Many of us have been sales managers at one time or another. We know there is pressure associated with needing to meet goals, managing the huge range of personalities in the sales and support areas, keeping track of inventory, understanding finance, and any of another ten million things that go into doing the job right.

This infographic by our friends at MindFlash gives a nice (and somewhat humorous) representation of the components of being a strong sales manager. The best sales person is not always good at being a sales manager. Conversely, a good manager may not be good at managing sales. It really takes the right person to be a strong sales manager.

Are you one?

Click to enlarge.

With this information, is there anything you can recommend to help someone be a better sales manager?

Recent news of gas prices potentially dropping a little over the summer is great news for consumers, but we're still nowhere near the days of truly affordable gas. As people buy cars, reward them with a printout of this nice infographic.

Our friends over at AutoMD put this one together to encourage the right maintenance and to offer tips for drivers to be able to get the most out of their vehicles. Print it out and give it to them (with your business card attached, of course). You can also embed it on your website or blog as a resource.

Any time we can help our customers save money, we're building value in our relationships with them.

Click to enlarge.

Some of the most important marketing tools start off with a completely different use in mind. Texting is one of them.

Anyone who has a teen with a smartphone knows that it's a "best practice" to have an unlimited texting plan. They love it. Most adults have embraced texting over the years as a good method of communication. Whether you're one of those people or not, you should definitely at least be looking at the different ways to integrate text messaging into your marketing strategy.

It doesn't necessarily even have to be outgoing. Sometimes, encouraging potential customers to contact you via text is a quick and easy way to collect more information about them. They don't always want to call and talk to a salesperson, but a text message is less direct (at least that's the perception). It offers a degree of separation that some customers crave.

Texting is big and getting bigger. You should be collecting cell numbers through text messaging whenver possible. Those teens of today who are texting like crazy are the buyers tomorrow.

Does anyone have anything that they're doing at their dealership to use texting in marketing, either outbound or to collect opt-in cell numbers?

If there is one constant on the Internet, it's change. Remember the days when dealers would show their websites and enthusiastically say, "Yep! It's flash!"

Now, of course, Flash is almost a dirty word in car dealer website design. Trends come and go. Fads pop in and pop out. Everything is changing.

In web design, being on top of the latest trends are good, but it's always important to keep an eye on "what has been" and "what will always work." Identifying these things can be a challenge, of course, and so it's imperative to be ahead of the game whenever possible.

To look ahead, you often have to look behind and take note of where we've been. This infographic below by our friends at KissMetrics puts it all into perspective with historical data on the evolution of web design.

Click to enlarge.

The thought crossed my mind the other day to search vendors for the different SEO packages they offered. I wanted to see where the high-end was and who was still hovering in the low-end, "make your site SEO-friendly" realm.

What I found surprised me. Those who have read my writing here in the past know that I do not get all controversial about topics - I prefer to stay productive and constructive at all times. However, I had to point this little tidbit out because, as someone who has been doing Automotive SEO for 4 years now, I found it disconcerting.

One size cannot fit all. When it comes to search, different cities, brands, and goals determine the level of SEO. A Mercedes dealership in a small town can get away with little or no SEO as they likely have their market covered. A Honda dealer in a large metro may need to have the latest and greatest "super-awesome-mega-SEO-package-of-the-month" just to stay above the fold for important searches.

I guess this is more of a question than a blog post -- am I missing something here? Is it realistically possible for any company to offer 1 or 2 different SEO pacakages and be able to cover the needs of any dealer, anywhere? Is SEO simply not given enough respect yet?

Sorry for the minor rant, but I'm baffled and could use some input.

Running a business in 2011 can be like walking through a landmine, particular in human relations. Employees seem to have more rights today than ever before and business owners must be careful not to fall into traps.

Most dealerships have an "HR Lady" or gentleman who handles questions about insurance, compliance, and hiring. The prospective employees are getting better informed and running the show like this is not only old but can also be risky. How can someone relying on memos and copy machines keep up with a LinkedIn world?

This Infographic by our friends at MindFlash puts it all into perspective and gives us an enjoyable view of the difference between the HR Lady and HR 2.0. Click to enlarge.

This is a portion of an article titled Why the Automotive Industry is Shifting to New Media.

While social media is the “new sexy” in the industry, search is still the primary tool that consumers use to research different vehicles. Once they make their decision on which vehicles to consider, the go again to the search engines to find the vehicles themselves. OEMs such as General Motors may be spending millions on making a splash in social media, but they continue to use paid search as a primary means of driving traffic both to their corporate properties as well as their dealer websites.

Organic search is trending as the primary method of driving traffic at the dealer level. The vast majority of dealers in the US utilize some level of search engine optimization to help get their websites ranked higher. The industry has turned into one of the most competitive with major metros crowded with dealers and 3rd-party lead vendors vying for the top 10 spots for high-volume searches.

“It’s a mess compared to what it was like just a year ago,” said James Bradford, President at TK Carsites. “Everyone is optimizing to some extent. The difference between the dealers who are ranking at the top and the rest of the pack is in the quality of their Automotive SEO. Solutions are not created equal and those who really want to make it have to step up.”

