As I watched the twitter stream from Denver and Arizona, most tweets are trying to sell Manning on why he should be QB1 for each respective city. Manning and your customers are FREE AGENTS. When Manning arrived in Denver, he was properly greeted after his appointment was set.  What.... I thought all customers arrived on private jets? He was led to the team's head quarters at Dove Valley were I am confident Manning was shown around the Denver Broncos facility (Service Walk and Demo). After that, I can only guess Mr. Bowlen President and John Elway placed Manning in Write Up. During his time in Denver, there was SELLING going on about why Manning should be in Orange and Blue. Knowing he was going to Arizona either way, as a Bronco's fan, I hope the team made sure Manning knew we would love to have him as QB1 before he left.

Your customers are Free Agents and can shop and buy from anywhere. After setting appointments and during your customers' visit, are you giving them reasons WHY you want them to be your QB1? Show your customers around and give them reasons YOUR dealership is a great place to do business. Have fun during the demo and write up even if they leave to Arizona (other dealers). Be confident in what you do and how you do it.

DO NOT make it easy on the next dealer that your customer visits. I'm sure the Broncos didn't.

I wonder if the number of "likes" the Broncos (1,155,811) and Cardinals (434,696) have will sway Manning?

True Marketing Time

Recently with the help of DrivingSales.com, we conducted a survey to better understand the timing of a used car process and determine Prime Marketing Time and Total Marketing Time.

Searching any dealer’s inventory at any given point, we can find “Newly Listed” cars on AutoTrader, Cars.com or a dealer’s site that is without photos or custom comments. The survey had five questions to review the used car process from service, detail, photos to live.

The questions were not designed to argue if a car should be place online right away with or without photos, but to determine how much "online" marketing time that could be considered as wasted. As we read through the results, please keep in mind we asked about averages.

• Total Marketing Time is defined as when a Used Car is through the entire process, with live photos online minus a dealers Day In Stock policy.

• Prime Marketing Time is defined as when a Used Car is through the entire process, with live photos online minus the average days it takes a dealer to sell a Used Car.

Data Collection

Using surveymonkey.com, we create a quick free version survey that was launched as a blog post on DrivingSales.com by Gary Sanders with the help from Bart Wilson. We also pushed it out to Twitter with RT’s from Ed Brooks @velocitysales, @CobaltMarketing, Gary May @imacsweb and Brian Pasch @automotiveseo and Paul Potratz (@POTRAZ) to name a few. This allowed us to spread the word and start collecting results.

Review of Survey

The follow questions in the survey totaled over 80 responses.

1. On AVERAGE, how long after the Used Car is placed in inventory (day one) does it take to complete your Used Car Inspection?  (Used Car Inspection can include the used car Repair Order, Certified and safety check, repair or replace worn parts, tires, brakes, etc…..)

 Analysis

These answers are right in line. Dealers are aware on the importance of getting fresh inventory through the shop with 90.3% of the dealer’s surveyed get a used car through the shop less than 6 days. 74.4% dealers are able to do it in less than 4 days

2. On AVERAGE, after the completion of the Used Car Inspection, how many days does it take to complete the Interior/Exterior Detail? (This can include dent repair and touch up)

Analysis

These results show most dealers moving the used car inventory through the process and get in to the front line as quick as possible. 76 or 92.7% of the dealers surveyed get a used car detailed in less than 4 days with most done in 1-2 days.

3. On AVERAGE, after the completion of the Interior/Exterior Detail, how many days does it take to upload Photos? (Taking live photos and replacing factory default photos online)

Analysis

Photos are an important part in your cars being displayed online. Along with compelling comments, photos tell the story give your customers shopping online the information about the car.

4. What is your AVERAGE Days In Stock of your Retail Used Car Inventory from when the vehicle is TRADED IN (day one) to when it is SOLD?

                          Response Count                            Response %

5. What is your “Day In Stock Policy”? (when a Used Car must be wholesale if it does not sale retail)

                                                Response Count                       Response %

Using a 60 Day Turn Example

If a dealer has a 60 day turn and using the average responses, marketing time could look like this:

• 3 - 4 days in service
• 1 - 4 days in detail
• 1 - 2 days of photos

It could be viewed a dealer has 50 - 55 days of Total Market Time.

If it takes an average of 30 - 31 days to take SELL at retail unit, this dealer has 20 – 24 days of Prime Marketing Time.

What we would like to hear from the DrivingSales.com community is additional analysis of the questions. As a dealer, did you have trouble areas of getting you cars through the process? What adjustments were made?

• Do you monitor your cars each step?
• Did you see a change if you made adjustments to your comments?
• Did you add photos?
• Did you make a change to the layout of your photos?
• Do you place you cars online with out photos or wait for the photos?

If 100% of your floor takes incoming sales calls and most dealers will tell you 10-20% of them are good on the phones, could changing up your Used Car photos improve the call?

*First, let me start by saying changing how you display your Used Cars online should not take the place of on going training. Phone calls still require enthusiasm, asking questions and setting an appointment.

Have you recently listened to a recorded call and the customer asks;

“What are the miles? Does it have navigation and heated seats?” and cringe when the sales person says “Ummm, you mean the Silver one? Can you give me the stock number? I’ll have to go check….” Go online and look at the car on your site, Autotrader and Cars.com to see what the customer sees. Do you then understand why the customers are asking these questions? (it might be your photos)

Your photos are a virtual walk around online. Bad photos and catching a sale person not prepared to take a call is a bad combination. I am not saying that adding 6-8 more photos to what you are taking now is all the sudden going to make sales people great on the phones. I am merely saying additional photos could assist the call by displaying special options to bail sales people out of a bad call when the customers knows the answer to the question………..“I see this one has the navigation, is it still available?”

www.twitter.com/sandersgary

I went to the Morehead State vs. Louisville game at the Pepsi Center in Denver for the opening round of the NCAA basketball championship. The game turned out to be a great basketball game with it coming down to the last seconds. While at the game, I was not aware of what Morehead State coach said in there last time out in the huddle.

