Take Back Your Brand By Building Trust

The success of your business depends on the trust you are able to build for your brand. After all, consumers with confidence in specific brands will not only return and provide repeat business, but they will also spread word of mouth advertising to their friends, increasing the success of your business even more. Positive experiences drive them to return to the businesses that have been able to meet their needs and exceed their expectations. Most businesses and dealerships already know thatbuilding trust is a key component to creating lasting relationships, however, the specifics that lead up to gaining this trust sometimes need to be addressed. How do businesses and dealerships gain consumer trust and leverage brand influence so that shoppers return time and again to their preferred brands?

Creating trust in your brand is not something that happens overnight. It takes time, diligence, and patience to achieve the level of brand confidence your consumers seek in the marketplace. There are several factors at play when dealing with the issue of consumer trust-building, and companies must focus on many things at once in order to continuously strengthen the bond they are building with customers.

Strike a Balance

The landscape of the marketplace is in constant flux, and many consumers see their trusted dealerships and businesses as the constants in a sea of change. It is important to strike the right balance between changing with the marketplace and providing consumer assurance, so that your business is able to continue to thrive and build consumer trust. By being transparent, communicative, and collaborative, you will be able to grow and innovate at the same time you reaffirm your commitment to your customers. Some of the following tips will be helpful as you work to build trust in your brand:

1. Protect consumer data. Demonstrate your commitment to maintain privacy when it comes to handling personal information. Especially now, in an age when information theft and fraud are abundant, it is essential that shoppers recognize your dedication to protecting their valuable personal and financial information; your concern will go far in gaining their trust.

2. Know your customers. Show shoppers you have taken the time to understand their shopping preferences. Without a firm grasp on your market and consumer behavior, you will find it difficult to meet the needs of shoppers who come to you to make a purchase. Getting to know your target consumers means getting to know not only what they are looking for in products and services, but also what they are looking for in a business relationship.

3. Offer quality options and service. By demonstrating your ability to provide what your customers need with regard to convenience, flexibility, and expertise, you will emerge as a leader and an expert in your field. Provide unparalleled service and offer guarantees on your work, and soon customers will recognize your business as a trusted provider that stands behind the services it offers.

4. Be honest and upfront with customers. Just as you should let people know when your business is doing something great, you should also own up to it if your business makes a mistake. Being forthright is always the best way to handle things, and consumers will view you as trustworthy when you simply apologize and move forward if mistakes are made.

5. Be a leader; don’t wait for others to lead the way, but instead forge a path and show people—both customers and other businesses—that you are a trailblazer in the marketplace. Your forward thinking and vision will place you in the category of trusted businesses among consumers.

6. Ensure you have knowledgeable employees. While not every employee you hire may be knowledgeable about the business from the start, be sure you have a good training program in place so that your employees become experts at what they do. Their confidence and knowledge will be noticed by consumers and will drive consumer trust in your dealership.

7. Build relationships, and the sales will follow. Whether personal or business, relationships are built on trust. So while it is necessary to make sales to keep your business running, focus on the relationship factor, and the sales will come. Let your customers (and potential customers) know their importance and offer value-added extras like workshops, car-care clinics, or even online tutorials in order to solidify relationships.

8. Be a great communicator. Ensure you have easy ways for customers to get in touch with you, whether they are asking questions, lodging complaints, or providing positive feedback. Everything your customers have to say is something you need to hear, so be sure to have a presence online, post your contact information on your website, and make it easy for people to get in touch with you.

9. Let your customers help you. Previous customers are a great resource when you are building your reputation and gaining trust for your dealership, so don’t be afraid to ask for feedback and testimonials from those who have had great experiences at your dealership. Share their positive experiences with potential new customers as a way of creating confidence in your brand.

• Produce quality, compelling content. It’s one thing to call yourself the expert in your field, but if you are the one actually offering relevant and interesting content to your customers, you will give yourself and your dealership more credibility. Position yourself as a trusted source by providing information about your dealership, online articles, tutorials, infographics, and more to meet your customers’ needs and help inform them. Your content will keep you front of mind, which will, in turn, build trust in your brand.

While there are many ways you can go about building trust, the key can be found in a single underlying factor. You must be authentic. If you work hard and let your authentic self—both your brand personality and your own personality—shine through, you will position your dealership to gain the trust of your customers. With so many choices in the marketplace, it’s important to note that shoppers won’t stay with a dealership that doesn’t gain their trust, and for this reason it is absolutely imperative to make them feel valued from the very first point of contact.

When you do this, the results you see will be reflected in improved brand reputation, repeat customers, and ultimately, increased sales due to the trust and loyalty your brand has gained.

Take Back Your Brand By Building Trust

The success of your business depends on the trust you are able to build for your brand. After all, consumers with confidence in specific brands will not only return and provide repeat business, but they will also spread word of mouth advertising to their friends, increasing the success of your business even more. Positive experiences drive them to return to the businesses that have been able to meet their needs and exceed their expectations. Most businesses and dealerships already know thatbuilding trust is a key component to creating lasting relationships, however, the specifics that lead up to gaining this trust sometimes need to be addressed. How do businesses and dealerships gain consumer trust and leverage brand influence so that shoppers return time and again to their preferred brands?

Creating trust in your brand is not something that happens overnight. It takes time, diligence, and patience to achieve the level of brand confidence your consumers seek in the marketplace. There are several factors at play when dealing with the issue of consumer trust-building, and companies must focus on many things at once in order to continuously strengthen the bond they are building with customers.

Strike a Balance

The landscape of the marketplace is in constant flux, and many consumers see their trusted dealerships and businesses as the constants in a sea of change. It is important to strike the right balance between changing with the marketplace and providing consumer assurance, so that your business is able to continue to thrive and build consumer trust. By being transparent, communicative, and collaborative, you will be able to grow and innovate at the same time you reaffirm your commitment to your customers. Some of the following tips will be helpful as you work to build trust in your brand:

1. Protect consumer data. Demonstrate your commitment to maintain privacy when it comes to handling personal information. Especially now, in an age when information theft and fraud are abundant, it is essential that shoppers recognize your dedication to protecting their valuable personal and financial information; your concern will go far in gaining their trust.

2. Know your customers. Show shoppers you have taken the time to understand their shopping preferences. Without a firm grasp on your market and consumer behavior, you will find it difficult to meet the needs of shoppers who come to you to make a purchase. Getting to know your target consumers means getting to know not only what they are looking for in products and services, but also what they are looking for in a business relationship.

3. Offer quality options and service. By demonstrating your ability to provide what your customers need with regard to convenience, flexibility, and expertise, you will emerge as a leader and an expert in your field. Provide unparalleled service and offer guarantees on your work, and soon customers will recognize your business as a trusted provider that stands behind the services it offers.

4. Be honest and upfront with customers. Just as you should let people know when your business is doing something great, you should also own up to it if your business makes a mistake. Being forthright is always the best way to handle things, and consumers will view you as trustworthy when you simply apologize and move forward if mistakes are made.

5. Be a leader; don’t wait for others to lead the way, but instead forge a path and show people—both customers and other businesses—that you are a trailblazer in the marketplace. Your forward thinking and vision will place you in the category of trusted businesses among consumers.

