Allowing bad processes and paying for more marketing is much like another American Classic:  How many homes do you know where there’s a nice automobile sitting in damaging sun and weather in the driveway while $300 worth of junk sits protected in the messy garage?  We do the same thing as dealers; buying new shiny things for our marketing and letting them sit outside our garage full of bad processes.  There’s money on that garage floor—let’s clean it up!

Where do we start?  First, let's say you are marketing "okay" today and getting shopper traffic . . . . and vendors and consultants are talking to you about how to make your marketing great and drive even more traffic to your lot.  Sounds fantastic, and necessary, but what if you could improve your business significantly at this time by just fixing your processes?  You’d not only make more money today, you’d also make even more money when you have that great marketing! 

Here are just a few examples where tools and processes are possibly failing your business today.

CRM:  Have you already paid for a CRM and not implemented it properly around good, solid processes?  Is it still possible that you have no idea how much of your traffic is not entered into the CRM?  And how about follow-up?  Your CRM is likely telling you every day that few salespersons are calling for bebacks if you look.  Your CRM can help you make more money if you motivate your sales staff and managers with conditions of being paid that include proper CRM use.  If you don't do that, why not?  Why are you paying for a CRM just to kill it's value with poor processes?

Phones:  Do you pay $8 an hour to a receptionist who fumbles the call you paid $300 to get?  If the call still gets to a salesperson or service writer, do they know how to best convert the call to an appointment?  And do you pay for a forensic tool like WhosCalling, etc. that can tell you (IF you listen!) how bad your staff is on the phones—and yet you do nothing to correct that situation?  This can also be fixed, by training and, again, conditions of being paid (even the receptionist!) that include good phone skills, or you can also consider a dedicted BDC (on-site or off-site).

Lot/Floor:  Do you require a manager TO on every shopper?  Do you require salespeople to “touch the desk” at critical points of the sale?  Do you train your salespeople on the Steps to the Sale, especially—but NOT limited to—your green peas?   This can be fixed, same as the others, by training and, again, conditions of being paid that include TOs and desk touches.

Service Drive:  Do you have busy service writers fumble trying to answer appointment calls, or do you have a dedicated person/BDC take care of those?  Do you have a true online scheduling page with alerts via email and text to folks waiting for cars?  Do you train your writers on up-selling?  Do you monitor their production?  This can be fixed, too, just like the sales side, by training and, again, conditions of being paid that include # of appointments and production quotas.

And you can all surely add to these items and to this list yourselves, once you consider all this.  Better marketing, especially the right online marketing woven into your current marketing, is as necessary to your business as oxygen is to the body.  Let’s just get our dealer bodies in better shape so that the oxygen really makes our business boom!  The first place for exercise?  Why, your messy garage of processes, of course.

By Keith Shetterly, keithshetterly@gmail.com
Copyright 2011 All Rights Reserved
www.keithshetterly.com

Allowing bad processes and paying for more marketing is much like another American Classic:  How many homes do you know where there’s a nice automobile sitting in damaging sun and weather in the driveway while $300 worth of junk sits protected in the messy garage?  We do the same thing as dealers; buying new shiny things for our marketing and letting them sit outside our garage full of bad processes.  There’s money on that garage floor—let’s clean it up!

Where do we start?  First, let's say you are marketing "okay" today and getting shopper traffic . . . . and vendors and consultants are talking to you about how to make your marketing great and drive even more traffic to your lot.  Sounds fantastic, and necessary, but what if you could improve your business significantly at this time by just fixing your processes?  You’d not only make more money today, you’d also make even more money when you have that great marketing! 

Here are just a few examples where tools and processes are possibly failing your business today.

CRM:  Have you already paid for a CRM and not implemented it properly around good, solid processes?  Is it still possible that you have no idea how much of your traffic is not entered into the CRM?  And how about follow-up?  Your CRM is likely telling you every day that few salespersons are calling for bebacks if you look.  Your CRM can help you make more money if you motivate your sales staff and managers with conditions of being paid that include proper CRM use.  If you don't do that, why not?  Why are you paying for a CRM just to kill it's value with poor processes?

Phones:  Do you pay $8 an hour to a receptionist who fumbles the call you paid $300 to get?  If the call still gets to a salesperson or service writer, do they know how to best convert the call to an appointment?  And do you pay for a forensic tool like WhosCalling, etc. that can tell you (IF you listen!) how bad your staff is on the phones—and yet you do nothing to correct that situation?  This can also be fixed, by training and, again, conditions of being paid (even the receptionist!) that include good phone skills, or you can also consider a dedicted BDC (on-site or off-site).

Lot/Floor:  Do you require a manager TO on every shopper?  Do you require salespeople to “touch the desk” at critical points of the sale?  Do you train your salespeople on the Steps to the Sale, especially—but NOT limited to—your green peas?   This can be fixed, same as the others, by training and, again, conditions of being paid that include TOs and desk touches.

Service Drive:  Do you have busy service writers fumble trying to answer appointment calls, or do you have a dedicated person/BDC take care of those?  Do you have a true online scheduling page with alerts via email and text to folks waiting for cars?  Do you train your writers on up-selling?  Do you monitor their production?  This can be fixed, too, just like the sales side, by training and, again, conditions of being paid that include # of appointments and production quotas.

