Leading Dealership SEO and Reputation Management Provider Significantly Expanding National Sales and Support Force

Riverside, CA – June 15, 2011 – eXteresAUTO, the top-rated SEO and Reputation Management provider[1] for auto retailers, today announced that the company has appointed dealership sales and training veteran, Bernie Mock, to the position of Regional Sales Manager. As part of the company’s overall expansion, they will be announcing numerous Regional Sales Manager appointments in the coming weeks.

Mock, who will oversee client development, support and training for one of the top three auto sales markets in the nation, Florida, brings over 30 years of dealership experience to eXteresAUTO. His career spans every phase of dealership sales and operations, and he previously served as an award-winning consultant for over 15 years at companies ranging from Half-A-Car, Reynolds Consulting Services and Assurant Solutions. He is an expert in personalized dealership process coaching and Internet strategies - and is one of only twenty people in the nation that has trained over 1,000 Ford dealerships. Prior to his long consulting and training career, he also served in sales and management positions for 13 years at dealerships.

“We’re thrilled to be expanding, building out our national sales and support network, and having Bernie on board,” said Dennis Colome, eXteresAUTO’s Vice President, Sales and Marketing. “He’ll be a great new resource for our dealer clients in Florida: giving them one-on-one training, and helping them take all the search- and review-driven traffic we drive to them, and convert them into more sales and service appointments.”

eXteresAUTO provides total “Search Asset Management” (SAM™) for car dealerships, combining the first, and consistently #1-rated, dealership SEO and Online Reputation Management solutions. Every eXteresAUTO product is engineered to help auto retailers establish the most powerful, positive presence across the search engines and online review/social media sites – to generate a high volume of calls and leads at a fraction of the cost of other traditional and Internet marketing options.

For more information about eXteresAUTO, contact: Beth McGoarty @ beth@rbicom.com or 213-300-0107

Leading Dealership SEO and Reputation Management Provider Significantly Expanding National Sales and Support Force

Riverside, CA – June 15, 2011 – eXteresAUTO, the top-rated SEO and Reputation Management provider[1] for auto retailers, today announced that the company has appointed dealership sales and training veteran, Bernie Mock, to the position of Regional Sales Manager. As part of the company’s overall expansion, they will be announcing numerous Regional Sales Manager appointments in the coming weeks.

Mock, who will oversee client development, support and training for one of the top three auto sales markets in the nation, Florida, brings over 30 years of dealership experience to eXteresAUTO. His career spans every phase of dealership sales and operations, and he previously served as an award-winning consultant for over 15 years at companies ranging from Half-A-Car, Reynolds Consulting Services and Assurant Solutions. He is an expert in personalized dealership process coaching and Internet strategies - and is one of only twenty people in the nation that has trained over 1,000 Ford dealerships. Prior to his long consulting and training career, he also served in sales and management positions for 13 years at dealerships.

“We’re thrilled to be expanding, building out our national sales and support network, and having Bernie on board,” said Dennis Colome, eXteresAUTO’s Vice President, Sales and Marketing. “He’ll be a great new resource for our dealer clients in Florida: giving them one-on-one training, and helping them take all the search- and review-driven traffic we drive to them, and convert them into more sales and service appointments.”

eXteresAUTO provides total “Search Asset Management” (SAM™) for car dealerships, combining the first, and consistently #1-rated, dealership SEO and Online Reputation Management solutions. Every eXteresAUTO product is engineered to help auto retailers establish the most powerful, positive presence across the search engines and online review/social media sites – to generate a high volume of calls and leads at a fraction of the cost of other traditional and Internet marketing options.

For more information about eXteresAUTO, contact: Beth McGoarty @ beth@rbicom.com or 213-300-0107

MediaPost reported today that Edmunds is launching a new program called “Edmunds Exclusives” modeled on a Groupon – but offering locally targeted deals on new and used cars.

The details are here: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=152186&nid=127740

The program (now in beta in South Florida, but slated to roll out to other US markets this summer, and then nationally), gives ready-to-buy car shoppers access to local car deals directly at Edmunds.com. The goal, says Edmunds, is to give dealers and OEMs who have excess or slow-moving inventory a new way to move those cars.

They describe it as “cash-back, financing and leasing deals from dealers,” although it may also expand to include “deals on repairs and parts, maintenance and body shops, aftermarket audio dealers and auto broker services.” They’re starting by simply offering invitations to Edmunds.com visitors, but after it rolls out in other markets they will be “sending consumers direct offers through search strategies.”

Some Thoughts:

Given that Groupon is the fastest-growing company in the history of the world…And given that there are HUNDREDS of full-blown “daily deal” and group buying sites in the US alone (with dozens servicing a single city). And given new GroupOn clones are sprouting up for every vertical imaginable…it’s not surprising news.

The new Edmunds model, of course, seems to be actually quite different than a GroupOn. The social/group buying - i.e., the group - aspect can’t be there, given the offer is for specific car models. And it’s not in real-time, Edmunds notes, because the cycle is logically based on the auto industry’s monthly sales targets/cycle. It does channel that wildly popular, just-for-members deal-offer-model that has become a global mania.

Car dealers suddenly have a lot of group-buying/daily deal sites to mull over: the Groupons of course – but also the brand-new Google Offers, Facebook Deals – and now the car-sales-specific Edmunds Exclusives.

