Your customers have questions. You can only hope that your people have the answers. Not all of your prospective clients (or loyal customers) want to speak to a live agent, though, so they visit your website in search of a quick solution. Above and beyond the relatively generic content placed onto your website at its launch, how well is your website at delivering them answers? Chances are, rather poorly.

In countless other industries, websites are constructed with a Frequently Asked Questions page (FAQ). Unfortunately, this common element is absent from the majority of dealer sites. A study last year from Blue Nile Research uncovered that 27% of all searches come in the form of a question. We like to believe that the text within our webpages answersthose questions, but I can assure you it rarely does. If a website content’s goal is to match up an online shopper’s search query with their intent, you must recognize what their questions encompass. The fundamental basis of a question starts with a “Who”, “What”, “When”, “Why”, “Where”, or “How”. Are those exact words written on your website? Not to sound like Alex Trebek, but you need to phrase that in the form of a question.

As Google looks to connect a searched question with that of website content, it is certainly in your best interest to actually have the full, written questions and their corresponding answers on your website. For that reason, you need to have a FAQ page on your website. The questions can be the sub-headlines on the page, and the answers can be either below them, or within an internal page linked by the question itself. (Talk to your Internet Manager if you have questions.) A FAQ page can improve time on-site, reward you with more search traffic/views, and earn you business if you do it right.

So how do you build a FAQ page? How do you know what customers want to see or are looking for? Crowdsource it.

• Distribute a simple questionnaire to each customer-facing employee (sales, service, and parts) at the dealership, asking them to write down the 5 – 10 questions guests asked them most regularly.
• Survey your in-store service waiting room guests, asking what the most pressing questions they generally have before a visit to the dealership.
• Set up a page on your website asking for the questions.
• Contact the OEM’s toll-free help desk number for customer service and ask them for their most frequently asked questions.

Once you have gathered all of the questions, simply pare them down and see which can be combined. Come to a collective agreement as to the best (and truest) answer to each question. If you determine that shoppers are wondering about a specific price for maintenance/service, make sure that you actually provide the pricing on your website. Know that you can support the pricing with any additional information you see fit.

Then, go one step further. Whether you decide to have a FAQ page for each department, or one page that links down to internal pages (whereas each question could potentially have their own page), know that text-based answers aren’t enough. It is important to go one step further. Associated with each and every question, you should both have the answer written (in a very conversational language), as well as have that department head shoot a brief 30 second video answering the question. (You should post the video to Youtube with the title being the entire written question.) This way you have both a written answer and a video response with an answer. This will help tremendously with the search engines. Your video answers can exist both on Youtube, as well as the associated webpage.

One great bit of advice…”How” is the primary word that begins most search queries, so don’t forget to create How-To videos as part of your FAQ pages. You can start with the basic questions your clients ask such as…

“How do I check my oil?”
“How do I change my tire?”
“How much is an oil change?”
“How long does a tune-up take?”
“Why is my check engine light on?”
“When will the New Model be out?”
“What do I need for a down payment?”
and so on.

Each department will have their own questions, and the value for consumers to be directed from the search engines to your Frequently Asked Questions page is invaluable. You can still end every answer with a call to action to contact your dealership in some fashion. At DealerKnows, we even work with our dealer clients and their web providers to build “Ask a Tech” and “Ask a Manager” sections of the website to generate more conversations with shoppers. Live chat can certainly help, but if it is a managed provider, you are likely unable to answer common questions directly.

Think about what your website needs to do from a customer service perspective, and start answering the questions that are most advantageous, not just for the dealership, but for your customers. The who, what, when, why, where, how of our industry needs a digital refresh, and it starts with the often-under-utilized FAQ page.

– as seen in Dealer Magazine, October 2016

The i’s have been dotted and the t’s have been crossed on the marketing budget for 2016. You’re wrapping up another great summer of sales. You’d always like to sell more, but you’re comfortable with the direction of your store. The dollars you’ve dedicated toward your marketing is well placed and understood. As you prepare to face the gusty winds of winter leading you into 2017, you ask, ‘what more should I be doing to dominate next year?’

