It all starts at the top, the decision makers, the shot callers, the check signers. Recent study shows that these managers, presidents and CEO's don't engage in social media leading to the non-understanding of why it is important.

Using the Fortune 500 list the following was discovered; 70% of all CEOs have no social presence. The percentage that do part take in social 25.9% are on LinkedIn, which was the highest percentage of all social sites.

• 7.6% are on Facebook (compared to 50.5% of the US public is on Facebook)
• 3.8% are on Twitter
• 1.2% have a blog
• 0.8% are on Google+
• 0% are on Pinterest.

Surprisingly a small number of CEOs participate in social media. Of the 19 Fortune 500 CEOs currently on Twitter only 9 have tweeted at least once in the last 100 days. 

How do these CEOs stack up on Facebook? Out of the 7.6% on Facebook, 65.8% have less than 100 friends. The Facebook average is 140 friends for the regular user. Only 2 CEOs have more than 500 friends on Facebook. 

Since LinkedIn tends to be the social site CEO's go to, you would expect more activity but 25% of CEOs have not updated their LinkedIn with a current company or title.

• CEOs with 500 connections or more on LinkedIn = 7.8%
• Have more than 10 connections = 58.9%
• 10 connections or less = 41.1%
• 0 or 1 connection = 27.9%

So, if social media is a vital part of online experience, why do so many CEOs neglect it? There may be several reasons for this:

• Risk of sharing the wrong information
• All mistakes are magnified
• Social media seems so overwhelming
• Too much commitment to justify
• Unfamiliar with how to use social media
• No time for social media
• Feel "too old" for social media

Even though the people at the top might not think it matters but it does. A recent survey by Chadwick Martin Bailey shows that 50% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company after following their tweets.

Employees believe that a social presence from upper management could have numbers positive outcomes (study from Brandfog of hundreds of employees from a wide range of companies)

What employees believe:

• 94% think social CEO will Enhance the Brand
• 93% think having a social CEO will help crisis management
• 82% think companies with social CEOs are more trustworthy
• 81% think social CEOs are better leaders
• 78% think having a social CEO leads to better communication
• 78% think having a social CEO will make it easier to recruit
• 77% think a social CEO's company will have increased purchases
• 64% think having a social CEO will improve transparency

This is the main reason upper management does not think or worry about social media marketing. Show them these numbers and maybe you'll get a different response.  Projections from IBM indicate that CEOs may soon take heed of these benefits and ramp up the social communications.

While the majority of Fortune 500 CEOs have yet to pick up the pace with personal social media efforts, current data shows that those who do are more likely to be rewarded with better engagement and loyalty at every entry level.

Its only human nature to fight something we don't understand. Is your company dumping tens of thousands into billboards and doing nothing with social media marketing? 

Show me a precise ROI on a billboard and I'll give you the same for social.

Internal/External Social Media Marketing Manager 

@LittleJoeAtVin

VinSolutions.com

Office: 800.980.7488 X199

It all starts at the top, the decision makers, the shot callers, the check signers. Recent study shows that these managers, presidents and CEO's don't engage in social media leading to the non-understanding of why it is important.

Using the Fortune 500 list the following was discovered; 70% of all CEOs have no social presence. The percentage that do part take in social 25.9% are on LinkedIn, which was the highest percentage of all social sites.

• 7.6% are on Facebook (compared to 50.5% of the US public is on Facebook)
• 3.8% are on Twitter
• 1.2% have a blog
• 0.8% are on Google+
• 0% are on Pinterest.

Surprisingly a small number of CEOs participate in social media. Of the 19 Fortune 500 CEOs currently on Twitter only 9 have tweeted at least once in the last 100 days. 

How do these CEOs stack up on Facebook? Out of the 7.6% on Facebook, 65.8% have less than 100 friends. The Facebook average is 140 friends for the regular user. Only 2 CEOs have more than 500 friends on Facebook. 

Since LinkedIn tends to be the social site CEO's go to, you would expect more activity but 25% of CEOs have not updated their LinkedIn with a current company or title.

• CEOs with 500 connections or more on LinkedIn = 7.8%
• Have more than 10 connections = 58.9%
• 10 connections or less = 41.1%
• 0 or 1 connection = 27.9%

So, if social media is a vital part of online experience, why do so many CEOs neglect it? There may be several reasons for this:

• Risk of sharing the wrong information
• All mistakes are magnified
• Social media seems so overwhelming
• Too much commitment to justify
• Unfamiliar with how to use social media
• No time for social media
• Feel "too old" for social media

Even though the people at the top might not think it matters but it does. A recent survey by Chadwick Martin Bailey shows that 50% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company after following their tweets.

Employees believe that a social presence from upper management could have numbers positive outcomes (study from Brandfog of hundreds of employees from a wide range of companies)

What employees believe:

• 94% think social CEO will Enhance the Brand
• 93% think having a social CEO will help crisis management
• 82% think companies with social CEOs are more trustworthy
• 81% think social CEOs are better leaders
• 78% think having a social CEO leads to better communication
• 78% think having a social CEO will make it easier to recruit
• 77% think a social CEO's company will have increased purchases
• 64% think having a social CEO will improve transparency

This is the main reason upper management does not think or worry about social media marketing. Show them these numbers and maybe you'll get a different response.  Projections from IBM indicate that CEOs may soon take heed of these benefits and ramp up the social communications.