This is a massive market and the hottest online category: comScore just predicted that the group-buying market will triple to $3 billion this year.

As more car dealers dip their toes into daily deal and group buying sites (whether with straight up deals like a super-discounted oil changes or maintenance jobs at a GroupOn - or by promoting cash-back or financing deals for new and used cars via an Edmunds), they will have to be sure (like the restaurants and spas that having been doing this for years), that they carefully set the right parameters for the deal. I.e., that the deal is strong and attractive enough, but at the same time manageable. And as with all marketing investments, that they carefully track their ROI – did it drive new customers that became repeat customers, generate incremental revenue over time, etc?

By Merla Turner, Director of Dealer Training at eXteresAUTO. (Rated #1 by dealers for both SEO and Online Reputation Management at this site)

If you have questions, you can contact her at m.turner@exteres.com or 866-994-2613

MediaPost reported today that Edmunds is launching a new program called “Edmunds Exclusives” modeled on a Groupon – but offering locally targeted deals on new and used cars.

The details are here: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=152186&nid=127740

The program (now in beta in South Florida, but slated to roll out to other US markets this summer, and then nationally), gives ready-to-buy car shoppers access to local car deals directly at Edmunds.com. The goal, says Edmunds, is to give dealers and OEMs who have excess or slow-moving inventory a new way to move those cars.

They describe it as “cash-back, financing and leasing deals from dealers,” although it may also expand to include “deals on repairs and parts, maintenance and body shops, aftermarket audio dealers and auto broker services.” They’re starting by simply offering invitations to Edmunds.com visitors, but after it rolls out in other markets they will be “sending consumers direct offers through search strategies.”

Some Thoughts:

Given that Groupon is the fastest-growing company in the history of the world…And given that there are HUNDREDS of full-blown “daily deal” and group buying sites in the US alone (with dozens servicing a single city). And given new GroupOn clones are sprouting up for every vertical imaginable…it’s not surprising news.

The new Edmunds model, of course, seems to be actually quite different than a GroupOn. The social/group buying - i.e., the group - aspect can’t be there, given the offer is for specific car models. And it’s not in real-time, Edmunds notes, because the cycle is logically based on the auto industry’s monthly sales targets/cycle. It does channel that wildly popular, just-for-members deal-offer-model that has become a global mania.

Car dealers suddenly have a lot of group-buying/daily deal sites to mull over: the Groupons of course – but also the brand-new Google Offers, Facebook Deals – and now the car-sales-specific Edmunds Exclusives.

This is a massive market and the hottest online category: comScore just predicted that the group-buying market will triple to $3 billion this year.

As more car dealers dip their toes into daily deal and group buying sites (whether with straight up deals like a super-discounted oil changes or maintenance jobs at a GroupOn - or by promoting cash-back or financing deals for new and used cars via an Edmunds), they will have to be sure (like the restaurants and spas that having been doing this for years), that they carefully set the right parameters for the deal. I.e., that the deal is strong and attractive enough, but at the same time manageable. And as with all marketing investments, that they carefully track their ROI – did it drive new customers that became repeat customers, generate incremental revenue over time, etc?

By Merla Turner, Director of Dealer Training at eXteresAUTO. (Rated #1 by dealers for both SEO and Online Reputation Management at this site)

If you have questions, you can contact her at m.turner@exteres.com or 866-994-2613

Google Preview Now Extended to PPC Ads & Supports Most Flash Sites

Preview for PPC Ads: Starting yesterday, the Instant Preview icon (that now-familiar little magnifying glass) will appear next to ads at Google, so searchers can view the ad’s landing page. So, Previews now not only impacts your organic results and SEO campaigns, but your SEM as well. Google argues that since it lets users take a look at your landing page before they click (and that’s free, one is only charged if they actually click through), businesses should drive “more highly-qualified traffic to their sites.” Hey, maybe it will end up saving dealers money…

This is not an optional new feature for advertisers, or something you can disable – it’s just how it is now. And Google notes it won’t affect your quality score in any way. 

Google Preview Now Extended to PPC Ads & Supports Most Flash Sites

Preview for PPC Ads: Starting yesterday, the Instant Preview icon (that now-familiar little magnifying glass) will appear next to ads at Google, so searchers can view the ad’s landing page. So, Previews now not only impacts your organic results and SEO campaigns, but your SEM as well. Google argues that since it lets users take a look at your landing page before they click (and that’s free, one is only charged if they actually click through), businesses should drive “more highly-qualified traffic to their sites.” Hey, maybe it will end up saving dealers money…

This is not an optional new feature for advertisers, or something you can disable – it’s just how it is now. And Google notes it won’t affect your quality score in any way. 

Google never rests: today they added a new feature called ‘+1’ that lets people share their recommendations for businesses, websites/pages, articles, etc., by clicking a new ‘+1’ icon on webpages/sites or ads they find cool, useful or they just plain recommend. Starting this afternoon (in experiment mode) those recommendations will show up to their friends, family and social connections (i.e., connections in Gchat, Gmail, Google Reader, Buzz – and soon Twitter). Searchers will see all the +1 votes that webpage or business has gathered, and the names and photos of the ‘likers.’ 