6. Ensure you have knowledgeable employees. While not every employee you hire may be knowledgeable about the business from the start, be sure you have a good training program in place so that your employees become experts at what they do. Their confidence and knowledge will be noticed by consumers and will drive consumer trust in your dealership.

7. Build relationships, and the sales will follow. Whether personal or business, relationships are built on trust. So while it is necessary to make sales to keep your business running, focus on the relationship factor, and the sales will come. Let your customers (and potential customers) know their importance and offer value-added extras like workshops, car-care clinics, or even online tutorials in order to solidify relationships.

8. Be a great communicator. Ensure you have easy ways for customers to get in touch with you, whether they are asking questions, lodging complaints, or providing positive feedback. Everything your customers have to say is something you need to hear, so be sure to have a presence online, post your contact information on your website, and make it easy for people to get in touch with you.

9. Let your customers help you. Previous customers are a great resource when you are building your reputation and gaining trust for your dealership, so don’t be afraid to ask for feedback and testimonials from those who have had great experiences at your dealership. Share their positive experiences with potential new customers as a way of creating confidence in your brand.

• Produce quality, compelling content. It’s one thing to call yourself the expert in your field, but if you are the one actually offering relevant and interesting content to your customers, you will give yourself and your dealership more credibility. Position yourself as a trusted source by providing information about your dealership, online articles, tutorials, infographics, and more to meet your customers’ needs and help inform them. Your content will keep you front of mind, which will, in turn, build trust in your brand.

While there are many ways you can go about building trust, the key can be found in a single underlying factor. You must be authentic. If you work hard and let your authentic self—both your brand personality and your own personality—shine through, you will position your dealership to gain the trust of your customers. With so many choices in the marketplace, it’s important to note that shoppers won’t stay with a dealership that doesn’t gain their trust, and for this reason it is absolutely imperative to make them feel valued from the very first point of contact.

When you do this, the results you see will be reflected in improved brand reputation, repeat customers, and ultimately, increased sales due to the trust and loyalty your brand has gained.

Consistency is Key: Branding with Purpose

Bruce Springsteen once said, “Sustaining an audience is hard. It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action over a long period of time.” Although he was referring to his journey to fame, his thoughts are very applicable to maintaininga consistent brand. Establishing brand consistency within a dealership is about more than just creating rules and setting the standards. Keeping a consistent brand image means you must uniformly brand yourself to your potential customers andcurrent, loyal buyers. Brand consistency significantly impacts your brand recognition and leading to more sales. There are two ways dealerships can demonstrate brand consistency—cultivating a social culture and delivering customer experience.

Social Culture Strategy

To achieve consistency, successful brands are careful to deliver messages that build familiarity. Whether it’s social media or a print ad, a strong brand will have a consistent look, feel and tone. The modern automotive dealership must begin branding from the inside out.  Focused efforts to cultivate a social culture and leverage the influence of employees begins with effectively communicating the core mission, vision and values of your brand.  Engaged leaders and their employees have the power to create a credible and authentic marketing channel.  A dealership culture of engaged employee advocates will reach a far broader audience than you could ever gain from paid advertising!  

Think of the brands who have gained your loyalty.  What kind of employees work for them?  Are they passionate about the brand and do they share what’s great about the brand they represent?  Brands like Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, Zappos and more place the highest value on creating a social culture and the proof is in the bottom line.

Although dealerships may not work exactly like the brands mentioned above, they can still improve the way they present themselves to customers by investing in their employees, offering tools for engaging with consumers at the top of the sales funnel and empowering them with consistent communication so they feel connected to the mission of your brand and excited to share it! Dealerships who want to stay competitive in the digital age must invest in the people they’ve charged with carrying out their growth strategies and goals.  It is no longer enough to buy a bigger ad or have cooler business cards.  Branding begins inside the dealership and from there it is carried forward by the people behind it.  

Customer Experience

Creating a consistently excellent customer experience is essential to a dealership’s success. In the automotive industry, consumers can find the same cars anywhere they search, but customer experience is what sets dealerships apart. Consistency on the customer journey is an important predictor of overall customer experience and loyalty. A customer journey spans all elements of a company and is most directly impacted by the level of employee engagement. To maintainconsistency, dealerships need tools and teams in place that allow them to quickly respond to customer needs and concerns.  Proper training ensures employees know their role in the customer experience, and the right tools provide them with effective strategies for stepping in when needed. When you have done the work of cultivating a social culture, every employee will know how, and have the tools to deliver a consistently excellent customer experience because they understand the values and mission guiding them.  Trust is gained or lost in every customer interaction, so empowering teams to meet customer needs is critical. When customers know what to expect, or better yet, know the people who work for a dealership, they will demonstrate loyalty. 

Customer experience is driven by the combination of promises made and promises kept by a dealership. Brands must deliver on the promised values of their brand in addition to the deals and promotions they advertise.  This will require a proactive strategy for sharing content that highlights the goals of the brand and the delivery of brand promises. 

Since a customer journey often touches different parts of the organization, companies need to rewire themselves and re-engage from the top down.  Everyone in your dealership must understand how they contribute, either positively or negatively, to the customer journey from beginning to end. Dealerships that miss the opportunity to invest in employees as step one on the customer journey department will undoubtedly expend unnecessary resources to improve the customer experience, without realizing the cost.

Creating brand-consistent customer experiences are critical to a dealership’s influence and bottom line success. Cultivating a social culture is the lynchpin for great customer service. When every lead is a referral, trust is easily established enabling your dealership to sustain continued growth.

Author is Kristin Huntley, Director of Content & Marketing for Motofuze powered by Fuzecast

Consistency is Key: Branding with Purpose

Bruce Springsteen once said, “Sustaining an audience is hard. It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action over a long period of time.” Although he was referring to his journey to fame, his thoughts are very applicable to maintaininga consistent brand. Establishing brand consistency within a dealership is about more than just creating rules and setting the standards. Keeping a consistent brand image means you must uniformly brand yourself to your potential customers andcurrent, loyal buyers. Brand consistency significantly impacts your brand recognition and leading to more sales. There are two ways dealerships can demonstrate brand consistency—cultivating a social culture and delivering customer experience.

Social Culture Strategy

To achieve consistency, successful brands are careful to deliver messages that build familiarity. Whether it’s social media or a print ad, a strong brand will have a consistent look, feel and tone. The modern automotive dealership must begin branding from the inside out.  Focused efforts to cultivate a social culture and leverage the influence of employees begins with effectively communicating the core mission, vision and values of your brand.  Engaged leaders and their employees have the power to create a credible and authentic marketing channel.  A dealership culture of engaged employee advocates will reach a far broader audience than you could ever gain from paid advertising!  

Think of the brands who have gained your loyalty.  What kind of employees work for them?  Are they passionate about the brand and do they share what’s great about the brand they represent?  Brands like Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, Zappos and more place the highest value on creating a social culture and the proof is in the bottom line.

Although dealerships may not work exactly like the brands mentioned above, they can still improve the way they present themselves to customers by investing in their employees, offering tools for engaging with consumers at the top of the sales funnel and empowering them with consistent communication so they feel connected to the mission of your brand and excited to share it! Dealerships who want to stay competitive in the digital age must invest in the people they’ve charged with carrying out their growth strategies and goals.  It is no longer enough to buy a bigger ad or have cooler business cards.  Branding begins inside the dealership and from there it is carried forward by the people behind it.  