I’ll tell you. There are marketing strategies you need to embrace no matter what. Every one of these initiatives should be considered when preparing your marketing budget for 2017.

1) Planning 12 Campaigns on your Calendar
Look up your historical volume units sold per month on each date and set realistic goals as to each month’s output. Line it up with each month’s corresponding budget. Now estimate what you’d prepare to spend each month of 2017. (Make sure you don’t over-allocate funds in anticipation of a presumed difficult month. It is better to underspend in those instances, and plan more low-cost guerilla-style marketing events to drive traffic during those leaner months.)

Research what monthly events/holidays you can leverage and prepare an omni-channel marketing campaign. Recognize that every single campaign you plan in advance needs, not just financial investment, but support. If you’re doing print at all one month, it should be highlighting that month’s campaign. The website should then be updated to clearly identify each month’s campaign. As each month’s campaign changes, you should ensure all graphics and designs you develop should be used across all mediums (print, TV, video, website, email marketing, display ads, in-store signage and more).

Now, create columns of categories under each month for:

• Print advertising
• Direct mail
• Website / landing page creation
• Email marketing / e-blasts
• SEM / Display / Retargeting
• Off-site events
• Social media
• Optimization / Conversion tools
• Television
• Internet radio / Radio
• Additional payroll to dedicate tasks

Assign a % of budget to each category, highlighting preferred vendors (or team members), and which initiatives require marketing budget to achieve success. Once you’ve completed this, you will now what to plan for and how to prepare for each month. As you roll out each campaign, and educate your team as to the chosen “sale” for the month ahead, you’ll have the foresight to quantify spend vs. results.

2) Update your Email Templates, Phone Scripts, and Sales Processes
Start by putting yourself in the shoppers’ shoes. Visit your website. Submit a lead under a fake account, and mystery shop yourself. What type of online experience are you delivering? Does your website answer questions or leave you with them? Is the messaging you receive influential? Do you see that your people differentiate your store in their communication, or is it more of the same?

You need to create simplistic, clean messaging, both online, in email, and on the phone, to appeal to today’s mobile-focused customers. Processes that fire out and trigger within your CRM must be devised with both your salespeople AND shoppers in mind, rather than what management believes would be nice to see happen. When we serve our clients, this is the first thing we change as it is the easiest way to convert existing opportunities into fresh sales.

3) Paying for the Intangible Rather than the Tangible
You can pay for leads (and you should).
You can pay for traffic (and you should).
You can pay for deep-links to your VDP (and you should).
You can pay for awareness (and you should).
But in 2017, so much of your business’ future will be determined by a positive, creative saturation of your local online market. This takes personnel dedicating time, energy, and brainpower to instilling goodwill in the community.

These are not things that you can simply spend money on and buy. Instead, it requires spending money on the intangible process of assembling teams in charge of finding new methods to engage shoppers and build the dealership’s brand. It may be payroll, in some instances, but you need to consider it a part of your marketing budget as well.

4) Improving Your Merchandising
Your product pictures already look great. You’re shooting in a photo studio with a high-powered camera and you already have a lot of pictures, which are photoshopped, filtered and watermarked. It doesn’t matter, as you still need to do more. Every piece of inventory must become its own advertisement. You can flesh out your written product descriptions, foregoing the automatically generated comments, and using data to develop customer-worthy statements regarding condition, service history, accident history, and ownership history.

You should also build upon your product display pages (or VDPs) with digital validation to grow the value of each vehicle, with market reports, video trade testimonials, transparent pricing, price validation tools, and third party reviews. To make a product or piece of inventory shine, it involves lighting, a high quality and quantity of pictures, video proof, well-written descriptions, and unlimited data assets to influence shoppers’ decisions.