As publications like Ad Age have noted, the move represents Google’s most aggressive to date into social search and it’s the first time they will have baked DIRECT social signals into the search results. Ad Age argues that over time the search giant will integrate the +1 into the search algorithm, so these human votes will impact the organic search rankings. What they said exactly is: “We are strongly looking at using this in our rankings.” Read the Ad Age analysis here: http://adage.com/article/digital/google-adds-button-foray-social-search/149645/).

And see the very Google-esque short video for consumers on how it works here: http://www.youtube.com/user/google?blend=1&ob=4#p/a/u/1/OAyUNI3_V2c.

More Facts Dealers Need to Know: 

• +1 votes will also be added to search ads, and their tests show that they increase PPC ad clicks. There’s no charge to add, and Google says higher click-throughs improve quality scores, which of course means that advertisers could ultimately pay less for keywords or positions. To see how +1 works for advertisers, visit their AdWords blog. http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/03/1-button-adwords.html

• Ad Age notes that traditionally, inbound links have been the strongest component in page rank, but last year Google also gave Twitter updates big traction in results – and this adds a whole new, super-targeted social element to search. 

• No plan to include Facebook connections – and given how this is ‘inspired’ by Facebook functionality, you can see why they don’t have the right to (and probably never will!) 

• Google says the way it decides which +1s to show people come from various signals – people they’re connected to thru Google (Chat buddies, contacts, etc.) And soon their connections on sites like Twitter. 

• Only people logged into their Google account will see the +1s. 

• In weeks ahead, +1s will “appear in many more places and Google products and sites across Web. 

+1 Needs to be Part of Your Online Reputation Campaign:

Obviously, with such powerful first-page visibility, getting +1s for your dealership/website/pages is now a key element of your Online and Social Reputation. Hence, you need to do what all Online Reputation requires: find appropriate, authentic and natural ways for your happy sales and service customers to +1 you and your pages/sites. Because you can see how impactful it will be: somebody’s searching X brand dealership in X market, and the dealerships/dealer websites/dealer PPC ads that people like/+1 are going to stand out!

Helping your customers to get started: 

• The first time they click on a +1 button in search results they will be prompted to create a Google profile – and they can adjust their privacy settings the way they want. They must have a Google profile, and at that profile they can see all their +1s in one place and delete anyone they want. 

• If they press +1, they also have the ability to undo it immediately

• If people want to know who they’re connected to in Google’s eyes, tell them to visit the ‘Social Circle and Content” section in the Google Dashboard. 

I logged into my gmail account today and tested the +1 process out, below are images that show the difference in search results and what your customers would see:

It’s a major move dealers need to understand and get proactive about – and it’s another sign of where the Internet and Google are headed – interweaving search results, consumer recommendations and social connections into new platforms that will change the way people find and select businesses. 

And sure, it sounds like another recipe for gaming the system. Analysts point out, though, that Google has been getting pretty sharp at filtering out the gamers. So keep it real with +1!

If you have any questions or need help, please call me at 866-475-5553 or email me at m.turner@exteres.com.

Merla Turner is the Director of Dealer Training at eXtéresAUTO (and recently honored as one of the “Top Rated” Internet Trainers by DrivingSales’ Dealer Satisfaction Awards). Previously she served as Internet Director at Dick Hannah Honda in Vancouver, WA.

Google never rests: today they added a new feature called ‘+1’ that lets people share their recommendations for businesses, websites/pages, articles, etc., by clicking a new ‘+1’ icon on webpages/sites or ads they find cool, useful or they just plain recommend. Starting this afternoon (in experiment mode) those recommendations will show up to their friends, family and social connections (i.e., connections in Gchat, Gmail, Google Reader, Buzz – and soon Twitter). Searchers will see all the +1 votes that webpage or business has gathered, and the names and photos of the ‘likers.’ 

As publications like Ad Age have noted, the move represents Google’s most aggressive to date into social search and it’s the first time they will have baked DIRECT social signals into the search results. Ad Age argues that over time the search giant will integrate the +1 into the search algorithm, so these human votes will impact the organic search rankings. What they said exactly is: “We are strongly looking at using this in our rankings.” Read the Ad Age analysis here: http://adage.com/article/digital/google-adds-button-foray-social-search/149645/).

And see the very Google-esque short video for consumers on how it works here: http://www.youtube.com/user/google?blend=1&ob=4#p/a/u/1/OAyUNI3_V2c.

More Facts Dealers Need to Know: 

• +1 votes will also be added to search ads, and their tests show that they increase PPC ad clicks. There’s no charge to add, and Google says higher click-throughs improve quality scores, which of course means that advertisers could ultimately pay less for keywords or positions. To see how +1 works for advertisers, visit their AdWords blog. http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/03/1-button-adwords.html

• Ad Age notes that traditionally, inbound links have been the strongest component in page rank, but last year Google also gave Twitter updates big traction in results – and this adds a whole new, super-targeted social element to search. 

• No plan to include Facebook connections – and given how this is ‘inspired’ by Facebook functionality, you can see why they don’t have the right to (and probably never will!) 

• Google says the way it decides which +1s to show people come from various signals – people they’re connected to thru Google (Chat buddies, contacts, etc.) And soon their connections on sites like Twitter. 

• Only people logged into their Google account will see the +1s. 

• In weeks ahead, +1s will “appear in many more places and Google products and sites across Web. 

