Car Dealers: Each of your BDC Reps or Internet Salespeople can produce 24 sales every month each, working by appointment, by following simple math!

Car Dealers: Each of your BDC Reps or Internet Salespeople can produce 24 sales every month each, working by appointment, ​by following simple math!

******Click here to download our FREE Internet Sales Process and CRM Checklist!******

If your dealership's response time is slower than your competitors, you are losing sales.

New and used vehicle shoppers are more web and tech savvy than ever before. They want information about vehicle(s) of interest prior to making the decision to visit your showroom.

Usually, the dealership that gets back to the consumer first, with the best information, has the best chance of turning that shopper into an appointment, which leads to a vehicle purchase. Quick response time to every shopper with QUALITY INFORMATION is key to a dealership impressing potential customers. Quick response time without quality information is useless and counter-productive.

Keep in mind that the email lead is a consumer communicating with the dealership DIGITALLY, not TELEPHONICALLY, to start. Therefore, it's advisable for the dealer to initially communicate back using the same method that the consumer did. Some dealerships' response process dictates that the first contact should be a phone call if a number was provided. I feel that it's better etiquette to email these folks back first, and then follow up that email with a phone call, rather than simply picking up the phone without first sending an email that sets up the call.

The best dealerships in the industry maintain an average response time of under 30 minutes, 24/7, consistently, every month.

How long does it take your dealership’s Internet Sales team or BDC to email a customized new or used vehicle quote to a prospect?

Consumers' primary question, most often, is "what's the lowest possible price you are willing to sell me the vehicle for?" But it's far from the only question. Customers also have questions about trade-in values, finance rates and lease programs, credit, maintenance schedules and cost, gas mileage, and warranty info. 

Does the email you're sending contain this additional information, or a link to view this information?

To read the rest of this article on CarbizAdam.com, click here: http://carbizadam.com/digital-marketing-for-car-dealerships/enhanced-automated-lead-response/improve-dealerships-lead-response-time/

Answering the question of whether or not car dealers should provide up-front pricing to Internet Sales leads.

I am often asked by car dealership Internet Managers, BDC Managers, Sales Managers, General Managers and Dealer Principals: Should I email pricing to prospect leads “UP-FRONT” or “AFTER WE SPEAK”? This free slide show presentation answers that question and explains why you should always strive to provide up-front pricing.

To learn more about Up-Front Pricing with Automated E-Brochures Click Here.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE SLIDE PRESENTATION

Happy Independence Day! A quick thought that I'd love your feedback about:

We've been researching the usage and effectiveness of heatmap and eye tracking testing.

a) Have you used it to measure your website? If so, what have you learned from it? 
b) If not, how come you haven't? What's holding you back?

Thanks for reading! Look forward to hearing your replies!

Adam Ross
National Sales Manager
Uperator, LLC
(201) 448-7253
http://carbizadam.com

There are several Enhanced Automated Response Tools designed exclusively for car dealers. They help car dealerships effectively respond to ALL email requests with robust, detailed information.

How can an Enhanced Automated Response Tool help car dealerships? Auto dealers receive hundreds, if not thousands, of prospect inquiries, or leads, via email every month- from the manufacturer, from their website, and from 3rd party websites like Craigslist, AutoTrader and Cars.com. The primary objective of the consumer submitting those leads is to obtain detailed pricing information from the dealership(s). Responding effectively and consistently to all of those leads can be a real challenge for dealers.

How many leads does your dealership receive monthly, on average?

Most car dealers have employed a CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, tool to centralize those leads into a powerful database, respond to all of those prospects and schedule future marketing and follow up. Dealership personnel can create and use email and phone templates, in order to reduce typing time, to both email vehicle information to prospects and log important call notes. Most dealers, however, do not use Enhanced Automated Response Tools. 

Does your dealership use a CRM Tool? If not, why not?

CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE ON CARBIZADAM.COM

Did you watch Car Lot Rescue on Spike TV last night? I did - it was both entertaining and inspiring!

