More often than not, businesses are left to turning part (or all) of their operation over to vendors and partners with the reasoning that they're not able to "do everything". In automotive retail the de facto excuse you hear usually has something to do with how selling cars is what gets done and nothing else matters. Well, it's 2012 and everything has to do with selling cars.

News flash: It always has been so.

More likely than not, as we're upon the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) season, hundreds if not thousands of dealers will leave with contracts signed, or nearly signed, convinced that simply punting their responsibilities over the wall is the best way to get 'er done. Fact is nothing is further from the truth.

Dealers must grasp a much more realistic perspective of controlling their business through action, education and accountability or they will absolutely have it taken over. And nobody is saying that's a bad thing, in the event that a business has no desire to be "in" business. While a $6M dealership may not scale, invest, market or operate like a Fortune 100 business, but there is not a single reason why it can't approach and plan business in the same way or using the similar methodology.

A few things to keep in mind as we go into the NADA conference this coming weekend.

1. Assess your dealership's needs and gain consensus from your employees on what to return from the conference with
2. Plan 90% of your schedule via expo and workshop schedules, focusing on must-have meetings
3. Schedule meetings with critical existing and vendors and check out their competition
4. Talk to as many dealers as you can outside of your 20 Group, in the booths you visit, about what they're doing and not doing with the vendors you're visiting as well as haven't considered
5. Look at vendor and supplier reviews on Google, forums including DrivingSales and other reliable sources
6. Ensure the viability of vendor/product deployment in your store prior to signing any agreement
7. Talk with existing/new vendors after the conference again, prior to accepting any new agreement

While the above steps are no guarantee against "being had", it should at least put some steps between a mediocre quick decision and a thought out beneficial one.

Areas that seem to be gaining traction and popularity that don't make sense include:

• Reputation management: services that promise hundreds, if not thousands, of well-deserved gleaming reviews from consumers that just haven't provided them to you. Garbage! Consumers see through it faster, better and more than Google does. Start expecting your staff to obtain reviews when selling or servicing products and ensure a process is in place. Some staff members don't want to do that? Let them go or simply hand over the keys because you're not leading a dealership...
• Social media: services that promise hundreds, if not thousands, of fans simply because you're a car dealership, with "caption this" or "tell us what you think" on nearly every other post sprinkled with inventory or incentive specials don't say "great place to buy" in the least. If a great Facebook, Twitter or blog presence means 2,000 likes, followers or readers and not more than 3-4 comments, shares, retweets or +1's, you're likely being had. Nobody wants to go to a dealership Facebook page to play Asteroids or Bejeweled 2 and write a title for a photo showing two dogs dressed up as superheros chasing each other, let alone find a tab that doesn't work (for months).
• CRM: services that say their great, train your staff for $5,000-10,000 a day, put in standard templates and tell you to look at reports to create accountability need to start traveling with the Dodo bird. At the same time employees not using CRM for any reason need to pack their neon-green Hulk baggage and leave town as well. Get real, negotiate agreements, expect your account person to visit regularly, get all of management to use the tools and then expect everyone else to in the dealership. If utilization of CRM is under 75% in your dealership, get your vendor to start acting like a partner and put sales and service staff on the bubble. It's not a choice, it's a reality check.

There will be a lot of fanfare, parties, speakers pitching and snow jobs at booths. However, it's in everyone's best interest to see through the smoke and put the rose-colored glasses down. Our entire world is digital, mobile and fast. It's time for 17,000+ franchises (and who knows how many independents) to get so as well. Leave the hook, line and sinker at home, ignore the playmates for as long as you can and get real with your business.

There is a boatload of opportunity for those that want it in 2012 and NADA happens to be a great place to kick it all off or continue down the progressive road if you've already started. It's also where tons of dealers get sucked in by nothing more than marketing and get nothing for their hard-earned cash except for an open liability door.

So go with purpose to NADA. Come back and operate your business properly. Or someone else will take it from you. All of it.

Best practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

You can read more IM@CS posts here on DrivingSales.com or on our blog

More often than not, businesses are left to turning part (or all) of their operation over to vendors and partners with the reasoning that they're not able to "do everything". In automotive retail the de facto excuse you hear usually has something to do with how selling cars is what gets done and nothing else matters. Well, it's 2012 and everything has to do with selling cars.

News flash: It always has been so.