+1 Needs to be Part of Your Online Reputation Campaign:

Obviously, with such powerful first-page visibility, getting +1s for your dealership/website/pages is now a key element of your Online and Social Reputation. Hence, you need to do what all Online Reputation requires: find appropriate, authentic and natural ways for your happy sales and service customers to +1 you and your pages/sites. Because you can see how impactful it will be: somebody’s searching X brand dealership in X market, and the dealerships/dealer websites/dealer PPC ads that people like/+1 are going to stand out!

Helping your customers to get started: 

• The first time they click on a +1 button in search results they will be prompted to create a Google profile – and they can adjust their privacy settings the way they want. They must have a Google profile, and at that profile they can see all their +1s in one place and delete anyone they want. 

• If they press +1, they also have the ability to undo it immediately

• If people want to know who they’re connected to in Google’s eyes, tell them to visit the ‘Social Circle and Content” section in the Google Dashboard. 

I logged into my gmail account today and tested the +1 process out, below are images that show the difference in search results and what your customers would see:

It’s a major move dealers need to understand and get proactive about – and it’s another sign of where the Internet and Google are headed – interweaving search results, consumer recommendations and social connections into new platforms that will change the way people find and select businesses. 

And sure, it sounds like another recipe for gaming the system. Analysts point out, though, that Google has been getting pretty sharp at filtering out the gamers. So keep it real with +1!

If you have any questions or need help, please call me at 866-475-5553 or email me at m.turner@exteres.com.

Merla Turner is the Director of Dealer Training at eXtéresAUTO (and recently honored as one of the “Top Rated” Internet Trainers by DrivingSales’ Dealer Satisfaction Awards). Previously she served as Internet Director at Dick Hannah Honda in Vancouver, WA.

I love the car business!  While at the Dick Hannah dealerships I had the great honor of working with amazing managers and staff - selling, training and managing ten different brands’ Internet teams over the years.  We sold thousands of cars through the Internet every year because the Hannahs were committed to both cutting-edge technology and sound core principles that drove massive success.

Today, I train dealers daily and am inundated with questions from highly successful dealers on how to effectively get more phone calls/leads and how to convert those leads into butts in the door!  As a follower of industry blogs and news, it recently struck me that while it’s important that much of the advice served up to dealers is focused on the bleeding-edge of technology - it’s so easy for all of us to forget what we ONCE mastered and still NEED to master every day. So, thinking back on my long dealership career, I set out to distill what I learned are the crucial “beatitudes” of Internet car sales.

The Beatitudes in the New Testament are, of course, a set of eight blessings, or starkly simple and beautifully basic rules to live by. “Beatitude” also means achieving a state of blessedness or extreme happiness.

I certainly don’t mean to evoke the concept of ‘beatitudes’ in some religious, denominational way (…these rules aren’t even brand-specific!), I just wanted to share credos to live by as a reality-check, hoping their simplicity reminds and re-inspires you and your digital dealership to focus on the absolute foundations of success, given the frenetic swirl of the ever-new.

The 8 “Be-Attitudes” for Internet Car Sales:

BE FOUND: In a world where 9 in 10 auto shoppers hunt down dealerships online (more than double the rates of any other information resource), and with roughly half the visits to dealer websites arriving via a search engine, make sure that you have done everything to BE FOUND by searchers.

SEO/PPC
Today that means having sustained, aggressive SEO, and often expanding your visibility (when needed) through strategic PPC buys. Your customer is first and foremost a searcher – and you need to make sure you’re easily found and have great first-page visibility at the big three search engines.

Google Places/Yahoo! Local/Bing Maps
Have your dealership properly set up and fully optimized for Google Places, Bing, Yahoo!

Online Review Sites & Directories
It is imperative that everywhere your customer looks online for your dealership - they find the correct dealership details and contact information.

Social Media Sites
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are no-brainers.  But WHAT you post on these sites is the critical issue – it’s not about selling, it’s about relationship-building.

BE DESIRABLE: They found you - now you need to ensure what they found is HIGHLY DESIRABLE.

Website
Your website needs to look nice, but above all it needs to be functional, useful and easy to maneuver, with clear calls to action so it converts into leads.  Additionally, if you don’t know what Google Previews is, read about it here.  Google allows customers to preview your site and decide whether or not they even want to click on it, so make sure your site is desirable in preview mode too.

Review Sites & Directories
Given the massive importance of online reviews and social feedback today - and their recent, radically heightened visibility at Google and many car-buying sites - you need to be absolutely sure the online word-of-mouth about your dealership is robust and positive - and that you shine with a positive reputation at all the search engines/websites consumers use.

Social Media Sites
2 Words: Warm Fuzzies.  Barrages of vehicle specials or impersonal vehicle articles on your Facebook page will cause your customer to ‘unlike’ you faster than you can say “pounder.” Check out the social media advice that Gary May posts on DrivingSales.com – real, practical advice that I would use if I were still at the dealership today.

Check up from the neck up:

• Find some new eyes – ask customers what they think about your site. 
• As friends and family to test out the usability of your website.  I would always ask my folks to go on the dealership website and pretend to shop for a car – I knew if they could easily figure out how to find answers to their questions and submit an inquiry, the general population could too.  (Sorry, Mom and Dad…)
  
• Add a feedback plug-in to gather feedback and get suggestions. 
  
• Do some quick searching on Google, Yahoo and Bing.  Do reviews come up?  What is the star rating?  Is your dealership information accurate and enticing?
  
• Read your Facebook and Twitter content.  Would you ‘like’ or find valuable your dealership’s messaging?
  

