Yeah, you know the Road to the Sale (RTTS) like the back of your hand, right?  Do you also know the Road to the Sale From the Sale?  Or the Road to the Sale from the Unsold?   And do you train your staff on any of this?  Even if you like a shorter RTTS, take a look below and see what you are missing!   This post is short and sweet, because sometimes the best things are simple.  Good selling!   Keith Shetterly Copyright 2012 All Rights Reserved www.keithshetterly.com keithshetterly@gmail.com   TEN STEPS ON THE ROAD TO THE SALE 1. Meet and Greet  2. Interview  3. Vehicle Selection  4. Walk-Around  5. Test Drive  6. Trade Evaluation  7. Present Numbers and Ask for the Sale  8. Close  9. F&I Turn  10. Delivery and Service Drive Intro   FIVE MORE STEPS ON THE ROAD TO THE SALE FROM THE SALE 1. Ask for Refe...

  There's a great article here called Doing It Wrong: 11 Boring Things GM Posted on Facebook.   I couldn't agree more with the article.  And, like the article itself, I have more to say than just comment on the "boring" Facebook page operation by GM, as well:  GM is stupid, or "dot dumb", for revoking their paid Facebook ads. What is going on?  This is really "Old Media vs. New Media" and nothing new for GM's advertising, unfortunately.  I don't agree with the folks who claim Facebook cannot be monetized well--in fact, if I were running GM's online efforts, I would have wanted to WORK WITH Facebook to tune up their ad system!  The press from such an effort would have been very big.  And positive, even if the project itself didn't work (which I think it would).  We will sell 14 million vehicles this year, give or take, and spend (between the OEMs and dealers) $14 ...

  Look for the "Yes!"--as "no" can find you without any help! Do you often find yourself locking into what is wrong about something rather than what is right?  Both wrong and right are good to consider, certainly--however, what are you looking for?  A way to say "yes" or a way to say "no"? Looking for the "no" first is really fear-driven.  From relationships to home-buying to weight loss, we often fear change and run for comfort, and we think saying "no" means we don't have to change.  We can stay the same, and we tell ourselves that we'll certainly change later if only we can find the "right" person, item, or program we want.  Really, however, none of these are the reason we stopped--we ran to "no" because we were more comfortable holding back and longing for the "right" item rather than risking to really ac...

  I've been involved in the TrueCar discussions for months now, sometimes prominently.  And the idea of protecting the dealers'--nay the industry's--data has become very, very important to me.  Thank you, Jim Ziegler, for goading us to pay attention to these issues. However, lately I've taken to also looking at these points:  Is the "Data Horse" already out of the barn?  Data genie out of the bottle?  Data under the bridge?  Maybe, maybe not.   And even if we can still just lock all vendors out of the dealers' data . . . well, what ramifications does that have for our business?  Should we just pull that plug with possibly as much ignorance in stopping the practice as we have had during it's birth and growth (when we, admittedly, weren't paying any attention)?  Are there strong and business-REQUIRED positives which we don't even know about that will die without that information?...

  Is anyone reading this old enough to remember travel agents and travel companies?  The Internet eventually killed them and rolled them all into Expedia, Priceline, etc.  I met a travel company owner back when Priceline was just taking off, quite a wake-up call to the travel industry, and he was buying up companies and agents as fast as he could:  He was convinced he was going to win because "People still want to buy from an agent."  He went out of business and lost a bundle. He missed the wake-up call.  Sound familiar?  Read on. Now the smart phone is killing the PC.  HP and Dell, the last titans of PC land other than Mac, are failing--and they even ousted the guy who smartly wanted to sell the PC division of HP last August, replacing him with a PC-fan CEO . . . who now faces a quarterly debacle that shows the guy she replaced was right (click here for that story). In our industry, we have billions of dollars in br...

  I am who I am.  I am me!  I work as me, I advise as me, and I write and publish as me.  I am this way because, as a person, I fit the “new credibility” very well:  I am all over the Web, and you can reach me by email and phone if you go to my website.  You can find me, easily, and find out about me, because I don’t hide.  And I don’t ever use pseudonyms for my work, and I don’t participate in pseudonyms for hire, either, so don’t bother asking me to ghost write for you as some have requested.  The answer is “No”. I have experience and a mind you can purchase services from, but many times I give away so much for free that my friends want to tie me up and gag me to get me to stop talking myself out of money.  I don’t adjust my ethics versus what I’m paid to do (you can’t hire me if I don’t basically agree with you on some important level), and you can&rsq...

