If you want to get rich on the lot today just listen to a few “consultants” that consider themselves “gurus.” Like millions of Americans did when Tom Vu told them how to make real estate millions in his free seminar that was used to sell the more expensive seminar. We have a lot of Tom Vu's in the car business today and while they’re not as entertaining (and don’t go everywhere with 5 gorgeous women in bikinis) they’re professionals at taking dealers’ money. “Do you think these girls like me? No! They like my money.” – Tom Vu

I'm going to sign up for thirty conferences over the next twelve months so I can take notes on how to talk well in front of groups and convince people I am an authority on something that is actually meaningless. I LOVE seeing all the pictures of the same bust-outs sitting at the same tables taking notes on the same things… It almost reminds me of college except the courses were different and were taught by real experts. None of the people that present at the automotive conferences, barring a select few, have any real dealership experience or any academic qualifications. I check LinkedIn constantly and am amazed at what 3 months at two different dealerships can produce by way of “experts.” So, I’m going to take my years of dealership experience along with my academic credentials show them all up. Get ready for the realness! “There’s an old American saying. It’s called, ‘Get off your butt and do it!’” – Tom Vu

I always laugh when I see the same piece of content on 10 different sites promoting the next workshop where "professionals" are going to give you all this great actionable content. The last "workshop" I went to was nothing more than a pitch fest, where nothing was shared except a bunch of worthless noise with handouts of how to contact the pitchers. “You can be successful like me” –Tom Vu

There is some decent content shared at these events but it's all about the Benjamin’s, to think any differently would be delusional. Why would companies or consultants spend the money to be there and provide the content? Nobody is going to give away their intellectual property for free… Are they? If it’s so valuable, why would they? I really respect and enjoy select events and that’s a fact however there are others that are quite literally a never-ending pitch focused on self-promotion and that’s it; nothing less and nothing more. Those are the ones that are a total waste of time and money. “Take the greatest vitamin in the world!” – Don Lapre 
 
I know all of these people by name and every time I see reference to one of them I think of the car people I can associate with each one. I won't publicly draw any inferences because if you’ve been in this space long enough you can do it for yourself. “The Making Money Show” – Don Lapre 

Great salespeople are everywhere. We’re an industry that wants great salespeople everywhere. I want to make millions and if following the lead of others will help me do it then I am all in. I want to do things that will make me rich beyond my wildest dreams and I dream big!  If you sell a couple cars from it and experience negative ROI, it's your fault not mine; I did what you paid me to do… Right?

 Chris Vitale is Vice President of Sales at iMagicLab.  He has over 15 years of in dealership experience and is quick to call it like he sees it.  If you want a no holds barred look into ​effective CRM deployment and use subscribe to our blog here at DrivingSales and follow Chris @thecrmgod on Twitter. ​

P.S. If you can't see the humor here you need watch the videos below on YouTube and then Google their respective answers to the various government agencies that clamped down on their shenanigans! 

Technology is a collection of wonderful tools and processes that continue to develop and change at the speed of light. What worked last year in certain situations may be regarded today as a passing fad while other products have stood the test of time with minor improvements along the way. It can be a formidable task choosing what will work best for your dealership given how rapidly the move to obsolescence is today.

When pitches come in with a lot of sizzle (and very little steak) they all have one major underlying theme: They don't really tell you what they’re going to do to make you more money. More traffic, more leads, better follow up, exclusive, etc. data don't mean anything unless they can show how it translates into incremental business and directly improves the bottom line. To determine what works for your store would require an in depth audit measuring results based on bottom line improvements and determining the correlation.

Here are a series of questions to ask yourself to measure how successful your technology vendor or “consultant” can be in meeting the demands of helping you improve profitability.

• Do they continually improve their service to enhance your return or does the service remain stagnant without much change?
• Are they in constant contact with you in a one on one basis, not just emailed reports?
• Do they tell you what you want to hear or do they tell you what you need to hear?
• Are they asking for your input on how to improve their product to meet your demands? 
• Are their employees champions of the company?
• Are your employees a champion of the service?
• Will their executive management help an end user or do they defer when asked for help?
• Do they have a core that they do really well or do they have a massive menu?
• Do they constantly have a new widget or do they try to make their core the best in the space?
• If you need help can you get it or is it a process that seems to intentionally infuriate users?

