I don't have to be a beer-maker to advertise beer. I don't have to have sold beer to sell beer. 

But I had best actually done ADVERTISING myself in order to PROVIDE advertising for beer. Or for cars.

Many of the folks who sell clicks (excuse me, "Digital Advertisers") don't sell you anything they have ever done, and many of them BUY and RESELL click products that they have never USED. Or, in some cases, even seen.

Well, I can definitely tell you I have made this beer. Myself. AND I've analyzed hundreds of dealer's digital ad spend to find those who have not.

Want to talk about your dealership's digital ad spend and get help? Just need an ear? Get a beer?

Call me. The BullCutter. 281-401-9520 cell/text

Keith Shetterly

Dealership Management System/Software (DMS). Customer Relationship Manager (CRM).

They aren’t the same, so stop treating them the same.

We went wrong when we began buying a lot of malarkey from CRM vendors about putting desking in the CRM so that usage of the CRM would be "naturally required". Sounded good, though, to many of us: Instead of building a process and a culture to grow our business, we tried to imprison salespeople and sales management into a CRM gulag. Well, our people are slick—and they avoided proper CRM usage, anyway, by only entering people to whom they showed numbers. We might as well have tried to eat chicken broth with a fork.

The right answer is one of two things:

1) Desk in the DMS and accept the CRM as our framework for sales processes and use it that way—and stop trying to make it One Stop Feature Shopping (which, just before Thanksgiving, became “One Stop Failure” for a major CRM, again);

or

2) Consider a DMS that includes a strong, usable CRM built-in with the DMS.

Is there a third choice? Yes. Continue to fail right along with your CRM. 

So don't fail.

Keith Shetterly
Independent Consultant
281-229-5887 cell/text
keithshetterly@gmail.com

P.S. This is one of a series, but here are some definitions you might need for clarity.

Essentially, we use our DMS to write and underwrite our business, and we use our CRM to chase customers/prospects and build our business.

DMS handles accounts payable, receivables, inventory, floor plan, punching cars to the OEM(s), national vehicle leasing and sales (a much harder crunch than you likely know), your F&I, your service lane, parts, your business office, your sales tax payments, info for your CPA for your federal taxes, payroll, and your Almighty Statement—and is your technology rock for desking a deal.

CRM handles Internet Leads distribution to your sales team, produces lead timing reports to various OEMs, manages email/text/social communications with your prospects, interfaces with your call recordings, orchestrates pre-sales and post-sales follow-up with prospects and customers, interfaces with your DMS for SOLD and SERVICE info, gets your inventory into the hands of your salespeople to send to customers, helps you manage your sales staff’s efforts and time usage, provides methods for data mining SOLDS, UNSOLDS, SERVICED-BUT-NEVER-SOLD, etc.—and is your technology Jello for desking a deal.

CRMs break and are often hard to use. Why?

When you look at this Dealership CRM picture at the bottom here, ask yourself:

1) Is it any wonder that CRMs don't see more than 25% average functionality usage at the dealerships, and

2) Is it any wonder they break down at critical points and/or are difficult to use?

The little part on the left about "Desking" is vastly under-represented: It actually takes all the rest of the picture and puts it into a blender due to the issues with different localities taxing and leasing laws and regs.

And I don't mean just the amounts, but even the ORDER in which they are figured, and "localities" means it can vary with state, commonwealth, county, township, parish, city, and town--so the complexity of a "national" CRM trying to get all that right means you deal with the issues and failures as they ripple out into the product (even to it breaking).

Anyway, I thought this picture might serve some of you when trying to figure something out with your CRM or evaluate a new CRM. You're welcome to use it wherever if you attribute it back to me.

Keith Shetterly
Independent Consultant
keithshetterly@gmail.com
281-229-5887 cell/text

We talked for years in automotive retail about “The Road to the Sale”, and I’m clearly one of the many supporters of that path to sales success.   However, too many of us are still on "The Road Less Profited".  Why?  Because we are not getting more sales (and profits!) from "The Road to Retention”!

Retention sales link the positives of variable and fixed operations together, and their teaming allows each part of the dealership to amplify the other.  Unfortunately, even in 2012, we don’t see that profitable interaction very often, and in fact it seems programs and efforts at retention—which will gain a lot more money for the dealership in both operation and by advertising—don’t get much attention.  Or action for sales.

And that is a huge, profit-abandoning, mistake. 

