Over the last few years, Cobalt has been trying to win over their dealers and build confidence in them as a website provider.  In the last 12-18 months, they have really switched gears and wanted to focus on SEO.  With the help of Google Guru, Brian Pasch, they made some changes in how they can help dealers with their websites.  The biggest change in the last 18 months is the url’s on specific vehicles are now including year, make, model, and city with Brian’s suggestions which will optimize the search within Google, Bing, and Yahoo. 

Fast forward to July 21^st.  Cobalt just released PowerSEO.  There are only a handful of dealers on the program right now as it has just been rolled out.  PowerSEO is targeted to generate more organic traffic to the dealer’s website, which we all want.  Each dealer will be assigned an SEO specialist which will monitor and optimize the dealer’s website and pages with the dealer’s marketing goals.  They will do it all for you. 

1. They will set up all of the business listing pages on Google Places, Yahoo Local, and Bing Local.  They will also synchronize all of the information on online directories and yellow page websites. 
2. Monitor and analyze their website continuously for keyword content.
3. Perform regular optimization to improve the visibility of their website to search engines.
4. Do quarterly review of PowerSEO performance with the dealer.

Dealers will be able to access performance reports in the Dealer Command Center on a daily basis to see how they are performing in the search engines and see what the keywords that are working the best are.

Cobalt did do a pilot with 5 different GM dealers prior to the launch of the product.  They saw significant improvement in their organic traffic.  Traffic was up about 10% just due to the optimization tweaks that Cobalt did with the SEO Specialist.  The pages that they focused on were the New Vehicle Search, Used Vehicle Search, Finance, Hours & directions, and Parts and Service.  Here is a shot of what was improved:

 There There are obvious benefits to this program.  It will drive more organic traffic to your website, which has a higher closing rate than your third party leads.  Make you more visible on all of the search engines.  Increase your Google, Bing, and Yahoo search results pushing your competitors down the page.  The one thing that I liked is that it takes a lot of work off the dealer’s hands and they can focus on what we do best, and that is sell some cars. 

If you are a Cobalt dealer or have an ADP Digital Marketing package, you can contact Ellen Jones or your representative from Cobalt and they can get you set up with this program and take you to the next level. 

So many internet managers get so overwhelmed with sales end of the business, we forget about fixed operations. I think a lot of managers forget about that since it generally takes care of most of the expenses of the dealership and is a profit center and takes care of itself and we forget to put it under the microscope at times.  Fixed ops are the life and blood of the dealership and sometimes we have to be reminded of that.  How much business are we missing or turning away?

The phone is our first line of communication with the customer and IS our first impression with a call to service.  Yes, we have some walk in traffic like sales, but for the most part, people call in for a service appointment or to get a general question answered. We have to be sharp on the phone, if not; we may not ever see that customer in our service drive or even on the sales lot.  If we stumble through our answers to questions, we may look like we don't know what we are doing and we may never see that customer.

In my daily activities, I have always listened to phone calls to check on conversions from our website, but I never really listened all the way through on them.  I recently started doing this at the request of my General Manager. I started noticing short call times that were for service under and that were a concern. I got to thinking that it would have to be kind of hard to get all of the customer information and schedule the appointment under 2 minutes.  Then I really started listening to the calls.

So this will bring a question to the table. Are your Service Advisors clerks or salesmen?  In the last week, I have listened to a few calls where a customer would call in and ask what a diagnostic would be for a check engine light or how much a service was. We would give them the information and then the customer would say o.k., thanks and would hang up with the customer before even asking for an appointment or any customer information. Did those customers call back and make an appointment? I don't know, but it brought things to the surface where we have to change things on the service drive while taking phone calls.

I did decide to call a few dealerships for service and see for myself if other dealerships had the same issue in their service drive. My questions were the same and that I had a check engine light on and how much was the diagnostic cost?  I called 8 different dealerships, different makes, and of the 8 dealerships, I was asked for the appointment 3 times.  Not good.

