Overland Park, KS – NCM Associates (www.ncm20.com), a leading provider of 20 Groups, management training, retail operations consulting, and operations benchmarking services for automotive dealers, today announced that since partnering with NCM Associates and Kain Automotive, Greenway Dodge in Orlando, Florida has more than tripled its Internet sales and is on track for an astounding 19% closing ratio on its Internet leads.

Ricky Lopez has been the Internet Manager at Greenway Dodge for the last five years. When he arrived, the store was selling 30 new units and about 60 used units a month. Of those, about 12 were Internet sales for annualized Internet sales of 144 units. He set up the BDC, focused on Internet sales and in 2009 the dealership sold 766 Internet units. 2010 saw growth to 1,735 units and in 2011 they hit 2,730 units.

Approximately two years ago Lopez joined an NCM-created 20 Group for Internet and BDC managers. In collaboration with Kain Automotive and led by David Kain, the group is designed to engage members to find solutions to some of the challenges faced by Internet departments and improve their performance and closing ratios.

“The meetings are invaluable and give me an opportunity to ask questions of my peers concerning how they handle leads, manage their CRM process and about coaching methods they use for their employees. Members often bring their dealer principals or general managers to the meetings to show how proud they are of their contributions and professionalism. It’s a wonderful feeling to be recognized for your achievements by your peers,” said Lopez.

The dealership is open seven days a week from 7 AM to 8 PM, with an active BDC handling a large volume of leads. Shifts are staggered for the inbound and the outbound team and members are on a pay-for-performance basis. The majority of employees in the BDC are women and it seems that auto shoppers are more open and honest when speaking with them. While the goal is to get the appointment and have the customer show up, they don’t employ strong arm tactics but work hard to provide guidance, information and a wonderful customer experience.

While Greenway Dodge had steadily increased its volume, Lopez also wanted to improve its percentage of leads-to-appointments ratio. He realized that the more people that show up for an appointment, the more opportunities there are to sell a vehicle.

Earlier this year Greenway leveraged the resources of their NCM 20 Group and asked David Kain to visit their location and audit their current processes. After studying the dealership, Kain recognized that leads coming in were being “cherry picked” and some of the sales staff were not following up on what he felt were sales leads with good potential. The solution was to work with Daniel Colon, the head of the dealership’s Business Development Center, to create a specific group to work these leads. The program evolved into their Nurture Team, aptly named for nurturing these customers during the auto shopping process.

Any lead not “worked” after three days in the system would automatically flow to the Nurture Team. The Nurture team would then work these “cold leads” and bring many back to life. Since instituting the program, deliveries for these “throw-away prospects” have never fallen below 40 units a month and many times are closer to 50 units.

So far this year, Greenway Dodge received 15,925 leads and has sold 3,105 units, which translates to a 19% closing ratio on their leads.

About NCM Associates, Inc.

NCM Associates, Inc. is the originator of the automotive industry 20 Group peer collaboration process and has been providing dealership Benchmark(R) analytics, Education and Retail Operations Consulting services to the industry since 1947. Located in Overland Park, KS, NCM provides a robust suite of services designed to drive dealership profitability using its proven, operations-focused Benchmark(R) for Success program with new and pre-owned U.S. automotive dealerships, as well as with dealerships in more than 20 other industries. NCM Associates is proud to be 100% employee-owned. For more information about NCM Associates, visit www.ncm20.com or call 800.756.2620.