. You know, it never it's never different that way the biggest headroom a dealer houses and set.

But let's let's assume that you're going to go off of our benchmark which is for 40% of your leads you should convert to a set appointment 40%. Okay. And out of those 70% of those leads should show up to your dealership. Okay. And you can do the math. You know, when you're when you're doing this planning, the last metric to look at is capped appointments that convert.

So out of those appointments that you've set, 40%, 70% of those should show up to your dealership. And out of those 30% of those should convert into a sale. And so and yet if you've got if you got more data and history to say, you know, I think I can go better, I can be above that, maybe I'm below that.

But setting those targets is a really critical step to that, to to your next step there.

JB: and like, like you touched on too, it's a much bigger conversation. And typically with, with the clients I work with and I'm doing this, this whole next step is talking about exactly that. What is your process is what are you actually getting? Because you can say I want 30% of my overall sales coming from digital, but if you have zero process to get there, you know you can want that number, but are you going to get that right?

And so we call my sessions. I typically this is the part that I slow down and we look at that because if you don't have those in place, you can want that. I mean, I get that. And then looking at how to coach with that client, you know, if their lead home subscriber, we already have, you know, some success goals in place on how we're going to get there.

And we work towards that you know together to make sure that their processes will end in this result. So that's where I was going next, is we would slow down and look at those and go from the overall percentage as to how many appointments we are out of your digital space you need to set and then how do you get them to show up to then give you the opportunity to get those conversions to line up there and then the work doesn't stop there either.

You know, the session will go into, you know, making sure that you're capitalizing on everybody that doesn't get to that step too, is there's fault to be done there. There's work to be done there. So I know we're going to probably talk about that another time. So that's a big point you brought up and that's where we would go next, John, if you wanted to.

I know we won't talk about Web traffic goals. You know, I know, Aaron. You know, the this site in and out. I would talk about that next. Looking at if they have the data of what their website brings in and if you want to talk about that, Aaron, I'll gladly turn it over to you for saying what.

JG: Just let me let me just jump in for a quick sec. So, guys, great, great stuff. So for those that are just listening to this, okay, we're going to we're going to walk through some of those set kept and delivered in traffic points in a minute. But what's interesting on this spreadsheet, and it's not a complicated spreadsheet, but every time, right, I'm still in my head as a dealer.

I've got 892 hit. Okay. Jason's work going to be to say, okay, what percentage that is going to come from digital. We say, I don't want you to just think that all we're doing is moving from a showroom sale to a digital sale, or we're not actually increasing our business, right? So these are incremental growth things inside my 890 guys.

I'm not just saying, hey, we're just we're just changing the categorization. There's no growth for you. Dealer. That's not it at all. Okay, We're talking about convert ing a higher percentage of the leads that start online into showroom sales in addition to the organic traffic that we have in the showroom through salespeople prospecting and follow up and referrals and advertising and so forth.

So that's one thing. The second is as Jason updates that 30%, so in my head, right, I want to sell 890, 30% is coming from digital. So annually I can say, okay, I have to have 267 sales that start in are really put together inside the digital space and then converted on the showroom. Any time he changes that, right.

If I said, okay, I want to go to 35 or 40, all it's going to do is it's going to adjust what my annual target and it's going to adjust by month. Okay, So now you're like, okay, I got to sell that many. And then we start to look at how many leads are we going to need to do that?

Because that's one piece. Well, how many leads is dependent on how many of those leads you actually set an appointment with? Right. The higher the set rate, the fewer leads you need to get them further down the line. So it's a it's it's you know, it's the it's the helium balloon, right? Every time you squeeze one and the other end blows up a little bit and you kind of got to get them all squeezed.

Right. To figure this out. And it starts with website traffic.

JB: And that's and interrupt just for a second. I don't want to lose my thought. great thing to remember, though, too, is that goal for digital, like you said, right now at our 30% number, we're saying that's 267 from our digital doorway where we see some dealers make the mistake of is was digital's producing and then the floor is not designed to do more you still have to keep equal accountabilities for your funnels.

You know your digital showroom and you're going to put in your physical showroom that they they bring their part to the table. You know, it's great if your digital sides all we're producing. You don't want your floor side to produce either. You have to have those focuses as well. And then like you were talking about, if we have a really good conversion rate digitally, maybe that refill forecast in trending comes in, we're maybe I can get more out of that funnel and then you can, you can change those goals for the better.