A service call is no different than a sales call calling in on a specific vehicle. We have to engage with the customer and try to set the appointment.  Service advisors have to be on their toes.  So what can we do to make our service departments stand out?

1.  When a customer asks what a diagnostic cost is or what service is recommended and what the cost is, we have to give them the information they are looking for, but then put our selling shoes on and say "is there a time that you would like to get that scheduled?" instead of giving them the answer and ending the call.

2.  Keep the tone in your voice upbeat. I know there is a huge call volume to the service departments, but we have to try to stay excited on the phone. I have always said smile before you dial with sales guys, so smile before you pick up too.

3.  Don't be negative. If a customer wants to get in and there is no room for an appointment, offer solutions and keep the tone up.  Don't sound like Eeyore. Offer up letting the customer bring the car in and try to work it in if that is an option.

4.  Offer alternatives.  If for some reason you are booked with appointments, offer something like bringing it in and working it in and offer the shuttle to take them somewhere if need be.

If we stand out on the phones, just like sales, you will conquer the market in the service world.

Success....what is success?  Is it getting the sale? Is it making a huge gross on someone? Is it making the customer happy?  Is it treating the customer right even though you may not get the sale?  What is success?

According to Webster, success is "the achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted."

As I sit and watch paint dry at a city swim meet, I look at success as baby steps. Yes, I want my kids and the team to succeed and win, but what is success to them?  Yes, they want to win, but if they are improving their times, they are being successful in my eyes. Their view of success may be different than mine.  I know they want to win, if they don't, they feel like they may have failed because I am such a competitive person and have passed it on to them and they don't want to fail.  When they get out of the pool and look at the board and see their times, they are either elated, or they are instantly in the dumps because of their time either being better or worse than their seed time.  Another thing that they do is practice.  Two a days at the age of 10 and 12 to get to the level of success they need to be at and want to be at.  This brings another question to the table. Are there different levels of success and how do we get there?

There are three key ingredients to success; processes, people, and execution.

Processes

We all want to dominate the market and be successful. We have to make baby steps to get there and make that happen.  It won't happen overnight after putting one process in place or get one product that will change the world and make you dominate.  We have to look at our processes and make sure that they are successful in every step and we are making one more step toward the sale and making a new customer.

I know when I see another vehicle driving down the road with a temporary tag in the window with another dealers' logos all over the backend, I feel like we have failed and take it personal. I look at it like we weren't successful in our marketing efforts to that person.  We have to look at the whole sales process and Internet processes. Do we have the right amount of contact set up in our CRM? Are they quality tasks that we expect our teams to do?  Get insight from your internet salespeople and have them involved.  If they aren't quality tasks and they are 'faking them out,' change them or get rid of them all together.

People

We have to surround ourselves with good people. We have to make sure that we have employees that are wanting to be at their place of work and retire from there. If they don't want to retire from the place they currently work, you may have to step back and make sure that they are a right fit for the dealership. I have let someone go that was a top performer for the store, but he wasn't a team player and was out for #1.

Execution

This all comes down to the management teams. We have to inspect what we are expecting. We as managers have to make sure that the salespeople are doing their jobs in their follow up and accomplishing the tasks set forth in the CRM to make them successful.

The other part of the execution is practice. I think back on when I got in the car business and had to sit in a back room and watch one tape after another of Joe Verde. The one thing that I have retained after all these years in the business is "practice, drill and rehearse." Just like athletes,  have to practice the what if situations with each other so we can be smooth when we are in the steps of the sale (the competition).  When we don't stumble, we will be smooth with the customer and we will be more believable to the customer.

When we have all of these items in place, you will see the success that you want to see. That success will change over time to take you to the next level.  Set the goals, achieve them, and raise the bar even higher to go for it and get that success that you are looking for.