And the “how” is not complicated.  For sales and service, here’s The Road to Retention:

1. Capture the newly-sold units into service with service walks and with discounted first-service and detail offers, etc. in a programmed, post-sale fixed ops monthly marketing effort.
2. Mine your existing owner base for the locals that still don’t visit for service, and send them service and detail offers in a programmed, post-sale fixed ops monthly outbound marketing effort.
3. Mine your sold-to-service owner base for flips from service to sales, both during appropriately-timed and/or large-service visits and also by making service-loyalty-prompted outbound equity calls and email/direct mail efforts.
4. Mine your service-only customers for flips from service to sales, both during appropriately-timed and/or large-service visits and also by making service-loyalty-prompted outbound equity calls and email/direct mail efforts.
5. Offer notable and marketable customer-facing “ease of use” features for your service drive, to include “loyal customer” loaners/rides, a great service drive and waiting room experience (and market to them there, too), easy mobile and online appointment scheduling, valuable email service reminders with offers (and body shop reminders/offers), timely opt-in text repair status, etc.
6. Perform equity calls to all owner-base customers every month, and email/direct mail the local owners in good equity position, as well.  If they are not ready for a purchase, invite them into service with a good incentive.
7. Concentrate on the fixed-ops up-sell AND CSI!  They go hand-in-hand, generating good repeat customers.
8. Provide great sales and service, and focus on capturing customer reviews to support your position.  And ADVERTISE your great reviews to all your potential and existing customers.  Online and offline.
9. Organize and measure all this with the best DMS, CRM, and 3rd-Party tools you can get.  And use them all!  If you can’t keep track of it, you can’t measure it.  If you can’t measure it, you are guessing—and dealerships are businesses not the Vegas tables!  KNOW.  Don’t guess.
10. Operate all of this as the “Great Turning Wheel of Retention”, because your bestnew customers are always your previous customers.  There is a lifecycle to all sales, and the strongest lifecycle is when the cycle is worked for retention—abandonment chases customers away.  Draw them back into your dealership for sales and service!  They already visited you once to purchase, and they will again if you manage them in a lifecycle focused on retention.

Dealers:  Don't follow "The Road Less Profited” any more.

Instead, follow “The Road to Retention” and make more money than ever!

by Keith Shetterly
keithshetterly@gmail.com

1. “Quiet Panther” (安靜的每週獅): Websites Should Be Seen and Not Heard
You wouldn’t set off the horns of every one of your showroom cars just as a customer opens the door—so don’t do it on the Web! Remember, customers with jobs don’t need the “Boss I’m Car Shopping Instead of Working” alarm to go off at their own desk. Use sound where it makes sense, but let the shoppers choose when to turn it on:  Make friends and sales with your site, not unemployment!

2. “Running Tiger” (執行老虎): Driving Traffic via SEO is More Than Just Meta Tags and Page Titles
Don’t expect your current success via yesterday’s SEO to last—are you creating and posting online video on your site?  Do you use off-site video?  Are you pursuing back-links from Social Media? Do you blog?  The Internet isn’t a RonCo “Set It and Forget It” appliance, so don’t treat it that way.  Stay on top of it. And if you use a vendor, use one with a great SEO reputation in automotive.

3. “Dancing Monkey” (跳舞猴子):  Live Chat to a Dead Head is Only Good at Concerts
The mega fans of The Grateful Dead should never provide live chat services—are you checking what you’re getting with your online chat service? Make sure they answer well and successfully set appointments by “mystery chatting” them yourself.  And do it often.  Good chat is a very valuable sales conversion tool—you worked hard to get the shopper to your site, so start the sales engagement there…and not lose sales to a bad website “Hello”. Which happens all too often.

4. “Lightning Snake” (閃電蛇): Using Short Videos Means Never Having to Say We Suck
Twenty seconds is a long time on the Internet.  Don’t be afraid to edit down your customers’ video testimonials before you post them, or better yet tell them briefly how to “get to the meat” when they talk.  Even the most positive but too-long testimonial says “We Suck!” out in the wilds of the Internet.  And also get that video walk-around down to the “Quick and Powerful” level.  And one more thing: Be sure to scroll your website and phone number across the bottom of all videos—don’t waste those precious few seconds of a customer's attention by not doing the right self-promoting.

5. “Knowing Crane” (知道蒼鷺): The Buzz of Social Media Might be From the Chainsaw You’re
Taking to Your Business
You need to get past the buzz words with Social Media, and in a hurry—you shouldn't just "buy services" for this, you need to understand and plan what you're doing.  Do you know how to use social media for your fixed ops, how to respond to Facebook issues on sales and service, and how to create business for yourself on Facebook and other Social Media?  You would laugh at someone who walked into a party and shoved his business car rudely under everyone’s nose—so don’t be that dork in Social Media! Learn how to interact or you'll get ignored, or, worse, derided in business-killing ways.  Do you watch your social media reputation? Google? Yelp?  Do you manage your Facebook fan pages several times a day? Do you watch Twitter for your business’ name—what are people saying about you?  And there's so much more!

by Keith Shetterly, Consultant
keithshetterly@gmail.com

Low CRM usage is a combination of several factors, but in general the better CRM is the one you use.

