Asking the proper questions is essential to identifying the right candidate for your dealership. Often, we ask templated questions that are easy to game. In this clip, we discuss an important tip to make sure you can interview for the competencies you need.

Personalized vehicle recommendations are helping dealers find the right Manheim inventory more quickly and easily.

ATLANTA -  Manheim is harnessing the power of AI to create a personalized shopping and buying experience for dealers in its Marketplace. Manheim’s Big Data approach looks at its buyers’ historic activity, recognizes their individual preferences and then recommends relevant inventory to them. With these vehicle recommendations, dealers shopping the Manheim Marketplace can make faster and smarter purchase decisions.

“With the wide usage of sites like Amazon and Netflix, people are used to seeing personalized recommendations and even expect it,” said Dr. Ben Flusberg, associate vice president of Decision Support, at Cox Automotive. “We’re bringing this capability to the wholesale market to help dealers quickly and easily find the right inventory and make faster decisions, which are core to Manheim’s mission.”

Using a variety of supervised and unsupervised machine learning techniques, Cox Automotive’s Data Solutions group built an AI-driven vehicle recommendation engine that learns on its own and improves over time. The technology evaluates a specific dealer’s historical buying and bidding patterns across a wide set of vehicle and market attributes and then scores available Manheim inventory against the dealer’s profile. When generating recommendations, Manheim’s algorithm accounts for dealer preferences across vehicle age, make, model, mileage, condition, seller segment and more, along with a variety of geographic and market factors.

Manheim has been piloting this new solution throughout 2018, so far emailing personalized vehicle recommendations to more than 15,000 dealers. Clients who viewed Manheim’s recommendations have been three times more likely to buy the recommended vehicles and have increased their buying activity by more than 10 percent, proving that Manheim’s recommendations help dealers quickly find the inventory they want.

“This is a great example of how we’re bringing together the best of our technology and data resources to give dealers a real, usable solution that will make it easier for them to buy the right vehicles,” said Ed Berkowitz, vice president of Product Management at Cox Automotive. “With the success of the pilot, we’re excited to make this modern experience available to dealers directly within the Manheim Marketplace.”

Starting in early 2019, dealers will be able to see their personalized recommendations by logging on to Manheim.com. 

About Manheim (www.manheim.com)

Manheim® is North America's leading provider of end-to-end wholesale solutions that help dealer and commercial clients increase profits in their used vehicle operations. Through its physical, mobile and digital sales network, Manheim offers services for inventory management, buying and selling, floor planning, logistics, assurance and reconditioning. With its omni-channel approach, Manheim Marketplace enables wholesale vehicle clients more efficient ways to connect and transact business how and when they want. Approximately 18,000 team members help Manheim offer 8 million used vehicles annually, facilitating transactions representing nearly $58 billion in value. Headquartered in Atlanta, Manheim North America is a Cox Automotive™ brand. For more information, visit http://press.manheim.com.

In this video, we look at different learning styles and how addressing them can help you with your walkaround.

This is a guest post from Russ Daniels, the Senior Manager, Product Marketing at Homenet. We're excited to have Russ presenting at the DrivingSales Executive Summit.  

Effective merchandising drives deeper interest from car shoppers, however, dealerships today do not know to differentiate their online inventory. 

In our dealer research, we found that 83% of dealers believe they can increase margin and reduce days to sell by improving online merchandising, yet just 12.0% feel their online presence was highly differentiated from their competitors. 

To begin understanding how to stand out, you need to understand how to measure several aspects of your merchandising. Below are three areas that I believe can provide the most insight into the impact of your current merchandising processes. 

Measure Merchandising Performance

Measuring the overall effectiveness of your online listings starts with tracking search result page and vehicle detail page views. Having an idea of the online engagement your inventory receives allows you see the impact your merchandising has on attracting shoppers.

For a deeper understanding of online engagement, track views for specific aspects of merchandising, such as videos, photos and 360 spins. 

In many conversations I have with experts across the industry, 125 VDP clicks per vehicle acts as a starting benchmark of measuring merchandising success.

Measure Time-to-Market

Used cars can take up to 11 days to be fully merchandised and online, but high performing dealers can accomplish this within three days. Use smart automation and technology to streamline this process as much as possible to save time and effort. 