"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." -Winston Churchill

I was on the phone with a dealer friend of mine in our 20 group.  About a month ago, there was a nasty post on their Facebook page about a deal that went south and the dealer wouldn't refund their money to them.  I just happen to be on Facebook at the time of the post and sent her a text to make sure that she saw it right away.  Initially while she was doing some investigation, she couldn't find this customer anywhere in her system.  She responded to the upset customer on Facebook to contact the General Manager to get this issue resolved.  They didn't hear from the customer right away and thought that this was maybe a bogus post and was going to delete it from their page.  Low and behold, a call came in.  After a message back and forth, they finally got a hold of the customer.

Here is what happened.  The customer wanted out of the deal for some reason.  He called the salesperson and let him know, but he didn't want to lose the deal and said that they couldn't have their money back and actually hung up on the customer.  The hang ups happened a few times.  Since the customer didn't have a Facebook account, he decided to open one up since this dealership has a good presence on Facebook to voice his concerns and that he would never do business there as a result of this incident.  He was heard and the situation was resolved.  The customer ended up deleting the string of comments on his own.

So what is the correct way to respond to that upset customer online?

1. Try not to bring your emotions into the situation.  That is tough since they may be bashing your company publically.
2. Don't delete the comment.  Respond to them publically and apologize for their experience and give them a contact person and number to take this offline.
3. Resolve it offline.  When it is resolved, have them respond to the thread how the situation was handled in a way that was satisfactory to them.
4. If they continue to bash you on other sites, just keep with a standard apology with a name and phone number to contact.

Let's face it, we all will have them come in and it all boils down to how you handle that upset customer.  Not everyone can be happy and it happens.

There are times when a call is in order to a previous customer, but the question seems to be, "What do I need to say to the customer?"  A lot of times, a renewal call is treated like a normal touching base call to keep your name in front of the customer.  That is not the case.

The reason for a renewal call is to get them back in the store and get them thinking about a new vehicle.  There are a few steps to do to make it an effective call to the customer.

1. Look at the previous deal.  Most CRM tools will store all of the pertinant information in the system and you should know if they bought or leased, what their payment is, and maturity dates.
2. Maybe do an online evaluation of their vehicle to see if they may be in an equity situation.  We all need nice trades and they are the best source to get them.
3. Check notes and history with the customer.  Make small talk before going for the appointment.  This goes back to making great notes in the system so you can refer back to them down the road.  If their son is playing soccer, make a note of it and when you call them, you can say, "Is johnny still playing soccer?"  This will make you stand out from the other salesmen.
4. Check inventory to see if you have something like what they bought from you last time or even a possible upgrade where you think you can keep their payment close to what they are paying now.

After this quick evaluation, call them.  The number one goal is to get them in to discuss options with them.  Once you get them in, go from step one of the sales process and qualify them in what they may want or need and go from there.  Get these calls done early in the month as people do tend to get busier as the month goes on.

So the question at hand is "Is the internet a lead generator or is it an influencer?"  This is a great topic for discussion.  I feel that it can be both to an extent, but which one weighs more than the other?

Autotrader just released all of their info that they gathered with Polk on Understanding the Influencers that Drive the Vehicle Purchase.  When I signed into the webinar the other day, I was anxious to see what they had to say and found out in their study and how it paralleled with the study that was done for our dealership.  To give a little background, the study was conducted by Polk and commissioned by Autotrader.  They wanted to understand what media sources influence the new and used vehicle buyer last year.

Some interesting things came out of the study that hit home and how the internet is getting so big in the vehicle purchase.  Yes, we know that it is big, but HOW big is it?  Well, here are some of their findings.  The new car buyer will spend a total of 19 hours shopping for their next new vehicle.  Of the 19 hours, 7.5 were offline and 11.5 were online.  On the used car buyer, a total of 18 hours were clocked with 7 hours being offline and 11 hours online.  This just goes to show how important it is for your online presence is strong and your merchandising is at it's best.  If it's not, then the mouse may just skip right over your vehicle and they will move on to the next one on the list.