As one who trains Internet Sales Departments in auto dealerships, it reinforced to me that without a well-trained, motivated sales team who have a positive attitude, it doesn't matter how much money a car dealership spends on advertising or how good their business development center is at bringing prospects through the door. The customer experience when they arrive will be lacking. Lack of product knowledge, combined with a lack of sales training from management, seasoned veterans and experienced trainers leads to inferior results and people turning over.

By the way - Claude, the Sales Manager, who Tom ripped into for not training his salespeople, was actually my GSM at the first dealership I worked at, 13 years ago. We had an EXTENSIVE new hire sales training program at the time, in which Claude participated, but ownership had been instrumental in ensuring that it happened.

It wasn't so long ago that salespeople couldn't work with a customer by themselves for at least 4 weeks - until they PROVED they could be a professional, but that practice is now long gone. For those who weren't around the business then or forgot, here's how it worked:

CLICK HERE TO READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE ON HTTP://CARBIZADAM.COM

This post was inspired by Eric Miltsch's question about using Salesforce.com as a CRM tool in the automotive industry.  http://www.drivingsales.com/forums/anyone-using-salesforcecom-crm-solutions For dealers, there are definitely better solutions out there, but most vendors and large companies use Salesforce or something similar. This is my 2 cents about it...

As a one-man operation running Infinite Prospects, I've been using Salesforce.com's Professional version (not the grand-daddy Enterprise or Unlimited Editions) to manage my history interaction with dealership prospects and clients from the day I opened my doors. I looked at several other cloud-based CRMs (Sugar, Zoho, and others) before deciding on Salesforce - though more expensive, it looked like it could "play better with others." I use Constant Contact and there's a nice tie-in between the two products. There are a lot of positives and I'm sure I'm still not using it to it's 100% fullest potential, but here are 6 of the biggest issues I've experienced along the way with Salesforce:

1. It's challenging to customize the system to work for your business. Unless you hire people to set up, administer and maintain the system full-time, it can be difficult for people to learn and understand how to set it up while simultaneously being responsible for a completely different full-time job. I had to customize the platform some with the help of a friend who worked as a Salesforce developer for one of their biggest customers. I know several of the larger companies in our industry that use it, but those are usually orgs with sales staffs in the 20+ range who hire a full-time staff to admin it.
2. The idea behind a great CRM is that the tool isn't only there to keep activity history records and provide management with stats on employees' productivity. Great CRM is supposed to help you find and prospect for business, and remind you who to follow up with and when. This can't be achieved in Salesforce without significant enhancements to the basic platform they provide, at the beginning, before usage habits develop. Automated schedules, triggered by the Opportunity Stage, can be programmed but are time-consuming to do.
3. Apps need to be installed, and sometimes purchased, from the Salesforce AppExchange to achieve your goals. This is an App Store for bolt-on products that third party companies develop code to perform enhanced duties that Salesforce does not natively provide. Having to purchase multiple apps, plus the time to install and set up other free apps, can significantly increase the cost per user. Apps exist that interface with Google Calendar, which can be integrated on desktops, browsers and mobile phones, allowing event info to partially sync with the system, but the eventss still then need to be tagged to a contact, account and/or opportunity. A different app had to be purchased to log all inbound and outbound email correspondence to lead and contact files.
4. Lack of a quality hard-line or VOIP interface that integrates with phones to automatically log inbound and outbound calls and assign them to prospects and customers. As a business owner and salesperson on the go, I am rarely in front of a computer with a phone next to it and a headset, the optimal way to log calls and activity in Salesforce. Since the CRM is completely web-based, there's no way to plug into a Vonage or Barracuda server. There's no direct link to Google Voice or Skype's call logs. As a result, many calls go un-logged, un-tagged and un-tracked. To be fair, I haven't heard of any non-server-based CRM tool that can do this, but THAT is something that could REALLY help my business.
5. Lack of a quality Mobile App. How is that possible in 2013, that the leader in the space doesn't have a decent one? You can make calls directly through the iPhone and Android Apps, but who wants to run their phone through Salesforce all day? One major limitation- the Salesforce app doesn't store ALL of your contacts - only a small portion of them (like 500). The Android App (iPhone won't let anyone see its call log file) has a decent look-back feature, which reads from your phone's call history log easily and enables you to Tag a call to a contact, account, and/or opportunity. However due to the contact limitation, if I get a call from someone I haven't heard from lately, to sync that call to Salesforce, I would first have to a) look them up as a contact in the app (loading from the server, which is sometimes very slow), b) let the server load their info into the cache of current contacts, then c) go BACK to the call log section of the app, find the call and tag it. And that's for ONE contact! Efficient? Hah.
6. Only 1 email address natively per Contact/Prospect that syncs with Google contacts? Why? They have fields for Work, Home and Mobile phone numbers that all sync... How many people do you know who ONLY have one email address today? How 1996 of them! Ask support how they want you to handle that - they don't really have a good answer.

