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Come on, let’s admit it. If someone launches a new tool, application, service, widget, doohickey, gizmo or gadget, we’ll all explode. We are so full of tools, you likely feel like the Craftsman section at your local Sears…
Fact is we can probably expect more and that is what keeps pushing the bar forward. With the store closures, OEM staff reductions, agency layoffs and more you can likely look forward to more consultants, new software, increased industry service providers and just plain more ’stuff’.
And considering how most owners, GMs and GSMs buy stuff, there may be cause for more companies wanting to get their piece of a smaller spend pie because they’re ‘new, shiny, better, sexier or have great advertising’. Folks, we’re not using all the tools you have currently, even if you don’t really know how to use them in the first place (Ok, you can put all of your hands down because we know you haven’t seen your so-called rep in nearly a year who promised the latest training you needed months ago).
More than ever, it’s not about sticking with who you already have, simply saving a buck or not taking meetings with new vendors (excuses today are a penny a dozen). Simply put, you get what you pay for. If you are saving $200 a month between one service and another, you had better know what you’re missing. If you’re not investing in your staff’s education/training (yes, I hate that word but the old guard will understand it), you might as well lower your unit forecast by 25-40%. And if you’re not willing to take ‘another meeting’, you might as well hand a few extra dollars to your competitor down the street and take the rest of the week off.
Overwhelmed by technology? Don’t ignore it, please! Don’t understand something? Get a non-manager in your office that will use the tool/service and get THEIR take on it first hand, don’t just give them a sell sheet and have them make a decision.
Over the next couple weeks, IM@CS is going to take a deeper dive into services available to the industry and write ‘em up. We’ll cover mobile, chat and inventory to start and see where it takes us. We hope to clear up misconceptions, especially around price since nearly everyone seems to be completely misguided on saving a buck versus being more effective. And then we’ll try to take it from there…hope you get to use the information in profitable ways!!
Best practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results
Tags: application, auto, car, chat, competitor, CRM, dealer, education, GM, gsm, inventory, listing, live, newsletter, profit, provider, sales, service, technology, tool, training, vendor, website, widget
Looses or loses its luster???
Great advice Gary! With all that is happening in the retail auto world today it will be easy for GM’s and Dealers who are looking at cutting costs to not look at new and innovative products or services. We will have to curb that urge.
Now more than ever before retail auto sales is changing, it being redefined but not by franchise dealerships and not by OEM’s. It’s being redefined by the “Middle Class” car dealer. This is a term I use to describe the new independent car dealer. These dealers have what Zig Ziglar describes as intelligent ignorance. They listen to their customers; give them exactly what they want, when they want it and how they want it, because they don’t know that you can’t sell cars that way. They don’t try and sell appointments they sell themselves and the car and a “No Brain Damage” (another one of my wacky terms) way of buying that car, again because they simply know any better. It seems to be just crazy enough to be working and every day these guys continue to take share away from new car dealerships.
These guys don’t have big ad budgets, they don’t have the Taj Mahal dealerships in the great locations, just cars people want to buy a good understanding of how to merchandise them online and good processes at the store level to take care of their customers… as I said just crazy enough to work.
I think the idea about getting a non-manager to test these tools out is great. As fast as internet/social media marketing is moving, you need a person dedicated to “taking the meetings” from the newest vendors, test driving the tool(s), then deciding if they are appropriate for that particular dealership.
Plus, as an added bonus, this person could come up with an internet/social media marketing strategy (i.e. which tool(s) to use, how to use each tool for certain objectives, when to scrap a tool for a better one, when something needs to be added, etc.). This leaves GM’s and OEM’s to concern themselves with other things.