5) Getting Creative and Consistent with Video
This falls between the tangible and the intangible. More videos are consumed than emails are opened and this trend is not going to change. Google recently released data showing that, for vehicle shoppers, the three most sought after video content are:

• Video Test Drives
• Product Feature/Option Explanation Videos
• Walk-around/Product Demonstration Videos

Those need to be on your video agenda for 2017, but you mustn’t stop there. Video throughout your website with assets such as personnel bios, customer testimonials, value propositions, how-to videos, service walk-throughs, and sales process explanations. This takes time, planning, and a team to execute, film and edit. But it has amazing impact to your time on-site, customer engagement, and winning online shoppers over. Don’t stop there. What videos do you like watching online? Funny videos? Videos about human-interest stories or your community? Why not bring in someone who can create unique videos that will breed that theatrical type of goodwill with the viewer? Don’t stop at the necessary vehicle videos. Think cinematic and people will believe your dealership is a theater they want to attend.

6) Caring More for Your Own than for Strangers
You have a book of business stored within the databases of your technology that are worth vastly more than the contact info of a potentially new client. I’ve long said great organizations recognize they need to dedicate twice the time to retaining past customers as they do attempting to conquest new ones.

Open up your CRM and develop processes, marketing, and messaging that continually builds the relationship between your loyal customers and store. Something as simple as a phone call on birthdays and anniversaries should be standard. Following up via email and text every time they’re due for service is necessary. Ensuring you leverage this past customer base to garner positive reviews for your business, and then promoting those reviews across social and web channels. You can go so far as dedicating marketing budget to a “thank you department”, as I’ve detailed with some of our clients, as a means to make long-lasting impressions in an effort to build lifetime loyalty with your most worthy clients over the years. These are all priceless acts for communication that you must embrace to own a foundation of customers going forward. You must make them feel appreciated, because only then can you hope to earn their repeat business.

7) Enforcing Internal Training and External Coaching
Consistent training and reinforcement of processes and techniques is not a one-time event. Nor should it be only performed over the course of a weekend with little reinforcement afterward. Training needs to happen internally, by the hands of your own management. We recommend daily check-ins with each salesperson, weekly save-a-deal meetings between manager and salesperson, weekly product/process group trainings, and monthly performance reviews with goal setting. Managers need to do just that. Manage. Ensuring the team is up to date on leveraging the in-store technology, understanding the product benefits, and following a designed process is step one to running a fluid sales organization.

However, coaching should be external. When managers are in-store training, you need to ensure they aren’t just pulling ideology from their own belief system, but are following best practices recommended by outside agencies. Sales managers have time in their day, but not enough to be an accountability task force within the CRM. One of our primary services we see our dealer clients taking advantage of is being that watchful eye within the CRM on their behalf. We gather their sales teams together in front of live, interactive video chats and address their specific needs, tailoring their ongoing education to their store. This two-pronged approach of in-store training coupled with ongoing coaching from outside influencers allow dealer owners to trust their most valuable asset (their people) are being cared for and groomed for future success.

8) Advertising in Social
The old sales adage of “fish where the fish are” has never been truer than with social media advertising of today. With over a billion of users able to be targeted by, not just their area and demographics, but their interests, social media is the giant fish in the giant pond of marketing. Daily user rates continue to increase, as does mobile usage on these sites, and companies big and small are doing everything they can to grow their brand and engage valuable customers on these platforms.

However, it is not just enough to have a FB page and post to it regularly. Right now, advertising on FB is one of the best buys for the advertising dollar and every corporation should have a line-item in their marketing budget dedicated to it. Instagram is now available for businesses, ad space can be purchased within different platforms, Snapchat is reaching a new generation, and every day a new app shows up that can influence a segment of the population. No longer can organizations simply feel that having a presence on these sites is enough to keep them in the game. They must dedicate dollars to advertising their businesses if they hope to reach their intended consumers.

You need to prepare for what lays ahead, both within the industry, and within the economy. While the getting is good, you must batten down the hatches and determine what is influencing your business growth and what is simply spending money without influencing sales. Designing a well thought out game plan for a year of campaigns and ad spends shouldn’t happen quickly, nor should it take place without guidance. Nonetheless, it is a necessity for any business owner hoping to, not just stay the course, but also thrive in the upcoming year. By following the guideline above, with enough planning, your marketing budget can be set for 2017 and you can begin to monitor the return on your investments before the ball drops.

