We've all heard the statement "are all your eggs in one basket?"  But are all your eggs in one basket when it comes to online reviews?  A couple of months ago, we all learned that lesson when Google changed the way of the star ratings on the Google Places page and only counting the Google reviews in the star ratings on the search results.  I heard of some dealers go from 400+ reviews to less than 20 Google reviews due to focusing on one review site.  I think we all look at reviews in making a large purchasing decision and we may even hit a few different websites to see what people have to say.  It is no different when it comes to vehicle purchases.  I never really saw the importance of being diversified when it comes to online reviews until this week when I attended a seminar hosted by cars.com.

What cars.com found in their tracking within their site was 73% of used car shoppers did consult and read the online reviews of the dealership.  That potential customer is four times more likely to submit a lead or call the dealership based on the reviews that were submitted.  On the new car side of things, 91% of the shoppers will look at the reviews and see how customers rated the service department.  They want to see how they will be handled after the sale.  Service departments will see 3-5 times more customers than the sales department every day.  This shows the importance of getting the service departments involved in the review process.

One thing that we are always concerned about is that bad online review.  Guess what?  It happens.  The potential customer will find the reviews to be more credible if there would happen to be a marginal review within the site and you have responded to it.  The key is, how did you interact with that customer after the online review?  Did you give them an option to contact you to resolve the issue at hand or did you just ignore it?  Are you acknowledging the positive reviews?  Remember, your possible future customer may be reading that review and may determine if they come or not come to the dealership to give you a shot at their business.

So what are the steps to getting those online reviews?  Cars.com did have a good philosophy here and included 4 steps*.

1. Monitor - Listen to feedback across the internet.  Share the feedback across the dealership.
2. Respond - Acknowledge and reply to the feedback given.  Correct any underlying issues at the store.
3. Ask - Deliver a positive customer experience.  Ask satisfied customers to write a positive review.
4. Promote - Share positive reviews with prospects.  Reward the staff  for success.

Cars.com did share numbers with us that shouldn't scare dealers.  In the last few months since they started offering online reviews, they have received 12,500+ reviews with the average score of 4.4.  79% of the reviews were rated a 4 or 5 star.  Only 24% of the dealers on cars.com had reviews.  Are you part of that 24%?

I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic and diversifying yourself with your reviews.

*Info taken from cars.com slide

Here we are.  The conference season has ended. Two words may come to mind, information overload. There have been three conferences in the last week and a half that are all noteworthy. Obviously, Driving Sales Executive Summit, Digital Delaer 11, and Jim Zeigler’s Internet Battle Plan. So what is the map to success and get the results that you want after these great conferences?

We have all heard and seen all of the conversations and tweets about who’s is bigger, better, better content, etc. Well, I have news for everyone. They are all good. My thoughts have always been if you can take away at least one component from the wealth of industry leaders at ALL of these conferences, you come out ahead. It is perceived value and what you do with it is the key.

So what happens when you get back to the store? You have all of these awesome ideas in your head and what you want to do, but when you sit down with upper management, we as dealers are all known to drag our feet a little to make it happen because you don’t know where to start.

• Go through all of your notes and sort what’s the most important to you and to the store.
• Create an action plan and act on it.
• If you need to see another demo of a product, schedule it. If you don’t follow up with the vendors, they will follow up with you.
• Use your network. Over the last two weeks, you have hopefully been able to connect with a lot of industry leaders. Use them. Call them, tweet @ them, shoot them an email, etc and bounce ideas off them and see how that product or idea can help your store’s success. The connections that I have made at conferences and workshops are priceless.
• Stay with it when you implement something, make sure that you stay with it. I have seen great ideas before, and the execution was horrible and was a huge failure. All of the ideas have value to them, it’s what you do with them and execute. Comes back to people, processes, and execution.

To the Dealer Principals and General Managers. Have an open mind. I would venture to say that 99.9% of the ideas and products all have value to them. Listen to what the managers that went to the conferences have to say on what they learned and let them run with an idea. There is proven success with about everything that was presented the last week and a half.  Yes, it may cost some money, but if you don’t get your return, just cancel the service that you bought into since most contracts are month to month. If the idea isn’t working after 90 days of diligent dedication, scrap it.