According to the study, the most influential source leading to your dealership is the internet (50% on new car buyers and 58% for used car buyers).  Coming in a close second is referral from a friend or family member (16% for new and 19% for used).  Can you feel the sarcasm here?  So how is your online reputation?  If it isn't good, I would say get a plan in place.  Customers are looking at reviews more and more just like when you are in a city visiting, you are looking at restaurant or hotel reviews to see where to eat and stay.  It is only human to rely on other humans and what they say and think about the business that is in question. 

When the customer contacted a dealership, only 30% of them either called or emailed the dealership before coming in the door.  If you want to think that people aren't hitting 3rd party sites and you aren't getting your ROI that you are wanting, you are wrong.  You have to look at those 3rd party sites as advertising.  Yes, they will generate some leads via phone and email inquiries, but a lot of your foot traffic is from those sites also whether you believe it or not.  Someone asked me what I thought of Autotrader and Cars.com and I said that "yes, they are expensive, but you can't really afford NOT to be on them."  The internet is your newspaper advertising that we did several years ago.  If you are still doing traditional media like newspaper, you are probably blowing your money.  Spend it digitally.  I will say it again, 70% of the buyers included in this study researched your vehicle online, and just walked in the dealership.

Now here are a few staggering statistics.  When the buyer is early in the process, the average number of vehicles that they will consider 5 months from their purchase is 2 vehicles.  When they get to 3 months from their purchase, the number goes up to and average of 2.3.  And during the month of their purchase, they are considering and average of 3.5 vehicles.  So how are you standing out?  Are you showing stock photos or are you showing the actual car in your pictures?  37% of the buyers wanted to see your actual vehicle that is on the lot, not stock photos.  This will make you stand out and you will see more clicks on your cars on those 3rd party sites.  The study found that a consumer is 4 times more likely to click on a vehicle with actual photos than one that doesn't have them.  It also increases the prospects by 2 times.  Need I say more?

These are just a few take aways from the study that I found interesting.  Now back to the question at hand, is the internet an influencer for your dealership or is it a lead generator?

You can look at the whole study by clicking here.

We as Internet Managers seem to focus so much on the sales end of the operation of the dealership website.  I don't know if it is part of our pay plans, but we should be looking at it from a 30,000 foot view for the dealership.  How can we as Internet Managers grow the dealership as a whole and not just on sales?  I know when I am going through conversion rates for our website, more than 60% of the unique visitors are there for fixed ops.  So what are we doing for those customers?  Here are some thought starters for your main dealership website.

1. Have service specials or a link on your home page to engage the customer.  Call to action is the key.
2. Have a coupon available for your customer online.
3. Have a parts special or coupon.
4. Have your online scheduling form easy to find.
5. Make sure your process is in line to be able to handle those online appointment requests as more and more people are starting to make their appointements online.

Now to think outside the box a little.  Are you generating fixed operations sales by having more websites?  A lot of dealers have micro-sites for sales, but do you have one for fixed ops?  I took the advise of a well known person in the industry and grabbed a url with our city and oil change in it.  It comes up number one in a google search when you search our city and 'oil change.'  You can build a professional looking website using Wordpress and run with it.  The only cost you have is the cost of the url and time to build the site (took me about 3 hours after the tweaking).  If you have a body shop, try it.  If you have a strong parts department, try it.  The options are endless. 

What are you doing to help fixed operations on the internet?  Do you have some micro-sites that are helping them?  Would love to hear your ideas.

I am currently reading the book Onward by Howard Schultz. It is about the trials that Starbucks has faced over the years and how they handled those trials and grew through them. There are a lot of great leadership values in this book that can be applied in the automotive business and wanted to share a few with the Driving Sales community.

Part of the book talks about the experience that a customer has when they come into a Starbucks. "We succeed by creating an experience that comes to life, in large part, because of how we treat our people, how we treat our farmers, our customers, and how we give back to our communities." When a customer comes into your showroom, are you giving them the experience that you want them to have? The car buying experience needs to be a good one or the customer will tell all of their friends about it, good or bad. We all have heard that a dissatisfied customer is 9 times more likely to express their experience to a friend than a satisfied customer. We must be passionate about our jobs and what we do. When we are passionate, we will be successful in giving that customer an experience like none other.