JG: Yeah I mean up upward adjustments in reforecast are fun to make. So let's just I.

AB: Think what one thing John and Jason I think for any listener right that that's super important is that a lot of us as dealers are ending this year wishing we sold more units this year, but let's be. Yes, right. I mean, there's different variables to that. Right? But you talked about it. You had having a plan, right, John?

Being in this carpool, having a plan and so forth. I think one data point is that 95% of customers start their journey, their buying journey online. And so why is all this important, this data and, you know, so forth. And a lot of dealers listening to say out this kind of reminds me of my physical track record. How many breaks do I have to get at a 10% conversion rate to hit my goal?

Absolutely. Well, what we're doing is we're we're really right now telling really is listening that there's another layer to this, a new layer that maybe didn't exist a few years ago or didn't lead to is, as you know, it wasn't as important because if what we know know 95% of customers sort of like that, in order for John to hit his 890 target, if he doesn't get those 267 sales from digital, what's going to happen?

You'll probably fall short at the end of the year and not hit that 890. Right. So I think it's an important point. It goes back to why why this kind of planning so important?

JG: It's critical. And I think let's let's do this for a sec. So before we work through set kept and delivery percentages, I'm going to have we're going to pull this traffic load down for a second. Aaron's going to show a screen that's actually a KPI screen from inside a lead, because I think the point that we need to get across here for those are just listening and watching either way is if you don't have this data, to me, there's a pretty significant liability based on what Aaron just said about the opportunity in the digital space to not have these metrics is is to me, I would I would be concerned as a dealer if I didn't have this. What I love you to have lead him. Absolutely. Because Aaron's going to show you this data is in here at your fingertips any time, all the time. But if you don't have this, you still need the data. And if you don't, then work with some initial benchmarks just as a place to start and then begin to track.

And then you're tracking your actuals can start to inform those targets. But once you walk through what you've got on the screen here, if you would.

AB: Yeah, no, it's a good point. You just said, John, because, you know, if you don't have this, sometimes you've got to go off some baselines and so forth. And that's where rich forecasting can come into play. But, you know, our our customers here at home, they have this a little bit easier maybe than some others. We know that data sometimes is hard to find and and so forth.

But what's interesting about this data before I roll into it is, is that at least home, you know, when the users, the salespeople, Internet salespeople, whatever, whatever you might call that role, whoever is working those digital needs, the work that it's done inside retail, inside the system is how this reporting is documented. So having true and accurate data is really, really important.

And, you know, hey, if you're basing your goals off of an accurate data, it it's not a good start to where you're at and where you want to get to. But this right here is an example of lead help reporting. And we offer, you know, if you if you are a lead on customer listening, you already know we offer different types of reports.

But I'm showing you right now our basic KPIs and Metrics report and I happen to do a date range on this just to look at, you know, if you are getting off this listening this day and saying, okay, I've got my digital traffic, I want to plan, you would want to pull data basically from obviously January 1st, 2023, and you be looking at the latest we can watch maybe November 29, 2023.

Right. So I want to take that snapshot of data with lead home reporting. What's really nice is you can actually sort this by month quarter, etc.. So that would help you with maybe some of the monthly planning as you're filling out your digital traffic log. But let's talk about what we're looking at right now on the screen, and that's basically a data snapshot for year to date.

And the first thing I want to do is start to look at how many total new leads do I have. So in this case, if you are able to look at our screen, 3754 leads for the year, I'm able to then say, okay, I can then go to my filters, start to break that down by month and see how realistic is my traffic log, digital traffic log that I'm planning compared to where my data is.

And there's other there's other KPIs and metrics that are really, really important to look at here. So out of those leads, how many got through the sales funnel, right? So how many of those got to a set appointment? How many of those got to accept appointment and how many is ultimately converted? And you know, there's some there's a lot of other great data points when it comes to performance to look at such as, you know, activities and and and maybe response time that helps you kind of look at some of the future behaviors of how you're going to influence this.

But I think the first start, guys, what we're talking about right now is getting those actual leads, goals and ultimately the sales goals align with where I want to be for 2024.

JG: And I think what's interesting, Jason, you you said it and dead on, right? I can't remember what have you said it the biggest opportunity we typically see with dealers is on set. And if you look at this statistic line, okay, they 59% of the appointments that they set, whoever this dealer is, are kept. So that's there's a little bit of headroom there.