Why, you ask, am I still using it if I can show these major glaring holes? Because, sadly enough, I still haven't seen anything that better suits my needs. It's far from perfect, but I have 3 years invested, and I got through the initial hurdles. To leave now would mean that I'd have to abandon all of the contact history. Sure - I can export the names, numbers, and database info, but the record of calls, meetings and emails cannot be exported. What gets lost in a changeover is too valuable to me at this point.

Thanks again, Eric, for getting me worked up and writing about this!

Tracking Traffic Is Crucial to Car Dealership Sales Success

As an expert who has helped hundreds of dealers sell more cars over the past 12 years, I've seen plenty of ways dealership sales departments struggle. Some of those struggles are incredibly difficult to remedy, while others, while requiring discipline, are relatively simple to address and fix. This recommendation falls in the latter category.

It should be obvious why every prospect who enters the showroom should be logged somewhere... The dealership can then thank them for coming in, follow-up to their visit, and then market to those prospects in the future. Statistics show that people who visit a car dealer without buying are often the best prospects for future sales. I am consistently amazed at how few dealerships have a process in place that enforce floor "up" tracking rules.

Too often, people go to a dealership, spend time with a salesperson, test drive a car, leave without buying - and then never hear from the dealership again. The likelihood of that scenario happening increases EXPONENTIALLY if the prospect information never leaves the salesperson's possession. When that happens, the dealership is wasting opportunity.

One of the most important responsibilities of automotive Sales Managers and General Sales Managers is to hold the sales staff accountable for the prospects they work with. That begins with the process of logging EVERY person who visits the showroom. When there is no consistent process in-place, it sends a subliminal signal to salespeople that management does not place top priority on maximizing EVERY opportunity that walks through their doors, and that it's OK to not turn in every"up" sheet.

GMs and Dealer Principals can get an accurate measure of their closing percentage, and track how the dealership is performing against local, national and brand averages. They can then use that analysis to both identify areas for improvement and coaching, plus adjust their advertising mix based on actual results. 

Is one ad source driving a lot of showroom traffic that's not converting? It's possible that the dealership needs to adjust the area in which it's buying leads from that particular source. Is a different source doing a really good job of delivering used car prospects to the showroom? Maybe the dealership increases the budget with that source to further increase floor traffic. The only way a  decision-maker can base those adjustments on actual results, rather that gut feel, is if they have the data.

The most simple, proven (stone-age-friendly) method is to number each "up" sheet (a form that EVERY dealership has), and each time a salesperson begins to work with a customer, they have to write the specific number of the sheet on a master log next to the stack of "up" sheets, which should be placed at the sales tower or in the manager's office. By the end of the day, the salesperson should turn in a copy to the front desk, so they can enter/update the prospect info in the dealership's CRM tool and/or on the desk log. If Joe Salesperson is on the list for taking sheet #18, he'd better turn it in by COB, or have an excellent reason why it hasn't been handed in.

Does your dealership have a process for logging every up and holding salespeople accountable for their sheets? Is there then a process in place for following up with those valuable visitors?

by Adam Ross, Managing Director at Infinite Prospects - Online Solutions for Car Dealerships

There are almost ONE BILLION registered Facebook users as of 7/22/12. You know that you need to have a presence, so you set up a fan page - but what should you be posting?