Using their performance reports to determine value is self serving and how you answer these questions will help you determine what your current relationships really bring to the table. If you don't like the answers you come up with chances are you need to make changes to improve your profitability. 

Paul Rushing is the Search Marketing Manager for iMagicLab.  He brings over 15 years of automotive experience to iMagicLab and stays ahead of the curve on search marketing and social . He can be found on Twitter and Linkedin if you dare...

We, as a society, have become more and more entrenched in the social media frenzy- both in our professional and personal circles. I have had always made it a habit to keep those circles separate, especially since I have spent most of my time in corporate America and the politics were much different than those of ours. I guess it boiled down to I didn’t want my colleagues or business partners to see my personal “activities”. Now in the auto industry, my philosophy on intermingling those circles has changed- and realize “everyone’s doing it” (as quoted by the great Will Ferrell in Old School after he was caught by his wife streaking). I think for colleagues and partners to see you in a different light allows them to get to know you on a deeper level and helps grow your relationship based on activities other than those solely related to business.

If you are like me and have chosen to combine your circles, I think there should be a checklist of sorts of what NOT to do (especially for us females out there) around the messages (posts/tweets/whatever…) being sent using any social media source. I have seen some of the most outlandish things as I’ve gotten more socially entrenched myself. I am not sure why someone would even want to (or think it’s remotely appropriate) share with their B.F.F. (Best Friends Forever) quite honestly.

My simple checklist for my “girls” out there would look something like this:

1. Keep pictures clean and classy
   1. Keep your shirts on
   2. Avoid exposing too much “personal” (anything you may not want to discuss in the Monday morning meeting)

• Stay positive: “If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all”
• Keep posts/tweets clean and appropriate for the larger audience



See, was that really that hard? It’s all about creating a positive presence so you can continue to earn the respect of the people in both of your circles. I’m not recommended changing who you are or producing a false image of yourself , but always keep in mind who’s reading, listening, watching. Share things that are brilliant that may help or benefit others (not necessarily how to do at-home Brazilian bikini wax on your boyfriend) but something you’d feel comfortable reading from someone that you follow in social media. “Be polite, be constructive; don’t be offensive”.

 



Carey Spillert is a Sales Solutions Manager at iMagicLab. She has recently come back to the industry after years of being a corporate powerhouse. You can follow Carey @theCRMprincess on Twitter and find her onLinkedIn.

Walmart has it down to a science. You can get your oil changed while you shop for an iPad and bananas. Kmart and Sears thought they had it down pat too. Have you been in a location of either of those stores recently and not felt like you were taken back to WWII Berlin as their model continues to evaporate? For those of us that remember Woolworths and their gradual decline may not be aware that they are now Foot Locker. They revitalized because they specialized.

Even the big players online, outside of automotive, don't diversify well. How many shuttered Google products are there? Google Wave, Google Video, Google Knol, iGoogle, Google Reader, Keyword Tool and many more. Why did they stop supporting these services? Because they took away from their core business and revenue model and they were a drain on recourses.

Trying to be all things to everyone does not allow you to do any one thing really well. The only perceived advantage you have is you're able to compete on price (although there's not really any savings in the automotive space) thus causing you to ignore important things like value, customer service and innovation.

When you fragment resources to serve the masses you wind up with mediocrity and layers that don't serve the company that created or the customers using them them well. You can't evolve to better meet the demand of the market. Bigger is not always better it is the antithesis.

In automotive the move to "one stop" solutions is creating an environment where dealers cannot differentiate from their competitors. OEM deals with technology providers really doesn't help dealers; it provides oversight and Tier One brand alignment. It doesn't allow dealers to establish their own identity and process to aid them in outpacing the same brand competitor down the road. They could care less which dealer sells their brand as long as it's their brand being sold.

Diversity is awesome in certain academic arenas and your stock portfolio as it creates well rounded people and investments. Serving the masses is a great way to profit if you don't have to provide excellence. Providing value and innovation requires dedication and singleness of purpose, you can't get that from one size fits all.

