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?

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?

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.

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”

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.

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.

I wanted to introduce myself as a contributor to the Driving Sale community. My name is Gary Sanders and I am the Internet Director at Stevinson Lexus of Lakewood which is just west of Denver Colorado. This year I am celebrating my seventh year at Stevinson and tenth in the car business. I started at a Ford store in Colorado Springs in 2000 when I moved to Denver in 2001. In March of 2003, I was hired at Stevinson Lexus of Lakewood on the floor. When the Internet position became available I started with the basics of Internet lead comes in, answer and repeat. I then learned as a dealer we had to option to edit our Cobalt site. As I dived in, my first step was to the other Lexus dealers in the area then region to see what they were doing with there site. For the life of me, I could not understand why dealer had the options and the tools and did nothing with them? As my career, understanding and education continued, I recognized I had a truly great opportunity to take it to the next level. One person I want to thank and consider a friend that has guided me is Gary May of http://www.imacsweb.com/. He has been very helpful in sharing ideas and always great to chat to. He is the one that introduced me to sites like drivingsales.com and others. My post will be about dealer to dealer chats and how we can improve. From sale, fixed ops to training. Although titled “It not all about the vendors”, I encourage everyone to comment. Thank you to Jared, Bart and the Driving Sale team. Follow me on twitter @DenverLexus and recently created @cardealerblog

I wanted to introduce myself as a contributor to the Driving Sale community. My name is Gary Sanders and I am the Internet Director at Stevinson Lexus of Lakewood which is just west of Denver Colorado. This year I am celebrating my seventh year at Stevinson and tenth in the car business. I started at a Ford store in Colorado Springs in 2000 when I moved to Denver in 2001. In March of 2003, I was hired at Stevinson Lexus of Lakewood on the floor. When the Internet position became available I started with the basics of Internet lead comes in, answer and repeat. I then learned as a dealer we had to option to edit our Cobalt site. As I dived in, my first step was to the other Lexus dealers in the area then region to see what they were doing with there site. For the life of me, I could not understand why dealer had the options and the tools and did nothing with them? As my career, understanding and education continued, I recognized I had a truly great opportunity to take it to the next level. One person I want to thank and consider a friend that has guided me is Gary May of http://www.imacsweb.com/. He has been very helpful in sharing ideas and always great to chat to. He is the one that introduced me to sites like drivingsales.com and others. My post will be about dealer to dealer chats and how we can improve. From sale, fixed ops to training. Although titled “It not all about the vendors”, I encourage everyone to comment. Thank you to Jared, Bart and the Driving Sale team. Follow me on twitter @DenverLexus and recently created @cardealerblog