Remember fully merchandised vehicles are going to drive consumer engagement. Listings with real photos get 349% more vehicle details page views than those with stock photos and vehicles with descriptions receive 27% more views than those without. 

Merchandising that Boosts Search Rankings

Industry leading classified sites like Autotrader, Kelley Blue Book, Cars.com and Cargurus are using merchandising completeness to drive which vehicles display at the top of the search results page. Now vehicles with real photo sets, video, descriptions etc. will be showing higher on the results page. This shift is aimed to drive a better shopping experience.  This also validates the need to measure the time it takes to merchandise your inventory and track engagement.

If vehicles are underperforming – it’s important to investigate where merchandising processes can be improved to maximize return on your advertising spend. For example, photos and thorough descriptions can be easily overlooked. By expanding the detail of your comments and taking more photos, you can give car shoppers more information to make a purchasing decision.

ATLANTA, October 2, 2018 — Contact At Once!, the automotive division of LivePerson, Inc. (NASDAQ: LPSN) today announced its customers are now able to use Apple Business Chat, a new way for users to communicate directly with businesses using the Messages app on iPhone and iPad.

“We are proud to support Apple Business Chat, which offers a powerful, engaging new way for businesses to connect with their customers where they are, and when they want, using the Messages app on iOS,” says Denise Chudy, Contact At Once! General Manager.  “Automotive businesses can easily sign up with Contact At Once! to try Apple Business Chat beta.”  Contact At Once! customers who are launching Apple Business Chat today include Hendrick Automotive Group, Lithia Motors, Inc. and Robins & Day.

Contact At Once! customers can use Apple Business Chat to connect with auto shoppers through their Messages app, share rich media such as photos and video, schedule appointments and more. With Business Chat, customers can always reach a live person and are always in control of whether they share any contact information with a business.

To start an Apple Business Chat, customers can click the ‘Chat with Messages’ button on a customer’s website or in their iOS app. A conversation with the brand’s agents will open instantly in the Messages app, and users can take their time responding when it’s convenient.

Apple Business Chat is now available to users and businesses in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland, UK and US, and is built into iOS 11.3 and higher. For more information visit: apple.com/ios/business-chat.

ABOUT CONTACT AT ONCE!

Contact At Once!, a LivePerson Company, helps create satisfying connections and build relationships between auto shoppers and dealers by making it easier for consumers to ask questions and get information in the micro-moments when they shop—whether on a brand or retailer site, via online advertising, on social media and more. Contact At Once! is the industry’s leading provider of messaging platforms with over 17,000 businesses using our solutions to build relationships with online, mobile shoppers. For more information, visit www.contactatonce.com.

ABOUT LIVEPERSON, INC.

LivePerson makes life easier by transforming how people communicate with brands. Our 18,000 customers, including leading brands like Citibank, HSBC, Orange, and The Home Depot, use our conversational commerce solutions to orchestrate humans and AI, at scale, and create a convenient, deeply personal relationship — a conversational relationship — with their millions of consumers. For more information about LivePerson (NASDAQ: LPSN), please visit www.liveperson.com.

MEDIA CONTACT

Allison Franzese

LivePerson

afranzese@liveperson.com

212-609-4224

This is a guest blog by Carla Fitzgerald, Chief Marketing Officer of Spireon.

Carla is speaking at DSES in a breakout titled, Next Generation Automotive Customer Lifecycle: How Connectivity is Transforming the Buying Experience for Consumers and Dealers Alike.

Connectivity is a central part of the human experience in 2018. Many of us keep tabs on family and friends through text messages and location sharing apps, as well as follow our favorite celebrities and athletes through Twitter and Instagram. Imagine trying to pick up someone from the airport without first tracking his or her flight status, checking real-time traffic to the airport, and — maybe most importantly — using texts to know exactly when he or she is ready and by which landmark to meet. (Unfortunately, some of us lived through that era, and we’re still traumatized.)

The point is, connectivity is ubiquitous. It’s grown beyond the novelty of arbitrarily knowing where someone is on a map; in business specifically, it enables efficiencies we never before thought possible.