If you have a website, SEO services, SEM services, inventory, DMS and CRM all managed by one provider it makes accountings job easier (because it's so difficult to sign a check) and it's easier for the unmotivated and complacent individual who doesn't see the real value of each of the services but views them as "necessary evils." If the same provider does all the same things for the same brand dealer 20 miles away, who gets better service? What about the store across the street that's competing for the same customers? Is it the dealer that pays the most? Is it the one that signed up first? Who knows...

It makes the job tougher for the people who rely on these tools to make the dealership profitable when they have to sacrifice quality of services to be in the same bucket as everyone who uses the same provider. They don't get best in class at any level, they may get close on one but not all.

Real diversification comes from using providers that are not diversified and have a vested interest in providing best in class in the one thing they do extremely well.

Facts:

• 75% of the day on the front end should be devoted to selling cars no matter what hat you wear.   
• If consistency is a requirement then confidence will become standard.
• Salespeople should be responsible for creating opportunities.
• Sales Managers should insure that opportunities become transactions.

 Chris Vitale is Vice President of Sales at iMagicLab.  He has over 15 years of in dealership experience and is quick to call it like he sees it.  If you want a no holds barred look into ​effective CRM deployment and use subscribe to our blog here at DrivingSales and follow Chris @thecrmgod on Twitter. 

The Internet destroyed the car business!” We’ve all heard it… From the best self-proclaimed “gurus” all the way down to tenured sales people. We have portals where customers can virtually park used cars side by side and they have many times more information on what’s available than the personnel at the dealership. The story’s always the same. It reduces gross profit, it puts the power of the price and the pace of the transaction into the hands of the consumer. Customers can avoid the showroom until they’re ready to pull the trigger.

The only way the Internet has destroyed the car business is because people look for reasons to not do the things that worked in the past and they keep playing with all the new shiny widgets that they don’t understand but won’t admit they don’t understand it.

When I entered the car business 23 years ago the only "sales training" I received was product knowledge and how to find customers. I was told to find a customer, land them on a car, fill out a buyers order (all the blanks), get a manager, sit down, shut up and listen. Lather, rinse, repeat.   Pretty practical on the surface. And you know what was magical? It actually worked! It still does, by the way; the basics still work beautifully.

As a sales manager, 16 years ago, I’d interview and hire people and the first question I’d ask is "How big is your book of business?" That’s what was really important, how many opportunities could someone bring with them to the store. Has all of that been lost today? We need to get back to the basics as an industry and fast.

I was taught how to network and prospect and first and foremost how to stay in touch with my sold customers. Mining those contacts for additional sales and referrals was a big piece of the puzzle. I’d dig out customer files from five years back and call and work them. I called the lists of prospects the manufacturer sent the dealership that requested information via print media. I even picked up the phone and made cold calls, imagine that today. After a few years of doing this I had a book of business where I didn’t have to do these things anymore, then I went into management, sigh.

The internet has created an industry where we wait for the opportunities to come in, the art of finding the deal is lost. If it’s not lost then it’s hiding because no one talks about how to do it anymore.

What I was taught pre-Internet still works today and using the technology that’s available makes the job that much easier. Oh, and now I can use social media and the Internet to prospect too? Wow! What a great time to be in the car business! Just don't sit around waiting for things to happen… Make them happen!

Go find someone and sell something.

Paul Rushing is the Search Marketing Manager for iMagicLab.  He brings over 15 years of automotive experience to iMagicLab and stays ahead of the curve on search marketing and social 

Day in and day out your BDC department turnover ratio should be well over 150% if you’re trying to maximize ROI without increasing your monthly nut. Your seats need to turn over three times a day!!

It's how you man (and woman) those seats and how the turnover is calculated that will add directly to your bottom line. You need product specialists talking to your potential customers and following up with sold customers. Who does the customer have the strongest relationship with – the person they agree to spend money with, that’s who.

Operate with "Universal Soldiers"

Put a revolving door on your BDC and have your salespeople filling those seats on a daily basis. They don't need to be there all day. They need to be setting appointments with fresh leads and following up with their sold and unsold customers. If they are good enough to put on the point to sell cars for you they better be good enough to talk on the phone and email your customers. If they can't do that, you don't have a process problem, you have a hiring problem.