You are who the customer believes you are.
That may not always be your preferred image of you, but it is what you’re stuck with. Online search has changed and the content you create is a digital version of website nutrition. Google has updated the way they evaluate your site’s value. Based on their quality ratings guidelines, you are what you EAT.

The semantic web has blossomed into the need for Google to catalogue website quality based upon the E-A-T concept. (The most basic way to explain the semantic web is to get past the idea that online search ranking occurs due to the use of specific keywords, but rather logically understanding the searcher’s intent and connecting them with the websites that have the most relevancy to their needs. In other words, Google is fashioning an algorithm that understands my wife. It’s not about what she is saying, but what she is wanting. Confusing, I know.)

Which brings us to why you are what you EAT.
Google seeks websites that have E-A-T elements:

• Expertise
• Authoritativeness
• Trustworthiness

It is just like having a conversation with a friend. If you want to talk cars, you don’t want to hear from every friend that owns a car. You want to hear from the friend who has a history of putting out relevant content with information, facts, helpful hints, and more regarding the topic. You seek credibility from the people you want answers from. Ask yourself what questions your website actually answers (if any) and then determine if you’re putting out solutions, or simply sharing inventory. Do people visit your website only to know availability and basic pricing? Or do they seek to gain more insight into the car-buying process?

Here are quick factors to determine if your website is part of the solution or part of the problem:

• Do you have a FAQ page?
• Do you have a FAQ page for each department?
• Do you have video answers to commonly asked questions?
• Are these questions written in text themselves as sub-headlines on your page, and followed by the answers?
• Are you sharing vehicle comparisons?
• Are you comparing your own models against each other, as well as comparing to your competitors?
• Do you offer a way for website visits to Ask a Tech? or Ask a Manager?
• Do you give detailed explanations regarding buying vs. leasing?
• Do you share how-to videos?
• Are you involving yourself as an authority on related topics within forums, groups, social networks, and more?

Again – experts share their advice and opinions with others off of their website, as well, as a means to grow themselves into a trusted authority on the subject. Are you confining yourself expertise to one URL or are you trying to build a brand across all channels?

Start redefining how you serve answers to those people who have questions. Use your website, your team, your technology, and all of the mediums available to you. The more you focus on being a solution to people’s problems, rather than solely being the seller and servicer of a product, the more online search will benefit you. Be what you E-A-T and watch your search rankings grow.

You pride yourself on the quality of your used car inventory. You ensure your customers that each pre-driven vehicle is sales-worthy, and it is because you have made it so. Every vehicle, whether they be trade or auction-bought, is inspected, valued, and detailed. But what costs dealers the most time and money is the reconditioning. Are you leveraging that work performed to convert shoppers into buyers? More than likely, you’re not.

CarStory data reveals less than 3% of all vehicle listings mention any reconditioning information. Why spend $700 making a car lot-worthy if you aren’t going to celebrate it?

All dealers know that shaving days off of their overall recon process can add countless thousands of dollars to their bottom lines (which is why software such as Recon Ninjas or Rapid Recon are taking off), but they aren’t utilizing this information when building value in their customers’ eyes. CarStory places a vehicle’s recon information on the VDP and inside the CarStory Market Report of every used car in an effort to add credibility to each unit.

Here is an example of how Subaru of Wichita leverages reconditioning data on their site using the free CarStory Market Reports:


In DealerKnows' opinion, though, a visual representation, while excellent, still isn’t enough. Dealers should also be sharing the recon info in their written vehicle descriptions. Let’s face it…using an automated tool that pre-populates descriptions filled with phrases such as as “This is a nice one!” or “Clean and in the wrapper” is not going to grab eyeballs. And writing those same word tracks IN ALL CAPS doesn't make it better. It makes it an eyesore. Instead, share information that builds value and credibility, not just appeals to emotions. Data science company CarStory also revealed there are 3 pieces of used car info shoppers seek first and foremost:

1. Vehicle Condition
2. Accident History
3. Service History

The parts you replaced, maintenance you conducted, and reconditioning you performed strongly influence two of the top three most valuable provisions you can share with shoppers. Show your recon process and info online, in your listings, on your VDPs, and in the showroom. Prove the money put into each vehicle to give peace of mind to buyers. You’ll find yourself in a better negotiating (and profit-retaining) position than you would have if you kept it quiet.