The best CRM is the one you can easily use.

We used to worry about salespeople “Watching the Glass” for UPs pulling into the lot. Now, they are all the same as everyone else: Heads down on their smartphone. If smartphones are the new “Glass They Watch for UPs”, let’s get CRMs on to mobile and marry their attention to what they need to be DOING. After all, they are looking at their phone, on average, over 150 times a day!

Mobile CRMs fall into two categories: Those that lose features in order to fit the mobile device, and those that are built around mobile. The second category of CRM is the one you want, because it will enable your sales team with the most power.

And then they can log UPs, call customers, email leads, and do follow-up from the same device they are, on average, just to hit that statistic again, looking at over 150 times a day!

So, get aboard with the new century and the new “glass” your salespeople are looking at—remove their excuses and use that "mobile attention" to your advantage to make more sales.

Keith Shetterly, Consultant
keithshetterly@gmail.com 

If you have a failing BDC, and you are a GM, then you are the reason your BDC is failing. Or not working properly and going to fail.

100% fact. Your fault. It’s the truth, and I can prove it.

Good thing is, you can also fix it.

Why is it your fault? Start here to understand: Years ago, our industry separated F&I from the sales staff to chase profits. Focused people, developed training, responded to the market need. Eventually, when lots more regulations came to play, dealerships were ready for those change. Because there was training—in fact, whole schools for the function were developed. All for one department.

A department that the GM paid attention to. Like his or her life depended on it. Because his or her paycheck certainly depended on it.

You don’t treat your BDC like that kind of department. You hardly pay attention, or you don’t know how to pay attention, or you keep trying to buy some talent that might bandaid the BDC but then leaves. Or it’s might be all three reasons.

Why do you treat your BDC that way? Think about it: If the BDC is answering sales calls, leads, and making outbound campaigns happen…that department touches more potential gross than any other department in the dealership.

And you don’t know how it works, how it is supposed to work, or how to fix it.

The fix, sir or madam, starts with you.

Learn what the BDC does. It’s not hard—it just may be foreign, because it’s likely that you never worked an Internet lead to a sale (which is similar in many ways to, and in many sales-making ways VERY different from, those phone calls you took), but that lead for the sale was what taught us about the need for a BDC. Because the Internet department focused on good calls, good and fast lead response, and setting appointments. Really, the Internet Department is actually at least an uncle to the BDC.

If you didn’t understand that about the Internet Department, or never saw the connection, now you do.

The BDC is accountable to the bottom line for the dealership—and, by that association, to your paycheck. Why in the world don’t you treat it that way?

Because if you don’t, the BDC will fail. Your competition will beat you. And your paycheck (and even your job, in some cases) will be chopped. So, it’s not an “if”, it’s WHEN, you as a successful GM will treat the BDC as important as the F&I department.

And you will apply your experience in accountability and require the best skills. Hire the best BDC talent you can find and pay them well. Inspect what you expect.

If you continue to ignore it? Then the sales BDC will continue to fail. And then, eventually . . . you will fail.

Wake up! NOW! Pay attention. Start the fix, because it starts in you.

And when your BDC wins, YOU win. A new and better truth.

You’re gonna’ like that. A lot.

Go get’em!

by Keith Shetterly
keithshetterly@gmail.com. Former eComm, Internet, BDC Manager, Floor sales.
Currently VP of Sales & Marketing for Drive360 CRM.
www.Drive360CRM.com

We don't have an "accountability culture" in the car business, and we need one. Badly. For great examples why, just look at the sports we love that are so successful!

The NFL keeps stats on players that boggle the mind and produce hours and hours of ESPN commentary; basketball hinges on free throw percentages that can haunt a player’s (and team’s) season; and, from long ago to now, baseball has led them all with stats that kept the players accountable in a witches brew of information.

These are all sports we know and love in the car biz. And they are accountable in every play they make. Or don’t. Every day in every season.

And yet somehow we don’t have that same Accountability Culture.

What do I mean? Imagine this:

• Every call you make or receive for vehicle sales is logged and followed up on for sales-making appointments using your CRM.
• Every prospect that walks on to your showroom floor is properly greeted, gets a needs assessment, and is logged into your CRM along the Road to the Sale.
• Every unsold prospect that leaves your showroom is pursued with strong follow-up via phone and email, all contact logged into your CRM, to create as many sellable be-backs as possible.