But that's reasonable there. Conversion on those is really strong, right. 78%, almost eight out of ten people that come in on a kept appointment by a vehicle. Okay. So you're thinking about this. And I mean, to me, I'm like, I got to figure out how to set more appointments. But that's that's that's the whole key. But again, this could take us into a complete

Right. Which I'll get some of that on version two of this. We're actually going to look at some updated information based on how we're performing in January. But for now. So these are actuals. Okay. So I jotted those down 1659 and 78. Now let's jump back into the digital traffic log and kind of compare those with some of the what we kind of what we would say are benchmarks.

It's taken a second to pull back up here, which is fine. And so what Jason then would start to work with me on is like, okay, you want to sell 30% of your vehicles from your from your digital traffic, your digital leads. We're talking about traffic versus leads in a second. And I'm going to I'm going to use what we just saw.

That's my historic data. 1659 and 78. So I'm going to come in in. Jason, let's let's I think I've got opportunity on my set percentage. I don't think I can get to 40 from 16, but that's that's a big lift for me in the team right now. But what if I got from 16 to 25.

JB: Yep. So that's exactly what we would do next as well. So again, our our target doesn't change 30% of sales conversions. We're still at 267 in that box. But as soon as I changed our target from 40 to 20 5 to 1 more time to 40%, the numbers down below in our target column change. So like you said, we're going to try to push to get 25% this year or better.

The biggest changes in your overall sales aren't going to change. So our target, you have to get more out of your website. So at that point you have to know that you can realistically kind of support that to, you know, having a web target of, you know, almost 15,000 visitors in the multi-channel year, is that realistic? How are you going to get there?

We may not go deeper as this either, but with an active claim that I was with you in this with, we might have an entire discussion on this call about marketing and their website and their events and the different things that are driving people to their website. How are you getting that and capturing them from browsing on your website to actually click on your website?

JG: So let's, let's, let's hang out on that one for a second because you're exactly right. Right. And for those of you that aren't seeing this, right, I the the the lead volume requirement at a 25% set rate is 5086 leads. Okay, run that back to 40%, if you would, Jay.

JB:Go back.

JG: Yeah. Okay. No, I'll fix now. Come on. It's all right. There.

JB: You it. I'll fix it. Next. Okay, so back to 40%.

JG: So at 40%, I only need 3179 leads. Right? So you can see how this thing that the dynamic nature of this it there's a lot of levers that you would pull on this. Right. So let's go back to 25%. But just a just a quick a quick comment on the website. Traffic. Right. Will see a statistic in a minute, but traffic does not equal leads.

Right. So one of the one of the KPIs that you need that we do not track inside of lead out is website visitors. What's your unique visitor traffic on a monthly and annual basis? Okay, take that and then you'll understand the number of leads that you capture and then we get a percentage there. What percentage of your traffic raises their hand?

They fill out a lead form and they give us a reason and a means to communicate with them. Used to trend two and a half, 3%. Okay, we've seen that come down quite a lot. Website traffic is relatively flat, maybe down a bit, but the percentage of people who are raising their hand is now one and a quarter to one and a half percent.

So that just says woof. Right now I've got to drive a lot more traffic or I've got I got to get really good at optimizing my website and having the right lead capture tools on there to increase my chances that somebody raises their hand when they're visiting guys. So just be aware of those. Because again, every time we change one of these things, these are going to these are going to fluctuate.

Jason's point was that, all right, I got to sit here and think about, okay, if I go back to 25%, which is my target percent percentage, I look historically, am I getting all 14,000 website visitors in a month of January and, you know, 28,000 in the middle of summer. And if I'm not doing that, this is going to be challenging to achieve some of these targets.

So again, that starts to we start to work into more operational discussions right there. But so let's go to go ahead, Jay.

JB: These are housing say, well, we're time these sessions with our active clients or, you know, they're our long sessions me and we're talking about so many things just like we like you mentioned at 40%. You know, at that number I need to have at least 179 leads come in in the month of January. That historically may not be accurate for the for the dealer.

They may not get that me lead. So then the whole discussion goes to a you're talking about lead volume and attracting the visitors and all that kind of stuff. So you might see we're clients that we work with already on. I don't get that many at least in January. And then that whole discussion is around how can you generate like you said, But then when we go to 25 to increase from 16, you got to give me 286 leads to work with.

Now you have to really have conversations. So these breakout sessions are we go down a lot of rabbit holes to help get the clients where they want to be with what they actually are working with to set the goals to change. Yeah.

