Process is everything in a dealership. without it you can be assured that you are setting yourself up for failure.

This isn't a new concept by any means yet it's a concept that many of us forget as we spend our days shucking and jiving.

If you want to expect a certain level of professionalism from your team. You need to treat them like professionals. That goes far beyond just telling them that they are professionals. 

You have to watch, coach and guide them to the results you want. 

The less structure and confidence you give them the less you should expect them to build their own.

To be effective in their growth you need to guide them. You don't need to hold their hand every step of the way. 

paint the picture of the path and allow yourself to become the backbone of the mission. 

Teams fail all the time and in most cases you can trace back the bottle neck of growth to the leadership of an organization.

Someone once told me; 

"Chris, I know you can do the job. But, can you teach others how to do it just as good?"

That statement has stuck with me over the years because of how much truth it speaks. 

Teaching others how to do the things I know how to do has become a personal mission of mine. Because it's not easy. 

The tactics, tricks and tips I find useful won't always work for others. 

But, Being able to identify their personality type and adjusting my approach to their style. 

That's what sets good leaders apart from bad ones. 

Instagram is arguably the best photo sharing app. Yeah, you read that right – it’s an app. And therefore, some users don’t like this idea of sharing photos from the phone. Those who belong to old schools (read web generation) still like to upload contents using web browsers. Thus, to upload photos to Instagram from Mac or Desktop computer gives them a kick.

How to Upload Photos to Instagram from Safari Browser on Mac

For Safari users on Mac, it is simple to post to Instagram from PC because spoofing the user agent is a built-in feature in browser. Simply enable Developer menu and your job is done.

To enable Developer menu:

Step #1: Launch Safari browser on your Mac.

Step #2: Press Command + Comma key to open Preferences. Alternatively, you can click on Safari and then Preferences from the list.

Step #3: In the following dialog box, click on Advanced button. Then click on the check box: Show Develop menu in menu bar.

Now you can see a new ‘Develop’ option in menu bar.

Spoofing…

• Open www.instagram.com in Safari browser and launch the Develop menu bar.
• Next, select User Agent→ Safari – iOS 10 – iPhone (or iPod touch/iPad).

The Instagram page will reload and you can see a Camera icon in the tool bar.

• Click on the Camera icon and you will be asked to choose images from your Mac.
• Once you select the image, you can see the preview.
• Crop the image here and click on Next button.
• Type in a caption and hit the Share button.

If you want to upload to Instagram using Chrome you can do that too. Check out the full post here. 

With the goal of becoming a better writer/blogger It’s just a personal accountability thing that I’ve decided to put myself through.

And just like with many other things. The only way to get better at it, is to do more of it.

Morning routines are probably the most important. They allow us to prepare our bodies for the tasks and responsibilities of the day.

Routines also allow us to accomplish things no matter how small in return giving us the ability to feel rewarded right away.

Being rewarded is a great way to start the day especially when you’re trying to keep it 💯

1. Get Up Early 

I get up every morning at 4:30

Did you know that getting up early will make you run faster? Actually I have no idea If that’s true at all. But getting up early has given me the ability to start my day with a stint of “me” time. Instead of waking up immediately into something chaotic I wake up to the sunrise every day.

2. Write Something

I use the WordPress app on my iPhone

Whether it’s a journal entry, a list of things you want to accomplish today or even a blog post. Whatever it is get that gray matter train moving. Chug a chug a chug a chug

3. Read Something

I use RSS readers

I use an app called feedly that stores all the RSS feeds I’ve collected for sites I like to follow. For stories that I want to save for further reading or for post topics later I’ll save those ones to instapaper from inside the feedly app. I try not to read until after I write because it’s easy to get lost in a sea of articles and never return to your writing.

4. Coffee/Tea

I use a Kuerig with self ground beans

I am a coffee drinker. Tried tea in the past and just can’t get into it. Coffee is my homeboy.

5. Workout

I do crossfit

The funny thing about this one is that in order to make it work for me I needed to get up even earlier than I was waking before. The coolest thing about that is I had total control in either making it happen or failing. I am 100% responsible for making this thing happen for me if I want to continue on my path of fitness. If I don’t make the 6:00am class I don’t get to do it plain and simple. Since I love doing it, I make 6:00 am work for me.

Routines build the habits that allow us to be the best versions of ourselves.

** What about you? Do you have any morning routines you want to share? 

Are you waiting on the Adwords Up Bus?

Just like having a team full of sales people standing on the lot, waiting for things to happen, rather then picking up the phone and making things happen. Your Adwords budget is doing the exact same thing for you. Sitting at the point and hoping people are looking for the things your selling instead of going out there and bringing customers in.

Up until the past few years, Adwords was really the only thing we had as digital marketers that allowed us to customize, segment and track conversions from our digital efforts. As digital budgets grow in the dealerships, they are also growing at the OEM, IMA and 3rd party level. Which means that it's getting incrementally more expensive to advertise your products, even on a local level.
 