I will end this with a friend’s quote out of his latest book, “You Are The Brand Stupid.”

“Understand yourself and what you offer
Understand your market and what they want
Match offer with what your market wants.” -Tracy Myers 

So I'm curious.  What are the things that you learned and want to take back to the store and implement?

Friday is my 15 anniversary in the automotive business.  As I reflect on the last 15 years, my, how things have changed.  Here I was 3 months before my wedding, and I had no job.  I decided to pull into a well known dealership in our area where I grew up with the owner's kids.  I went in there, and who do I ask for?  The owner of course.  He wasn't there, but his daughter was who graduated a couple years ahead of me.  I ended up speaking with her and the GM and they were looking at adding a position within the dealership; a Lease Retention Manager.  Fifteen years ago, a CRM was just spreadsheets spiral notebooks, and a card file with 3x5 cards.  I digitalized our follow-up with the leases that were up within 3 months of termination, got them in, and got them with the salesperson that sold them the car originally.  If they were an orphan, I would take it cradle to grave.

That position lasted a whole 4 months and ended up doing F&I due to resignations and terminations.  I remember there were 2 of us, and the other was terminated.  I was on my own for the month of May.  That month, I delivered 187 cars by myself.  There was no selling involved.  Do you want credit insurance? Do you want a warranty?  Great....NEXT!  I remember people waiting 4 hours to get into my office to button things up.  When my help arrived, her first day was at the local tent sale.  Not only did I have to get deals bought and deliver them, but had to try to train her in the process.  In that 4 day period, we sold 100+ cars.

Next came the internet.  Who knew what this beast was going to be what it is today.  I remember getting all of the Autobytel leads via fax, calling and trying to close them.  That was my first glimpse of the internet.  No one knew how important it was to have photos on a website, but I was doing it.  It was just a place in space that people may stumble upon.  Google?  Well, it was nonexistent.  If you were lucky, you had dial up with AOL paying the $9.95 a month.  Marketing involved TV, Radio, Newspaper, and if you were lucky, the free car publications that you would pick up at the gas station that we would pay $150 per week for a full page ad.  Yes, we had websites that were provided by the OEM's, but we didn't know what we were doing.

A couple years later, I found myself at a Volkswagen store.  The internet was starting to take off.  CRM's were starting to hit the market.  Some were OEM mandated and wanted you to respond to the customer within 24 hours.  24 hours?  They would do their best in tracking those times through their mandated lead management systems.  We had the beepers to alert us to let us know that there was a lead in the system.  Pictures were still a little nonexistent on most dealer websites.

Then came along the third party sites.  The kbbs, cars.com, autotrader.com, and, edmunds.com.  I still remember to this day a customer coming in and saying that they knew what we paid for a new car.  That was the game changer.  At the time, we would all be selling cars at retail and no one would stop us.  Then they would go to edmunds and get our invoice pricing.  We went from selling cars at sticker to splitting the profit down the middle or selling at a set percentage over invoice.  It was fair in the customer's eyes and in the dealer's eyes.  

Then came the Internet Manager responsible for all of the leads, getting photos up on the website and third party sites, getting vehicles loaded every day, etc., etc.  Also, I remember doing research on all of the different vehicles that we had in stock.  It was a manual version of vAuto of going to all of the different websites to see how to price a vehicle.  About every dealer had one;  and when I say one, I mean one.  One word comes to mind....stressful.  I remember taking the leads from cradle to grave.  The boss would call me when a lead would come in to make sure that I got the alert on my beeper since we had 2 at the dealership.  Then, if you were lucky, they would add another person to help out with the leads.

Here we are today, 15 years later.  Everything for the most part is automated in inventories loading and pushing out to the different website providers.  We are still getting those same leads as we did 10 years ago, but they are all digital.  We have solutions like vAuto, VIN First Look to help us price vehicles;  CRMs like Autobase, VIN, Higher Gear, etc to help us with the whole follow up processes with floor traffic and internet leads.  

But 15 years later, a lot is the same.