Have you ever run a red light? Did you do it by accident? Not paying attention? Did you need to because you were in a hurry? Or maybe you did because no one was around and you just felt like it. Could that have been it?

Inevitably, the law catches up with everyone that continues to break the rules of the road, whether it be a stiff warning, a few points on a license, or a citation and fine. You know it is wrong, so you are deterred from doing it again. In most cases, it is senseless rule breaking, or a careless oversight that should be prevented. You get busted for doing it once, reap the consequences, and stop running red lights.

No, this isn’t a driver’s education class, but minor infractions are being committed on your showroom floor, within your CRM every day, and no one is correcting the bad behavior.  If you never stop someone from running red lights, they’ll continue to do it over and over. Eventually, a major accident or tragedy could occur. It is up to dealerships to elect a traffic cop in their CRM.

Whether your team are falsifying call logs/attempts with a simple “LM” note in the CRM (the most common culprit), or flipping active prospects to “Lost” far too early to avoid having to make follow-up, there are countless ways sales and BDC teams are getting away with wrongdoings. It isn’t their right to cost your dealership money if you’ve set forth rules for them to follow. But with no one to slap a wrist, issue a warning, or lay down the law, your CRM will be a cluttered intersection of wrecked opportunities.

If a salesperson knows you’re not watching (or doesn’t believe you care), they’ll continue this negative behavior. Not catching these sales misdemeanors as they take place is nothing short of burning your marketing and ad dollars.

You need a traffic cop. Someone who actually puts the “manage” in a manager title. Whether it is our , or an individual you select, we’ll tell you there is no better enhancement to your bottom line and lead metrics than actually ensuring no one is acting above the law.

Hold your people accountable. Demand them to utilize your CRM and follow the processes as they’re designed. Employ a traffic cop and see how quickly you can drive profits safely.

There are countless website providers beating down your doors and crashing through the phones. Some have great products and some have not-so-great products. Dealers need to understand that websites are not products. They are pets.

If you believe your website is a ‘leave-it-alone and let it do it’s thing’ robot, your website is going to be a misbehaving, costly animal. They should not be plug and play.  They can’t be left alone for too long or they’ll chew the leg of your new couch and not benefit you one bit. Yet far too many dealer websites sit unattended, poorly cared for, or viewed as an afterthought. They should not simply be chosen, hired, launched live, and let to live out its life alone under the domain. Websites should not be lifeless.

A great website is a living, breathing organism. It needs to be looked after, cared for.  It is alive, much like a pet. And with the proper care and maintenance will serve you well into the future.

So how do you make sure your website is alive?

• Make sure it not only has a name (domain), but is registered (across the business listing sites) as well.

• Dress it with lively conversion tools, but not too many or you'll suffocate it.

• Make sure you have ever-changing, dynamic calls-to-action, but not too many or you'll confuse it.

• Raise it to be responsive to all environments, be it mobile, tablet or desktop. (It should be able to adapt its behavior to the device. You can’t just have a lap dog.)

• Give it the occasional scrub and face-lift. A nice grooming and homepage refresh goes a long way to understanding functionality (especially if you A/B test the looks).

• Feed it with quality content, forever growing the pages. (Don’t let it sit dormant or it will wither away.)

• Show it around, say its name, and make others aware of its presence.

• Update its information, give it new tags, and be social with it.

If you constantly add to your website, exercise it, and feed it, it will grow. It will get big and strong and generate you more traffic than you’ve ever had. Like a good website should.

Understand this takes work. It takes a team. While we at DealerKnows aren’t website providers, one of our first priorities is to bring our clients’ websites back to life. In that respect, we are website veterinarians. We make sure dealers know how to keep them healthy, prescribe the right diets and exercise, and help groom them. It needs to be one of your top priorities as well. Know that website maintenance takes time, knowledge, a little bit of money, and a lot of focus.

