What are Spiffs and how are they Used in Dealerships Today?

Sales-performance incentive funds are referred to as “Spiffs.” In sales culture, a Spiff is synonymous with commissions or rewards - the rewards focus behavior.

In the dealership, managers often place a cash incentive to salespeople on aging vehicles at certain thresholds. Spiffs are also applied to the service department on accessories or service packages that move the needle or provide higher margins.

Some would argue a standard pay plan provides incentive enough to sell cars. More recently, vendor case studies provide a more compelling argument for incentive plans to drive higher CSI scores and increased sales volume, which is promising news for leaders looking to drive in-store performance.

Can Spiffs Scale without Wasting Valuable Management Time?

Dealers manage multiple incentives programs per month, per quarter. Managing and accounting for them without technology is daunting and a time burner. Where program discipline is weak, allocated funds go unused, or are underused, and either way, product sales stall out.

In this market, no dealer can afford to let opportunity slip away because of lax process and poor program oversight.

The saying goes, “that which is measured gets done.” An incentive platform can help automate the “What’s in it for me?” factor, while removing some of the management overhead in day-to-day dealership operations.

What Value does an Incentive Solution Bring to the Dealer?

We sat down with Spiffit Founder and CEO Sean Ugrin to learn more about how their sales incentive and compensation tool is helping dealers drive greater success by meet or exceed their own KPIs. When it comes to Spiffs, the technology helps create incentive programs to focus sales behavior toward profitable business outcomes.

“We leverage technology, analytics, and accountability to engage frontline sales behavior in real-time at the dealership in both fixed and variable operations. We provide a catalyst for change, which is the strategy of reinforcing variable performance pay for consistently selling higher volumes of products and services that meet various dealer group, OEM and vendor volume goals.

Dealers must fight constantly to isolate processes that leak revenue and thus conspire to suppress success. Spiffit tackles these challenges across five fronts:

• On the front line, it improves staff engagement, using gamification and by creating a good-hearted competitive environment among sales associates.
• On the administrative side, Spiffit does the heavy lifting and carries on the day-to-day burdens required to make Spiff programs highly successful. Reconciling happens automatically, which provides a benefit of “payroll ready all day, every day.”
• At the department level, helps managers drive their people to execute on the day-to-day business to make their numbers, KPIs and earn their compensation.
• From the dealer group level, the picture is more complicated. The group has buying power and needs to leverage it to drive volume and velocity of specific products and services across rooftops. OEM programs often run for the quarter, and if the volume in particular categories is met, then the dealer earns “bonus money” – a payment from the OEM that can also be considered a Spiff. By participating, a dealer earns preference with the OEM. “Playing ball,” adds to the bottom line.
• Vendors run programs too, and Spiffit can help the dealer group hit their vendors’ sales volume goals. This applies to both fixed and variable operations.

Sean Ugrin

Spiffit

What’s Next for Dealers?

On April 29, Spiffit published a sales-performance incentive funds management solution on the Fortellis Automotive Commerce Exchange™ platform. Spiffit is now available in the Fortellis Marketplace for dealerships, OEMs and independent software vendors (ISV) in North America.

View Spiffit's Latest Solution Offered in the Fortllis Marketplace