Fancy Talk

We all know that there is a lot of speak about attribution and tracking going on in the automotive world right now. But, at the end of the day, all the multi-touch attribution models and dynamic phone numbers are just fancy talk. Fancy talk doesn't sell cars. It sells the products that the "fancy-talking" people are trying to sell you. Your agency or vendor partner will disagree with me. After all, it's their job to spend your money. It's always in their best interest to spend the whole budget every time.

If they didn't, you would, more than likely, lower the budget. Simply put, the money they can make off of you is just too easy to pass up in terms of management fees and so on.

I'm not saying that all Adwords spend is wasted. What I am saying is, at a certain point, you hit a ceiling. And it can't be broken by throwing more money at it. There is simply not enough volume in local markets to justify the spends. This is because the majority of your Adwords budgets probably go to dealership or new make model campaigns. Which tells us that our customers are either looking for us by name or by make name and model.

You're bidding on those campaigns but so is your same make competitor.  Not to mention, your LMA or region and your OEM. They are all trying to do the same thing. Drive traffic and track ROI.

That's before we even account for third parties throwing their hat in the ring.

Additionally, our industry is so fast paced. Every month we are doing something different. One month we might be pushing truck month. The next, it's competitive lease conquest. Which means, even if the data last month was solid, you are no more likely to spend future money any wiser because your target market/demo has changed.
 

There is a bright side to all of this.

We live in a time now, when our mobile device has the ability to almost anything. Even make us into professional photographers, movie makers and story tellers. There is no better marketing than telling a good story through platforms like Instagram, YouTube and Facebook. We can speak to our local markets and customers through live digital events or telling amazing stories through words and images. This is stuff that isn't hard to do but requires a little bit of time and creativity.

So when it's time to look at your marketing budgets again, consider this: Are you the kind of person who is hoping you have enough budget to pay the driver of the digital up bus? (If and when he decides to show up.) Or, are you the kind of person who wants to dig in, try something new and make a real difference while having fun.

It's up to you...

Originally Posted on The Next Up Blog

The Hero program that many General Motors dealerships are going through now was actually created here in Las Vegas by our Owner and Managers.

There are tons of programs out there that organizations have built to help with employee recognition and the like. But rarely have I heard of an organization take it to the level we have. 

Being a HERO in our organization just might earn you an all expenses paid trip to Disneyland for two plus spending cash. 

Hero is an acronym for 
*H*elpful 
*E*xceed Expectations
*R*epresent (our brand and our store)
*O*wnership of all situations you find yourself in. 

Around our stores you will find boxes and next to those boxes are forms to nominate a HERO. We make it easy for customers and other employees to nominate someone for going above and beyond their daily call of duty.

Each month our DP brings the entire dealership together for a companywide lunch. Food and drinks are provided and  each department head reads the submissions the people in their department got. All the names are then put into a raffle box and one is chosen at random. That person receives a $100 gift card on the spot. 

Check out pictures from our past lunches. 

We even have a HERO CHEER

Even if you didn’t win at a monthly lunch a  person can still win the quarterly prize of an all expenses paid Disneyland Trip. 

At the end of each quarter there is a committee that will go through all of the nominations again and pick out the very best example of someone being a true HERO. That person will then win an all expense paid trip to Disneyland for 2. Including spending cash and hopper passes. 

We even design pictures and frames that we put up around the dealerships of your wining photo. 

I can tell you that I have never seen another organization take employee satisfaction and participation to the level we take it. Even in down months we still have our lunches and we gather together as an organization and recognize those people who help make our business grow. 

When your people are happy, your customers are happy and when times get tough it’s our people and our customers who we lean on the most. 

Does your organization do anything like this?
If so, can you share?
If not, Do you think this is something that would help your store?

Sound off in the comments.

Octane AI, a company that offers tools to create chatbots for Facebook Messenger, has developed a tool that packages a predefined message thread into an individual piece of content. Called Convos, these episodic conversations can be distributed as links outside of Messenger.

In November, Facebook provided a way for people, primarily bot makers, to add referral codes to Messenger links. These referral codes could be used to tell the bot something about where the person on the end of the conversation was coming from or what they were looking for.

Referral links remove the need for any introductory rigamarole, as well as any uncertainty as to why someone might want to converse with a Messenger bot. Instead of all the small talk, the links send them straight into a particular pre-programmed conversation.

Which means we now have context into our customers intentions. By knowing this information we are able to start the conversation exactly where it needs to be started without having to revert back to qualifying questions. Moving a conversation forward and in the direction we want it to go. 

All through automation and expanding or limiting the scope of the questions being presented.

Esentially taking those flow charts and scripts we use to train and turning them into a fully interactive experience.

Chatting up a bot is like carrying a conversation with a Westworld host, albeit one lacking a bicameral mind of course.

Convos can be straightforward: bot sends a message or multiple messages, person clicks on one of the predefined reply buttons that triggers a preset response from the bot, rinse, repeat.

In addition to text, responses can contain photos, photo galleries, videos, audio and buttons that people can click to visit a website.

Or Convos can be more interactive than a color-by-numbers conversation. People can be presented with multiple predefined reply buttons that fork the conversation into different directions. Maybe a convo goes into finding out the best scenic drives outside the city for example.

