BMW of Riverside had been sitting in the #6 spot in its market for quite some time when it brought in industry veteran Antony Chandler from Fletcher Jones Mercedes-Benz. Chandler having grown professionally at Fletcher Jones over the last 22 years had recently spent the last 4 years as their General Manager. OREMOR understood that if they were to improve the store’s customer experience and overall performance in their market they needed to bring in someone who came from a dealership with one of the most proven track records. Fletcher Jones Mercedes-Benz is the number one Mercedes-Benz dealership in the world.
Launched in 2007 by CEO Clint Burns, The Nextup Managed Retail Sales Process (MRSP) assists dealerships in monitoring and measuring team performances while ensuring effective customer engagement in the showroom, in the finance office, and in the service drive. There are four components within the Nextup platform: Engage: focused on Sales, Drive: tracking and auditing the test-drive; Transact: geared towards Finance; and Maintain: targeting Service activities. Nextup provides in-depth tracking for customer engagement processes and offers opportunities to improve both customer service and time management.
Changing Process, Changing Culture
“When I arrived at BMW of Riverside I saw that we had a dealership with a strong Service department but a demoralized and underperforming Sales department. The dealership was employing an open sales floor, we had to identify a solution or continue to get subpar results”, Chandler explained. “I have always been a believer in a ‘closed floor’ with accountability and control as provided by the Nextup system. It was one of the first changes I made.”
“Working with my Sales Managers, I shared the 11 years of success we experienced at Fletcher Jones with Nextup. Knowing how effective Nextup was for us, we went straight to the platform. Nextup provides a low cost, low maintenance solution to a closed floor. Making every up count and counting every up. Accountability for time spent with guest and test drive was critical for us. We need to know who was here and how to contact them so we can sell them a car if they did not buy on their first visit.”
Immediate Impact, Immediate Improvements
Where Nextup exceeds expectations is how you can see and measure its effects on the sales floor and on the store culture amongst a team. Placing the Riverside staff into a rotation allowed for a smoother in-store process, better coverage by their BDC, sales, and management. “The sales-force has to focus on appointment setting when they are not up”, says Chandler. “Common HR issues like “skating”, opportunity fairness and staff turnover were quickly removed.”
“The increases were telling, with Nextup we have accountability and reporting that the store desperately needed to be successful”, Chandler shared. “We had few if any, benchmarks to refer to, Nextup has increased our measured Managers Intros 100%, recorded test drives by 100% and our closing ratio is consistently at 40% store-wide. We have gone from 6th spot in our market to 1st, Nextup helped us evolve into the modern dealership we knew we could be. This point of difference will be our competitive advantage in our market and help us set a goal at being the #1 store in the US in the next 3 years.”
The increases were telling, with Nextup we have accountability and reporting that the store desperately needed to be successful
