By Bobby Malatia

In every industry, you hear talk of reports and numbers and how good or poorly someone is doing at any given time based on the data in the reports. It all sounds good and is extremely important — but only if you know what the numbers mean and what to do with the information to make you and your team better. Let’s take a look at the big picture as it pertains to the reporting aspect of internet/business development center(BDC) sales.

Your internet/BDC sales reports can be broken down into two categories. The first is more of a simplistic overview of your activities that will provide decent information and show you how you are performing. Examples of this kind of data are:

• The number of leads/opportunities per lead source.
• The number of sales from those leads.
• The cost of the individual source.

With this information, you can calculate a cost per vehicle sold based on the total, as well as the individual lead source, and create the closing percentage for both the individual lead source and the total number of leads. This information will help you determine if the lead sources are working for you and how well your team is performing based on the opportunities they have to create sales.

The second level of reporting allows you to track the above information plus a lot more. It provides more detail and dives through the numbers. This will give you detailed information on the activities involved in your process. In addition, it provides you with solid operational data that helps you make intelligent decisions on what to concentrate on to increase sales. Examples of this kind of data are:

• The number of leads/opportunities per lead source.
• The number of sales from those leads.
• The cost of the individual source.
• The gross created from the sales.
• The gross average per individual sales/internet/BDC associate.
• The number of appointments created by sales/internet/BDC associate.
• The number of shows.

This more detailed inform.ation will allow you to really analyze potential problem areas such as appointment ratios per lead source and associate, show ratios, and sold ratios, as well as a comprehensive return on investment per lead source. When you can track this kind of detailed information month over month, it will give you confidence when making the difficult decisions of adjustments that sometimes need to be made in order to achieve the optimum results.

The lesson here is a simple one. The more information we have to make intelligent decisions the better off we are regarding potential changes we need to make. The key is to track the numbers using good data and know what to do with the information once you have it.