With the abilities of chatbots now and in the future. How do you see this new technology working in your dealership?

Is it possible that chatbots might be the BDC's of the future?

I’m a huge fan of My buddy Jason Stum's work work and being asked to join him on the newly launched Think Bigger Podcast was a huge honor. 

On Episode 003 of the Think Bigger Podcast, I’m being joined by the Marketing Director for Henderson Chevrolet and Fairway Chevrolet, Chris K. Leslie. Chris and I will talk about his award winning idea for automating his dealership’s email marketing by utilizing his web platform’s RSS feeds, form submissions and a MailChimp account.

Listen to the show

More than 25,000 new-car and -truck dealers and their managers, as well as dealers from over 30 countries, auto industry executives and exhibitor staff attended the 2016 NADA Convention & Expo in Las Vegas. Founded in 1917, NADA will celebrate its 100-year anniversary during the 2017 NADA Convention & Expo in New Orleans, which will run from Jan. 26-29.

For some reason or another I’ve never made it to a NADA. Even when it was in Vegas last year I was too busy to scoot on down the road the largest automotive conference of the year. 

Since I’m not going to be there this year I thought the least I could do is provide you guys with a list of the exhibitors that I think are pretty interesting and would be spending time with if I was in New Orleans. 

Use the official NADA100 Mobile App to:

• Find and schedule meetings with exhibitors
• Create your personal schedule of workshops and events
• Navigate the convention center with walking maps
• Rate your workshop session experience
• Download and email workshop presentations and handouts

Get the latest news and happenings surrounding the show

Download the the app today: Apple Store | Google Play.

I've learned over the years that the best way to plan is to set big goals. Setting big goals does a few things. It allows you the ability to reach those goals in a way that suits you along with giving you the ability to define objectives and progress targets more effectively. 

The car biz is crazy at times. Who am I kidding. It's crazy all the time. Things seem to move so fast around us but a lot of times it's just things moving in place giving the illusion that real change is happening. When in actuality you're just shuffling papers around. 

It's ok to set goals with no idea of how you're going to reach them. I would argue that's the point of goal setting. Not having a clear path is the exciting part about making impactful change happen. 

So as we come into 2017 here are the 4 goals I've set for myself. I don't have a clear path of how I'm going to do any one of these things. But by setting big goals like this I can ensure that everything I do is going to be something that moves me closer to reaching them. 

• Become #1 and #2 Chevy stores in Las Vegas area. 

• Increase customer visibility and satisfaction by measurable means.

• Remove internal barriers between sales/BDC 

• Create New media shows. Podcasts, video etc. 

What are some of your big plans for the new year? Post them in  the comments below. 

If I'm reading this correctly and if you still have varied versions of your site. They are now going to be looked at differently by google. So content on your main site may suffer if it isn't also on your mobile site. Also, depending on how many variations of your site there are because of screen size. You would need to submit different sitemaps for each for them to really count. 

https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/11/mobile-first-indexing.html

Today, most people are searching on Google using a mobile device. However, our ranking systems still typically look at the desktop version of a page’s content to evaluate its relevance to the user. This can cause issues when the mobile page has less content than the desktop page because our algorithms are not evaluating the actual page that is seen by a mobile searcher.

To make our results more useful, we’ve begun experiments to make our index mobile-first. Although our search index will continue to be a single index of websites and apps, our algorithms will eventually primarily use the mobile version of a site’s content to rank pages from that site, to understand structured data, and to show snippets from those pages in our results. Of course, while our index will be built from mobile documents, we're going to continue to build a great search experience for all users, whether they come from mobile or desktop devices.

We understand this is an important shift in our indexing and it’s one we take seriously. We’ll continue to carefully experiment over the coming months on a small scale and we’ll ramp up this change when we’re confident that we have a great user experience. Though we’re only beginning this process, here are a few recommendations to help webmasters prepare as we move towards a more mobile-focused index.

• If you have a responsive site or a dynamic serving site where the primary content and markup is equivalent across mobile and desktop, you shouldn’t have to change anything.
• If you have a site configuration where the primary content and markup is different across mobile and desktop, you should consider making some changes to your site.
  • Make sure to serve structured markup for both the desktop and mobile version.
    
    Sites can verify the equivalence of their structured markup across desktop and mobile by typing the URLs of both versions into the Structured Data Testing Tool and comparing the output. 
    
    When adding structured data to a mobile site, avoid adding large amounts of markup that isn’t relevant to the specific information content of each document.
  • Use the robots.txt testing tool to verify that your mobile version is accessible to Googlebot. 
  • Sites do not have to make changes to their canonical links; we’ll continue to use these links as guides to serve the appropriate results to a user searching on desktop or mobile.
• If you are a site owner who has only verified their desktop site in Search Console, please add and verify your mobile version.
• If you only have a desktop site, we'll continue to index your desktop site just fine, even if we're using a mobile user agent to view your site.
  
  If you are building a mobile version of your site, keep in mind that a functional desktop-oriented site can be better than a broken or incomplete mobile version of the site. It's better for you to build up your mobile site and launch it when ready.