Give customers a single point of reference and let your sales people work the customer cradle to grave. Dealers and OEM's spend thousands of dollars supporting sales staff but adding personnel to do the work you are paying the sales people to already do creates an expense that you can never out run. It's the law of diminishing return.

For Example:

8 BDC reps x $30,000 per year plus a $60,000 manager = $300,000 in salary expense. In order to break even on salary expense alone a dealer would have to sell an additional 150 cars at a $2,000 average gross just to break even, not including return on capital expense, additional sales commissions,  benefits, or employer matching. If you were able to realize an additional 300 cars per year from adding a dedicated BDC your expenses would increase geometrically just in added bonuses and increased cost of goods sold in the form of sales commissions.

If you create a process where every sales person works every lead from start to finish and help them increase their bottom line you will accomplish several things:

·         Sales people will take ownership of the process

·         You’ll return more using less without increasing overhead or potential liability

·         Develop more loyal customers and let them identify with your employees

The investment then would be in training and helping your most important employees to do their jobs better, which in turn will help you attract and retain talent and cut down turnover on the front end.

It really boils down to your philosophy. You can outsource BDC, have professional greeters, product specialists, closers, F&I managers, delivery specialist and outsourced customer follow up or you can let your front line really represent you and your store. The choice is yours…

 

 Chris Vitale is Vice President of Sales atiMagicLab.  He has over 15 years of in dealership experience and is quick to call it like he sees it.  If you want a no holds barred look into ​effective CRM deployment and use subscribe to our blog here at DrivingSales and follow Chris @thecrmgod on Twitter. 

I’m sure the first question being asked is why anybody from a CRM company would bother writing anything that doesn’t have anything to do with CRM in the first place. The answer is simple: CRM is but one component needed, in my opinion, to run a successful automotive operation today. While I believe it’s one of the most critical, there are other things necessary for a store to be successful in today’s hypercompetitive environment. Additionally, having lived and thrived in the retail automotive industry, I can; which, is in sharp contrast to that of all my counterparts.

Gross

It’s something that we’ve created and supported business after business and consultant after consultant alike to give us ideas and tactics in order to preserve. Profit isn’t a dirty word; there are some minimum metrics to which one must adhere. They are as follows:

• 30% net to gross in each department
• A blended average of $2,500 in gross per retail unit new and used including F&I, packs and holdback
• Department Margins: Parts 33%, Service 70%, Body Shop 60%
• Service and parts absorption: 85%

Expense

Total expenses should be 10% of total dollar sales or lower. What’s amazing to me is how many dealerships across the country have tremendous bureaucracy and are extremely “long” in their structure. We need to move toward flat organizations and less bureaucracy and fewer people doing non-income producing tasks. This reminds me of a scene from the movie Office Space and the character Tom Smykowski when he’s asked by Bob and Bob the management consultants what exactly he does when in fact he didn’t do anything. Here are minimum expense metrics that produce results:

• Sales management payout shouldn’t exceed 10% of total gross in each department
• Sales commissions shouldn’t exceed 20% of front end gross
• Total F&I payout shouldn’t exceed 20% of the total NET F&I income
• Total advertising notwithstanding rebates/credits should be 20% of total vehicle gross (NADA says 10%). The rule of thumb is $300 per vehicle sold before credits
• Floor Plan expense should be a push including credits
• Salaries and bonuses for all fixed op personnel shouldn’t exceed 30% of gross

Asset Management

This is pretty self-explanatory. Keeping in mind protecting the cash position and adding to it is the number one goal. Here are some metrics that will keep you safe:

• New cars inventory shouldn’t exceed a 60 day supply
• Used cars inventory shouldn’t exceed a 30 day supply
• Used car average ACV should be ½ of average new retail invoices
• Parts inventory should be a 60 day supply with less than 10% over 9 months and nothing over 12 months

Obviously there are other pieces, including office personnel comp, ideal staff sizes to maximize each person’s income while not compromising floor coverage (the trick is to not underpay and not flood the floor). .