  1) They get the online shoppers from leads and calls into the store; they answer the shoppers’ questions but still build urgency and make appointments.   2) They are great on the phone and depend on it for success; they know that email is best as merely a strong, personalized riff on a template and that it faces many hurdles (SPAM, attention, etc.) to just be seen by the shopper.  Even those shoppers who ask for contact don’t often see it by email.   3) They are their own commercial:  They use things like short, personal video invitations and video walkarounds to establish connection and rapport with customers before they come in.   4) They understand that the store’s reputation online is first seen by shoppers but first built by sold customers, and they work very hard to add positives to that online reputation from every customer they can.   5) They keep strongly to an effective, standard fol...

  We are not doctors, but I love the idea of “First, Do No Harm” for working with dealers.  Even though that phrase is the common, but incorrect, quote of the Hippocratic Oath for Physicians, it still conveys a lot for the proper doctor/patient relationship—and it also means a lot for vendor/dealer, consultant/dealer, and even blogger/dealer relationships.  And, so, I’m establishing it here as the cornerstone of a vendor/consult/blogger creed for working with dealers. When any of us (peers, dealers, vendors, consultants, etc.) are working with, critiquing, or advising dealers—or even affecting the readers on this and other online forums by what we write—we need to remember up front to not over-state and/or overreact:  Help for a hangnail shouldn’t be amputation!  Not even for a frantic, and possibly hypochondriac, patient.  Next, we need to remember that the “patient/doctor confidentiality&r...

    First, let me assert this:  There is NO such thing as “purity and sanctity” of a customer review of a business.  Of ANY business, dealership or not.  Why? Trying to police reviews while thinking otherwise is Pollyannaish and is really an enormous “plate of spaghetti” (whether the reviews were performed on the business’ property or off)—because either, or both, the business and the customer may have agendas that bear little on the actual experience and more on their personal and/or business reasons.   And that’s assuming the review came from a real customer—as both businesses and individuals can “game” any system of reviews, and they will.  So, again, whether the reviews are done on or off property of the business does not change that. And gaming is hard to fairly detect, even if you start by looking at a pattern of reviews done by a single individual, or reviews done once b...

  The biggest lies are those we tell ourselves, personally and in business.   We’re going to look at a few here that we, owning or working at dealerships, tell ourselves that cost us profits every day. The Internet is Killing Our Business.  The lesson of the Internet for car dealers is that we sold best when we totally controlled the information and experience of the large body of uneducated in-market shoppers AFTER they had made a choice to come see us at the dealership.  High volumes of traffic entering very close to the top of the sales funnel AT THE DEALERHIP rendered great sales at the bottom for decades. Nowadays, however, the Internet allows the customers to move themselves very far down the funnel on their own well BEFORE choosing a dealer.  That should mean your dealership’s visit and phone traffic is more ready to a buying decision than ever before, right?  Hmmm.  Does your closing ration reflect that? ...

  Pay-per-Click (PPC) maps well to what we’ve done for years on our lots, but we don’t realize it:  We spend a lot of money getting visits and calls to a dealership, and we train our salespeople to land a customer on a car before starting the negotiation process in the store.  Get'em "lickin' the paint" as my first GSM told me.  And, once landed, do NOT lift them from the car! Well, on PPC, we need to get'em "CLICKin' the paint":  The text of the PPC ad should be compelling "$6,500 off our Ford Super Duty TODAY!", etc.  And then the landing page for the PPC campaign is really a "conversion" page, where the point is to convert to a contact and to NOT leak away to other makes of cars . . . or to service . . . etc.  . . . because, as we taught our green peas, the customer has landed on a car (clicked in this case), and they need to see the offer and inventory and a way to contact u...

  Yeah, I said it:  GM’s Internet lead response measurements are wrong-headed.  The age of pushing dealers to a better 24x7 response time is over, and the results are misleading.  And they are unfortunately too often focusing dealers, and therefore precious resources, AWAY from car sales.  And here’s why.  First, the requirement:  To be measured as “passing”, a dealer has to have an average response time—across 24x7—of under ONE hour and 95% of the dealer’s leads must be answered in under 5 hours (and NOT by an autoresponder).  It’s that second time measurement that makes no sense at all, and here's why . . . Second, the "Lead Response Math":  Say a dealer gets 100 leads.  Then that means, no matter what effort they make on response time, NO MORE THAN FIVE leads can ever go over five hours.  That's very, very few mistakes allowed, and it can be very...