Despite a robust and effective social media marketing strategy, Chuck Capps at Advantage Nissan is still seeing over 60% of their traffic coming from organic search. “We’re selling vehicles through many different channels, but search is still our bread and butter.”

As Google and Bing continue to improve the way they rank sites, dealers are focusing on getting their inventory, specials, and various profit centers on as many search results as possible. (continue)

When a good friend of mine tried to contact me about an Infographic he was working on, I knew that it was going to be both huge and likely related to automotive. As a lead at Car Insurance Quotes, it only made sense that most of his work surrounds the car business in some way or another.

When I first saw the graphic today, I was blown away. It wasn't just the longest and most detailed automotive infographic I'd ever seen. It was the longest infographic, period.

I had been a long-distance friend of Muhammad Saleem for over a year when I first met him in person at Blogworld in 2009 right after speaking at the Driving Sales Executive Summit. I introduced him to another good friend who was working in social media at the time - Jared Hamilton. They hit it off, but Mu was not involved at the time in the automotive industry.

Perhaps he would make a good fit at the next summit? I sat on a panel with Mu at MIT last year and the exchange was extremely compelling. Here we were at the head of a lecture room in the most prestigious technical college in the world spewing on and on about social media. The topic of automotive came up and it stirred an interesting series of discussions - at the time, unbeknownst to the spectators, Mu and I had clients who... how should I say it... didn't care much for each other.

I would love the opportunity to speak with him again on a panel. Now that he's in automotive marketing, I think it would be a great fit. Jared?

Oh, and here's the infographic.

Every few months, we see a dip in sentiment regarding social media. It's been going on consistently since early 2009 and we know that it will continue. Dealers try social, see little reason to continue, and set things on autopilot or abandon it altogether. Then, something changes that makes social media more important and the searches for "Automotive Social Media" spike again.

Get ready to do the search. Social just got more important again. A LOT more important.

During the Digital Marketing Strategies Conference in Napa last earlier this month, I gave a keynote that highlighted Google's commitment to social media (as soon as Jared, Bart, and Arnold send me the video, I'll be happy to post it here... hint, hint). Google reaffirmed that commitment in a big way earlier today that will change the way savvy dealers do social media.

Google Social Search is a game changer - even SearchEngineLand, a blog that is often conservative about the impact of Google changes, agrees. It will insert links into the natural search stream based upon social connections that share and produce those links. While social search itself has been around for nearly 2 years, it has always been a side-note buried at the bottom and likely unnoticed by most. Now, it has the potential to change the search results important to us with a single Tweet, review, or blog post.

With access to Beta, I did 2 searches for "Washington DC Chevrolet." The first, I did while not logged into Google, personalized search off and cookies cleared:

Then, I did the exact same search while logged into Google:

As you can see, a post by good friend Paul Rushing popped up at the top.

What does this mean for search and social? It means that social sentiment, which many dealers are paying attention to more regularly, just got that much more important. It means that dealers who are unprepared have the potential to see their search traffic drop, particularly if a competing dealer in the market is able to take advantage of this.

It means that YOU can beat them all to the punch and start getting prepared today before it rolls out fully.

I am in the middle of exhaustive research on the subject right now, but here are some key points to think about while you wait for our next version of the Automotive Social Media strategy guide:

• - Tweets Matter. A Lot. - Imagine a potential customer doing a search for one of your makes in your metro area (the most common new car search; "Denver Ford," for example). They under one of the results close to the top your dealership's listing. It's not at the top, but something catches their eye... Co-worker Debbie tweeted your dealership URL. They click through and see that 14 months ago, Debbie bought a car there and tweeted about how good her experience was. Bingo.
• - If You Thought Reviews Were Important Before... - As Google always does when they roll out new search features, we can expect expansion. While Facebook is almost completely out of the question for integration, reviews are definitely part of the equation. Same scenario as above, except replace "Tweet" with "RatePoint." Bingo again.
• - That Pesky Blogger... - Remember the guy who thought he'd wreck your business by posting on his blog about how you low-balled him on his trade? You were smart and covered your Google page one results to keep his post off, but now it's showing up again for hundreds, even thousands of people who are either connected to him or connected to someone who shared his post on social media.
• - Your Connections. - Now more than ever, having a strong and well-maintained Twitter account is important. Do you still have an RSS feed handling your Tweets, driving potential customers to unfollow you, or are you growing your account and being interesting? If the subtle, intrinsic benefits of Twitter didn't get your attention before, how about moving your website up to the top of hundreds of searches? Still want to automate?

I'm not going to sit here and say "I told you so." Not here. Not on Driving Sales. The dealers here represent the top echelon of automotive social media knowledge so you're probably taking advantage of social media in one way or another. Don't let up. Stay aggressive. Keep up with the changes.

And don't forget to bug Jared about getting me that video. It has some information that may further change the way you do your social media.

While dealers have been paying attention to social media for a couple of years now, it hasn't been until recently that the effort and investment has been put into hiring employees directly engaged in the field. It has been pushed off on Internet managers, sales people, and occasionally college-bound children of owners and general managers (more often than you probably know).

This infographic design by our friends at SocialCast puts the job into perspective in a way that will hopefully shed some light on what a full-time social manager's day looks like. We don't necessarily have to understand what it is that they're doing, but we definitely need to know that there is a distinct ROI involved.

When done right, there is.