Facebook has made some minor tweaks to the size of profile pictures which has thrown off a lot of people's and brand's custom designs for their personal profiles and soon their Facebook Pages. After businesses have meticulously created custom designs for their Facebook Page cover photo to cleverly connect with their profile picture, as have individuals for their page, Facebook has notified users that on April 26, they will be updating the size of the profile picture on all Pages to 160 x 160 pixels to site 23 pixels from the left and 210 pixels from the top of the page. The change has altered the appearance of pages already, as seen below, rendering once beautiful and custom pages and profiles defunct. Here is a before and after example of change: fb-before-after.jpg List of new dimensions There are important dimensions that you should know:   Cover photo size for Pages and Profiles: 850 pixels wide, 315 pixels tall New profile picture size: 160 pixels...

  With the president election in full swing I have noticed that the majority of president hopefuls often use negative selling and mud-slinging attack campaigns. It has grown to something I expect from politicians but not from salespeople. Yet recently I experienced some negative selling tactics that I thought I would share. The first occurred when I was a shopping for a new car a couple months ago. I had decided on what make and model car I was planning to buy but wanted reassure myself that I was making the best choice by looking at some other vehicles. When I visited a different dealership and I mentioned I was doing some research on two vehicles, I was surprised at the salesperson's approach. He immediately began to negative sell by talking about how bad the gas mileage was, that it didn’t score the highest safety ratings, and weaknesses in its performance while failing to point out any of the strengths of his brand. It was a big turn off for me a...

One of my first jobs out of high school was selling cars and I have worked as a vendor with a CRM company in the industry for 7 years.  I enjoy working in the auto industry and take pride in helping dealerships be more successful either through the products I sell or through the processes I teach from my experience. About every three years, I find myself as a customer in the market for a new vehicle.  Recently, that time had come and I was looking for a new vehicle.  I am not loyal to a particular dealership, but I usually buy my cars from the dealership that has the vehicle I want, and at the best price.  Since I am only in this situation every so often I thought it would be wise to document my experience, with the hope that dealers and industry specialists could use it to improve their processes. I sold my car to a private party and needed to buy a vehicle within the next day or two.  In deciding my next vehicle, I did my entire search online.  I l...

As a vendor these last couple weeks were pretty busy as we prepared for NADA.  It is amazing how much goes into an event like this in order to be successful.  NADA consists of some very long days and my body is still trying to recover.  The show was very good for us and I imagine it was for others as well. The first thing that stood out to me; unlike years past when the economy was worse and dealers were not spending as much; dealers had positive outlooks on the current and future conditions of the auto industry.  Dealers were eagerly looking for new and innovative products to buy.  There are sure a lot of vendors out there now.  Competition is good; it sparks innovation and keeps vendors having to improve in order to keep being competitive. As dealers shopped different vendors it was interesting for me to hear what the technology, features, and benefits they liked.  But what was more interesting to me this year, was how many dealers seemed very...

This week I attended Digital Dealer (sigh!), the exhibitor room was full of vendors selling all types of technology.  I counted at least 7 booths that offer a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Tool.  As dealers visited each booth I noticed they were often comparing the different features each vendor provided.  One thing that stood out to me is for the most part all CRM companies offer the same type of technology.  They all allow you to input customers, receive leads, automate marketing campaigns, and reporting.  It is important that the technology isn’t the only thing that you are looking at. Technology should enable processes.  Consistent processes create consistent business. One of the ways to enable process is through the automation of business rules designed to target specific groups of people.  If the data is there, the technology should be able to enable processes like: A customer life cycle (customer for life) Finance termin...

A couple months ago I came across an ad for the new Mercedes SLK. I was really impressed with the marketing campaign that Mercedes-Benz incorporated with some pretty innovative ideas and incorporating some new technology. The ad was introducing the new SLK and although I wasn’t interested in the SLK I clicked on something called “Speed Date”, I invite those who haven’t done so to do it. http://www3.mercedes-benz.com/mbcom_v4/us/slk/en.html What stood out to me was the integration with Facebook. As the movie begins, it pulls your image from your Facebook profile picture and inserts it in various parts of the film. In the movie you are stranded in the desert with an overheating car who hitches a ride with a beautiful girl (Ksenia Lauren) driving a SLK. Throughout the movie you can choose different outcomes and it shows off different features of the car. The interactive movie really did a good job putting me actually into the movie and experiences it firsth...

I was recently in a meeting with someone from a popular 3rd party lead provider who was talking about leads and the open rates of the AutoResponder emails compared to the open rates of first and second emails. I was unable to get a source of this data but it was something like: Open Rates: AutoResponder: 97% First Email 56% Second Email: 20%   This got me to think. We live in a society that people want their info now! Just look at the instant response with text messages, and instant access to the internet for info. People who are submitting a lead are on the computer and are requesting info that they would like as soon as the request it. Most dealerships send out an AutoResponder. I advocate the use of an AutoResponder. It acknowledges that their lead has been received. It’s an instant personalized response that shows the dealership is quick to respond. It allows the dealership time to work on getting back to them, answer questions, etc. It is great for...

Do your customers know more about the cars you sell than your salespeople? A couple of months ago, a friend of mine was in the market for a new car. He, like the majority of new car buyers, began his shopping experience online. He knew six months ago that his lease was ending and that he was in need of a new car. My friend looked at current models and then began to look at new model releases. He was interested in a car that was coming out about the same time he was going to be returning his lease. The next couple of months he was looking at spy photos, reading reviews, watching YouTube videos and he even went to the auto show to see the car in person. Knowing that I am also into cars, my friend would forward things to me that he would find every once in a while about the vehicle, like “check out this…” or “did you know that…” I could see that he was really excited about the car. The time had come when the new models began to arrive at ...