 Chris Vitale is Vice President of Sales at iMagicLab.  He has over 15 years of in dealership experience and is quick to call it like he sees it.  If you want a no holds barred look into ​effective CRM deployment and use subscribe to our blog here at DrivingSales and follow Chris @thecrmgod on Twitter. 

Search engine optimization is an ever changing proposition, but it will never die.  As long as there are ways for people to look for information on the internet businesses will have to look for ways to be "optimized" to be relevant so people can find them.  If search becomes completely dominated with paid advertising, people will look for other ways to find the information they want.

SEO in automotive is simple as the bucket of keywords that dealers should optimize for is relatively small to get the most ROI.  To go after the avalanche of traffic that a well done SEO campaign can deliver depends on many variables from location of the dealership, to budget and purpose of the campaign.

The problem that I have seen, SEO is such an ever evolving art form and so many have been "burned" by cheap SEO that the confusion is compounded and the lack of information that SEO firms are willing to share with their clients or potential clients. 

10 things your SEO company won't tell you:

1.  Your, the clients, keyword wishes are worthless.  If clients choose the keywords they want to rank for it inherently makes the job of the SEO company easier.  The can either completely discount the clients request and say what you want is unreasonable or realize that you handed them a list of keywords that requires little effort to accomplish.  Unless the client has done the research chances are they do not know the true value of their wish list.  Then again if the client is doing the keyword research they are doing the job of the SEO company, making recommendations based on value and budget.

2.  Localization his highly defined.  Optimizing for "Major Metro Ford Dealer" is pretty much wasted effort unless your address it "123 Main Street Major Metro, State 00000-0000" unless you have a page optimized really well showing consumers why doing business with you is worth their effort if you are not located in the defined area.  With localization that is being offered by search now major metro searches are returning results based on the search engines users location and radiating from there.  "Brand dealer" searches are even tighter.  If you are trying to capture traffic based on searches from users not in your direct market area go for it.

3.  A well designed content strategy would remove the need for paid SEO.  Content is KING and you need a lot of it.  A few paragraphs on the home page in hidden divs is not going to help you get the mountain of traffic that a well planed content strategy will deliver.  To capture the "long tail" you need to be adding content on a regular basis to your website.  Best accomplished by a blog with relevant content about your business, it's employees and the products you represent. 

Is your dealership the same as Down the Road Motors?  Do you do things just like they do?  You sell the same brand of cars, have about the same inventory, so there’s no reason for a customer to do business with you versus them… is there?  If you’re different than your competition why do you look just like them online?

Cookie cutter is good at Christmastime, but day to day it makes you pretty boring.  In the eyes of your consumers, a Chevy store is the same as the next one if you look the exact same online.  What can you do to look different than Down the Road Motors?

The cookie cutter template websites have gotten a lot better over the past couple years but it's everywhere else dealers are suffering from “sameness.”  Portals (cars and autotrader), regional manufacturer sites and the process and procedures that are given out by manufacturers and vendors alike encourage being too similar.

I challenge you to differentiate yourself from your competitors.  We all know dealers should take pictures of their new cars, most don't.  Almost none give unique descriptions of their new cars and rely on VIN data to populate options.  Those that empirically trust that data have never dealer traded for a vehicle and the car that comes in not "as called" by the maroney data.

When is the last time you raised your hand at a regional ad meeting and said “give me the money back, I can do a better job!”  Do you really get the bang for the buck those regional dollars supposedly buy?  I could do a phone audit of your ROI and show you that you’re being screwed by your regional advertising agency, I promise!

Response time quotas are good and without them many dealers would miss following up on those leads at all.  What about the vendor that does not offer a customized plan of attack for using their tools that apply specifically to your store.  You gotta march to the beat of their drum, customized is not even in their vocabulary for implementation.

Damn being a cog in somebody else’s wheel! Drive your own wagon and dare to differentiate.  Yeah I work for a vendor that probably can't help you with 80% of this but that’s not what matters.  We want you to think about what’s going to make you and your store successful and maybe one day you’ll remember us and how we differentiate ourselves from the other big boxes on the market today!!

Paul Rushing is the Search Marketing Manager for iMagicLab.  He brings over 15 years of automotive experience to iMagicLab and stays ahead of the curve on search marketing and social strategies.