1. We have to sell ourselves, the dealership, and the product
2. We have to do follow up.  Now, we just have a lot of reminders with the CRMs.
3. The customer still has to come to the dealership.  The internet doesn't sell cars, we do.
4. We have to stand out.  Before it was stand out in person, but now we have to stand out on the internet, in our phone skills, and be different than the next guy that emails that same customer.  
5. We have to be more transparent than ever.  All of the information is out there now.

So many of us have heard the story of Morton's Steakhouse monitoring their social media and going above and beyond with meeting Peter Shankman at the airport with a full steak dinner.  That is just one example of a small business watching their social media.  I'm sure that Morton's didn't know that they would get the publicity that they got among all the social media channels.  I know that when I am near a Morton's Steakhouse, I will probably hit one remembering the experience that Peter had with it.

Now, what about one of the biggest companies in the US watching their social media?  I made a call to AT&T because I knew that I was eligible for an early upgrade.  Little did I know that I would only be able to upgrade one of my phones on my plan, and not the other.  It all started with a tweet.  After I got off the phone with customer service, I tweeted out of frustration.  

I didn't know what to expect after tweeting that.  Here I am dealing with one of the largest companies in the country.  To be honest, I wasn't really expecting anything.  I was just plain frustrated with the whole thing and decided to vent on Twitter.  About 10 minutes later, I received a tweet from @ATTCustomerCare.  

I was shocked.  I did DM them my phone number for them to look into my account and received a call about 15 minutes after sending them my information.  They explained to me what the policies were for early upgrades.  I found out that my primary line was eligible, but not the other for about another 7 months.  I vented on the Social Media Customer Care Representative my frustrations.  I bought two Blackberries, signed contract the same day, and only one was eligible?  He understood where I was coming from.  We spoke about it and a few weeks later, I was on the phone with him again ordering 2 iPhones.  They waived upgrade fees, early termination fees, and expedited shipping to me.

So what does this have to do with the automotive business?  We as dealers have to be aware of what is going on out there and what people are saying about you.  It happens everyday and you may not know it.  

• You must have a strategy in place on how to handle situations.
• Pay attention.  Do searches or be alerted when someone tweets about you or the dealership.
• You have to respond to it, and not just 'let it be.'  If it is a frustrated customer, reach out to them.
• Be active and engaging with the consumer.
• Go above and beyond with the customer.  Do the unexpected.

CarZen just released their new and improved iPad app for their 120,000 consumers that have downloaded the app.  There have been some MAJOR changes to the app from the previous version.  They are claiming it to be your “one-stop-shop, bringing everything you need right to your fingertips.” The new version was just released on September 15.  In the previous version, it was primarily targeted for a new car buyer and just an information gathering app.  They have taken it to the next level.

CarZen has teamed up with Vast to receive the feed for inventory on the app.  They are receiving the feed for both new and used vehicles.  They also have incorporated listed dealers with dealer reviews from DealerRater (don’t dump them yet).  CarZen has also teamed up with Evox Images for the most complete package of images.  They teamed up with MotorMouths for 3^rd party reviews on different models from consumers and experts.  Lastly, they are getting their video from WheelsTV which is powered by Chrome Systems on new and used vehicles.

I played around within the app and was pretty impressed.  It is a very clean app and is consumer friendly.  The videos are current with the different models.  They are pulling all of the new and used vehicles and you can also submit a lead through the app to the dealer that has the vehicle listed.  There are links to the dealer websites when you are looking at the vehicle so that should generate some more mobile traffic to your websites.  You can also look at the vehicle history report if there is one available through Carfax. 

Down the road, CarZen will be opening up some advertising for dealers to bring your listings to the top of the search results pages.  Whether you like it or not, chances are you are on there and will hopefully generate more traffic to your websites.    

We all know that mobile and tablet usage is starting to increase month over month in the automotive world.  It is also said that someone that is on their phone/tablet are further down the sales funnel and are closer to making a car buying decision.  It will also come down to the merchandising of your vehicles.  Within the app, you can blow the pictures up to the full screen to look at the different photos that are fed into the app. 