Creating Loyal Customers

In auto sales, customer lifecycle is king. A great buying experience leads into a long service relationship, which leads into the next car purchase, and so on. After years of building trust and solidifying ties, you may have yourself a lifelong customer who is faithful to you and your brand. This is the customer who turns down overtures from your competitors, both in sales and service, because he or she trusts you. This customer spends all of his or her car budget with you.

Sounds good, right? Well, with the latest technology on your side, you can cultivate legions of lifelong customers. The key lies in connectivity.

Connected cars are not new, but their utilization by auto dealers to improve the customer lifecycle is. Connected car technology leads to invaluable data — data that can be analyzed to uncover dealer and consumer blind spots throughout the customer lifecycle. Data analytics can identify factors at the dealership that affect what consumers set out to buy and what they ultimately end up buying. Data analytics can show you how to best manage your inventory to make the greatest impact on sales. And with customer connectivity data as your guide, you can align dealer operations to improve consumer engagement and loyalty.

Giant Data

We hear a lot about the data revolution. It’s a big concept that one might look at as some fairytale giant sleeping in the woods of some far off fantasy land (or Silicon Valley). Well look out folks — that big data giant is awake and approaching all the dealer lots in the land! As he approaches yours, you’ll need the tools to train him to be manageable and articulate, and before you know it, he’ll begin sharing the trends and critical insights to help you turn every customer experience into a golden goose.

Come join me at Innovating on Customer Experience, the mightiest breakout session in all DSES 2018, on Monday, Oct. 22, at 11:15 a.m. I’ll introduce you to how connectivity and vehicle intelligence is transforming the customer lifecycle for the next generation.

Carla Fitzgerald is chief marketing officer at Spireon, provider of Kahu vehicle intelligence built for dealers, and an industry veteran with more than 25 years of experience in mobile and wireless technologies. Outside of work, she enjoys dog walks by the beach, great meals with family, and tracking her son’s vehicle trip history and speed alerts with Kahu.

"How do I validate my trade number?" is a question we often hear. If you factor in how many deals have trades and how many customers have negative equity, it's easy to understand why this is asked so often.

Jason Volny presents some ways in which you can make sure the customer understands how you came up with the trade number.

We take a look at the key components of any effective phone script. It doesn't matter if its a BDC phone script or a Service Advisor phone script. Good scripts contain the same elements.

Needs analysis questions are a key part of the sales process. What are the questions that make up a successful needs analysis so you can set up your deal properly? Jason reviews the "Big Five" questions that you need to answer.

CENTREVILLE, Va. (April 24, 2018) – The Carfax database, believed to be the largest vehicle history database in the world, has surpassed twenty billion records. The rapidly growing resource feeds Carfax products that people use in each stage of a vehicle’s lifecycle – shop, buy, maintain, price and sell. More than 112,000 domestic and international sources that report vehicle information to Carfax contributed to the milestone.

“The amount of information loaded daily into our database and how quickly it reaches the next billion mark is astounding. What once took us 15 years to accomplish now happens every five months,” said Dick Raines, president of Carfax. “Carfax information helps save lives and money. We work hard to make sure the millions of people turning to us for help every day have the information they need to make confident decisions.”

Many records comprising the Carfax database is information only found at Carfax. Consumers, dealers and auto-related companies have access to vehicle history details from a robust list of Carfax sources, including vehicle service shops, police departments, auto auctions, insurance companies, U.S. and Canadian motor vehicle agencies and more.

The twenty billionth record loaded into the Carfax database is an accident reported in Tennessee for a 2010 Toyota Prius.

About Carfax

Carfax, a unit of IHS Markit (Nasdaq: INFO), helps millions of people every day confidently shop, buy, own and sell used cars with innovative solutions powered by Carfax vehicle history information. The expert in vehicle history since 1984, Carfax provides exclusive services like Carfax Used Car Listings, myCarfax, Carfax History-Based Value and the flagship Carfax® Vehicle History Report™ to consumers and the automotive industry. Carfax owns the world’s largest vehicle history database and is a nationally recognized top workplace byThe Washington Post and Glassdoor.com. Shop, Buy, Own, Sell – Show me the Carfax™. Based in London, IHS Markit is a world leader in critical information, analytics and solutions.