Customer Experience

Creating a consistently excellent customer experience is essential to a dealership’s success. In the automotive industry, consumers can find the same cars anywhere they search, but customer experience is what sets dealerships apart. Consistency on the customer journey is an important predictor of overall customer experience and loyalty. A customer journey spans all elements of a company and is most directly impacted by the level of employee engagement. To maintainconsistency, dealerships need tools and teams in place that allow them to quickly respond to customer needs and concerns.  Proper training ensures employees know their role in the customer experience, and the right tools provide them with effective strategies for stepping in when needed. When you have done the work of cultivating a social culture, every employee will know how, and have the tools to deliver a consistently excellent customer experience because they understand the values and mission guiding them.  Trust is gained or lost in every customer interaction, so empowering teams to meet customer needs is critical. When customers know what to expect, or better yet, know the people who work for a dealership, they will demonstrate loyalty. 

Customer experience is driven by the combination of promises made and promises kept by a dealership. Brands must deliver on the promised values of their brand in addition to the deals and promotions they advertise.  This will require a proactive strategy for sharing content that highlights the goals of the brand and the delivery of brand promises. 

Since a customer journey often touches different parts of the organization, companies need to rewire themselves and re-engage from the top down.  Everyone in your dealership must understand how they contribute, either positively or negatively, to the customer journey from beginning to end. Dealerships that miss the opportunity to invest in employees as step one on the customer journey department will undoubtedly expend unnecessary resources to improve the customer experience, without realizing the cost.

Creating brand-consistent customer experiences are critical to a dealership’s influence and bottom line success. Cultivating a social culture is the lynchpin for great customer service. When every lead is a referral, trust is easily established enabling your dealership to sustain continued growth.

Author is Kristin Huntley, Director of Content & Marketing for Motofuze powered by Fuzecast

I rarely meet a Twitter user who doesn’t want more followers. A few argue that the numbers aren’t important. They are only concerned with “quality followers.” I’m not sure it is either/or, but I notice that most of the people making this argument have very few followers.

Why would you want more followers? Three reasons:

1. More followers provide social authority. Like any other ranking system, the higher your follower count, the more people assume you are an expert—or at least someone interesting. It may not be valid, but it’s the way it works in a world where there is a ranked list for everything.
2. More followers extend your influence. Twitter is a great tool for spreading ideas. If you have ideas worth sharing, why wouldn’t you want to spread them to as many people as possible? Twitter makes it ridiculously easy. The larger your follower count, the faster your ideas spread.
3. More followers lead to more sales. You’re likely on Twitter for one of three reasons: to be entertained, to network with others, or to sell your stuff. Whether it’s a new or pre-owned, service, or even a cause, more followers provide the opportunity to generate more leads and more conversions.

So how can you get more followers? Follow these steps for better Twitter usage and increase your followers:

1. Show your face. Make sure that you have uploaded a photo to your Twitter profile. I will not follow anyone without a photo. Why? Because the absence of a photo tells me they are either a spammer or a newbie. Use a good headshot.
2. Create an interesting bio. Don’t leave this blank. It is one of the first things potential followers review. Explain who you are and what you do. If you were a brand or a product (crass, I know), what would be your tagline? Include that in your bio. Also, be sure to include a city name. By the way, Twitter will not include you in search results unless you fill out your username, full name, and bio.
3. Make your Twitter presence visible. I can’t tell you how often I have read an interesting post and wanted to tweet the link, but couldn’t find the author’s Twitter username. So I gave up and moved on. Make it easy for people to follow you. Display links to your Twitter account in your email signature, your blog or website, business cards—everywhere.
4. Share valuable content. This is probably my most important piece of advice. Point people to helpful resources. Be generous. Be inspiring. Use lots of links. Create content that other people look forward to getting and want to pass on to their own followers. 
5. Post frequently, but don’t flood your followers. I do most of my blog reading early in the morning. I scan over 30 blogs, and love to share the gems I find. I used to do this as I found them, which often meant a flood of 8–10 posts at a time. Now, I use HootSuite to spread these throughout the day, so I don’t overwhelm my followers.
6. Keep your posts short enough to retweet. Retweets are the only to get noticed by people who don’t follow you. Therefore, you must make it easy for your followers to retweet you. Keep your tweets short enough for people to add the RT symbol and your username (“RT @LittleJoeAtVin”). For me, that takes up 17 characters, including the space. That means my tweets can be no longer than 123 characters (140–17=123).
7. Reply to others publicly. I used to reply to people via DM, thinking my message was irrelevant to most of my followers. Because I wasn’t replying in public, this made me look unsociable. So now, I reply almost exclusively in public. The only people who see those messages are those who follow both me and the person I am replying to—a small subset of my followers. So, it’s sociable but not annoying.
8. Practice strategic following. By this I mean, follow people in the auto industry, people who use certain keywords in their bio, or even people who follow the people you follow. Some of these will follow you back. If they retweet you, it will introduce you to their followers. For example, I could use Twitter’s Advanced Search Feature to find everyone within a 50-mile radius of Kansas City who has used the word “automotive” in their bio or a post.
9. Be generous in linking and retweeting others. Twitter fosters a culture of sharing. The more you link to others, the more people will reciprocate. And that’s precisely what must happen for you to grow your follower count. You need others to introduce you to their followers. 
10. Avoid too much promotion. Yes, you can promote your blog posts, products, etc. on Twitter but be careful. There’s an invisible line you must not cross. If you do, you look like a spammer—or just clueless. Not only will you not get additional followers, you will wear out your existing followers and many of them will unfollow you. 
11. Don’t use an auto-responder. Do not set up an auto responder to send a DM to thank someone for following you. Its tacky and a bad practice. 

Social Media Marketing Manager

@LittleJoeAtVin

VinSolutions.com

Office: 800.980.7488 X199

Taken from: http://michaelhyatt.com/12-ways-to-get-more-twitter-followers.html

I rarely meet a Twitter user who doesn’t want more followers. A few argue that the numbers aren’t important. They are only concerned with “quality followers.” I’m not sure it is either/or, but I notice that most of the people making this argument have very few followers.

Why would you want more followers? Three reasons:

1. More followers provide social authority. Like any other ranking system, the higher your follower count, the more people assume you are an expert—or at least someone interesting. It may not be valid, but it’s the way it works in a world where there is a ranked list for everything.
2. More followers extend your influence. Twitter is a great tool for spreading ideas. If you have ideas worth sharing, why wouldn’t you want to spread them to as many people as possible? Twitter makes it ridiculously easy. The larger your follower count, the faster your ideas spread.
3. More followers lead to more sales. You’re likely on Twitter for one of three reasons: to be entertained, to network with others, or to sell your stuff. Whether it’s a new or pre-owned, service, or even a cause, more followers provide the opportunity to generate more leads and more conversions.