BE FAST: You simply have to get back to Internet customers and leads lightning-fast, because with any response that stretches past a half an hour, you’re losing sales.

How I trained the importance of this to my employees?  I asked them to imagine…

A car pulls into the lot and a nice family gets out.  They walk the lot, peering into car windows, checking pricing on hangtags.  They glance around looking for help, but nobody comes.  Up and down they walk, and within 30 minutes they get back into their car and pull out. A salesperson comes running: “Wait, I can help you, come back”!

Wouldn’t that be too little too late?

What I know to be true about car dealers is that we are NOT going to let our walk-in traffic wander around the lot and leave without talking to an employee, so why would we let our internet customers do so?

If we don’t handle inquiries in a timely fashion there are so many repercussions, the biggest being that customers ‘wandering around online’ quickly move from one site to another, gathering information and contacting other stores that are focused on - and able to - answer their questions and meet their needs.  In short, lost sales, lost gross.

When I was at the Ford dealership we had a 40-foot banner (stretching across the room where leads were worked) that said: “SPEED IS POWER, ATTITUDE IS EVERTHING!”  For those of you who imagine ‘this is not an issue at my store’, let me tell you: many dealers mistakenly think their response times are speedy, but they need to analyze the realities. I fell into that trap over and over again – thinking to myself, “I have a process, my team and I are on it,” when a quick check of new incoming leads proved otherwise.

Check up from the neck up:

At the DrivingSales conference last fall, I heard Grant Cardone say that, “anything worth doing is worth doing everyday.”  I agree!  Pull a report from your CRM tool every day to analyze how long after the lead was received:

• That a call made
• That an email sent (response quality counts, auto responders do not!)
• That notes were entered, indicating meaningful contact was actually made

Another tried-and-true suggestion:  Set a reminder on your calendar monthly to review and refine your Internet inquiry coverage and response training.  I always found that the 8th (or so) of the month was perfect – nowhere near mid-month or month-end closeouts, but still early enough in the month to address issues before the bulk of our leads would come in.

BE REAL:  Do your salespeople come across as ‘old school,’ or as real human beings helping customers find the car of their dreams?  Do your salespeople understand their customers’ (understandable) fears, and work to alleviate them - without buying into their objections?  Now, I’m not suggesting that we throw away strategies that work to close deals, just that we deliver them in a way that doesn’t turn customers off.

Train your people to build a relationship with customers - that starts the moment they inquire.  People like people like them, so make sure the way your sales staff connects with customers (via phone/email/text/chat) smacks of authenticity and a real desire to help them.  As I’ve learned from Dennis Colome, it’s not what you say, but how you say it that matters.

Great salespeople know how to connect with a customer immediately, find common ground, build a rapport and set that firm appointment.  Help your staff accomplish this by using phone scripts that help them identify the customer’s needs, that avoid typical “salesperson speak,” and ask for the appointment over and over again.

With almost everyone and their dog on Facebook, Twitter or both, people are suddenly connecting with others on a very personal level – even people they don’t know well.  Consumers are now used to seeing peoples’ pictures and equating the image to some sort of a relationship.  With that in mind, when you follow-up via email, have an inviting picture of the salespeople (family pictures are great too, people have a hard time resisting pictures of parents with their kids) in their signature line – you’d be surprised how less likely that customer is to distrust them or flake out on an appointment.

Check up from the neck up:

• When speaking to a prospect, do your employees engage people in an authentic, friendly tone of voice?
• When speaking to a prospect, do your employees talk more about the vehicle, or everything else?  In my experience, “vehicle talk” leads to a lot of vehicle questions that lead to other objections you can’t control over the phone and/or email!  However, the more time you spend building a relationship with a customer, they more they trust you – and the more likely you are to sell a vehicle at higher gross. 
  

BE INFORMED:  It’s a cliché, but today’s Internet car buyer is insanely informed, and not just about invoice pricing. Some customers walk in with binders filled with specs, competitive models, etc. When I secret-shop dealerships to help them with their processes, it’s shocking how many salespeople don’t have even basic product knowledge on vehicles that people are dropping $10,000 to $100,000 on!  Can you imagine salespeople at the Apple store not being informed about the newest i-whatever coming out?

At the dealership I spent a great deal of time on core training like phone/Internet lead handling and sales conversion, but your people must know the product because it closes far more deals.  That doesn’t mean they should spill their guts and create objections, but product knowledge can be used in appropriate situations to excite people, convert cross-shoppers to the vehicle and increase trust in the salesperson.  Salespeople must be able to answer the customer’s objections and understand how to redirect them back to the appointment or close the deal with an appropriate question.

Check up from the neck up:

Are your people all product certified?  Probably. 

• Does the majority of your product training only happen when it’s crunch time to be certified, before you get in trouble with the OEM? (Happened to me a couple times…)
• Do you have a committed process and/or manager responsible for ongoing product training?
• Have you trained your employees how and when to deliver product knowledge information that leads them directly back to the close? 

Each is equally important, and with the wealth of information online, salespeople need to be masters at answering questions in a way that sets firm appointments.

BE BOLD: When I secret-shop dealers it’s also shocking how passive, almost listless, salespeople can be in follow-up - with calls and emails like, “Would you like to look at the car?” (!!!) Your employees MUST ask for the appointment every single time!