After CarZen works a few bugs out of the system, they said that they will be promoting the app more so they can gain more traffic for not just themselves, but for the dealers also.  When it picks up some traction, that is when they are planning on opening up the advertising portion to the dealers.

The only down side to the app was that I couldn't find my dream car in my area, an Aston Martin DBS Convertible.

You can also watch their promotional video here.

com·pla·cen·cy

kəm-ˈplā-s^ən(t)-sē

It can happen to the best of us as managers, salesmen, service writers, all the way down to the service porter.  We can get complacent.  How does this happen to the best of the best?  It can happen easily and I was reminded of it recently.  The inner businesses (departments) within the dealership starts doing well, and we forgot how we got there.

Some love him and some hate him, but I just got done reading The 10x Rule by Grant Cardone.  Reading the book and then watching his weekly online G+ hangouts, I realized that I was getting a little complacent myself.  As a dealership, we are excelling and have some incredible growth in the last year and a half, but I have found myself guilty of complacency.   People will ask me, "How's business?"  I would respond we are "rocking and rolling and growing."  We can find ourselves happy with our performance, but there is ALWAYS room for improvement.  Even if it is moving 1 or 2 percentage points in closing rates, getting the up sell from the L.O.F. on the service drive, or improving a response time by hours or minutes.  We all have something that we can shoot for and improve regardless of how well you are doing in your department or field.

So how do you get out of that rut of complacency?  Here are a few things that I have found that is working for myself.

1. Surround yourself with positive people.  They will bring you back to the top of your game.  They may give you a new perspective on something that you didn’t see.  Eliminate the negative in your life.
2. Re-evaluate your goals.  Get them in front of you and shoot for them.  Don’t set them too low.  Shoot for the stars.  Grant talks about writing them everyday.  I’m ordering a whiteboard for my office so I will see them right on the wall in front of me everyday.
3. Find someone to keep yourself accountable to those goals.  One idea is make a copy of them and give them to other managers you work with.
4. Talk with veterans in the business.  You can always learn something new or get a new perspective on something after speaking with someone else.  My philosophy in life is ‘you learn something new everyday.’
5. Keep on reading.  The average person will read 1 book per year that relates to their profession.  Stay ahead of the curveball and read more.  Set a goal of how many books you can read in a year industry-related and go for it.  You can even take a book that is not a part of your industry and apply it to your industry.  It happens all the time.
6. Examine your processes and see what you can do better?  Are you mystery shopping other dealers to see what they are doing with their follow-up system?  Can you mirror that in someway to make your store more successful?  When I look at our processes, I see a variation of several stores and advise from a very highly regarded person in the automotive industry.
7. Stay educated in the industry.  There are a few conferences coming up as you all know well.  Get to one and learn something.  If you take something away from the conference, you will get your money's worth.

These are just a few things that I am practicing and trying to stay ahead of the 8-ball.  What are you doing to stay away from complacency?

I have written about this before, but I felt the need to do it again due to an experience we had the other day on Twitter.  I was going through one of my Twitter timelines on my personal Twitter account and noticed someone that I follow asking about repair shops in the area.  There was a conversation going on with her and another person in town and she was about to make an appointment with the service department that was recommended to us.  I chimed in from my personal account to try us out.  We have been known to save people money over the independent shops.  I then started tweeting from the dealerships Twitter account to her since she knew that I was the one actually tweeting to her. 

Through several tweets, we were able to set the appointment, and hopefully made a customer for life.  She said that she is going to be in the market for a new vehicle in the next 6-12 months.  After a few tweets, we set the appointment, she came in, and she ended up having a $350 service done on her vehicle that was needed.  (And we got cookies from the customer out of the whole deal.)

So what are you doing with your social media?  Are you actively going out and looking for customers on Twitter?  If not, I would suggest you do.  Do some local searches on Twitter for different keywords and interact with those prospective customers.  Search for car, oil change, service, tires, etc.  You may have a customer sitting in your backyard tweeting and you just may not know about it.  Get creative and you may just find a customer sitting at a Jiffy Lube or getting ready to make an appointment there and conquer the market!