More likely than not, as we're upon the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) season, hundreds if not thousands of dealers will leave with contracts signed, or nearly signed, convinced that simply punting their responsibilities over the wall is the best way to get 'er done. Fact is nothing is further from the truth.

Dealers must grasp a much more realistic perspective of controlling their business through action, education and accountability or they will absolutely have it taken over. And nobody is saying that's a bad thing, in the event that a business has no desire to be "in" business. While a $6M dealership may not scale, invest, market or operate like a Fortune 100 business, but there is not a single reason why it can't approach and plan business in the same way or using the similar methodology.

A few things to keep in mind as we go into the NADA conference this coming weekend.

1. Assess your dealership's needs and gain consensus from your employees on what to return from the conference with
2. Plan 90% of your schedule via expo and workshop schedules, focusing on must-have meetings
3. Schedule meetings with critical existing and vendors and check out their competition
4. Talk to as many dealers as you can outside of your 20 Group, in the booths you visit, about what they're doing and not doing with the vendors you're visiting as well as haven't considered
5. Look at vendor and supplier reviews on Google, forums including DrivingSales and other reliable sources
6. Ensure the viability of vendor/product deployment in your store prior to signing any agreement
7. Talk with existing/new vendors after the conference again, prior to accepting any new agreement

While the above steps are no guarantee against "being had", it should at least put some steps between a mediocre quick decision and a thought out beneficial one.

Areas that seem to be gaining traction and popularity that don't make sense include:

• Reputation management: services that promise hundreds, if not thousands, of well-deserved gleaming reviews from consumers that just haven't provided them to you. Garbage! Consumers see through it faster, better and more than Google does. Start expecting your staff to obtain reviews when selling or servicing products and ensure a process is in place. Some staff members don't want to do that? Let them go or simply hand over the keys because you're not leading a dealership...
• Social media: services that promise hundreds, if not thousands, of fans simply because you're a car dealership, with "caption this" or "tell us what you think" on nearly every other post sprinkled with inventory or incentive specials don't say "great place to buy" in the least. If a great Facebook, Twitter or blog presence means 2,000 likes, followers or readers and not more than 3-4 comments, shares, retweets or +1's, you're likely being had. Nobody wants to go to a dealership Facebook page to play Asteroids or Bejeweled 2 and write a title for a photo showing two dogs dressed up as superheros chasing each other, let alone find a tab that doesn't work (for months).
• CRM: services that say their great, train your staff for $5,000-10,000 a day, put in standard templates and tell you to look at reports to create accountability need to start traveling with the Dodo bird. At the same time employees not using CRM for any reason need to pack their neon-green Hulk baggage and leave town as well. Get real, negotiate agreements, expect your account person to visit regularly, get all of management to use the tools and then expect everyone else to in the dealership. If utilization of CRM is under 75% in your dealership, get your vendor to start acting like a partner and put sales and service staff on the bubble. It's not a choice, it's a reality check.

There will be a lot of fanfare, parties, speakers pitching and snow jobs at booths. However, it's in everyone's best interest to see through the smoke and put the rose-colored glasses down. Our entire world is digital, mobile and fast. It's time for 17,000+ franchises (and who knows how many independents) to get so as well. Leave the hook, line and sinker at home, ignore the playmates for as long as you can and get real with your business.

There is a boatload of opportunity for those that want it in 2012 and NADA happens to be a great place to kick it all off or continue down the progressive road if you've already started. It's also where tons of dealers get sucked in by nothing more than marketing and get nothing for their hard-earned cash except for an open liability door.

So go with purpose to NADA. Come back and operate your business properly. Or someone else will take it from you. All of it.

Best practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

You can read more IM@CS posts here on DrivingSales.com or on our blog

This is officially the beginning of the end for many. December 27, 2011. There will be a moment over the next handful of years in which you'll reflect back to this post (or others like it) and say "Oh, crap." Or it may be the longer rendition which usually sounds something like "Why did I allow myself to get in my way over and over again? Why did I shut down and refuse to change, giving garbage excuses?"

As time went on from December 27, 2011 Acute Death by Delusional Digital Defiance, we'll call it ADDDD for short, you invested more and more in the comfort zone, allowing vendors to do with you money and brand what they wanted, essentially squandering opportunities while you were convinced you were actually doing something. Your business was actually disappearing at the same time everything looked the same from your vantage point behind the desk or golf cart steering wheel.