JG: All right. So let's All right, we so we got set let's jump over to kept okay so the kind of the target that capped is 70 I finished 23 at 59 so I'm going to go I'm going to see if I can improve that to 65% capped.

JB: And once you make that change, you know, now again, this big conversation keeps going. Coming back to is your opportunities. How many leads are you going to get? They're dropping the target from 70 just 5%. Change the amount of lead volume again for you big time. So you know, you're going to need 286 leads in January. Changed it to 65.

JG: So guys, this is it's I mean, maybe, maybe, maybe we're just, you know, data geeks on this. I don't know. But it's to me, this is how you structure and your business for success on this point Aaron said it has to have this on the physical floor as well. Right. How many units of these do you want to sell through the physical doorway?

How many greets does it take to deliver those things? Same kind of thing. If I know how many greets I need, I need. I know I know how many salespeople I need. This is the same thing just in the digital space. So. So I'm at 25 set, 65 capped, and me and I'm blown away that 78%, you know, if I can continue that, because I think what's going to happen is if I up my capped and my set comes up, I'm not as confident that I'm going to keep deliver and converting at that higher rate necessarily because I don't know I don't know that the quality of every one of those shown appointments is going

to be as good because I'm pushing so much harder to drive that traffic. So I'm going to take that. I'm going to take that down to 60% or which is still great. But I think I think I got to be a little bit realistic here.

JB: In that conversation. Then, you know, as a real client, I would be saying, no, that's really great. You know, historically, your numbers of conversions, your sales process to the point of, you know, getting the sale is really tight. If you want to keep that where you're at, increasing that number now affects your lead volume to now and back around.

I need at least 154 leads to come in. If I can close. 60% of all my business that is walking through the doorway on an appointment now my lead number comes down. So now as a dealer, you might take a little bit of a breath going, Wow, that helps out a lot.

JG: I feel.

JB: That's a great.

JG: Number. I feel better.

JB: Very big number that when I work with our clients, you have to keep, you know, almost a daily focus on, you know, and, you know, we've all been to the dealership and Erin, if you were my you know, if you were the sales manager working for John, that would be the stuff you and me would be working on almost daily to making sure you were getting those numbers where they needed to be.

AB: Yeah. And I think that something here, guys, is that's what it's about, right? It's vital to identify what levers you can have control. There's a lot there's a lot of things we can laugh about in our business that we don't have control over. I mean, let's face it, there's just a lot of variables. We don't. But these things here, these are level levers that we can control in our business.

We can I guess I would say the word excuse me, being able to influence and manipulate, whether it be through many areas. I mean, there's levers, guys, that you guys have talked about so far. You guys have talked about. Okay, beyond goal setting, you know, we talked about your website. What what can you do inside your website to get more people to view your website and click one big lever, another big lever that the both of you talked about was, you know, how many am I going to get to a set appointment?

Right? Again from the biggest head room? Another lever is how many can I get to show up? Another lever is how many are actually can convert when they come in. Yeah. And each one of those areas, there's there's a lot of operational things that help us move those. And you know, good example of this is is that you could be low in traffic one month on your physical traffic log and you'd have lower rates than what you, you know, maybe budgeted.

You had to have log into your travelog but you were able to do a better job of sitting your customers down, writing them up and putting them through the ethanol process to equal the deliveries and still hit your goal. Right. And so I think John and Jason, you guys have articulated that there's there are different ways to hit a goal, but knowing what those levers are and then working hard, diligently, daily, weekly, monthly throughout the year to influence those letters, that's what's going to help a dealer hit its target, hit its goals in 2020.

JG: Yeah, I think the last little piece on here and then we'll put a little pull a bow on this is this web traffic target. Okay. So that'd be the last discussion, Jason, that you'd have with a dealer. And you know, before we used to have this at 3%, that was our target. But data tells us in reality tells us that that's not what it is right now.

So we've dropped that. I'm going to shoot for two. Okay. I'm going to leave it where it is right there. So I believe that 2% of the people who visit my website will raise their hand and become a lead. Okay, These are critical pieces. Know your traffic, know your number of leads, Understand that percentage. And let's put something that's real in there.

Right? Because this one, if you fudged that one, it really messes up all the rest of the things downs stream. It's the last bucket we fill, but it drives a ton of this stuff. So I'm going to stay with 2%. Now, what I have as a dealer, as a picture, what I need to do for the year and by month in terms of website traffic leads, number of appointments set kept and delivered out of my digital department.