Same-day appointments are golden and to secure them you simply must be bold. When I was at the Honda store, my GM had a great line: “How close to right now can you be here?” Love that line because IT WORKS!

Be willing to go out on a limb to do whatever it takes to get the customer in the same day.  Customer stuck at work?  Take the car to their office.  Customer needs to ‘get dinner first’?  Order the family a pizza.

Boldness and enthusiasm lead to incredible closing ratios because both are contagious.  Excitement breeds excitement, for your customers and your staff!

Check up from the neck up:

• Are your people ruthlessly aggressive, yet fantastically kind, in asking for appointments?  How do you know?
• Do you talk to your salespeople daily about the importance of being bold and asking for appointments?  Do you role-play “asking for the appointment” with them? 
• Do you incentivize/spiff your staff for each customer they get in the same day?
  
  

BE INVOLVED: For so many years, the Internet department has been quarantined from the desk manager, the GM and Dealer Principal - it’s crazy and costing many, many dealers business. Quite often, the majority of dealership managers have never even worked an Internet inquiry, the very source of most dealership traffic!  It’s my personal belief that:

• GM’s
• Sales/Desk Managers
• Finance Managers
• Closers
  

…all need to get intimately engaged with the dealership’s Internet operations, and, frankly, go in and get their hands dirty. At my former dealership, the whole management team cycled through every aspect of Internet sales, by actually working leads themselves for two whole days.

Check up from the neck up:

Internet Managers/Directors, I have a message for you, spoken from experience:
We Internet people sometimes possessively hang tight to our Internet processes because we feel our job security is tied up with being the only person at the dealership that understands the Internet world.  Nothing could be further from the truth: the more cars sold because of Internet efforts, the busier you will be in managing the MASSIVE amount of work it takes to keep things successful! 

Furthermore, the more other managers in your stores understand the Internet buyer, the more gross everyone can make.  So, encourage your store’s management team to get involved – the rewards (and your paycheck) will be well worth it!

BE UNIQUE: The average dealership has a bunch of same-brand competitors in their market, so it’s absolutely critical for you to tell your story – and communicate and get creative with what exactly makes you unique.  Whether it’s your sales staff, the way you sell cars or special promotions, you need to get that story out there.

I’ll give one example: At my Chrysler, Jeep and Honda stores we were attracting, and wanted to keep attracting more, leads/sales well outside our DMA, so I created a promotion called “Weekend in a Car.” We offered these customers a package: a weekend night at a nearby 5-star lodge, where they could relax, go to the spa and pick up their car Sunday and take a leisurely drive home. (We cut a deal with the hotel, and it cost us less than $100 a customer.) And while only 3% of eligible customers ultimately took advantage of the offer, it was wildly successful and made us extremely unique.

Check up from the neck up:

• What really sets your dealership apart from the competition? 
• Is that difference meaningful and of value to your customers?
• Do you effectively communicate what sets you apart? Not only in your advertising, but in how you interact on the phone and via email with your customers?
  

It’s my sincerest hope that these core steps or rules will ‘Be’ helpful to your dealership's Internet sales processes and produce more car deals!  If you have any questions or need help, please call me at 866-475-5553 or email me at m.turner@exteres.com.

Happy Selling!

By Merla Turner: Director of Dealer Training at eXtéresAUTO (and recently honored as one of the “Top Rated” Internet Trainers by DrivingSales’ Dealer Satisfaction Awards). Previously she served as Internet Director at Dick Hannah Honda in Vancouver, WA.

I love the car business!  While at the Dick Hannah dealerships I had the great honor of working with amazing managers and staff - selling, training and managing ten different brands’ Internet teams over the years.  We sold thousands of cars through the Internet every year because the Hannahs were committed to both cutting-edge technology and sound core principles that drove massive success.

Today, I train dealers daily and am inundated with questions from highly successful dealers on how to effectively get more phone calls/leads and how to convert those leads into butts in the door!  As a follower of industry blogs and news, it recently struck me that while it’s important that much of the advice served up to dealers is focused on the bleeding-edge of technology - it’s so easy for all of us to forget what we ONCE mastered and still NEED to master every day. So, thinking back on my long dealership career, I set out to distill what I learned are the crucial “beatitudes” of Internet car sales.

The Beatitudes in the New Testament are, of course, a set of eight blessings, or starkly simple and beautifully basic rules to live by. “Beatitude” also means achieving a state of blessedness or extreme happiness.

I certainly don’t mean to evoke the concept of ‘beatitudes’ in some religious, denominational way (…these rules aren’t even brand-specific!), I just wanted to share credos to live by as a reality-check, hoping their simplicity reminds and re-inspires you and your digital dealership to focus on the absolute foundations of success, given the frenetic swirl of the ever-new.

The 8 “Be-Attitudes” for Internet Car Sales:

BE FOUND: In a world where 9 in 10 auto shoppers hunt down dealerships online (more than double the rates of any other information resource), and with roughly half the visits to dealer websites arriving via a search engine, make sure that you have done everything to BE FOUND by searchers.

SEO/PPC
Today that means having sustained, aggressive SEO, and often expanding your visibility (when needed) through strategic PPC buys. Your customer is first and foremost a searcher – and you need to make sure you’re easily found and have great first-page visibility at the big three search engines.

Google Places/Yahoo! Local/Bing Maps
Have your dealership properly set up and fully optimized for Google Places, Bing, Yahoo!