So, ask yourself, how much attention am I (and my provider) paying to my website?  If you’ve left it there to die, it’s time to resuscitate it or get a new one. If you have a living, breathing website like I’ve described above, great job. Now don’t stop caring for it, and it will keep you happy for a long time. What are you doing to keep your website alive and kicking?

My wife recently decided it was high time to get a pet dog for the family. I had been delaying this decision since my wife and I first moved in together (years and years ago). I just wasn’t ready for the responsibility. (And, on top of that, I’m allergic). Nonetheless, almost 15 years and two sons later, I acquiesced and began researching a suitable breed. Long story short, we decided upon a Havanese. We researched breeders, investigated, awaited a litter, and picked up our new puppy.  Cute as can be, I realize that this ball of hair will be essential to the growth and development of my children. But these first few weeks have been a lot of work.

To tie this together, I was recently honored to have been hired by Jacuzzi corporate to speak at their International conference on the subject matters of lead management and process improvement. Even though I was the one to be dispensing knowledge onto the audience of franchise owners and manufacturer reps, I was able to walk away with my mind swimming with ideas as well. I was intrigued by a simple statement from Jacuzzi’s Director of Advertising and Digital Marketing, Martin Borsanyi, during his session on social media. He said “Social Media is free like a puppy is free.” I can say first hand that this statement hit home. Literally. 

Any corporation can have a social networking account the same way anyone can adopt a dog. It just takes doing it. Sure, breeders charge an arm and a leg the same way a social media management firm does for their set-up costs, but relatively speaking, you can do it on the cheap yourself. However, if you want to get the most out of your puppy (let’s name her Social Media), then you are going to have to invest a decent amount of money and a lot more time.

Social Media the Puppy requires time for training. Not only does the puppy need training, but you need training on the puppy. You have to spend time with it so it doesn’t get lonely. You have to work with it ongoing if you want to see results in its behavior. You need to dedicate money to its collars, food, and grooming, just as you do to its promoting of posts, PPC campaigns, and FB dark posts. To do it right, you have to spend some money. To be the best owner of Social Media the puppy you can be, you have to give it a fair amount of attention.

It needs to run.
It can’t just sleep all day.
You need to feed it posts, tweets, links, Likes and comments.
You need to listen to its barking notifications, and respond accordingly.
Social Media is a new member of the family, and regardless of what you think of the channel, it is in its infancy. Social Media is the 80 lb black Labrador puppy that is too big to act like one. It still needs to learn its way, and it will break things in the meantime.

​Social Media the puppy is a ton of work. If you aren’t giving it attention, money, and time, you aren’t going to like how it behaves when full grown. You’ll never have control, and you’ll never have full ownership of it.  Treat it the way a young puppy deserves to be treated, and you’ll have a friend and companion for life.

I pulled up in front of an office building in a 2003 Toyota Camry XLE V6 right on time. Just an hour earlier, I had spoken with the Internet customer that said he didn’t have the time to come in and test drive. I took it upon myself to save him time, and I was bringing the vehicle to him. Out walked a mid-30’s man in a white shirt and striped tie, accompanied by two other coworkers. I knew I had sold the car before I shook his hand.

The first of his friends said “So… you’re finally getting rid of that piece of crap you’ve been driving.” The other chimed in, “It’s about time. Pretty sweet ride. Hope you can afford it.”  Corporate America busts chops just like we do in the car business.  Without seeming presumptuous, there was no way this guy wasn’t going to buy this car. Not after the verbal abuse from his friends.  He showed up that night after work and purchased the very same car.  This may have been inevitable, but I knew I did myself a favor by being proactive and bringing the vehicle to him.

To be successful in sales, we need to take our business over the curb. If the Internet has taught us anything over the last decade, it’s that consumers are visiting less dealerships than ever before and only showing up when they’re good and ready. Time is a commodity and there is no use stepping foot onto a showroom floor until they’ve made up their mind. They prefer to bask in the glow of a computer monitor or the blue light from a mobile device than to tan under the halogen lights of our dealerships. So we need to do business (and offer to do business) where they are most comfortable.

