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Reputation . . . "Managed"??
“Reputation Management” (RM)?? I was in one of the first group of folks who started using this term, as far as I know, and I have come to strongly dislike it: A great reputation is created with great customer service; it isn’t managed. However, if, by RM, you mean that you need to let the world know about your great reputation that you get from delivering great customer service and working to correct unhappy experiences, that’s very good; unfortunately, RM is sometimes positioned as a way to overcome valid bad reviews (get them off SERP 1, for example). Or, worse, the term “RM” is sometimes hijacked by people wanting to advertise a way to “correct” your reputation, much like the firms that advertise to “clean” consumer credit. And just as false and un-successful.
So, how do people find your reputation? Nowadays, it’s found online by searching on a make/model in you area, searching on your dealership’s name (52% of website hits are from direct searches), finding Google Places rolled-up reviews, finding sites such as your PrestoReviews site on the first SERP, getting DealerRater info, and various other review sites such as MerchantCircle, etc.
And how much impact is a reputation? Reputation is the oldest advertising, but it has been long-eclipsed by one-way, one-to-many commercial advertising. Data says that, however, if reviews are available, 82% of online shoppers will read them—but what the shoppers do with them next is currently in some debate: How much do reviews influence their choices?
Do you really want to wait for that data? Not if you want to win.
And, so, the first real “management” you need to do for reputation, besides delivering a great customer experience, is to understand and properly react to what’s actually happening with customers that is now being relayed via reviews, Facebook, Twitter, etc. And in ways it will be sometimes hard to see or measure. And sometimes in real time!
For example, in my own case I’m “friends” on Facebook with my wife’s dear friends, a couple. The husband, call him “Ted”, was on Facebook complaining he was being mistreated at a dealership during the sale, and I happened to catch that in my Facebook news feed—and I realized it was the dealership where my friend, Mike, was GM! I called Mike, and it took a few days to sort it all out, but “Ted” was finally happy and crowing about the good experience to all his friends on Facebook.
That’s “hands on” Reputation Management. Real reviews from real people, really in the dealership, that lead to a real and great reputation.
And we come to the age-old question, paraphrased: If a tree has a great customer experience in the forest, and no one is there to see it, did it really happen? In other words, how do you amplify the advertising that is a review?
The first answer? SEO! This is why I’m a big fan of PrestoReviews, which accepts reviews from customers in the dealership (allowing for the fastest resolution of any issues) and turns them into fantastic search engine results! We talk a lot about the extremely high value of “user-generated content” for great SEO, as we should, and this is “customer-generated-content”! This is the best of what I already wrote “Real reviews from real people, really in the dealership, that lead to a real and great reputation”, now leading to great SEO! Brilliant, and a great win for any dealership.
And the Presto Reviews are starting to roll up into Google Places, as well, which is even better. Here’s a screenshot of a search for a PrestoReviews client Hawkinson Kia (click on it to see it full size):
The next answer? It’s not Yelp. It’s DealerRater, in my opinion. Yes, I know DealerRater is best used a paid service, and that it runs its own search engine efforts using your reviews (your content!), and which it sometimes also turns into ads for competitors within your review listings, However, it’s dealer-centric and has a strong “review-site” foothold, and it’s not that expensive to do the paid version. AND DealerRater reviews will often roll up into Google Places, and that’s the real value. There are a few other sites like MerchantCircle to consider, as well. Here’s a Dealerrater screenshot (click on it to see it full size, and note the competitors shown are actually in Houston, which is where my IP is):
Anyway, to wrap up here, I’ll live with the term “Reputation Management”, as it’s got that strong foothold, too. However, without hesitation and regardless of what tools you use to manage letting people know about it, I’ll tell you how to simply and always have a great reputation:
Start with a great customer experience!
P.S. Check out Shetterly’s Three Laws of Reputation
TurnUPtheSales.com
Shetterly's Three Laws of... Reputation
1) Reputation is advertising. Good or bad, you don't buy it, but you pay for it one way or another.
2) Reputation begins with customer service that people must talk about. If you fail at great customer service and you fail to be talked about positively, you are going to fail at great reputation.
3) Reputation is something you own as far as responsibility, but your customers always own it as far as content--it's what they say, not you, that is your reputation.