And you can all surely add to these items and to this list yourselves, once you consider all this.  Better marketing, especially the right online marketing woven into your current marketing, is as necessary to your business as oxygen is to the body.  Let’s just get our dealer bodies in better shape so that the oxygen really makes our business boom!  The first place for exercise?  Why, your messy garage of processes, of course.

By Keith Shetterly, keithshetterly@gmail.com
Copyright 2011 All Rights Reserved
www.keithshetterly.com

Extinction Event Sale!  Every Weekend in 2011!!  With some car dealers, that’s the business they are in, and they don’t even know it.  And they need to adapt to instead survive!  Here’s what I mean:

Extinction?  Scientists say the fossil record of bones indicates several sudden mass extinctions of life during the history of the earth, called "extinction events", possibly due to large meteor impacts.  Even if that’s eventually determined to be wrong, I believe we are poised at a real extinction event for dealers who do not get aboard the Internet.  2011 will be the beginning of that. 

And don’t think this is the “chicken little” cry you heard over ten years ago—it’s real, and you can see it today at our conferences:  Who is there talking about “starting the Internet” and who is doing business ON the Internet NOW?  Who is the dinosaur in threat of extinction and who is not?

The Internet is not something you write a check to someone about and say “Handle it!”  It’s as fundamental to a dealership’s business now as any advertising and sales effort has ever been.  As fundamental as the need for air.  It cannot be ignored by any modern dealership, and it cannot be misunderstood by any modern dealership.  At least, not dealerships that are ready for in 2011 for the fullest impact of the Internet on their business that they have ever seen.

Who will survive the Internet meteor?  Who will succumb and be extinct?  Really, which do you want to be?  The survivors, of course.

How to survive?  Get your website, online inventory, social media, online reputation, mobile website, and SEO/PPC modernized and in place.  Get rid of as much newspaper as you can stand.  For any direct mail, do targeted direct mail to the right customers ONLY.  Get email blasts going for sales and service.  Install the best CRM/Internet Lead Manager (CRM/ILM) that you can.  Film and host short video testimonials from happy customers, as well as videos of your cars for sale.  Focus on your fixed ops Internet presence, allowing customers to get online for appointments, status, and sales/offers.  And learn to answer the PHONE the right way:  Stop answering phone calls that cost you $2-300 to get with an $8-an-hour receptionist who answers/routes wrong, and if your sales staff is answering the sales calls then train them AND hold them accountable.  And just give up that blue inflatable gorilla on your roof for good.

Otherwise, you’ll soon join the fossil record of dinosaur bones in the transportation retail business that already includes those who couldn’t understand the change that the telephone brought.  Or print advertising.  Or that the automobile was taking the place of the horse!

Bones are like that:  Some scientist may dig them up and study them one day.  Who knows.  However, for now in 2011 it’s not too late to survive the Internet meteor.  I have one word to help you with that:

Hurry!

By Keith Shetterly, keithshetterly@gmail.com
www.keithshetterly.com
Copyright 2011 All Rights Reserved

Extinction Event Sale!  Every Weekend in 2011!!  With some car dealers, that’s the business they are in, and they don’t even know it.  And they need to adapt to instead survive!  Here’s what I mean:

Extinction?  Scientists say the fossil record of bones indicates several sudden mass extinctions of life during the history of the earth, called "extinction events", possibly due to large meteor impacts.  Even if that’s eventually determined to be wrong, I believe we are poised at a real extinction event for dealers who do not get aboard the Internet.  2011 will be the beginning of that. 

And don’t think this is the “chicken little” cry you heard over ten years ago—it’s real, and you can see it today at our conferences:  Who is there talking about “starting the Internet” and who is doing business ON the Internet NOW?  Who is the dinosaur in threat of extinction and who is not?

The Internet is not something you write a check to someone about and say “Handle it!”  It’s as fundamental to a dealership’s business now as any advertising and sales effort has ever been.  As fundamental as the need for air.  It cannot be ignored by any modern dealership, and it cannot be misunderstood by any modern dealership.  At least, not dealerships that are ready for in 2011 for the fullest impact of the Internet on their business that they have ever seen.

Who will survive the Internet meteor?  Who will succumb and be extinct?  Really, which do you want to be?  The survivors, of course.

How to survive?  Get your website, online inventory, social media, online reputation, mobile website, and SEO/PPC modernized and in place.  Get rid of as much newspaper as you can stand.  For any direct mail, do targeted direct mail to the right customers ONLY.  Get email blasts going for sales and service.  Install the best CRM/Internet Lead Manager (CRM/ILM) that you can.  Film and host short video testimonials from happy customers, as well as videos of your cars for sale.  Focus on your fixed ops Internet presence, allowing customers to get online for appointments, status, and sales/offers.  And learn to answer the PHONE the right way:  Stop answering phone calls that cost you $2-300 to get with an $8-an-hour receptionist who answers/routes wrong, and if your sales staff is answering the sales calls then train them AND hold them accountable.  And just give up that blue inflatable gorilla on your roof for good.

Otherwise, you’ll soon join the fossil record of dinosaur bones in the transportation retail business that already includes those who couldn’t understand the change that the telephone brought.  Or print advertising.  Or that the automobile was taking the place of the horse!

Bones are like that:  Some scientist may dig them up and study them one day.  Who knows.  However, for now in 2011 it’s not too late to survive the Internet meteor.  I have one word to help you with that:

Hurry!

By Keith Shetterly, keithshetterly@gmail.com
www.keithshetterly.com
Copyright 2011 All Rights Reserved