So how can you get more followers? Follow these steps for better Twitter usage and increase your followers:

1. Show your face. Make sure that you have uploaded a photo to your Twitter profile. I will not follow anyone without a photo. Why? Because the absence of a photo tells me they are either a spammer or a newbie. Use a good headshot.
2. Create an interesting bio. Don’t leave this blank. It is one of the first things potential followers review. Explain who you are and what you do. If you were a brand or a product (crass, I know), what would be your tagline? Include that in your bio. Also, be sure to include a city name. By the way, Twitter will not include you in search results unless you fill out your username, full name, and bio.
3. Make your Twitter presence visible. I can’t tell you how often I have read an interesting post and wanted to tweet the link, but couldn’t find the author’s Twitter username. So I gave up and moved on. Make it easy for people to follow you. Display links to your Twitter account in your email signature, your blog or website, business cards—everywhere.
4. Share valuable content. This is probably my most important piece of advice. Point people to helpful resources. Be generous. Be inspiring. Use lots of links. Create content that other people look forward to getting and want to pass on to their own followers. 
5. Post frequently, but don’t flood your followers. I do most of my blog reading early in the morning. I scan over 30 blogs, and love to share the gems I find. I used to do this as I found them, which often meant a flood of 8–10 posts at a time. Now, I use HootSuite to spread these throughout the day, so I don’t overwhelm my followers.
6. Keep your posts short enough to retweet. Retweets are the only to get noticed by people who don’t follow you. Therefore, you must make it easy for your followers to retweet you. Keep your tweets short enough for people to add the RT symbol and your username (“RT @LittleJoeAtVin”). For me, that takes up 17 characters, including the space. That means my tweets can be no longer than 123 characters (140–17=123).
7. Reply to others publicly. I used to reply to people via DM, thinking my message was irrelevant to most of my followers. Because I wasn’t replying in public, this made me look unsociable. So now, I reply almost exclusively in public. The only people who see those messages are those who follow both me and the person I am replying to—a small subset of my followers. So, it’s sociable but not annoying.
8. Practice strategic following. By this I mean, follow people in the auto industry, people who use certain keywords in their bio, or even people who follow the people you follow. Some of these will follow you back. If they retweet you, it will introduce you to their followers. For example, I could use Twitter’s Advanced Search Feature to find everyone within a 50-mile radius of Kansas City who has used the word “automotive” in their bio or a post.
9. Be generous in linking and retweeting others. Twitter fosters a culture of sharing. The more you link to others, the more people will reciprocate. And that’s precisely what must happen for you to grow your follower count. You need others to introduce you to their followers. 
10. Avoid too much promotion. Yes, you can promote your blog posts, products, etc. on Twitter but be careful. There’s an invisible line you must not cross. If you do, you look like a spammer—or just clueless. Not only will you not get additional followers, you will wear out your existing followers and many of them will unfollow you. 
11. Don’t use an auto-responder. Do not set up an auto responder to send a DM to thank someone for following you. Its tacky and a bad practice. 

Social Media Marketing Manager

@LittleJoeAtVin

VinSolutions.com

Office: 800.980.7488 X199

Taken from: http://michaelhyatt.com/12-ways-to-get-more-twitter-followers.html

PRLog (Press Release) - Apr 30, 2012 - 
VinSolutions, an industry-leading developer of automotive Internet-based Customer Relations Management (CRM) and Internet Lead Management (ILM) software, is excited to announce its company-wide charity initiative, “VinGives”, allowing employees the opportunity to contribute to their favorite non-profit organization. 

Through VinGives, employees at VinSolutions may apply to receive monetary support and recognition for their participation in community service.  Each month, an executive committee will review applications received through their website and make unanimous decisions, track progress and trends, make notifications and evolve the program accordingly.     

"Philanthropy has not only become our corporate responsibility, as one of the fastest growing and successful companies in the nation, but an important part of making a positive impact in the lives of our most valued asset – our people,” said Keith Polsinelli, Chief Operating Officer of VinSolutions.  “VinGives is an extension of our “Be One with VIN” motto and continues to foster the kind of culture that encourages job and personal innovation through teamwork and balance."  

Community Outreach is a core value that VinSolutions is eager to adopt in hopes that employees begin to get involved and volunteer throughout the year.  Find out more about VinGives here:http://www.vingives.com

About VinSolutions (http://www.vinsolutions.com)

VinSolutions, headquartered in Overland Park, KS, consolidates data from all areas of an automotive dealership helping dealers to find, sell and keep customers more profitably with their fully-integrated “Dealership Marketing System.” VinSolutions’ all-in-one internal management and external sales and service marketing solution platform includes  search marketing, online advertising, social media marketing tools, mobile marketing, websites, ILM (Internet Lead Management), CRM (Customer Relationship Management), sales force automation, desking, appraisal, finance, used vehicle marketing and market pricing, inventory management and distribution, window stickers, automated video tours, loyalty management and targeted marketing with email, text, direct mail and telemarketing services. This cloud-based system is available for large dealer groups and individual dealerships from anywhere an Internet connection is available and can be viewed from any smartphone including BlackBerry, Google DROID and iPhone.  VinSolutions’ Dealership Marketing System is installed by their implementation experts and supported by best practice retail strategy consultation, process training and customer care.

VinSolutions was named on the Inc. 500|5000 in 2010 and 2011 and has received many industry accolades including the Automotive Website Award for Best Integrated Website Platform and the Driving Sales Innovation Cup for VinLens™. VinSolutions is certified by GM, Ford, Chrysler, Honda, Hyundai, Acura, Mazda, Toyota, Subaru, Volkswagen, Audi, Volvo, Kia, Saab, Mitsubishi, Infiniti, Jaguar Land Rover North America and Nissan and is ADP, Reynolds & Reynolds and DealerTrack DMS certified. Other alliances include, but are not limited to, Kelley Blue Book, Black Book, Galves, NADA, CARFAX, R.L. Polk, AIS Rebates, KnowMe, AutoSoft, Arkona, Autodata and RouteOne. Founded in 2006, VinSolutions became a subsidiary of AutoTrader.com in 2011.

http://bit.ly/VinGives

PRLog (Press Release) - Apr 30, 2012 - 
VinSolutions, an industry-leading developer of automotive Internet-based Customer Relations Management (CRM) and Internet Lead Management (ILM) software, is excited to announce its company-wide charity initiative, “VinGives”, allowing employees the opportunity to contribute to their favorite non-profit organization. 

Through VinGives, employees at VinSolutions may apply to receive monetary support and recognition for their participation in community service.  Each month, an executive committee will review applications received through their website and make unanimous decisions, track progress and trends, make notifications and evolve the program accordingly.     

"Philanthropy has not only become our corporate responsibility, as one of the fastest growing and successful companies in the nation, but an important part of making a positive impact in the lives of our most valued asset – our people,” said Keith Polsinelli, Chief Operating Officer of VinSolutions.  “VinGives is an extension of our “Be One with VIN” motto and continues to foster the kind of culture that encourages job and personal innovation through teamwork and balance."  

Community Outreach is a core value that VinSolutions is eager to adopt in hopes that employees begin to get involved and volunteer throughout the year.  Find out more about VinGives here:http://www.vingives.com

About VinSolutions (http://www.vinsolutions.com)

VinSolutions, headquartered in Overland Park, KS, consolidates data from all areas of an automotive dealership helping dealers to find, sell and keep customers more profitably with their fully-integrated “Dealership Marketing System.” VinSolutions’ all-in-one internal management and external sales and service marketing solution platform includes  search marketing, online advertising, social media marketing tools, mobile marketing, websites, ILM (Internet Lead Management), CRM (Customer Relationship Management), sales force automation, desking, appraisal, finance, used vehicle marketing and market pricing, inventory management and distribution, window stickers, automated video tours, loyalty management and targeted marketing with email, text, direct mail and telemarketing services. This cloud-based system is available for large dealer groups and individual dealerships from anywhere an Internet connection is available and can be viewed from any smartphone including BlackBerry, Google DROID and iPhone.  VinSolutions’ Dealership Marketing System is installed by their implementation experts and supported by best practice retail strategy consultation, process training and customer care.