And who could blame you? You read the ads in the trades and took advice from your 20 Group and absorbed the Powerpoint presentations. You wrote the checks. You took the training, however often that someone actually showed up and you attended the conferences. It never dawned on you that everything you relied so heavily on was the white elephant in the room. You took the easy way out instead of asking the tough questions and not believing the hype. Simply put, you allowed yourself to fail.

Why did this happen? You didn't take the road less traveled when the paths diverged in the woods. As far as you knew, you believed it wasn't supposed to be about "hard work" anymore: you're senior management or, better yet, a business owner. Add to that the whole "Internet thing" was just too difficult to understand and should be handled by young kids and "people who text a lot and surf the web."

So wind it down now so you don't experience the slow, deliberate march of self-induced death. Ignore the articles from Joe Webb prodding the salespeople that you mistreat (http://bit.ly/rVN66B) and from HubSpot on Harvard Business Review about Google changes (http://bit.ly/ub6iOH) that your website company will not talk about, or some trends to capitalize on (http://bit.ly/rU9VAt) and what's going on with mobile (http://bit.ly/smRSOt) from Search Engine Watch. You're been reading all of these...right?

Nope..."too busy running a business."  More like "too ignorant to run a business."

So while you idly wait for the inevitable why don't you ask:

Your website company why:

1. your pages have the same names and metadata
2. you don't have model and trim level landing pages
3. you don't have separate tracking numbers
4. you don't have original content on your pages (heard of Google Panda?)
5. you don't have a truly optimized mobile presence
6. you can't track conversions on Google Analytics or your PPC/SEM
7. they don't truly offer eCommerce
8. their proouction team doesn't talk with their marketing team (ie SEO to SEM)
9. they lack in customer support
10. they're not up to date on what's happening with Google and social

Your CRM company why:

1. you can't track email opens, bounces, links, shares, etc.
2. you can't change headers and footers dynamically
3. they don't append and integrate for text/mobile delivery
4. you are still on servers and not on the cloud
5. they don't offer true mobility
6. they can't make lead duplication management much easier
7. data "siloing" still existst (lead based: service/sales/finance)
8. they're not up to date on what's happening with Google and social

Your social media company why:

1. they don't actually write content
2. what they do publish is redundant and automated (ie "Caption this photo" of dogs or cats)
3. they don't create engagement
4. they sold you on 20+ "social media sites/platforms" when traffic comes from 4-8 of them
5. they pitch and don't produce (and not actually active on the networks at all themselves)
6. they are disconnected from the store
7. they're not up to date on what's happening with Google and social

Waiting? You've been told your entire life that good things come to those who wait. Well, we're here to set the record straight. Only the leaders thrive. You can wing it today, sure. There will be "those" that still make it with no true effort. However, it is a false existence and leads to ADDDD.

The grim reaper is coming and his sickle has your business' name on it. Are you waiting? Still? Well.....Goodbye!

Thanks to @HarryHaber and @BryanCarGuy for a little insight on the list of dealer pain points... you're great friends and car guys!

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

You can read more IM@CS posts here on DrivingSales.com or on our blog.

This is officially the beginning of the end for many. December 27, 2011. There will be a moment over the next handful of years in which you'll reflect back to this post (or others like it) and say "Oh, crap." Or it may be the longer rendition which usually sounds something like "Why did I allow myself to get in my way over and over again? Why did I shut down and refuse to change, giving garbage excuses?"

As time went on from December 27, 2011 Acute Death by Delusional Digital Defiance, we'll call it ADDDD for short, you invested more and more in the comfort zone, allowing vendors to do with you money and brand what they wanted, essentially squandering opportunities while you were convinced you were actually doing something. Your business was actually disappearing at the same time everything looked the same from your vantage point behind the desk or golf cart steering wheel.

And who could blame you? You read the ads in the trades and took advice from your 20 Group and absorbed the Powerpoint presentations. You wrote the checks. You took the training, however often that someone actually showed up and you attended the conferences. It never dawned on you that everything you relied so heavily on was the white elephant in the room. You took the easy way out instead of asking the tough questions and not believing the hype. Simply put, you allowed yourself to fail.

Why did this happen? You didn't take the road less traveled when the paths diverged in the woods. As far as you knew, you believed it wasn't supposed to be about "hard work" anymore: you're senior management or, better yet, a business owner. Add to that the whole "Internet thing" was just too difficult to understand and should be handled by young kids and "people who text a lot and surf the web."

