They are tired of doing so much work. After 250+ mystery shops I think I can safely speak for the group when I say that my mystery shoppers are exhausted.  Their eyes hurt and their heads ache. And all just because they try to launch buyer/seller relationships with car dealers. If you’ve ever tried researching and selecting a new car or truck online you know that it’s not as easy as one might think.  A typical outing starts with a Google search the leads you down a labyrinthine path through dozens of sites and pages.   Eventually you reach a vehicle (or a retailer, or both) and are given the opportunity to type in your name and contact info with the promise of getting something of value in return. You comply; hit “Submit” or “Get Your Free Internet Price Quote” or “Make An Offer” or “Get More Information” or whatever, then sit back and wait to see what happens. We think this is the end of the...

  They don’t trust you.   We both know it’s largely unfair, but they don’t trust you.    You’ve seen all the polls where buyers say if they could bypass the dealership and buy directly from the manufacturer they would.  They trust the OEM, but they don’t trust you.   A couple weeks ago, I heard a Ford maven say this (I’ll paraphrase): “The more your outgoing emails resemble Tier 1 emails, the more prospects trust you.”   By gawd, he’s on to something.     Ignoring, for the moment, issues like quality of content, font selection, correct spacing & spelling, etc. etc. what is the simplest and most powerful thing we can do to make our outgoing emails resemble Tier 1 emails?    Shared graphics, right?   For example, this month www.Ford.com  has “The Best Place To Be” sales event plastered all o...

  Our team’s official Ford Motor Company job title is Digital Marketing Consultant.  Sounds cool.  I like it.  But it’s actually a misnomer as it suggests that we want to sell you SEO/SAO, website development, lead generation and other services.  And we don’t. For some time now I’ve been telling people that our real title should be Best Practices Consultant: Internet-based Retail New Car Sales.  But besides being too long, it’s also inadequate because it suggests (to me, anyway) that the job entails walking into a dealership and pulling out a new car Internet sales best practices playbook.  If there is such a document, I’ve never seen it. At the end of some dog tired days I think we are really a combination of things:    - eCommunications skills teacher +  - eProspect management practices instructor +  - Art of salesmanship coach and trainer. Isn&r...

  Imagine that you run a restaurant.   Out in the dining room it’s nothing but surprises: you open each day with no idea how many people are going to come through the doors, what they are going to order, whether you have too much or too little staff or food on hand, etc. etc. etc.  Anything goes, and that’s what makes it fun.   But back in the kitchen there must be order and process: if the kitchen is not systematically organized and operated the dishes will not make it out to the dining room on time (if at all) and the restaurant will crash.    The dining room makes money out of chaos (and the more the better), the kitchen makes money out of order.   I think the dining room is analogous to a dealership’s sales floor.   And Internet-based car sales is the kitchen.  An Internet department (whether it is standalone, integrated, BDC, or whatever) requires process, method and consistency in order to sup...

  It’s odd how, in the fortnight that passes between these lite essays, the theme for the next one always appears out of recent dealer visits.  For example, if I write about lead response times it’s because, unexplainably, LRT became an issue multiple times in my visits during the two weeks prior.  The issue that revealed itself this time is Over-Thinking The Lead.  I had some poor mystery shops, and from stores that should know better and do better.  When we looked for a cause it was, in most cases, because the salesperson overanalyzed the eLead instead of just responding to it.  And the more they analyzed it the worse the initial response and follow-up!   One example: my mystery shopper used a phone number that, to my surprise, was still in the store’s CRM from a shop a year earlier.  (My bad).  Their CRM caught the match (though nothing else – name, address or email address – was the same).&n...

  I just discovered that in the past sixteen months I have launched more than 225 mystery shops.  Wow.  I didn’t realize there had been so many. You’d think after 225+ mystery shops a guy should have some profound observations and conclusions to share about mystery shops, right?  I don’t know about the profound part, but, yeah, you’re right, it seems that a person should have some observations and conclusions to share. So I’ve spent the last couple hours ruminating and writing down things that currently stand out in my mind.  Here they are, in no particular order of importance. Feel free to add some of your own or challenge these. 1). The view from out here in shopper land is way different from your view down in dealer land.  I thought I was a pretty good template writer and process builder when I was an Internet salesman; I now see that I wasn’t nearly as good as I credited myself for being. &nbs...