Online Review Sites & Directories
It is imperative that everywhere your customer looks online for your dealership - they find the correct dealership details and contact information.

Social Media Sites
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are no-brainers.  But WHAT you post on these sites is the critical issue – it’s not about selling, it’s about relationship-building.

BE DESIRABLE: They found you - now you need to ensure what they found is HIGHLY DESIRABLE.

Website
Your website needs to look nice, but above all it needs to be functional, useful and easy to maneuver, with clear calls to action so it converts into leads.  Additionally, if you don’t know what Google Previews is, read about it here.  Google allows customers to preview your site and decide whether or not they even want to click on it, so make sure your site is desirable in preview mode too.

Review Sites & Directories
Given the massive importance of online reviews and social feedback today - and their recent, radically heightened visibility at Google and many car-buying sites - you need to be absolutely sure the online word-of-mouth about your dealership is robust and positive - and that you shine with a positive reputation at all the search engines/websites consumers use.

Social Media Sites
2 Words: Warm Fuzzies.  Barrages of vehicle specials or impersonal vehicle articles on your Facebook page will cause your customer to ‘unlike’ you faster than you can say “pounder.” Check out the social media advice that Gary May posts on DrivingSales.com – real, practical advice that I would use if I were still at the dealership today.

Check up from the neck up:

• Find some new eyes – ask customers what they think about your site. 
• As friends and family to test out the usability of your website.  I would always ask my folks to go on the dealership website and pretend to shop for a car – I knew if they could easily figure out how to find answers to their questions and submit an inquiry, the general population could too.  (Sorry, Mom and Dad…)
  
• Add a feedback plug-in to gather feedback and get suggestions. 
  
• Do some quick searching on Google, Yahoo and Bing.  Do reviews come up?  What is the star rating?  Is your dealership information accurate and enticing?
  
• Read your Facebook and Twitter content.  Would you ‘like’ or find valuable your dealership’s messaging?
  

BE FAST: You simply have to get back to Internet customers and leads lightning-fast, because with any response that stretches past a half an hour, you’re losing sales.

How I trained the importance of this to my employees?  I asked them to imagine…

A car pulls into the lot and a nice family gets out.  They walk the lot, peering into car windows, checking pricing on hangtags.  They glance around looking for help, but nobody comes.  Up and down they walk, and within 30 minutes they get back into their car and pull out. A salesperson comes running: “Wait, I can help you, come back”!

Wouldn’t that be too little too late?

What I know to be true about car dealers is that we are NOT going to let our walk-in traffic wander around the lot and leave without talking to an employee, so why would we let our internet customers do so?

If we don’t handle inquiries in a timely fashion there are so many repercussions, the biggest being that customers ‘wandering around online’ quickly move from one site to another, gathering information and contacting other stores that are focused on - and able to - answer their questions and meet their needs.  In short, lost sales, lost gross.

When I was at the Ford dealership we had a 40-foot banner (stretching across the room where leads were worked) that said: “SPEED IS POWER, ATTITUDE IS EVERTHING!”  For those of you who imagine ‘this is not an issue at my store’, let me tell you: many dealers mistakenly think their response times are speedy, but they need to analyze the realities. I fell into that trap over and over again – thinking to myself, “I have a process, my team and I are on it,” when a quick check of new incoming leads proved otherwise.

Check up from the neck up:

At the DrivingSales conference last fall, I heard Grant Cardone say that, “anything worth doing is worth doing everyday.”  I agree!  Pull a report from your CRM tool every day to analyze how long after the lead was received:

• That a call made
• That an email sent (response quality counts, auto responders do not!)
• That notes were entered, indicating meaningful contact was actually made

Another tried-and-true suggestion:  Set a reminder on your calendar monthly to review and refine your Internet inquiry coverage and response training.  I always found that the 8th (or so) of the month was perfect – nowhere near mid-month or month-end closeouts, but still early enough in the month to address issues before the bulk of our leads would come in.

BE REAL:  Do your salespeople come across as ‘old school,’ or as real human beings helping customers find the car of their dreams?  Do your salespeople understand their customers’ (understandable) fears, and work to alleviate them - without buying into their objections?  Now, I’m not suggesting that we throw away strategies that work to close deals, just that we deliver them in a way that doesn’t turn customers off.

Train your people to build a relationship with customers - that starts the moment they inquire.  People like people like them, so make sure the way your sales staff connects with customers (via phone/email/text/chat) smacks of authenticity and a real desire to help them.  As I’ve learned from Dennis Colome, it’s not what you say, but how you say it that matters.

Great salespeople know how to connect with a customer immediately, find common ground, build a rapport and set that firm appointment.  Help your staff accomplish this by using phone scripts that help them identify the customer’s needs, that avoid typical “salesperson speak,” and ask for the appointment over and over again.

With almost everyone and their dog on Facebook, Twitter or both, people are suddenly connecting with others on a very personal level – even people they don’t know well.  Consumers are now used to seeing peoples’ pictures and equating the image to some sort of a relationship.  With that in mind, when you follow-up via email, have an inviting picture of the salespeople (family pictures are great too, people have a hard time resisting pictures of parents with their kids) in their signature line – you’d be surprised how less likely that customer is to distrust them or flake out on an appointment.