So wind it down now so you don't experience the slow, deliberate march of self-induced death. Ignore the articles from Joe Webb prodding the salespeople that you mistreat (http://bit.ly/rVN66B) and from HubSpot on Harvard Business Review about Google changes (http://bit.ly/ub6iOH) that your website company will not talk about, or some trends to capitalize on (http://bit.ly/rU9VAt) and what's going on with mobile (http://bit.ly/smRSOt) from Search Engine Watch. You're been reading all of these...right?

Nope..."too busy running a business."  More like "too ignorant to run a business."

So while you idly wait for the inevitable why don't you ask:

Your website company why:

1. your pages have the same names and metadata
2. you don't have model and trim level landing pages
3. you don't have separate tracking numbers
4. you don't have original content on your pages (heard of Google Panda?)
5. you don't have a truly optimized mobile presence
6. you can't track conversions on Google Analytics or your PPC/SEM
7. they don't truly offer eCommerce
8. their proouction team doesn't talk with their marketing team (ie SEO to SEM)
9. they lack in customer support
10. they're not up to date on what's happening with Google and social

Your CRM company why:

1. you can't track email opens, bounces, links, shares, etc.
2. you can't change headers and footers dynamically
3. they don't append and integrate for text/mobile delivery
4. you are still on servers and not on the cloud
5. they don't offer true mobility
6. they can't make lead duplication management much easier
7. data "siloing" still existst (lead based: service/sales/finance)
8. they're not up to date on what's happening with Google and social

Your social media company why:

1. they don't actually write content
2. what they do publish is redundant and automated (ie "Caption this photo" of dogs or cats)
3. they don't create engagement
4. they sold you on 20+ "social media sites/platforms" when traffic comes from 4-8 of them
5. they pitch and don't produce (and not actually active on the networks at all themselves)
6. they are disconnected from the store
7. they're not up to date on what's happening with Google and social

Waiting? You've been told your entire life that good things come to those who wait. Well, we're here to set the record straight. Only the leaders thrive. You can wing it today, sure. There will be "those" that still make it with no true effort. However, it is a false existence and leads to ADDDD.

The grim reaper is coming and his sickle has your business' name on it. Are you waiting? Still? Well.....Goodbye!

Thanks to @HarryHaber and @BryanCarGuy for a little insight on the list of dealer pain points... you're great friends and car guys!

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

You can read more IM@CS posts here on DrivingSales.com or on our blog.

The constant challenge in the auto industry is for retailers to implement strategies, execute on their plans, follow process, create awareness, promote accountability and stop making excuses for doing anything less. There will always be a party to throw a finger at, many times deservedly so. That, however, does not take the greater point of responsibility away from an operator of a business and the business's staff.

There are always opportunities to learn, grow, adjust and review. There will always be new opportunities to add capabilities, add products, add services, add partners and add resources. You need the first group before the second, always.

Products and services, good and bad, make any industry go 'round. Companies tend to follow the herd, good and bad. It's why 20 Groups, marketing associations and other collections of automotive retailers are so attractive to companies selling their services and the reps who speak. People will buy blind without the first grain of sense..."My golf buddy uses that website company", or "my 20 Group chairman recommends the third party lead company we just signed", or "It was hard to make up my mind on which new CRM company to call so I looked at the ads in the back of Automotive News/the NADA directory/fill in the blank source" and other oft-heard stories are nothing close to strategies and typically are doomed to fail.

Car dealers need to start looking at track records, company histories and more before even considering where their hard-earned money goes. The majority of dealership spends are not very different today then fifteen years ago. Yes, some are doing thing very differently, it's just not the majority or even close to parity. Stop and ask yourself "do I really need to buy this service or product?" and then ask others than are AND are not for at least some benchmarks and common sense. And start realizing that companies incapable of answering the tough questions before you sign are almost always less equipped to do so after you sign. Which is harder: losing money due to an improper commitment or not making enough from not executing well with the right one? Either way.... this is not a new issue!

The ongoing rants and discord due to one service provider are well warranted, regardless of which position you take (or none at all). At the same time, they are absolutely no surprise at all. If anyone had done their homework, they'd realize that what is being asserted should not be a jaw-dropper to anyone. People just followed the bounding ball/shiny object without question... this is not a new issue!