VinSolutions was named on the Inc. 500|5000 in 2010 and 2011 and has received many industry accolades including the Automotive Website Award for Best Integrated Website Platform and the Driving Sales Innovation Cup for VinLens™. VinSolutions is certified by GM, Ford, Chrysler, Honda, Hyundai, Acura, Mazda, Toyota, Subaru, Volkswagen, Audi, Volvo, Kia, Saab, Mitsubishi, Infiniti, Jaguar Land Rover North America and Nissan and is ADP, Reynolds & Reynolds and DealerTrack DMS certified. Other alliances include, but are not limited to, Kelley Blue Book, Black Book, Galves, NADA, CARFAX, R.L. Polk, AIS Rebates, KnowMe, AutoSoft, Arkona, Autodata and RouteOne. Founded in 2006, VinSolutions became a subsidiary of AutoTrader.com in 2011.

http://bit.ly/VinGives

Toyota Marin’s Numbers Tell an Impressive Story:

• Toyota Marin is among the top dealers nationwide in Internet new and used car sales, with 1,710 Internet sales units in 2010 and close to that number for 2011.
• The dealership ranks 10^th in the region for new car sales. That’s up from 41^st in the region when the Price-Simms Group acquired the store in 2004.
• Toyota Marin is 145% sales efficient – selling almost 1.5 Toyotas to every Toyota registered in its primary market area, as defined by Toyota.
• Toyota Marin’s fixed operations are up 21% year over year.
• 2011 was Toyota Marin’s fourth consecutive year winning Toyota’s President’s Award.

An open mind, an aggressive sales strategy, and ongoing critical evaluation of the performance of its digital technology vendors are keeping Toyota Marin among the top dealerships nationwide in Internet sales.

And, the dealership has just completed remodeling to Toyota Image USA II standards a Scion facility that will be its new direct sales building.  That is expected to more than double the dealership’s capacity for new car sales and for the direct sales department in 2012. 

Toyota Marin’s General Manager Mike Christian and General Sales Manager Jay Brownrigg recently shared with Digital Dealer magazine the secrets to the success of this remarkable dealership.

Click here to read Mike and Jay’s full story and the rest of the March 2012 Digital Dealer magazine.

First of all, Mike, how did you get into the car business?

Mike: In 1985, I was 16 years old, my mother was in the business and I was hired to sell cars on weekends and after school at Ricart Ford, in Columbus, OH. I fell in love with the business and worked my way through high school and college and never looked back.

I worked at a few different dealerships. Then, I moved to California and went to work for the current owner of this dealership, Tom Price in 1998. He had a group called First American Automotive. In the early 2000s, he sold out to Sonic and I stayed with Sonic. Then in 2004, Tom Price bought Toyota Marin and in March of 2007, I came back to work for him here.

Jay, how did you start in the business?

Jay: I started in the business in 2001 after I got off of active duty in the U.S. Air Force. I responded to an ad in a local newspaper and was hired by County Ford and worked there for five years. Then I was recalled to active duty to serve in Afghanistan and Iraq. When I was done with my tours of duty, my wife and I moved to California and in 2010, I applied to Toyota Marin and I was hired as a sales manager. I’ve since progressed to general sales manager and I manage our Internet sales.

Tell us about the company culture that fosters so much success at Toyota Marin.

Mike: The dealership group we are part of – Price-Simms – is unique. We are very open-minded and generous. We are constantly looking at other dealers and vendors in order to help improve our own operations. We also bring dealers in from outside the organization and share information with them. We all stay actively involved with what’s happening within our industry. For example I am on the dealer advisory board of AutoTrader.com and others sit on boards like ResponseLogix.

We’re embracing a lot of things that many dealers are resistant to — such as the intangible results from a blog or from postings on Facebook. Some dealers may feel: Why waste the time on it? We’re trying to be more forward thinking than that. We’re constantly looking to evolve.

We pride ourselves on our ease of doing business, and whether it’s for our sales people or the consumer, we like transparency. We have transparency at our sales meetings; we will talk about aspects of our financial statement or why and how things may operate. We have transparency with the consumer. We pre-discount all of our cars. We quote prices, terms, rates, and availability questions right up front.

We’re completely negotiation free on pre-owned. We sell 165 pre-owned cars a month and our goal this year is to expand that to 250 and it’s based upon a totally upfront, straightforward and transparent sales process.

From a new car standpoint, a couple of times a month we’ll shop and determine what price cars are transacting at by model. We use Toyota’s reports as well as outside sources like; Edmunds.com, Zag and other third-party providers. Once we feel we have an accurate picture of the transaction price we simply price the cars there right out of the gate.

It just makes good business sense. The least amount of control I have is over my new car margin. So, I want to spend the least amount of time trying to manage that aspect of my business. Our transparency in pricing makes it easier for everyone (consumer and salesperson alike) to do business, after determining what price the car is transacting at, we just put it at that price and go.

When the tsunami hit last year and supply diminished, obviously the cars were transacting at a higher price and we made a little more margin during that time. But, at the same time, we remained committed to our value pricing, and so we kept discounting when other dealers simply saw an opportunity to gouge a consumer.

How about pricing on the pre-owned side?

Mike: It’s really the same thing on the pre-owned side. We just tell ourselves the truth every day. When we take a car in, we price it right at the market price, right out of the gate. That allows us to turn our inventory two times a month. We are selling 165 used cars a month on a lot where we never can carry more than 85 on the front line at any given time.

This past year, 2011, we sold a little over 1800 used cars and sold just about 1700 new cars.

What percentage of those sales were Internet sales?

Jay: Strictly speaking, about 44% of our sales are Internet, based upon our direct sales department numbers. We get about 1,200 to 1,300 Internet sales leads per month and our closing ratio for these Internet leads is about 12%.

Unlike many other dealerships, we don’t count phone leads as Internet leads. They are an entirely separate channel, and we track them a little differently. Most of the phone leads go to the direct sales department, but a retail floor person can take the training for our own certification program and they can handle phone leads as well.

We get between 700 and 800 phone leads a month and we generally close around 10% of our phone leads.

Many dealerships do count phone leads as Internet leads. Often the store’s number that the customer is calling is only available from the dealership’s website.

Mike: In a broad sense, we actually attribute 95% of our sales to the Internet, because all customers are touched by it — even the ones who walk in with no mention of any prior Internet queries.

And that’s why most of our advertising is focused online.

Do you do any traditional advertising?

Mike: We spend about $5,000 per month advertising with Comcast in our local market, for fixed operations and sales. Our total dealership’s ad spend is around $100,000 a month.

The other $95,000 a month is spent in online ads or services such as: SEO, SEM, and third-party lead aggregators – we spend a decent amount with AutoTrader.com – and our email follow-up company.

Our e-mail follow-up leverages analytics to send targeted multi-channel communications to our customers on the fixed operations side. That, along with our superior customer service, and the fact that people are keeping and servicing their cars longer in this economy, is why Toyota Marin’s fixed operations are growing at 21% year over year.