There was another quote that he made in the book that he went into one of the stores and the barista didn't know who he was. He thought to himself that barista "this wasn't his job, it's his passion" by the way that he was treated.  When we have a passion for our job, we will make the customer happy by listening to them and helping them find the right vehicle for them. "It's a combination of intent, process, and heart, a trio that must constantly be fine-tuned."  Several years ago, Starbucks closed all of their stores for one day for training.  I know that isn't really feasible in the car business, but the whole point was to train all of their 130,000 baristas from treating customers to making a cup of coffee.  They caught a lot of flack for doing this and lost a lot of money just in that one day, but in the long run, it helped them grow just on the customer service end of things. 

Another part of the book talks about leadership. "It is the responsibility of the leadership team to keep our culture alive, growing, and thriving." This is so true when it comes to our management teams within the dealership. Sales managers are responsible for growing sales, service manager do the same through growing service and retaining that customer with the experience they have in the service drive and parts managers do the same thing and retaining that customer for life.  When the customer has a great experience in service, we hope that they will keep coming back not only for their service work, bu also to buy their next vehicle from us. 

The last part that I wanted to touch on is being an icon in the business. "Icon make sense of the tension of the times, offering hope and even mending a culture in turmoil." This is where management comes in. In the tough times, they will make the cream rise to the top. We are on the way out of a recession, and some analysts say that we may be double dip recession and on our way down again. There a lot of dealers that didn't make it in the last few years, and if you did, congratulations. Some grew, some stayed flat and some did not and just stayed in business. It all comes back to how your teams came through and built their sales force up and got them through.

"Icons assert a 'cultural authority,' helping to frame the way people view the times they live in." When we were in the recession, where your salespeople down and out and asking 'how am I going to make any money?' I know that there were some people out there asking that. I know I was unsure of my future when we lost our GM franchise in the mist of the recession. I was scared to death, but I made it through and still have a job thanks to my employer. Some jobs were created within the dealership and I came out as others did also.

"Icons don't confuse history with heritage, and always protect and project their values.". I work of a dealership that has been here for over 40 years. A lot of it comes back to our values and how we have treated our customers. We have come through the recession growing year over year through our great values and you can also.  Keep treating your customers the best you can and you will continue to rise to the top. 

I had the opportunity to look at a new product that is hitting the automotive business.  It is a social media solution for dealers.  Yes, I know, just one more solution to look at.  This product was developed by Netbiz who is in association with Cargigi.  The solution that they have come up with is being used in other industries on Facebook (i.e. photography studios, real estate, computer repair, etc.) and is now transitioning to the automotive industry.  As of right now, there are just under a dozen dealers that are signed up. 

There are three parts to the automotive solution that Netbiz and Cargigi offer.  The first is a posting to Craigslist tool with an incredible reporting tool that makes it unique.  With over 49 million unique visitors to Craigslist and it being number 10 in traffic rank in the US, why shouldn’t you be posting your inventory there?  The tool will post your inventory at your designated times that you would like to post.  (In the part of the reporting, you can see when people are looking at your vehicles the most so you can determine the best time to post.)  It has a 7 day rotation where it will post the same vehicle with different templates to make sure that the dealership doesn’t get flagged or blacklisted. 