Sometimes we're fortunate to be in the right place at the right time. Another ongoing issue in our industry (while not as hot as the one just mentioned), as well as every other industry, is what's happening to search - predominantly Google - around content propagation/redundant content, link building and more related to site quality and ranking. Back in 2006 the company that employed me was warned by Google to stop syndicating their content all over the web as it was lowering quality scores and other factors that would affect their traffic and revenue. Fast forward to today and website and SEO companies are struggling with issues under Google's Panda initiative? Who thought that it was a good idea to have 100 blogs all over the country with the same exact content, let alone 700 auto-related websites with the same car reviews? And what to think of website companies that give 40 pages in your site the same name and/or metadata, let alone missing metadata??? The reasons to not go with these strategies are over six years old...this is not a new issue!

If more businesses (dealers) would be willing to listen more, learn more, challenge more and measure more, we'd all be a lot better. And dang it so would our websites. Stop following the heard, start paying attention and making sense even if it hurts a little or you're not in the "product of the week" club. So much $10 garbage gets purchased by $10,000,000 businesses every day it's amazing, but.... this is not a new issue!

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

p.s. I just checked the market value of this post and you're not paying enough!!!!!

You can read more IM@CS posts here on DrivingSales.com or on our blog.

The constant challenge in the auto industry is for retailers to implement strategies, execute on their plans, follow process, create awareness, promote accountability and stop making excuses for doing anything less. There will always be a party to throw a finger at, many times deservedly so. That, however, does not take the greater point of responsibility away from an operator of a business and the business's staff.

There are always opportunities to learn, grow, adjust and review. There will always be new opportunities to add capabilities, add products, add services, add partners and add resources. You need the first group before the second, always.

Products and services, good and bad, make any industry go 'round. Companies tend to follow the herd, good and bad. It's why 20 Groups, marketing associations and other collections of automotive retailers are so attractive to companies selling their services and the reps who speak. People will buy blind without the first grain of sense..."My golf buddy uses that website company", or "my 20 Group chairman recommends the third party lead company we just signed", or "It was hard to make up my mind on which new CRM company to call so I looked at the ads in the back of Automotive News/the NADA directory/fill in the blank source" and other oft-heard stories are nothing close to strategies and typically are doomed to fail.

Car dealers need to start looking at track records, company histories and more before even considering where their hard-earned money goes. The majority of dealership spends are not very different today then fifteen years ago. Yes, some are doing thing very differently, it's just not the majority or even close to parity. Stop and ask yourself "do I really need to buy this service or product?" and then ask others than are AND are not for at least some benchmarks and common sense. And start realizing that companies incapable of answering the tough questions before you sign are almost always less equipped to do so after you sign. Which is harder: losing money due to an improper commitment or not making enough from not executing well with the right one? Either way.... this is not a new issue!

The ongoing rants and discord due to one service provider are well warranted, regardless of which position you take (or none at all). At the same time, they are absolutely no surprise at all. If anyone had done their homework, they'd realize that what is being asserted should not be a jaw-dropper to anyone. People just followed the bounding ball/shiny object without question... this is not a new issue!

Sometimes we're fortunate to be in the right place at the right time. Another ongoing issue in our industry (while not as hot as the one just mentioned), as well as every other industry, is what's happening to search - predominantly Google - around content propagation/redundant content, link building and more related to site quality and ranking. Back in 2006 the company that employed me was warned by Google to stop syndicating their content all over the web as it was lowering quality scores and other factors that would affect their traffic and revenue. Fast forward to today and website and SEO companies are struggling with issues under Google's Panda initiative? Who thought that it was a good idea to have 100 blogs all over the country with the same exact content, let alone 700 auto-related websites with the same car reviews? And what to think of website companies that give 40 pages in your site the same name and/or metadata, let alone missing metadata??? The reasons to not go with these strategies are over six years old...this is not a new issue!

If more businesses (dealers) would be willing to listen more, learn more, challenge more and measure more, we'd all be a lot better. And dang it so would our websites. Stop following the heard, start paying attention and making sense even if it hurts a little or you're not in the "product of the week" club. So much $10 garbage gets purchased by $10,000,000 businesses every day it's amazing, but.... this is not a new issue!

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

p.s. I just checked the market value of this post and you're not paying enough!!!!!

You can read more IM@CS posts here on DrivingSales.com or on our blog.