  "Negotiation is the art of reaching agreement by trust while lying."  -- Keith Shetterly, 2011 Wow!  My friends have pointed out that I needed another article for "trust-eroding" words and phrases--spoken or written--that can kill sales, so here comes Part 2 of what is now a series.  What do I mean by "trust-eroding"?  Well, that's best explained by going right to the first example:   Honestly.  You're eroding trust directly with the use of this word--because when you reach a point in a conversation where you say, "Well, honestly, . . .", does that mean to the customer that you were lying the entire time before you said that phrase?  YES.  My opening quote is true of negotiation, in that the customer knows things like the dark history of their trade and/or their credit score that can kill a deal, while the dealer knows the invoice, holdback, step money, bonus motivations, etc. that ...

  Want to make more sales or maybe just sound smarter?  Then learn which words make lots of people--from your peers, to your bosses, to your CUSTOMERS--cringe.  Spoken or written, these words lose you sales!   Irregardless.  It's a common word now that is most often misused as a synonym for "regardless"--and it is not.  It's a double negative of "regardless"--instead of meaning "in NO regard" to something, like "regardless", it means "NOT in NO regard" to something, or actually then IN REGARD to something!  So, saying "Regardless of the high interest rate, you got a new car!" is not the same as "Irregardless of the high interest rate, you got a new car!"  The first sentence says to the customer that he or she is getting a new car and just ingore the minor pain of the interest--the second sentence says the customer got a new car AND the interes...

  I don’t know that GoogleBots suspending a dealer's Google Places (GPs), or incorrectly merging their GPs, or automatically creating dealer GPs that the dealers don’t know about, qualifies for this dramatic article title (also the title of my new movie script!), but they can definitely cause as much havoc on your business GP as the robot “Gort” did in the 1951 science fiction classic “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (I didn’t much like the 2008 remake).  And there’s no “lone stranger” alien to listen to your pleas and perhaps Save the World (or just your GP) from Gort the GoogleBot:   Uttering the famous phrase “Klaatu Borada Nickto” isn’t likely to work. I want to note here at the beginning of this article that I believe that speaking too authoritatively about Google Places’ direction (much less Google!) and particulars is especially risky right now.   I&rsq...

  Google Places.  Facebook.  Twitter.  Foursquare.  Etc.  All free.  Car dealers have to love that price, right? My caution is not about whether to use these services, as YOU MUST USE THEM.  It’s not an option any longer—it’s just a matter of when you can get to using them with the attention they deserve for the result you need. My caution IS, however, about knowing what you’re getting with “Free”.   With “Free”, you have no contract , you have “Terms of Use”.  And you don’t have a platform you bought with agreed-to deliverables and some controls, you have a service you are gaining whose deliverables CHANGE.  And whose data presentation and on-screen arrangement is NOT up to you! The latest case in point is Google Places.  Your GOOGLE business reviews are prominently displayed there, but previously your business “star rating” included ...

  To me, we’ve all clearly moved past the Reputation Management phase:  Now, it’s “Reputation MARKETING”.  Before I explain that, let’s talk about where we have been so far with Reputation Management. Reputation Management is the ability to monitor and defend your online reputation.  And, although folks gaming the system have been rightly and roundly condemned, some companies still try and sell some type of “review ballot-box stuffing” service much like Black Hat SEO companies still try and sell their schtick.  I think we all know, or can learn now, however, how to get the best reviews ourselves from our customers.  And, SURPRISE, they can do the review at the dealership.  I see it done every day, even for Google Places.  In my case, Presto Reviews (which we still use) taught me that. Reputation Marketing, as they say, “begins at home”:  Are you pressing folks to your review sites...

Made you click from the title or the picture, didn't I?  Well, this article is about Pay-Per-Click (PPC), but a short story first to explain my point:  When I had my entertainment company ten years ago, we always laughed at the long-standing joke that naming a band “Free Beer!” would make all the honky-tonk signs read “Free Beer Tonight!”—ensuring strong attendance.  I still grin at it, because it’s so damned true.  And impossible to do, because no bar would book you.  PPC campaigns that focus only on Click-Thru-Rate (CTR) are a very similar “high click attendance” effort, but they’re no joke.  Just a few years ago, people fought for audience, and anybody clicking your ad was a win:  It was All About the Click.  NOT true any more.  It’s all about “conversion”.  Want to have some PPC companies turn as white as a sheet?  Ask about conversion.  And ...