JB: And it's big too if you have to. You have to know these numbers. You know, if if, if you have a marketing manager or someone who's responsible for that and you just don't know, they've got to be on this call with you. They've got to be able to, you know, speak on these things because like you just said, I change the number to 1% and you're lead volume or web traffic.

Don't you have to know that you can get to 2% if you can't get a lot of visitors coming in that you may not have the ability, you know, to hit. So if you know, the biggest thing is if you don't know any of this, find the person that does have the information so that you can, you know, forecast properly.

JG: Yeah. Or if you don't have it, then use some of these targets that are built in there. Right. Use use the 4730 you need to use 2% and start somewhere. Okay. Use this traffic log you're going to go in at the next time we get together, we're going to show you because what you do is the end of every day you'd, fill out your activity each day and that drives trending reports so we can see how we're doing relative to our goal, where do I need to focus and so forth.

So when we get together again, we're going to look at daily inputs, we're going to look at trending. We're going to talk a little bit more about process and procedure. Right. And insights and coaching on process and procedure that come from the data that you're putting in here all the time. Because again, data provides insight data, as are x rays.

I got to get a clear x ray to give a great diagnosis and know what to do next, right? What prescription of any right, what fix to they need, what exercise they need. I don't know that if I get a fuzzy X right, because we have to have that. I think what I would suggest for anybody that's listening or watching go to lead Health.com and request some information.

We will get in touch with you and we'll give you this traffic log. If you'd like to have a traffic log. If you have one and you want some help going through it, happy to do that. If you want to see some more about lead out, I'm happy to go through that. But again, I would implore you at some level to have a plan specific to digital because it is big and it's going to continue to get bigger.

Guys, any any final thoughts on this great job today? I mean, we always say this, right? We could sit here and talk about this for a long time, but to try to now go through daily things, I mean, this would be a two hour podcast. We don't want to do that. So we're just breaking it down to the point planning phase for now.

Okay, Get this build start to think about the people that are going to be required to handle this number of leads. How am I going to track the metrics? And then again, we'll have another one of these for you late January. We're actually working through some of the data, So maybe you got any final thoughts?

AB: No. You know, I think it's great stuff, guys. And I think, you know, one thing that's really clear and you said we've all kind of said it on today's podcast is that, you know, in order to really have a competitive advantage and role, in order to really have the right foot forward in 2024, even more than in 2023, we've got to be focused on the digital traffic log just as much.

Okay, I could, but I could sit there, argue more, but just as much as we are with our physical showroom. So starting here, like you said, John, downloading this, reaching out to us, we'll get your copy. This will help. We we want to sit down and talk you through it, help you fill it out. This is the one of the most important things that I think a dealer can do going into next year.

Get your planning together and allow you to really influence behavior that's going to drive success and let you help and help you hit your sales target. So look forward to meeting you if you're a dealer and like to learn more and show you how lead can make it easier for you to not only set this up, but also forecast and and the training, right.

The home academy training that we do really can have an influence on the behaviors in some of these areas. So hopefully hopefully we get some get some dealers reaching out to us that have a lot of questions because there is a lot of information here.

JG: Yeah, no great, great. Jay, parting words of wisdom.

JB: I mean, it's nothing that we haven't already heard. You know, you have to know where you are to plan, where you want to go and plan has to have the that the behaviors and processes in place to get to that success. So you can't leave it to chance. You have to be prepared to get where you want to be.

And if you want to hit numbers like this, you know, you have to have the processes in place, the behaviors. And, you know, like you both said, you do have to manage some of this stuff daily so that you can adjust as necessary. But yeah, that's a plan that's going to be hard to get where you want to be.

And anything I can do, if you're an active dealer, you know, take advantage of you have some, you know, coaching sessions we can jump on a session like this and reforecast your plans off for 23. Whatever we can do here to help.

JG: Now, that's great, guys, for everybody out there. Again, thanks for taking the time. If you know, as as you're listening to Watch, I always I always tip tip my hat to two dealers that continue to be students of the business. Right? The business evolves, the customer evolves, the market evolves. And I know you're busy. And to take time to continue to learn and improve and sharpen your skillset is commendable.

So thank you very much. We appreciate the time and attention here to help as needed. Lead Health.com Jason Aaron, myself, anybody in the team. Otherwise happy planning and happy selling and we will talk you soon.

To learn more about LeadHelm and how we can help your dealership drive more appointments with your digital leads, visit LeadHelm.com.

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