In an interview with Dan Patrick show, Morehead State Coach Donnie Tyndall presented a play that came to him the night before. He went to his notes and plays at 2:30am the day off the game and run through his mind; “Down one what are we going to run. Down two what are we going to run?” He said if they have the ball down two, we are going to shoot a three for the win. They are going to put it in Harper’s hand because he is 6’3 and the two defenders that could defend him are 5’11 or 6’0. Morehead State's Demonte Harper dribbled patiently and watched the clock tick down. Then, he stepped up behind the 3-point line and swished the shot with 4.2 seconds left Thursday for a 62-61 victory over No. 4 Louisville and the first big upset of the NCAA tournament. (full interview available on Dan Patrick Podcast 3/18/2011)

What is great about this story is the coach had a plan. He knew how he was going to win and planned his day before he arrived to the stadium. He relied on his player’s ability and the only thing left was execution.  

Would you rather work hard for a coach or be managed?

If you have been to an airport or looked at a Sunday newspaper ad, QR codes are growing. So how can we use them?

What if QR codes became a virtual walk around? We may not be ready to have them on the showroom (yet), but what about any car you have on display offsite?

What if the Manufactures used them at the Auto Shows? 

What if this code talked about the fuel economy of the Lexus RX350?

What if this code talked about the Smart Access Key and Push Button Start?

What if this code talked about the RX Performance and the 3.5-liter V6 Engine?

As I continue to learn more about them, the ideas are limitless. The one recommendation is to create a separate site that is compatible for a smart phone. Don’t send it to your vendors sites like Cobalt and Dealer.com because it opens your dealers mobile site. I am testing out the use of our codes on StevinsonLexusofLakewood.org which is hosted by Word Press.

Are you using them in your dealer? Let the Driving Sales community know what you are doing.

Write your post here

Do you know how long it takes to get your inventory through the shop, detailed and add photos?

Along with a dealers main website, sites like AutoTrader.com and Cars.com post a dealers inventory, but what are we sending to these sites?

AutoTrader.com and Cars.com rewards your fresh trades with a "NEWLY LISTED" tag, but New Trades are not through the shop or detail. This "NEWLY LISTED" vehicle has no photos or custom comments.

 Pleas take this short survey. The goal of this survey is to determine Prime Marketing Time and compare the total Marketing Time Online vs. your Days In Stock policy.  Results of the survey will be shared in a later post.

Click the link below and take the five question survey.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/W7FTR68

As fall is upon us, our big tree started to shed its leaves. Knowing the tree still had leaves on it, we raked our yard even thought an hour later it looked like we did nothing at all. Some leaves remain on the tree, some continue to fall and some are blowing down the street. So what does this have to do with SEO?

I am not an expert or “guru”, but like leaves on a tree (metaphor), it is important to continue to drop articles, a press releases, post or pages in Google’s yard. The leaves that are in Google’s yard are the most relative links for any given search term. The leaves that are about to fall are the relative links attacking any given search term. Leaves that are blowing down the street are no longer relative to that search term or may be poorly written.

When dropping a new article, post or page in Google’s yard, make sure it has good content, clear page titles and page description or risk Google raking it up. It’s ok when your leaves end up in the neighbors (competition) back yard.

*This is my opinion of SEO and what I have learned about it.

I’d appreciate replies and comments.

The second annual Driving Sales Executive Summit was a great success. I had an opportunity to listen and met great people in the industry. The layout, timing, venue and flow of the event went very well. It was nice to network and put a face with the person behind the email or twitter account. The speakers and agenda provided a wide variety of topics. Like the first #DSES, the speakers I enjoyed the most was someone who was not in the car business. Last year it was:

Media Spend: Efficiently Reaching Today’s Buyers – Triple your results by understanding how the media environment has changed and will continue to change  - Will Travis, Dentsu America

This year:

Dan Zarrella, award-winning social, search, and viral marketing scientist and author.

These two speakers gave key information that reminded me of the importance of understanding the customers.  Each gave insight to behaviors of what people do. “Customers no longer passively absorb advertising -- they seek it out, share it, critique it, and in some cases, create it”(Dentsu America) Dan Zarella presentation challened me to “Break Though The Noise” and “Use combined relevance”.

This event again offered new ideas and tools to “Drive Sales”

On the way to the airport with Jody Devere (@askpatty) and Gary May (@imacsweb) after the Innovative Dealer Summit in Denver, Jody asked me a great question after any event; “What was the one thing you got out of the event?” My response was that dealers continue to go to these events and get new information and do not act on it. As DD9 starts and next weeks Driving Sales Executive Summit begins, more dealers will gain new information and fail to act on it. Dealers: Just Do It.

If you continue to attend these events and you turn to your General Manager, Internet Manager or you are one and say “That was great information. We should do _________ (that)” Go back to your store and start to place “that” into action. It is difficult to start a project unfamiliar to most dealers. It does take work, but be patient and start off slow. Open the communication in the store to get feed back from the departments. It’s ok to get the “why are we doing that” from employees. Why are we on Twitter? Why do we have a dot org site? Just Do It or at least Just Try It.