And so:

• You know your true store closing ratio because of these two items inside your CRM along with the SOLD unit number. You begin to see the real state of sales and make adjustments from these facts to grow your business—everything from advertising to inventory goes into this.
• You begin to know what real follow-up call and email methods and schedules work in your market, and you make sales *and* CSI gains.
• You use the unsold and sold customer information in the CRM to create call and email campaigns where every email opened and call made and received is logged and known for sales and service results.
• And the Internet Department grows into even more sales than today, because it is by nature the most-accountable work (lead/call/visit) in the entire dealerships.

Accountability is MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY!

Doesn’t this sound great?? And yet far too many dealerships don’t have the Accountability Culture in place: The owner wants accountability tools and processes but too often turns away to leave them solely in the GM’s hands; the GM may or may not want an Accountability Culture, but gets really uncomfortable if the tools and processes seems to say he or she isn't doing the proper job; and the salespeople in general don't want accountability at all because they want to be judged on the sales they make, not on the UPs they burned through to “make their eight”.

I guarantee most dealerships in the USA don’t use their CRM properly, and they don’t have processes that lead to true accountability to show true results. At all. Replacing the CRM has become almost a hobby at some dealerships, thinking that it’s a tool holding them back.

Well, an Accountability Culture would even work with a pen and paper. Because it starts in the heart and is led from the top, and it flows down to every position from there.

If you lead a store and believe your CRM “is not working”, make sure you look into a mirror before you spend $100,000 to make that change. Because even the simplest-to-use CRM, or even the least-expensive CRM, needs you to USE it. 

For example: Do you even know how to log into, much less use, the CRM you have? And If you lead a department, are your folks truly accountable to you for their work towards sales production— is your “22 car guy” burning through 200 UPs a month and you don’t know?  In other words, as a department manager DO YOU USE THE CRM? As a salesperson, aren’t you trying to be more efficient and work less hard for MORE MONEY? All that is in the CRM if you go there.

Because accountability isn’t a discussion at the coffee machine. And it isn’t just the sales you made this month, either.

It’s the sale you missed.  You know, the ones you’d be accountable for, too, if you really wanted accountability for everyone? The ones you can get with beback efforts of follow-up? Accountability Makes Sales Happen!

Accountability is for Winners. What is your culture?

You know this story: The new GM comes in, sweeps out the current management, and replaces them all with "his" or "her" guys and gals.

Maybe this is smart, but it doesn't seem so. ESPECIALLY with eComm Directors and Internet Directors who are juggling websites, reviews, reputation, lead sources, training, marketing, and CRM, all while very often leading a sales team AND desking deals.

Revolution is a natural affair of human organizations, and--though dangerous and painful--revolution is very different from a radical takeover and replacement of the government by the military in the RESULT. History shows that a coup is hardly ever an improvement.

And just this week a good friend of mine, really an excellenteComm and Internet leader, was swept out. I'm sick of "that's the way it is". Really?

Thank God nothing ever changes in this business. Like the Internet. Do we REALLY have to live with regime changes that decapitate every key department?

I don't think so. That dealership will be a long time recovering from this particular loss. Right about the time the Google Reviews fade, the Internet stops producing, thepay-per-click goes south, and the sales drop off . . . it will be time, sadly, for another GM. And another house cleaning.

House SMASHING, more like it. And we need to stop doing it.

Keith Shetterly
VP of Research, CAR Research
keiths@carxrm.com

You know this story: The new GM comes in, sweeps out the current management, and replaces them all with "his" or "her" guys and gals.

Maybe this is smart, but it doesn't seem so. ESPECIALLY with eComm Directors and Internet Directors who are juggling websites, reviews, reputation, lead sources, training, marketing, and CRM, all while very often leading a sales team AND desking deals.

Revolution is a natural affair of human organizations, and--though dangerous and painful--revolution is very different from a radical takeover and replacement of the government by the military in the RESULT. History shows that a coup is hardly ever an improvement.

And just this week a good friend of mine, really an excellenteComm and Internet leader, was swept out. I'm sick of "that's the way it is". Really?

Thank God nothing ever changes in this business. Like the Internet. Do we REALLY have to live with regime changes that decapitate every key department?

I don't think so. That dealership will be a long time recovering from this particular loss. Right about the time the Google Reviews fade, the Internet stops producing, thepay-per-click goes south, and the sales drop off . . . it will be time, sadly, for another GM. And another house cleaning.

House SMASHING, more like it. And we need to stop doing it.

Keith Shetterly
VP of Research, CAR Research
keiths@carxrm.com