Bringing a vehicle to someone’s home or work is certainly not a novel concept. It isn’t new or revolutionary. Yet, we don’t do this near enough.  Bringing a vehicle to them, to experience it on their own terms, is often a deciding factor whatthey choose, who they choose to do business with, and when they choose to do it.  Quite frequently, just the OFFER to bring a vehicle is all the shopper needs to hear when deciding who is worthy of earning their business.

Tesla has shown us that consumers don’t mind an entirely digital transaction. Bringing a vehicle to a home is just a first step to over-the-curb selling. Your dealership needs to be fully capable (and promoting) over-the-curb shipping. Paperwork can be electronic, signatures can be scanned, and money can be instantly transferred.

The only reason I purchased my own vehicle from the individual I did was because he allowed me to bring the SUV to my home. My kids spent 20 minutes crawling around inside. My wife sat in its seat and played with its features. My family essentially gave me their seal of approval on the spot. (I couldn’t have brought them into the store conveniently so I brought the store to them.) I felt indebted (some could say, obligated) to purchase from this salesperson and dealership. It was my idea to drive the car home, not theirs, but they allowed it.

You need to actively promote doing business over the curb. Take the experience off of your lot and put it in the friendly confines of the client’s home. Bring your work to the shopper’s work, and see if their peers can help influence their buying decision. A new car always looks nicer than their used one.  Do business outside of the lot, and beyond the confines of your rooftop. Make transactions digital and then personal. You just might find it to be a simpler process for everyone involved.

As you can see from the picture on the right, it may be time for this dealer to update their phone script.  (Yes, that is a real, actual, antique phone script currently taped to a real sales desk.  No, this is not a pirate’s map circa 1702.)

World’s Worst Phone Script found at a present-day car dealership by DealerKnows

Almost every dealer who records calls using a call management software knows that listening to those very calls is the quickest way to make their blood pressure skyrocket.  Phone handling is abysmal at most stores, and while some track the calls, and others preach the importance of phone skills, very few are training their teams to be skilled in today’s phone etiquette.

Much of this is the fault of the times.  With the digital smorgasbord that dealers must chew through, far too often they put phone training on the backburner. They assume that the online traffic will generate itself into sales and ignore the fact that phone handling has evolved.

If your dealership still operates off of an archaic phone script passed down from the sales managers of yesteryear, you need to update your phone script.  
(And yes, “phone script” can be a bad word on the
showroom floor. It still carries with it a negative connotation.  We, at DealerKnows, believe in phone structure over phone script.  With that said, we still provide scripts (and the corresponding structure) to our clients, solely as a foundation for quality phone etiquette.  You cannot rely on the antiquated questions…

• 2-door or 4-door?
• Automatic or manual?
• Lighter colors or darker colors?

These idiotic questions are medieval when you consider how detailed the consumer’s research process is, as well as how the OEMs build their vehicles.  These questions aren’t relevant.  So here is a proverbial “Call to Action” -
Walk up to the nearest salesperson and ask them for a phone script they use to train on.  Or something they use as a guide. Then ask your sales manager.
Do they have anything that wasn’t written on 1960’s parchment?
Does it need to be updated?
Does it need to ask more intuitive questions based on today’s researched customers in an effort to covert more appointments?

My guess is there are some holes in your phone script. It is time you get them some phone training and do something about it.

Are you ready to follow in the footsteps of the Monsters of the Midway?
Is it in your best interest to run your dealership like the Chicago Bears runs their team?
Is it time to “Bear Down”?
The answer is Yes… and not just because I’m a Bears fan.

Much like the Chicago Bears, your dealership likely is a storied franchise. In this analogy, the OEM is like the NFL, providing policies, guidelines, and rules to adhere to in an effort to remain a viable brand. And your dealership operates under this umbrella. You, as a corporation, have a history. A story. You have decades of faithful fans. The Chicago Bears is the NFL’s oldest team (originally the Decatur Staleys) and many dealerships have a similar longevity among their community. Maybe not to the tune of 95 years, but some of you aren’t too far off. You’ve made an impact in your town and you desire to continue your winning (or surviving) ways.