Copyright 2011 All Rights Reserved
www.keithshetterly.com
No Comments
TurnUPtheSales.com
Shetterly's Three Laws of... Reputation
1) Reputation is advertising. Good or bad, you don't buy it, but you pay for it one way or another.
2) Reputation begins with customer service that people must talk about. If you fail at great customer service and you fail to be talked about positively, you are going to fail at great reputation.
3) Reputation is something you own as far as responsibility, but your customers always own it as far as content--it's what they say, not you, that is your reputation.
Copyright 2011 All Rights Reserved
www.keithshetterly.com
No Comments
TurnUPtheSales.com
Flushing Your Olympic Marketing Down the Drain of Bad Processes
The OEMs and the vendor/consultant marketplace are more and more teaching dealers all about modern marketing, and I get why: Generating good traffic these days requires lots more than a newspaper, radio, or TV ad. We’re all being shopped on the Internet by customers, and we need to be there, and be there strong, in order to win sales.
And, so, if we train and execute our dealer marketing to be at Olympic levels across all our media, including the Internet, then we’ve greatly improved our business, right?
NO.
If your marketing generates $300 calls being bungled by your $8-an-hour receptionist, if your sales staff lot-quals and drops your ups without a T.O., if your sales managers lose deals over $150, if your finance managers hit good-credit customers too high . . . if any of these, and more, happen, your processes are losing you sales. And the same is true in service, because how many appointments don’t get set because you rely on busy writers and low-paid receptionists to set them? How many up-sells don’t happen because they aren’t even asked for?
As you attend conferences and bootcamp training this year (the more the better!), don’t just look for new “Olympic” marketing for your sales and service, look for tools and services to help you make more money from better processes. There are a lot of “Internet Rainmakers” to help you, but do your processes allow a sales-destructive and uncontrolled race down the drain--or do your processes and tools channel all that water into a beautiful pool to get the most sales possible?
Because it’s no use being the “Olympic High Diver of Marketing” if you and your sales just get flushed!
P.S. I apologize for the, er, "graphic graphic", but it was so funny I couldn't resist! :)
By Keith Shetterly, keithshetterly@gmail.com
www.keithshetterly.com
Copyright 2011 All Rights Reserved
No Comments
TurnUPtheSales.com
Flushing Your Olympic Marketing Down the Drain of Bad Processes
The OEMs and the vendor/consultant marketplace are more and more teaching dealers all about modern marketing, and I get why: Generating good traffic these days requires lots more than a newspaper, radio, or TV ad. We’re all being shopped on the Internet by customers, and we need to be there, and be there strong, in order to win sales.
And, so, if we train and execute our dealer marketing to be at Olympic levels across all our media, including the Internet, then we’ve greatly improved our business, right?
NO.
If your marketing generates $300 calls being bungled by your $8-an-hour receptionist, if your sales staff lot-quals and drops your ups without a T.O., if your sales managers lose deals over $150, if your finance managers hit good-credit customers too high . . . if any of these, and more, happen, your processes are losing you sales. And the same is true in service, because how many appointments don’t get set because you rely on busy writers and low-paid receptionists to set them? How many up-sells don’t happen because they aren’t even asked for?
As you attend conferences and bootcamp training this year (the more the better!), don’t just look for new “Olympic” marketing for your sales and service, look for tools and services to help you make more money from better processes. There are a lot of “Internet Rainmakers” to help you, but do your processes allow a sales-destructive and uncontrolled race down the drain--or do your processes and tools channel all that water into a beautiful pool to get the most sales possible?
Because it’s no use being the “Olympic High Diver of Marketing” if you and your sales just get flushed!
P.S. I apologize for the, er, "graphic graphic", but it was so funny I couldn't resist! :)
By Keith Shetterly, keithshetterly@gmail.com
www.keithshetterly.com
Copyright 2011 All Rights Reserved
No Comments
TurnUPtheSales.com
The Next Best Thing Won’t Fix Your Old Wrong Thing
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
No Comments
TurnUPtheSales.com
The Next Best Thing Won’t Fix Your Old Wrong Thing
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
No Comments
TurnUPtheSales.com
Extinction Event Sale! This Weekend!!
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
No Comments
TurnUPtheSales.com
Extinction Event Sale! This Weekend!!
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
No Comments
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