We can also give some credit here to Xtime, which we use to schedule service appointments. Xtime is doing a very good job for us. We upgraded Xtime to become a premium dealer so our customers can do bill pay online. We’re moving towards being more transactional on our web site.

How do you manage your website and drive traffic to it?

Mike: Dealer.com hosts our website and our mobile website and does a great job with both. Our inventory lead management system is VinSolutions, which works very well for us. We do our own specials, and we also have an ad agent, ThinkOut, that specializes in online marketing and sales and helps us manage our ads, SEO and SEM as well as our web content.

ThinkOut is headed by Beth VanStory and she is phenomenal. When we brought her onboard, she tripled the number of leads that came in for sales and also for fixed operations. She does an amazing job for us.

What percentage of your leads does your own website generate?

Mike: Our web site generates 50% of our Internet leads. The other 50% comes from our third-party lead providers – mostly from AutoTrader.com, Cars.com, and Zag.

We’re constantly scrutinizing our third-party lead providers and their territories. We’re constantly redefining our territories and evaluating providers by quality and close ratio.

Throughout the year, we periodically change our third-party lead providers. If they are performing well for a period of time, we stay with them, and if they are not, we cut them off.

There’s been several that we shut off during the past year and now we’re back with them. We’re very aggressive from the standpoint that we’re always looking to get bigger and grow our operation, but we certainly want to work with quality and not waste our sales persons’ time. If we don’t feel the leads are performing – say a conversion rate drops down to 4% – we’ll take a hard look at that lead source.

Rather than just shut it off immediately, we’ll concentrate on the leads we get from that source and work a little harder on them, to see if it’s us or the quality of the lead. If we work that source’s leads for another 30 or 45 days and we can’t improve the conversion ratio, then that provider is gone.

How do you process your Internet sales leads?

Jay: We look at everything as its own individual channel. We treat an Internet lead or a phone lead with the same level of intense follow-up as most stores treat a walk-in consumer.

Most dealerships focus on walk-in traffic and they can count how many ups, demos, write ups, etc., and they handle walk-in follow-ups more aggressively than their Internet leads. We handle all our leads aggressively.

We have 26 salespeople altogether. Twelve of them handle Internet leads and 12 handle phone leads. We don’t have a BDC.

Everything channels into our CRM no matter what type of lead it is and every lead has its own type of work plan – whether its phone follow-up, or email or mail follow-up. It’s all dictated by which channel the lead came from.

What is your normal response time to an Internet lead?

Jay: We use ResponseLogix and it performs very well for us. Our immediate response to an Internet lead is a custom-tailored price quote sent out by ResponseLogix within 10 minutes. That frees our sales person to pick up the phone and call the customer while that customer is still at the computer. Our personal response time is within half an hour.

Our follow-up time for both Internet and phone leads is 75 days. We have one required follow-up call on a phone up and then we traditionally will have one of the sales managers call on that lead as part of customer relations. That call is to see if the first call was handled properly.

Then we use services like Who’s Calling, a call capture service, which allows us to track whether the prospect makes an appointment or not. So our managers can react quickly on the phone leads, if the phone call did not go in the manner that we want.

What do you use for CRM?

Mike: We are actually thinking of changing our CRM this year. We are shopping and keeping an open mind to anything out there. As the technology changes, we’re constantly looking to improve communications with consumers and make things a little easier for our sales people to do business. There are some great new advances in CRM technology that we are looking to take advantage of this year.

What specific advances or features are you looking for?

Mike: Everybody’s CRMs are good at trading, workflow and a sales person’s to-do list. The lead comes into the CRM and it quotes a price, or not, depending on your business model. Then, all the CRMs offer a set of templates for emails that go out to the prospect and, of course, all CRMs offer the sales person’s phone action plan and to-do list to coincide with all that.

We are looking for a CRM that does all that, but will also help us improve our leads to sales ratio. To do that you have to fine tune communications with the consumer.

We’re seeing different consumer behavior in today’s market. The old buying funnel is disappearing. It used to be that a consumer would start by looking at five different cars four months out, and as they got close to transactional time, they would be considering two cars – like a Toyota Camry and a Honda Accord. Today, we’re seeing the consumer typically start with two cars and eventually go to three or four when it comes down to transaction time.

So, our goal this year is to make sure that we are speaking to the consumer about what’s relevant to them when it’s relevant. Companies like Dataium can watch and track what each consumer’s behavior is and help us tailor our message to each customer and deliver it when the consumer is most receptive.

For example, let’s suppose a consumer sees that we have a really cool used car, a Toyota Supra on our home page, and submits a query, which becomes our Internet lead. Meanwhile that same consumer goes on to look at five Toyota Tundras in our inventory. If we are able to track that online behavior, we know we need to be communicating to that consumer about a Tundra, not a Toyota Supra, because based on their behavior, the Tundra is what they are really interested in buying.

It’s about using all the information that’s available about consumers online and being able to educate our sales force and improve communications, so we can talk to our customers about relevant information in a timely fashion and help drive more customers through our door.

How do you keep up on technology?

Mike: We read Dealer magazine. We go to the Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition. We are part of the Price-Simms organization, so we get together as a group twice a year and invite several vendors and listen to their presentations. We are receptive. We try to be very open-minded. We’ll look at things. We are always trying to deal with vendors that are best in class and we’re always trying to figure out what is the latest, greatest development.

How do you handle social media?

Jay: We use Digital Air Strike for social media. We are extremely pleased with the approach they take.

One of the reasons we chose Digital Air Strike is that they offer more of an agency, hands-on approach, rather than provide some automated solution. They handle Facebook and Twitter for us – posting links on those sites to wherever consumers have put reviews about us online.

Mike: Digital Air Strike is much more proactive than we have the time to be. We have a lot of things to do during the day. Sitting down and writing and posting things on Facebook, and Twitter are not top of mind for most dealers. But, I think social media is an important and growing segment.

That’s why we write our own blogs for our website. Each department head is supposed to write one blog per month. Beth VanStory and I just post them. We are constantly reminding the managers to make sure they get their blog in and I can’t say we’re successful every month, but I think we do a better job than most.

Specifically, how do you handle online reputation management?

Jay: Digital Air Strike helps us with online reputation management and we get a lot of traction with the online reviews. We personally answer all the reviews that require an answer.

We are on DealerRater.com with an average rating of 4.9, with 23 reviews. We’re constantly looking to drive up reviews. Whenever a customer reaches out to us to tell us about their experiences here, we respond with a templated e-mail that has the hyperlinks to the big review sites. When we want to push to get more reviews on DealerRater, we put its link first and foremost on the email. Google Places is probably the next initiative we need to take to get more reviews.

What is your biggest challenge?

Mike: We have several: Margin compression – that’s a problem for everyone in the industry; maintaining quality personnel and being able to grow people; and keeping on top of all the technology we use – between the CRM and the products – and having 22 different model lines.

As for maintaining a quality staff, Price-Simms is an upwardly mobile and growing organization that’s launched several new dealerships all in the San Francisco Bay Area this year: Ford of Fairfield, Mercedes Fairfield, Fisker and McLaren for all of Northern California.

That’s good for us, because it allows us to recruit more and keeps people on a career path. At the same time, it’s a challenge, because there’s constant evolution. It never stops, so we are always training.

What is your vision for the future?