  Are you still debating whether to employ text messaging in your eLead response process?  This story may get you off the fence.   One day a couple weeks ago, as I do most days, I was sitting in a General Manager’s office reviewing his store’s recent mystery shop.    When I told him the Lead Response Time (LRT) was a disappointing 5 hours 36 minutes he immediately went to his CRM to verify.  To my surprise, the CRM said the response time was 41 minutes.   Hmmm, OK.  So, was the First Quality Response (FQR) an email or a phone call?  (In Ford-world, only an email stops the clock).  It was an email, and a manually written and sent email at that.  (In Ford-world, autoresponders and other auto-sent emails do not stop the clock).  So everything checks out to support the 41 minute LRT story.   Then the problem is on my end.   My mystery shoppers always have gmail.com or yahoo.com email a...

This week a wonderful thing happened.  I got to see real salesmanship in action. Here’s the set-up: I only mystery shop Ford dealers, and I almost always mystery shop for an F-150.  But this week I got the wild urge to do something different.  I had two stores to shop so I sent the same request to both: the female shopper clicked the “Get  Info” button on a specific 2012 Ford Focus in the dealer’s inventory and, in the Comments/Questions box, wrote “Does this one have a sunroof?” Here is how Store # 1 replied: Mystery Shopper, This particular Focus doesn't have the sunroof.  There are only a couple hatchbacks in entire country with sunroofs right now.  Is there any other design that  you want, or did you want me to notify you when we come across one? Dealership Salesman Ouch!  He pretty much shut me down, didn't he?  He said “No” to my question (This particular F...

  Last week, while at a dealer client, and while reviewing the mystery shop I had just done for them, I flashed on a story told to me last year by one of my teammates.  First know that this was a pretty typical mystery shop – the shopper received 2 emails and 1 phone call before the store stopped contact attempts.  Now the story: Bob was 13 years old, in middle school for the first time, and faced with having to ask a girl to an upcoming school dance.  Like a lot of 13 year old boys he had no experience in this area and had no idea what was expected of him.  So, summoning up his courage, he walked up to the girl he wanted and asked if she would go to the dance with him.  She said no.  Dumbfounded by this unexpected setback, he retreated, concluding that he would either have to find another girl to ask, or forgo the dance altogether. The next day her best friend pulled him aside and said “Bob, you putz, you don&rs...

  As one who launches three to four e-mystery shops per week, I get to see the marketplace from a perspective far different than the one I had when I worked at a store.  I’ve learned that a lot of what, in my selling days, I thought was good material actually contains a message far different from the one intended – and that the message that comes across is not always a good one.    Judging by some of the follow-up emails I get from dealerships today, many stores still have the same unintentional communication difficulties that I had.  So, in the interest of industry service, I’d like to pass along some (admittedly subjective) constructive comments, observations and recommendations. Please read on if you’re interested.   Let’s first establish that within 24-48 hours of its arrival every incoming e-lead is going to fall into one of the following three categories:  1). Responsive,  2). Lurker (opens your ...

  OK, the title of this story is intentionally cheesy, but rest of it is real.  I mystery shopped some Dallas Region Ford-Lincoln eCommerce Elite (Top 100 stores in USA for new Ford-Lincoln Internet sales) stores recently and was surprised to discover that their response processes are similar.  This piqued my curiosity, so I called my DMC teammate in southern California to ask him how the  #1 new Ford Internet sales store in the country does things.  Turns out they work much the same as the top Dallas Region stores do.  So what is the #1 Internet new car sales secret of the eCommerce elite 100 stores that I shopped?  They call.  And call.  And call.  And call.  That’s pretty much it.  I must admit, by the time a pleasant, friendly salesperson leaves four voice messages for my mystery shopper I have to answer or return the call, if for no other reason than I feel guilty ignoring them.  You can’t shut four p...

This is a true story told to me in 1996 BC (Before Computers) by sales trainer extraordinaire Diana Ball Cooksey. (www.dbcooksey.com) Diana was a busy working professional and single parent with little time for projects outside her day to day work and home responsibilities. But she needed to buy some health insurance. So she left voice messages after hours (this is the days before PCs, remember) with three agencies, requesting an estimate/quote and providing her name, the ages of family members she wanted to insure, her insurance purchase goals and explaining that she had little or no time to devote to insurance shopping during the work day. Agent 1 called the next day during business hours with a message to call him back during business hours. Agent 2 called the next day during business hours with a message to call him back anytime. Agent 3 called the next day during business hours and in his message gave her some estimates and a deadline after which these numbers would ...