Keep in mind that the ultimate goal is to show up consistently in peoples’ News Feeds. That's how the "Rule of 7" in branding can take effect, and the fan can get a feel for the personality of the dealership. Studies are showing that visits by fans to Facebook business fan pages and their custom tabs is declining. However, once someone “Likes” the Fan Page, they then have the potential to see every post of yours in their News Feed without ever visiting the page again. Do not post every car you get into stock to people's news feeds or they will either block your posts from appearing in their feeds, or just un-like your page entirely - you just lost them.

Here’s the type of posting activity that will be relevant to fans:

• • • Local news – anything interesting but not controversial that you think your Fans would value.
    • Special offers – and make them exclusive to Facebook. People like getting something they think nobody else can get. Once you set up a Check In Deal (see below), you can create as many “Offers” as you’d like.

• • • Events – is something happening at the dealership or in the area?

• • • Coupons – service, discounts off of vehicle purchases
    • Funny items you find around the web involving cars or current events
    • Pictures of happy customers – try to get them to tag themselves and comment
    • Customer reviews / recommendations / testimonials
    • Community involvement – does the dealership sponsor little league, hospitals, municipalities, etc?
    • Surveys (Questions) – people love to give their opinions
    • Recipes
    • Local Gas Prices
    • Check-in Deal – create it, promote it, track it . There's a limit of one – ex. $9 oil change, $500 off Any Used Purchase, 15% off all parts, 10% off Extended Warranties, etc. People can use them and share them...
      • Facebook Offers Help Section - http://www.facebook.com/help/offers
      • Deals PDF Help Guide - http://ads.ak.facebook.com/ads/FacebookAds/Deals_businesses_US.pdf
      • How to Create a Deal Video Overview – http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10100211990206733

Adam Ross is the Managing Director of Infinite Prospects, Inc. Adam is a seasoned veteran of the car sales industry who has over 12 years of Automotive Internet Sales experience on both the dealer and vendor side, and educates car dealerships on maximizing sales and fostering relationships through technology. With hands on experience from the sales desk to management and high-level executive communication, Adam has thousands of connections in the automotive industry. From solutions providers, to lead generation websites, to implementing best practices for following up with prospects and closing appointments that lead to sales, Adam is the person you want to lead you through the technology landscape. He'll help you select the best sales technology for your car dealership, get your team running at top efficiency using the tools necessary for success, and maximize the capabilities of the solutions you already have in place. Contact Infinite Prospects at (201) 448-7253 to speak with Adam.

How come everybody isn't using Google Voice?

Here are 15 reasons why you should be, if you're not already…
This may sound like a commercial, but I am just a fan and user trying to pass on the idea.

• It's FREE with a GMail account.
• You can get a new phone number or port over an existing number.
• You can even choose your new number from an available list in most area codes.
• You can also have your number include a word or phrase like SALE (7253), if it's available.
• Free voicemail and call recording (optional).
• Route incoming calls to as many as 6 different phone numbers simultaneously - one phone number can ring to your office, cell AND home phone!
• Make calls from your cell phone's data plan with the free Google Voice app (iPhone, Android and even Blackberry) - save your minutes!
• Add a "Call Me" Button to every page of your website with the Google Voice Widget - customer clicks on it, types in their phone number, Google Voice calls them and then rings the phones you told Google Voice to ring on incoming calls.
• Free incoming and outgoing calls and text messages to the United States and Canada from your computer with the Google Talk app or Talk PC software from anywhere in the world with an Internet connection.
• Ties into your Google contacts, so all your phone numbers are probably already there
• Maintains a log of your calls, texts and voice mails.
• Make calls from your Chrome browser with the free Google Voice extension.
• You can change the phone number or port it to any other carrier at any time
• Give it out whenever you don't want to share your home, cell and/or work number
• Car dealerships can use it for call tracking and/or mystery shopping the competition.

by Adam Ross, Managing Director

Infinite Prospects - Online Solutions for Car Dealerships - (201) 448-7253 (SALE)

http://infiniteprospects.com