Mike: Right now we have 120 employees at Toyota Marin and we’re selling over 3,600 cars per year. We’ve recently expanded and opened up a used car facility across the street to increase our used car capacity.

Our vision for the future is to constantly grow our organization and improve our CSI. We want to be number one in CSI, sell 250 used cars per month, be in the top five in the region for new car sales rankings, and top five for certified pre-owned sales. We are always looking to get bigger, including our fixed ops side. We’re constantly driving our sales volume up to increase our units in operation and our used car volume to drive our reconditioning which in turn fuels our fixed operations. We are always looking to improve, refine and grow along this trajectory.

Link to Article

Toyota Marin’s Numbers Tell an Impressive Story:

• Toyota Marin is among the top dealers nationwide in Internet new and used car sales, with 1,710 Internet sales units in 2010 and close to that number for 2011.
• The dealership ranks 10^th in the region for new car sales. That’s up from 41^st in the region when the Price-Simms Group acquired the store in 2004.
• Toyota Marin is 145% sales efficient – selling almost 1.5 Toyotas to every Toyota registered in its primary market area, as defined by Toyota.
• Toyota Marin’s fixed operations are up 21% year over year.
• 2011 was Toyota Marin’s fourth consecutive year winning Toyota’s President’s Award.

An open mind, an aggressive sales strategy, and ongoing critical evaluation of the performance of its digital technology vendors are keeping Toyota Marin among the top dealerships nationwide in Internet sales.

And, the dealership has just completed remodeling to Toyota Image USA II standards a Scion facility that will be its new direct sales building.  That is expected to more than double the dealership’s capacity for new car sales and for the direct sales department in 2012. 

Toyota Marin’s General Manager Mike Christian and General Sales Manager Jay Brownrigg recently shared with Digital Dealer magazine the secrets to the success of this remarkable dealership.

Click here to read Mike and Jay’s full story and the rest of the March 2012 Digital Dealer magazine.

First of all, Mike, how did you get into the car business?

Mike: In 1985, I was 16 years old, my mother was in the business and I was hired to sell cars on weekends and after school at Ricart Ford, in Columbus, OH. I fell in love with the business and worked my way through high school and college and never looked back.

I worked at a few different dealerships. Then, I moved to California and went to work for the current owner of this dealership, Tom Price in 1998. He had a group called First American Automotive. In the early 2000s, he sold out to Sonic and I stayed with Sonic. Then in 2004, Tom Price bought Toyota Marin and in March of 2007, I came back to work for him here.

Jay, how did you start in the business?

Jay: I started in the business in 2001 after I got off of active duty in the U.S. Air Force. I responded to an ad in a local newspaper and was hired by County Ford and worked there for five years. Then I was recalled to active duty to serve in Afghanistan and Iraq. When I was done with my tours of duty, my wife and I moved to California and in 2010, I applied to Toyota Marin and I was hired as a sales manager. I’ve since progressed to general sales manager and I manage our Internet sales.

Tell us about the company culture that fosters so much success at Toyota Marin.

Mike: The dealership group we are part of – Price-Simms – is unique. We are very open-minded and generous. We are constantly looking at other dealers and vendors in order to help improve our own operations. We also bring dealers in from outside the organization and share information with them. We all stay actively involved with what’s happening within our industry. For example I am on the dealer advisory board of AutoTrader.com and others sit on boards like ResponseLogix.

We’re embracing a lot of things that many dealers are resistant to — such as the intangible results from a blog or from postings on Facebook. Some dealers may feel: Why waste the time on it? We’re trying to be more forward thinking than that. We’re constantly looking to evolve.

We pride ourselves on our ease of doing business, and whether it’s for our sales people or the consumer, we like transparency. We have transparency at our sales meetings; we will talk about aspects of our financial statement or why and how things may operate. We have transparency with the consumer. We pre-discount all of our cars. We quote prices, terms, rates, and availability questions right up front.

We’re completely negotiation free on pre-owned. We sell 165 pre-owned cars a month and our goal this year is to expand that to 250 and it’s based upon a totally upfront, straightforward and transparent sales process.

From a new car standpoint, a couple of times a month we’ll shop and determine what price cars are transacting at by model. We use Toyota’s reports as well as outside sources like; Edmunds.com, Zag and other third-party providers. Once we feel we have an accurate picture of the transaction price we simply price the cars there right out of the gate.

It just makes good business sense. The least amount of control I have is over my new car margin. So, I want to spend the least amount of time trying to manage that aspect of my business. Our transparency in pricing makes it easier for everyone (consumer and salesperson alike) to do business, after determining what price the car is transacting at, we just put it at that price and go.

When the tsunami hit last year and supply diminished, obviously the cars were transacting at a higher price and we made a little more margin during that time. But, at the same time, we remained committed to our value pricing, and so we kept discounting when other dealers simply saw an opportunity to gouge a consumer.

How about pricing on the pre-owned side?

Mike: It’s really the same thing on the pre-owned side. We just tell ourselves the truth every day. When we take a car in, we price it right at the market price, right out of the gate. That allows us to turn our inventory two times a month. We are selling 165 used cars a month on a lot where we never can carry more than 85 on the front line at any given time.

This past year, 2011, we sold a little over 1800 used cars and sold just about 1700 new cars.

What percentage of those sales were Internet sales?

Jay: Strictly speaking, about 44% of our sales are Internet, based upon our direct sales department numbers. We get about 1,200 to 1,300 Internet sales leads per month and our closing ratio for these Internet leads is about 12%.

Unlike many other dealerships, we don’t count phone leads as Internet leads. They are an entirely separate channel, and we track them a little differently. Most of the phone leads go to the direct sales department, but a retail floor person can take the training for our own certification program and they can handle phone leads as well.

We get between 700 and 800 phone leads a month and we generally close around 10% of our phone leads.

Many dealerships do count phone leads as Internet leads. Often the store’s number that the customer is calling is only available from the dealership’s website.

Mike: In a broad sense, we actually attribute 95% of our sales to the Internet, because all customers are touched by it — even the ones who walk in with no mention of any prior Internet queries.

And that’s why most of our advertising is focused online.

Do you do any traditional advertising?

Mike: We spend about $5,000 per month advertising with Comcast in our local market, for fixed operations and sales. Our total dealership’s ad spend is around $100,000 a month.

The other $95,000 a month is spent in online ads or services such as: SEO, SEM, and third-party lead aggregators – we spend a decent amount with AutoTrader.com – and our email follow-up company.

Our e-mail follow-up leverages analytics to send targeted multi-channel communications to our customers on the fixed operations side. That, along with our superior customer service, and the fact that people are keeping and servicing their cars longer in this economy, is why Toyota Marin’s fixed operations are growing at 21% year over year.

We can also give some credit here to Xtime, which we use to schedule service appointments. Xtime is doing a very good job for us. We upgraded Xtime to become a premium dealer so our customers can do bill pay online. We’re moving towards being more transactional on our web site.

How do you manage your website and drive traffic to it?

Mike: Dealer.com hosts our website and our mobile website and does a great job with both. Our inventory lead management system is VinSolutions, which works very well for us. We do our own specials, and we also have an ad agent, ThinkOut, that specializes in online marketing and sales and helps us manage our ads, SEO and SEM as well as our web content.