When is it too little too late for a dealership?  Honda of San Marcos recently ran an auction on eBay for a 2009 Nissan GT-R.  The winning bid was at $55,100.  There was a ‘mistake’ on the listing within the auction and the final auction price wasn’t going to be honored by the dealer and they were offering the customer the same vehicle for $59,000.  Later, the dealership said that they would honor the winning bid and it was their mistake. 

I am all about dealers being successful, especially Honda dealers since I work at one.  Unfortunately, this dealer is hurt and is going to feel the hurt for a while over this ‘mistake’ on their eBay listing.  Their online reputation is completely shot and currently has 61 reviews with a 1.5 star rating.  There is now a Facebook page with 829 ‘likes’ that is bashing the dealership.  Honda of San Marcos actually shut their Facebook page down and is inactive due to this and opened another Facebook account where you have to request friendship with them.

So when is it too little too late?  When you have a mistake within management, you must own up to it.  Unfortunately, this is not what they did.  They did admit right off the bat that they had made a mistake and put it on the listing agent who was off for the week, but they didn’t own up to it and offered the vehicle to the customer for almost $4,000 more than the winning bid.  They shouldn’t have dodged the phone calls from the customer on that Monday morning.  This may take a while for their online reputation management to get back up to par.  Yes, a lot of the reviews happened after the auction ended, and who knows how many of them are legit.  They will have to sort through all of this with Google and Dealerrater and the other online review sites that they have been bashed on. 

Honda of San Marcos will have to come up with a plan to overcome the hurt that has been placed on them.  They will have to get every one of their happy customers to try to bury all of the negative comments. 

You can read the whole story here with the customer comments and responses from Honda of San Marcos.     

Today, I went to Google and did a search on our dealership as I do everyday to take a look at our reviews to see if anything new has come accross.  Well, to my surprise, Google decided to change things up a little on the search results.  I looked at other dealers in my area and it was the same thing. 

Here are my findings:

• First off, you have the main site like before.
• Under the main site, you have specific pages within the website (i.e. inventory, service, used inventory, staff)
• Reviews are a little further down from where they were yesterday.

I am really liking the new format of the page.  What I can see is the customer can go right to the page that they are looking for whether it is service, new vehicle inventory, used, or any of your main pages that are hit on so they don't have to go digging within your website for the information they are looking for.

I am guessing that these are the most visited pages within the site and that is how they came up with what was listed in the separate areas. 

Do a Google search on your dealership and take a look at the new look.  Would love to hear thoughts on what you think on the new format.

I am just finishing up a great family vacation over the last week to Myrtle Beach.  As I think back, I think of the different experiences I had throughout the week and how it can relate to the car business.

One number stands out from the week. $55.67. That is how much we actually spent on 5 lbs. of fudge. That is not a typo.  It was 5 lbs. of fudge.  Crazy, right? I think back on it, and it was a total experience. It wasn't your typical fudge shop where you walk in and just pick out the fudge from behind the glass. It was a whole production. Picture four fudge makers working around the marble tables singing songs that they made up to tunes from the 50s and 60s. They sing, dance, hoot, and holler as they are making the fudge you are about to take home because they know they will have you sold. It was a whole production. They give you samples as they are making the fudge. Then they go for the close and tell you all about the special. Heck! I got $72 of fudge for $56! What a great deal I got! O.K, maybe not, but I was caught up in the moment just like my wife and kids;  but most of all, I was sold.

Now, let's look at this from the car dealer experience.

1.  Are we doing the things and building the value in our fudge (make and model we are selling)?

2.  Are we doing the full walk-around (the whole production)?  Have fun with the customer after building some rapport. That will help you sell the fudge.

3.  Be confident. If you are not confident when you ask for the sale, you are showing a weakness with the customer and they will go for your jugular. Be strong in your presentation and justification in your pricing.

4.  Are we asking for the sale? I have to say that most of the sales that we lose are the ones that we don't even ask for it and give yourself a chance.

5.  Are we closing the deal with the customer? Yes, we have to ask for the sale, but we have to overcome the objections that the customer is bringing up (see Nicki's latest blog postings on overcoming objections).

If we take the sale of a vehicle like these guys that were making and selling fudge, you will be successful in getting to the end of the road on the road to the sale.