The second part of the solution is posting your inventory to Facebook.  The postings are clean and will pull in any video that you may have right on your facebook page.  The edge that they have over a Dealerrater solution which a lot of dealers use is that it keeps you on the dealer’s Facebook page vs. taking you to the inventory page on Dealerrater where there are Google ads from your competitors.  The customer can share it with their friends on Facebook just like a lot of the other solutions that are out there.  The cost of the posting tool with reporting and tracking numbers is $399.00

The last part of the solution is specifically for Facebook.  Instead of a potential or existing customer seeing your wall when they get to your page, they will have a landing page within your facebook page.  It can be designed in different ways to gain likes from anything to getting a gift card somewhere or donating money for every like to different charities.  I really liked the cleanliness of the landing page and the graphics were very well done.  It has a call to action as you land there to like your dealership.  They also offer a targeted advertising solution where they handle it all for you.  They have two packages to choose from for their advertising.  You can take advantage of ‘Sponsored Stories’ or normal Ads that are on the right hand side of your facebook page.  The ‘Sponsored Stories’ fee is an affordable $200/mo. And the normal advertising package is $800/mo. 

Being an analytical guy, I loved the analytics that comes with the program.  It is very detailed and will break down your times of days that the cars are being looked at and it is real time.  There was only one thing that I didn’t like on the product and that was the landing page for clicking on a car will land you on the Facebook inventory page.  I can see a prospective customer clicking on a car from Craigslist and landing on your Facebook inventory detail page.  Yes, the customer can see all of the photos, video, and comments on the vehicle, but I can see a potential customer click on your car on Craigslist, get to your Facebook page, and then get A.D.D. and go see what Jared Hamilton or any of their other friends are doing today.  You can set up another ‘landing page’ which would be a separate url for that vehicle.  The reasoning behind this is for their reporting features.

You can view screenshots of their product on their Facebook page or their website. 

Over the last few weeks, I have been thinking about the last 15 years or so that I have been in the Automotive Business. I think back to my first days on the sales floor and how stoked I was to be there and have a job even though I had NO idea what I was doing. You want me to talk to people about cars and get paid for it? Sure, sign me up. Then, we start to learn things and habits, and the production seems to go down a little.  We go from kindergarten to 7th grade in a matter of months and we know everything.

So why is it that a 'green-pea' in the business can do so well and how can we keep that fire going? We all have them and highly recommend hiring someone green so you can mold them how you want them.  In our store, we have two salesmen that are green in the business. They never really were in sales and in the last two months, the two of them have sold 54 cars with a combined closing rate of 39% (they do log everyone as they do things to the T). So I posed the question to them, "What do you attribute your success to in such a short time in the auto business?". Here is their short list that they came up with.

1.  "Stupidity." I asked him what he meant by this. He said that "I have no idea what goes on in that office with numbers and how to get to certain payments. I just go and have fun with customers and sell them what they need."
2. "I come to work to work. I'm not here to socialize and hang out with the guys." I will attest to this. He is there to work and rarely if ever do I see him just hanging out and talking in the circle that we have in all of our stores.
3. "Management."  The management team at the dealership has been great.  They don't just throw you out in the lions den and work with you every day to improve skills.
4. "A great Sales Team to work with."  Everyone has been 'willing to show the ropes of the car business and offer plenty of encouragement.'
5. "Talk to everyone, even service customers."  How many times do you say to a salesperson, "There's a person out there on the lot" and the ir response is "yeah, they're just in for service."  The new guys will always go out and talk to those people.  You have to talk to people.  The more people you talk to, the more successful you will be.
6. Product Knowledge.  "I spend a great deal of time learning the product.  If I don't know the answer, I tell them I don't know and will find out for them."  Honesty is the key.  Knowing your product and the competitors is the key.  Also, know what the others in your local market are doing and handling their customers. 
7. Knowledge of the staff.  The knowledge that the managers and work associates share is monumental.  Learning from the best in the business huge. 
8. Coffee.  It's the caffeine that keeps me going. 
9. Hard Work.  Work ethic is key in this business.  You can get sucked into all of the circles and just shooting the breeze with the guys.  When you are here, you need to work for the success that others have had in this business.

If you keep your eye on the ball, it will come to you and hit it out of the park and be successful.  To keep that green-pea attitude does take work and we all know that and sometimes we all have to be reminded of it.

What do you hear from your "green-peas?"