ThinkOut is headed by Beth VanStory and she is phenomenal. When we brought her onboard, she tripled the number of leads that came in for sales and also for fixed operations. She does an amazing job for us.

What percentage of your leads does your own website generate?

Mike: Our web site generates 50% of our Internet leads. The other 50% comes from our third-party lead providers – mostly from AutoTrader.com, Cars.com, and Zag.

We’re constantly scrutinizing our third-party lead providers and their territories. We’re constantly redefining our territories and evaluating providers by quality and close ratio.

Throughout the year, we periodically change our third-party lead providers. If they are performing well for a period of time, we stay with them, and if they are not, we cut them off.

There’s been several that we shut off during the past year and now we’re back with them. We’re very aggressive from the standpoint that we’re always looking to get bigger and grow our operation, but we certainly want to work with quality and not waste our sales persons’ time. If we don’t feel the leads are performing – say a conversion rate drops down to 4% – we’ll take a hard look at that lead source.

Rather than just shut it off immediately, we’ll concentrate on the leads we get from that source and work a little harder on them, to see if it’s us or the quality of the lead. If we work that source’s leads for another 30 or 45 days and we can’t improve the conversion ratio, then that provider is gone.

How do you process your Internet sales leads?

Jay: We look at everything as its own individual channel. We treat an Internet lead or a phone lead with the same level of intense follow-up as most stores treat a walk-in consumer.

Most dealerships focus on walk-in traffic and they can count how many ups, demos, write ups, etc., and they handle walk-in follow-ups more aggressively than their Internet leads. We handle all our leads aggressively.

We have 26 salespeople altogether. Twelve of them handle Internet leads and 12 handle phone leads. We don’t have a BDC.

Everything channels into our CRM no matter what type of lead it is and every lead has its own type of work plan – whether its phone follow-up, or email or mail follow-up. It’s all dictated by which channel the lead came from.

What is your normal response time to an Internet lead?

Jay: We use ResponseLogix and it performs very well for us. Our immediate response to an Internet lead is a custom-tailored price quote sent out by ResponseLogix within 10 minutes. That frees our sales person to pick up the phone and call the customer while that customer is still at the computer. Our personal response time is within half an hour.

Our follow-up time for both Internet and phone leads is 75 days. We have one required follow-up call on a phone up and then we traditionally will have one of the sales managers call on that lead as part of customer relations. That call is to see if the first call was handled properly.

Then we use services like Who’s Calling, a call capture service, which allows us to track whether the prospect makes an appointment or not. So our managers can react quickly on the phone leads, if the phone call did not go in the manner that we want.

What do you use for CRM?

Mike: We are actually thinking of changing our CRM this year. We are shopping and keeping an open mind to anything out there. As the technology changes, we’re constantly looking to improve communications with consumers and make things a little easier for our sales people to do business. There are some great new advances in CRM technology that we are looking to take advantage of this year.

What specific advances or features are you looking for?

Mike: Everybody’s CRMs are good at trading, workflow and a sales person’s to-do list. The lead comes into the CRM and it quotes a price, or not, depending on your business model. Then, all the CRMs offer a set of templates for emails that go out to the prospect and, of course, all CRMs offer the sales person’s phone action plan and to-do list to coincide with all that.

We are looking for a CRM that does all that, but will also help us improve our leads to sales ratio. To do that you have to fine tune communications with the consumer.

We’re seeing different consumer behavior in today’s market. The old buying funnel is disappearing. It used to be that a consumer would start by looking at five different cars four months out, and as they got close to transactional time, they would be considering two cars – like a Toyota Camry and a Honda Accord. Today, we’re seeing the consumer typically start with two cars and eventually go to three or four when it comes down to transaction time.

So, our goal this year is to make sure that we are speaking to the consumer about what’s relevant to them when it’s relevant. Companies like Dataium can watch and track what each consumer’s behavior is and help us tailor our message to each customer and deliver it when the consumer is most receptive.

For example, let’s suppose a consumer sees that we have a really cool used car, a Toyota Supra on our home page, and submits a query, which becomes our Internet lead. Meanwhile that same consumer goes on to look at five Toyota Tundras in our inventory. If we are able to track that online behavior, we know we need to be communicating to that consumer about a Tundra, not a Toyota Supra, because based on their behavior, the Tundra is what they are really interested in buying.

It’s about using all the information that’s available about consumers online and being able to educate our sales force and improve communications, so we can talk to our customers about relevant information in a timely fashion and help drive more customers through our door.

How do you keep up on technology?

Mike: We read Dealer magazine. We go to the Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition. We are part of the Price-Simms organization, so we get together as a group twice a year and invite several vendors and listen to their presentations. We are receptive. We try to be very open-minded. We’ll look at things. We are always trying to deal with vendors that are best in class and we’re always trying to figure out what is the latest, greatest development.

How do you handle social media?

Jay: We use Digital Air Strike for social media. We are extremely pleased with the approach they take.

One of the reasons we chose Digital Air Strike is that they offer more of an agency, hands-on approach, rather than provide some automated solution. They handle Facebook and Twitter for us – posting links on those sites to wherever consumers have put reviews about us online.

Mike: Digital Air Strike is much more proactive than we have the time to be. We have a lot of things to do during the day. Sitting down and writing and posting things on Facebook, and Twitter are not top of mind for most dealers. But, I think social media is an important and growing segment.

That’s why we write our own blogs for our website. Each department head is supposed to write one blog per month. Beth VanStory and I just post them. We are constantly reminding the managers to make sure they get their blog in and I can’t say we’re successful every month, but I think we do a better job than most.

Specifically, how do you handle online reputation management?

Jay: Digital Air Strike helps us with online reputation management and we get a lot of traction with the online reviews. We personally answer all the reviews that require an answer.

We are on DealerRater.com with an average rating of 4.9, with 23 reviews. We’re constantly looking to drive up reviews. Whenever a customer reaches out to us to tell us about their experiences here, we respond with a templated e-mail that has the hyperlinks to the big review sites. When we want to push to get more reviews on DealerRater, we put its link first and foremost on the email. Google Places is probably the next initiative we need to take to get more reviews.

What is your biggest challenge?

Mike: We have several: Margin compression – that’s a problem for everyone in the industry; maintaining quality personnel and being able to grow people; and keeping on top of all the technology we use – between the CRM and the products – and having 22 different model lines.

As for maintaining a quality staff, Price-Simms is an upwardly mobile and growing organization that’s launched several new dealerships all in the San Francisco Bay Area this year: Ford of Fairfield, Mercedes Fairfield, Fisker and McLaren for all of Northern California.

That’s good for us, because it allows us to recruit more and keeps people on a career path. At the same time, it’s a challenge, because there’s constant evolution. It never stops, so we are always training.

What is your vision for the future?

Mike: Right now we have 120 employees at Toyota Marin and we’re selling over 3,600 cars per year. We’ve recently expanded and opened up a used car facility across the street to increase our used car capacity.

Our vision for the future is to constantly grow our organization and improve our CSI. We want to be number one in CSI, sell 250 used cars per month, be in the top five in the region for new car sales rankings, and top five for certified pre-owned sales. We are always looking to get bigger, including our fixed ops side. We’re constantly driving our sales volume up to increase our units in operation and our used car volume to drive our reconditioning which in turn fuels our fixed operations. We are always looking to improve, refine and grow along this trajectory.

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