Check up from the neck up:

• When speaking to a prospect, do your employees engage people in an authentic, friendly tone of voice?
• When speaking to a prospect, do your employees talk more about the vehicle, or everything else?  In my experience, “vehicle talk” leads to a lot of vehicle questions that lead to other objections you can’t control over the phone and/or email!  However, the more time you spend building a relationship with a customer, they more they trust you – and the more likely you are to sell a vehicle at higher gross. 
  

BE INFORMED:  It’s a cliché, but today’s Internet car buyer is insanely informed, and not just about invoice pricing. Some customers walk in with binders filled with specs, competitive models, etc. When I secret-shop dealerships to help them with their processes, it’s shocking how many salespeople don’t have even basic product knowledge on vehicles that people are dropping $10,000 to $100,000 on!  Can you imagine salespeople at the Apple store not being informed about the newest i-whatever coming out?

At the dealership I spent a great deal of time on core training like phone/Internet lead handling and sales conversion, but your people must know the product because it closes far more deals.  That doesn’t mean they should spill their guts and create objections, but product knowledge can be used in appropriate situations to excite people, convert cross-shoppers to the vehicle and increase trust in the salesperson.  Salespeople must be able to answer the customer’s objections and understand how to redirect them back to the appointment or close the deal with an appropriate question.

Check up from the neck up:

Are your people all product certified?  Probably. 

• Does the majority of your product training only happen when it’s crunch time to be certified, before you get in trouble with the OEM? (Happened to me a couple times…)
• Do you have a committed process and/or manager responsible for ongoing product training?
• Have you trained your employees how and when to deliver product knowledge information that leads them directly back to the close? 

Each is equally important, and with the wealth of information online, salespeople need to be masters at answering questions in a way that sets firm appointments.

BE BOLD: When I secret-shop dealers it’s also shocking how passive, almost listless, salespeople can be in follow-up - with calls and emails like, “Would you like to look at the car?” (!!!) Your employees MUST ask for the appointment every single time!

Same-day appointments are golden and to secure them you simply must be bold. When I was at the Honda store, my GM had a great line: “How close to right now can you be here?” Love that line because IT WORKS!

Be willing to go out on a limb to do whatever it takes to get the customer in the same day.  Customer stuck at work?  Take the car to their office.  Customer needs to ‘get dinner first’?  Order the family a pizza.

Boldness and enthusiasm lead to incredible closing ratios because both are contagious.  Excitement breeds excitement, for your customers and your staff!

Check up from the neck up:

• Are your people ruthlessly aggressive, yet fantastically kind, in asking for appointments?  How do you know?
• Do you talk to your salespeople daily about the importance of being bold and asking for appointments?  Do you role-play “asking for the appointment” with them? 
• Do you incentivize/spiff your staff for each customer they get in the same day?
  
  

BE INVOLVED: For so many years, the Internet department has been quarantined from the desk manager, the GM and Dealer Principal - it’s crazy and costing many, many dealers business. Quite often, the majority of dealership managers have never even worked an Internet inquiry, the very source of most dealership traffic!  It’s my personal belief that:

• GM’s
• Sales/Desk Managers
• Finance Managers
• Closers
  

…all need to get intimately engaged with the dealership’s Internet operations, and, frankly, go in and get their hands dirty. At my former dealership, the whole management team cycled through every aspect of Internet sales, by actually working leads themselves for two whole days.

Check up from the neck up:

Internet Managers/Directors, I have a message for you, spoken from experience:
We Internet people sometimes possessively hang tight to our Internet processes because we feel our job security is tied up with being the only person at the dealership that understands the Internet world.  Nothing could be further from the truth: the more cars sold because of Internet efforts, the busier you will be in managing the MASSIVE amount of work it takes to keep things successful! 

Furthermore, the more other managers in your stores understand the Internet buyer, the more gross everyone can make.  So, encourage your store’s management team to get involved – the rewards (and your paycheck) will be well worth it!

BE UNIQUE: The average dealership has a bunch of same-brand competitors in their market, so it’s absolutely critical for you to tell your story – and communicate and get creative with what exactly makes you unique.  Whether it’s your sales staff, the way you sell cars or special promotions, you need to get that story out there.

I’ll give one example: At my Chrysler, Jeep and Honda stores we were attracting, and wanted to keep attracting more, leads/sales well outside our DMA, so I created a promotion called “Weekend in a Car.” We offered these customers a package: a weekend night at a nearby 5-star lodge, where they could relax, go to the spa and pick up their car Sunday and take a leisurely drive home. (We cut a deal with the hotel, and it cost us less than $100 a customer.) And while only 3% of eligible customers ultimately took advantage of the offer, it was wildly successful and made us extremely unique.

Check up from the neck up:

• What really sets your dealership apart from the competition? 
• Is that difference meaningful and of value to your customers?
• Do you effectively communicate what sets you apart? Not only in your advertising, but in how you interact on the phone and via email with your customers?
  

It’s my sincerest hope that these core steps or rules will ‘Be’ helpful to your dealership's Internet sales processes and produce more car deals!  If you have any questions or need help, please call me at 866-475-5553 or email me at m.turner@exteres.com.

Happy Selling!

By Merla Turner: Director of Dealer Training at eXtéresAUTO (and recently honored as one of the “Top Rated” Internet Trainers by DrivingSales’ Dealer Satisfaction Awards). Previously she served as Internet Director at Dick Hannah Honda in Vancouver, WA.