  So, you market well to your website:  Use it across your advertising, put the URL on t-shirts, do fantastic SEO, and run PPC campaigns.  Get your Social Media sending people there, too.  After all, we know that everybody (90%+) shops online now!  Success for your dealership is just a click away. And then your online inventory is incomplete.  Mis-priced.  Photos are wrong, or they’re just stock.  Individual comments are missing.  The Specials Page—often the 2nd-most visited page on your site!—is blank.  You have no calls to action on the site at all.  There’s no way to make an offer, either, if shoppers can find the car.  And nothing is said about your reputation or who you are as a dealer.   Great.  You just spent all those marketing dollars and effort just to send all your customers to the worst salesperson you’ve ever had!  Maybe the worst in history.  A...

  Here we finally have a car dealership using Groupon for CAR DISCOUNTS (Cadillac and Groupon).  People can purchase an amount off the car later for buying a coupon for a lesser amount now.   I tried to get four separate dealers to try this last year. I'll get the same push-back here, perhaps, as I did from them, but this guy quoted in the article gets it:  It's not a coupon, it's ADVERTISING.   $199 buys you $500 off a car purchased this year.  The customer commits to buying from you by spending money NOW, and you apply this as an advertising expense.  Really, how much do most of you spend now per vechicle to get the phone to ring, leads/emails to come in, and to get walk-in traffic?   It's going just like pricing did:  We used to hold all the cards for brochures and price, and some of us played games in the newspaper.  Nowadays, if you're asked a price in a lead, you answer with a price (as well wit...

  Grand Theft Auto - Customer:  It’s not a video game—it’s your real profits.  How do other dealers steal your customers? They park a PPC campaign on your dealership name.  They use your dealership name in their SEO work.  They hijack your Google Places results (just found and undid one of those!).   And your Bing.  And Yahoo. And so on.  All because you’re not watching your digital presence and stopping it. And you cooperate as theft victim, as well.  You push your customers to review you on third-party review sites that sell ad space around your reviewsto your competitors.  You pay to drive your customers to online inventory sites that lead shoppers off to other offers.   And I’ve even seen links within a dealer’s Internet Autoresponder that invite customers to visit these sites to get stolen by competitors!  In one particular case,  a dealer’s Autorespond...

  1) Keep It Short.  People don't watch commercials, they Watch Shows and Put Up With Commercials.  And the Internet did NOT improve their patience! 2) Make It Fun to Watch and Share.  Entertainment is the largest video audience, NOT education--so tell a great story, show your product, and leave the detailed info for a store visit.  And remember:  If your video makes them smile, they'll share it. 3) Include Calls to Action and SEO.  Tell your viewers to come buy something and how and why!  And remind them to share your video--and don't forget to tag the video with your website URL, keywords, etc. so that you get the full value of online video SEO.   Copyright 2011 Keith Shetterly keithshetterly@gmail.com www.ShetterlysLaws.com www.KeithShetterly.com www.twitter.com/keithshetterly www.fullofshetterly.com ...

  Those that know me or read my professional blogs know that I'm a GREAT believer in processes, and that I consider that many, many dealerships' profits would increase dramatically from just making THOSE EXISTING PROCESSES WORK FOR THEM.  And we never want process to fail us, sure, but it's especially painful when we've gotten a customer in from a call, landed them on a car--and our process blows up in, say, finance.  And they walk out. Well, we need to consider our web conversions ARE JUST AS PAINFUL iF NOT MORE.  We do SEO, PPC, integrated marketing campaigns, email, etc. . . . spend many thousands of dollars a month on all that . . . to get the shopper on to our website.  And that visit somehow still blows up on, say, online pricing.  Or website usability.  Or unanswered questions and no one to talk to.  And they click out.  We call that "bounce rate", as in "We need a low bounce rate!!!". Ex...