The Bears are not the best franchise. As a fan, I must admit this. Still, they are my favorite team. Like many dealerships, the Bears don’t always have the best ownership. Sure, the history of a dealership may shine a little dimmer without a renowned leader the likes of Papa Bear George Halas, but most are owned by an individual or family that carries with them a reputation. Like most dealerships, the Bears rarely have the best management or coaches. Almost never are their players the most talented or physically gifted. But damn it if they don’t try to win every single time.

I believe the Bears have the biggest hearts, and they bring that intensity to the field the same way automotive professionals should be trying to succeed every day on the showroom floor and service drive. The Bears try harder. They hit harder. They hurt more when they lose. And all you can ever ask of anyone on your team is to TRY. And to never stop trying. To take what they do personally and to leave it all out on the field. Or, to quote every over-used sport soliloquy, your team should be like the Bears because they always seem to be giving 100% effort. And that is what has made them legendary.

Your dealership could learn something from the Chicago Bears.

But history, legacy, work ethic, teamwork, “super fans”, and desire can only get a team so far. Inevitably, it takes critical thinking and analysis. So I was excited to see the headlines recently when the Chicago Bears hired a Director of Analytics. This is nothing new. “Moneyball” has been bandied about by sports organizations for years. The Chicago Bears aren’t the first to dive into this philosophy. And you wouldn’t be the first dealer either to hire someone with this sole job responsibility. But you can be like the Bears by finally coming around to the idea. The Director of Analytics was a newly created position for their organization. The individual they hired, Mitchell Tanney, is responsible for identifying, extracting and analyzing data to support decisions for both in-game situations and personnel evaluation in an effort to predict future outcomes.

Listen to the General Manager of the Chicago Bears, Phil Emery, and try to tell me this position doesn’t make sense for your dealership. Emery said, “We needed somebody with an expertise in filtering through subsets of data to make sense of them in terms of which pieces are important and which pieces can be put together to give a clearer picture of projecting performance, whether it’s on the field or in scouting projecting players moving forward.” I don’t need to connect the dots for you.

There is a vast amount of data at your dealership’s fingertips. But all of that is worthless if you don’t have someone who can see the digits, convert them into trends, and enact changes in the company’s operations that will help them improve. Making decisions based on gut reactions can only get you so far. Making decisions based on cold, hard facts get you even farther. You aren’t in this industry to have an 8-8 record every month. You’re in this industry to always be in the playoffs, and to strive for the trophy. To do this, you’re going to seriously need to consider hiring a numbers-cruncher.

The change is already happening. While I’ve joked that every vendor and their brother was trying to sell “social media management” over the past couple of years, if you walked through the exhibit halls at the most recent digital automotive conferences, the biggest trend was “Dashboards”. Many vendors seem focused on aggregating all important data for a dealership into one portal/dashboard/platform/buzzword. Some were actually dynamic, fresh, and valuable.  Others were underwhelming and ill-conceived.  Nonetheless, the metrics dealers are generating (and ignoring) can be their salvation.  But having the data isn’t enough. You must be using it to change your processes, marketing, methods, and structures. The data is too valuable to just throw it into the lap of an Internet Director. Someone with a history of selling cars online and one semester online at University of Phoenix under their belt isn’t likely the candidate to be analyzing data and finding opportunities for growth. Your service tech, with all their certifications and advanced knowledge of mechanics, is still probably not the best person to drive a million dollar race car. A former quarterback is not always the best coach. You must put the valuable data into the hands of someone who can harness that power and convert it into performance.

It is time to think about the personnel on your team. Do you have specialists? Do you have that playmaker that can put your team over the top in the division? This is a brutal and vicious game we’re in, and we need to be leveraging every ounce of energy we have to be the best at it. Like the Chicago Bears, we won’t always win, but hell if we don’t give it our all while we’re on the field. Go Bears.