The last 2 months have been crazy for me. Between work, school, and my wife and I having our second baby, I have been very busy.  Because of my busy schedule, it has caused me to work more “mobile” than ever before. Almost every email I have read or responded to was from my phone, please excuse the brevity and any typos if you received an email from me recently. This week DealerSocket had its annual User Summit in Dana Point, California  The summit was a great opportunity for users of DealerSocket to come together and share best practices and also learn how to better use DealerSocket.  My presentation at the summit was about how dealerships can better use mobile.  I thought I would pass along some of the things I discussed. When I began my session I asked the attendees to raise their phones, I was very pleased to see that almost everyone had a smart phone; thank goodness I didn’t see any “Jitter Bug” phones.  In my resea...

Program seeks to partner with auto dealer customers by donating set up fees to the American Red Cross SAN CLEMENTE, Calif., May 26, 2011  -- DealerSocket, a leading auto dealer CRM provider announced today the launch of a charity drive program aimed to raise relief funds for victims of the recent tornado disaster. DealerSocket will allow new and existing auto dealer customers who purchase new products or services to "choose their set up fee." 100% of the dealer's setup fee will be donated by DealerSocket to the American Red Cross to help in the relief effort for those impacted by the disaster. As a true partner and service provider to automotive dealers, DealerSocket anticipates donating approximately $200,000 to help in the relief effort. "Our hearts go out to the families in the Midwest who have suffered such horrible losses. It is the least we can do to donate our time and talents and redirect the dollars to help," said Matthew Redden, DealerSocket...

I am always surprised the answer I get when I ask a dealership about how many more cars they think they could sell a month if they improved their follow-up process.  This missed opportunity can often be fixed by implement a CRM technology, which is great for processes and campaigns. However, it is ultimately up to the salespeople to do what they are supposed to do. I have found that what you may think is being done in the dealership, often isn’t. When I sold cars, I remember multiple times when the sales manager would tell a salesperson to make his daily follow-up calls and the salesperson would simply respond that he had already completed his calls.  It became a constant battle.  Apart from not making the calls, salespeople are notorious at finding ways to cut corners and cheat the system.  This not only hurts the salesperson but, the dealership and even the customers. The first suggestion I have is to utilize reports in your CRM that track the number o...

I had to call a dealership recently about servicing my wife’s vehicle.  At 9:00 am I called the dealership’s main number and the phone rang eight times before it went to voicemail.  I called back and the same thing happened.  I needed an answer right away so I didn’t leave a message and called another dealership that was able to help me. I understand that the receptionist may have been busy, but this got me to think: How many calls does your dealership miss a day?   Does the customer end up calling other dealerships as well?   What do you have in place to insure that you don’t miss phone calls? One way to fix this issue is to integrate an inbound Call Center.  Majority of dealerships wouldn’t want all of their inbound calls to go to a Call Center, most people think that Call Centers are for prospecting but, what about just the phone calls that don’t get answered? If all of your calls get answere...

I was asked recently to help a dealership with their email templates. Thought I would pass a long some of the tips I suggested: The subject line is the single most important indicator of whether an e-mail message will be opened and read. Ensure that the subject line is clear, concise, and, if possible, contains personalization so the recipient will distinguish it as being unique. Studies have proven that consumers are more responsive to e-mail communications when they are sent in a consistent format, with the same “look and feel” from one mailing to another.   Dealers are advised to develop an “e-mail template” which will allow their content to change from month to month but still be consistently identifiable, over time, as a message from the dealership.   Send information that is relevant to the customer.   Provide both sales and non-sales content.   Use Data-Mining tools in your CRM to market t...

With more and more customers originating from the internet, it is important that your dealership has a good internet process to respond to every lead quickly and efficiently. If a customer submits a lead on a Third Party site, that lead is often sent to multiple dealerships. This is one reason why response time is so important because most customers usually buy from the first person who responds to them. What are you doing to make sure your internet depart is doing the absolute best it can do? One thing I have learned is not every customer that’s sends in a lead is in the market to buy a car right now. Often customers are online doing research and submit a lead or request a quote by mistake. For example, many customers don’t know that when they go to Cars.com or CarsDirect.com they are actually going to be sending a lead to a dealership. Often they just want to know if the car is in their price range. These customers are sometimes as much as six months ou...

One of the biggest areas of improvement I often see at the dealership is fixing the disconnect, lack of communication and cohesiveness between the sales and service departments. How well is your dealership doing in integrating the two departments at your dealership?   Are you marketing to sold customers who have not been in for service?   If someone comes to your service drive with high mileage or is out of warranty, do you have a process of notifying someone in the sales department?   When one of their sold customers comes in for service, do you notify the salesperson to greet them in the service drive (and ask for referral)?   If a salesperson sells a vehicle, are they setting the customer’s first service appointment?   Do you send out sold anniversary letters and/or emails reminding the customer of their registration renewal, recommended services, their current trade-in value, and current sales specials...

 I have been involved in the auto industry for many years and have encountered this situation multiple times: a person comes in looking for a used vehicle that the dealership just doesn’t have. Most dealers I know either try to change the customer’s mind to a vehicle they do have in stock or simply state that they don’t have the vehicle and let the customer walk away. Some CRM technologies have a “Check New Inventory” feature which allows the salesperson to save the vehicle of interest, and the CRM will automatically notify the sales person when a similar or matching vehicle is received into inventory. Another feature allows you to pull a list of those looking for a certain vehicle which you can use as a “wish list” for purchasing vehicles at auction. Although these are great features, I have found there is a better way. Your CRM should have a way to search your historic sold data through some sort of listbuilder. If a customer ...