  1) Rapport Gets'em in the Door:  Smile!  Shoppers buy from people they like and trust, and that process begins from the first moment on the phone.  Be and sound happy and interested, and they will be, too.  They can see your smile through the phone, and always give it to them--so that they want to come see you and your vehicle for sale.   2) Conversation Leads to Conversion:  Give in Order to Get.  Give your name to get theirs; give your enthusiasm to get theirs; give your phone number to get theirs; give your urgency to get theirs; and so on.  And answer enough of their needs only to convert to the appointment, not close them on a vehicle.  Which is actually the next rule . . .    3) Close on the Appointment, not on the Vehicle:  For best selection and terms, they must be present to win!  An appointment is faster and makes best use of their time; you'll have several vehicles pulled up and ready f...

  1) Don't Forget to Still Answer the Sales Calls Correctly: An Inbound Sales Call is Still Always Much Better than an Internet Lead. Studies show that nearly 8 out of 10 shoppers who contact us from our web presence call us for that first contact. Just because Internet Leads might be easier to measure doesn't mean you can or should ignore needing great sales phone skills on your inbound sales line--online shoppers are going to call you, so be ready to close them on an appointment! 2) Be Ready to Work for Your Money: The Only Fact You Actually Know About an Internet Lead is That You Got One. The email address might be wrong; the vehicle of interest might be the result by a bad shopper selection; the lead might be a prank (on your dealership or on the shopper); etc. Really, all you know for a fact is that you got a lead, so work it via email and phone until you are sure that you've done your best to get the information needed to reach the shopper. And then . ...

  Silly title, yeah, but here's my point:  Is Autotrader's purchase of Vin Solutions the "death knell" for other Website/CRM/Digital/etc. vendors in automotive?  Do I need no do more study or market homework for tool selection, and so I just have to call Autotrader to get all my strongest needs satisfied?  To the first question, I don't personally think so IF the other vendors focus on improving their products to compete.  At least not for a while.  To the second question, well, I'd guess that was Autotrader's intent, which I am thankful for, but I am wary to make sure something of this size will stay focused on my and my dealer's needs. In my career that includes several other non-automotive vertical markets, I've been through a number of tool-market consolidations that moved us away from the "best of breed" mentality--and I can say from ...

  The Good Ol’ Boy Network (GOBN) of the car business limits us in how we apply experienced and/or capable people, how we run our dealership’s business, and in how we approach women in this business for everything from ownership, to manager spots, to sales positions. And, by doing all that, limits our success.  And our profitability.  Let me tell you my own experience with the car business GOBN, and then I’ll address the point I’m making on limits. I came to the car business in my 40’s (I’m now 52) with experience ranging from owning my own business, to Fortune 100 Consulting, to several years at Microsoft. I entered the sales floor, as perhaps many do, because I had a financial issue—I had a cash flow problem with my business, and so I was making an effort to offset that slowdown. I was privileged to work with several great salespeople who were happy with me until I started selling #1 consistently. Eventually, the...

One of my very good childhood memories is Mom writing Granny (her Mom) letters and Mom also getting letters from Granny.  Mom and Dad had moved us to Ohio for the better life that came then from factory work, so at the time we were far away from Granny back in Tennessee.  The telephone was still expensive and unreliable way back then, and Granny's phone was also a party (shared) line for a while--so privacy wasn't assured on the phone, but it was in the mail.  And so there was something very special about those letters, and those times, too, because people had to take time to reflect and write and mail, to wait and read and reflect.  Putting hand to pen to paper meant something in those days, and that something is really not as strong as an "instant" email is now. I'm sure those letters came in all seasons, but I recall them best when it was warm spring and summer. The mailbox was across the street, and I remember when I was old enough to g...

  1) Hire some women!  Women buyers will, on average, prefer to buy a vehicle from another woman when they can--and women salespeople are awesome.  By the way, women salespeople will do a great job with male buyers, too. 2) Smile and understand their power.  Lots of women are on their own and earning money these days, and, when in families, women statistically make most of the car-purchasing decisions, anyway--so, if you can pleasantly help women smartly enjoy a vehicle purchase, you will get some of your best sales.  And referrals. 3) Sell with polite confidence.  Women don't want to buy vehicles from mean or weak people, male or female, which means--no matter your own gender--you'll lose the sale if you are condescending or disrespectful.  Or just don't know your product.     **To help be sure I wasn't a total Neanderthal about this, I vetted some of these ideas with Dr. Elizabeth Ar...