While the majority of Fortune 500 CEOs have yet to pick up the pace with personal social media efforts, current data shows that those who do are more likely to be rewarded with better engagement and loyalty at every entry level.

Its only human nature to fight something we don't understand. Is your company dumping tens of thousands into billboards and doing nothing with social media marketing? 

Show me a precise ROI on a billboard and I'll give you the same for social.

Internal/External Social Media Marketing Manager 

@LittleJoeAtVin

VinSolutions.com

Office: 800.980.7488 X199

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

Hearing about Klout.com? Is it showing up in your Twitter feeds, Facebook news feed, on Google+?

Klout is becoming bigger and bigger for those who want to know where they stand with their Social Media reach & influence.

So, what exactly is Klout? 

The Klout Score measures influence based on your ability to drive action. Every time you create content or engage you influence others. The Klout Score uses data from social networks in order to measure:

• True Reach: How many people you influence
• Amplification: How much you influence them
• Network Impact: The influence of your network

Basically your Klout score is a rough indication of how successful you have been in getting people to respond to and share your content online in the past 90 days and especially the last 30. In the past 18 months my score has increased from 47 to fluctuating between 69 and 71. An average score on Klout is 20 but if one follows the following list their Klout score shall rise quickly. But keep in mind the higher your Klout score goes the harder it is to keep making it rise, i.e.: Its easier to go from 20 to 30 than 40 to 50, and easier to go from 40 to 50 than 60 to 70.

1. Create content that will get a response. Don't always talk about yourself. Ask questions. Seek advise. Get people to comment on your personal Facebook posts and retweet your tweets. Share PopCulture and industry news. Try to share breaking news as quick as you can. (scheduling content works better for me. I use HootSuite to schedule 80% of my stuff on Twitter and Facebook)
2. Reply in some way to everyone who engages you publicly. Hopefully within 24 hours but at least within the week. Promote the people who reach out to you.
3. Share liberally and give credit to the creator and curator of the content that you share. Part of sharing is following, friending and circling back. Put yourself in the mind and position of the other person. 
4. Create at least some kind of content in automotive and publish it every day.This will brand you as an expert in automotive software & marketing. The sharing that you do will result in even more sharing of your stuff. Make sure you share each others content in sales.
5. If someone compliments you or endorses you then allow and accept it. Promote it!
6. Be 100% positive. Always. If possible be fun too. People go online to be inspired and entertained. Not depressed and bored.
7. Thank your followers weekly. Create #FF (follow fridays on twitter), retweet your followers, +1 all your Google+ friends' posts, Like and comment on your Facebook friends.
8. Be around at least a bit everyday. People will engage and share the content of those who they know will see that being done and people who they think will respond. 15 minutes a day is better than 10 hours on just one day a week

Klout.com can be used to track businesses too. 

Social Media Marketing Manager

@LittleJoeAtVin

VinSolutions.com

Office: 800.980.7488 X199

Hearing about Klout.com? Is it showing up in your Twitter feeds, Facebook news feed, on Google+?

Klout is becoming bigger and bigger for those who want to know where they stand with their Social Media reach & influence.

So, what exactly is Klout? 

The Klout Score measures influence based on your ability to drive action. Every time you create content or engage you influence others. The Klout Score uses data from social networks in order to measure:

• True Reach: How many people you influence
• Amplification: How much you influence them
• Network Impact: The influence of your network

Basically your Klout score is a rough indication of how successful you have been in getting people to respond to and share your content online in the past 90 days and especially the last 30. In the past 18 months my score has increased from 47 to fluctuating between 69 and 71. An average score on Klout is 20 but if one follows the following list their Klout score shall rise quickly. But keep in mind the higher your Klout score goes the harder it is to keep making it rise, i.e.: Its easier to go from 20 to 30 than 40 to 50, and easier to go from 40 to 50 than 60 to 70.

1. Create content that will get a response. Don't always talk about yourself. Ask questions. Seek advise. Get people to comment on your personal Facebook posts and retweet your tweets. Share PopCulture and industry news. Try to share breaking news as quick as you can. (scheduling content works better for me. I use HootSuite to schedule 80% of my stuff on Twitter and Facebook)
2. Reply in some way to everyone who engages you publicly. Hopefully within 24 hours but at least within the week. Promote the people who reach out to you.
3. Share liberally and give credit to the creator and curator of the content that you share. Part of sharing is following, friending and circling back. Put yourself in the mind and position of the other person. 
4. Create at least some kind of content in automotive and publish it every day.This will brand you as an expert in automotive software & marketing. The sharing that you do will result in even more sharing of your stuff. Make sure you share each others content in sales.
5. If someone compliments you or endorses you then allow and accept it. Promote it!
6. Be 100% positive. Always. If possible be fun too. People go online to be inspired and entertained. Not depressed and bored.
7. Thank your followers weekly. Create #FF (follow fridays on twitter), retweet your followers, +1 all your Google+ friends' posts, Like and comment on your Facebook friends.
8. Be around at least a bit everyday. People will engage and share the content of those who they know will see that being done and people who they think will respond. 15 minutes a day is better than 10 hours on just one day a week

Klout.com can be used to track businesses too. 

Social Media Marketing Manager

@LittleJoeAtVin

VinSolutions.com

Office: 800.980.7488 X199

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.

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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