I love reading Jim Ziegler’s articles there is a lot of hard core truth in what he writes, most of all you can bet he is passionate and believes and lives every word. While reading this latest article “Coffee’s for Closers” it floored me that we still see this connection between the “PRICE” and the close. What’s even more ironic is that is that what actually “CLOSES” a car sale is as old school as it gets and hasn’t changed in the last 50 years.

You all know what I am talking about…To put in James Carville terms “It’s about the relationship…stupid”

Now I am certainly not going to say that price isn’t a concern, you will address, it but I will say… IT AINT THE CLOSE and I will go even further and say… IT NEVER HAS BEEN.     

Back in march of last year after South By Southwest I wrote a post called “The Currency of Trust” in this post I shared my ideas on how trust was built in a car sale before the introduction of the internet and social media and how the internet and social media is redefining the building of trust today, and therein lies the CHANGE in the sales pr

ocess.

It’s not a change in human behavior for the last 30 years people have been shopping for a car salesperson not a car. It’s a change in how long we now have to engage with customers a change in the channels we engage with those customers in and the way in which customers are starting to use the internet to formulate their opinions of how trustworthy your dealership really is.

This is a part of the “Old School” sales training I received from a set of Clint McGee Auto Sales Training tapes back in 1984 when I first started selling cars…yes I am that old.

The premise of this graphic was that if you took the time with the customer to get to know them, answer their questions, sell yourself, the dealership and the benefits of that car for their needs the “Close” would be relatively short and you would make more gross profit.

You had 3 days to do this over the phone and most of it was accomplished on the lot.

The “New School” and the fool here is the one that ignores this:

The customers process starts earlier because they have access to more information and with that access most feel very uncomfortable if they don’t at least do some research before they buy.

Make no mistake the customer shops for the car first and the dealership a distant second, but now the process of shopping for a dealership can involve multiple channels and there is a lot more opportunity for a lot more “Second Basemen” to be involved in that dealership shopping process.

Ease of access to information about your dealership and the ability to engage remotely has stretched the time a customer is willing to take to shop for a dealership & what used to take place in 3 days can now take as much as 90 days.

Why?

Because the customer CAN…

So what do you do about it?

You do what GOOD salespeople have done for over 50 years.

Listen and help the customer with THEIR needs

Be responsive to information on the customer’s timeline

Be transparent with the information you provide

Be authentic and genuine in your desire to get the customer the best buying experience for them

This again hasn’t changed in 50 years.

So… “Excuse Me” but “One Price”… “No Haggle” these are just tactics they are not sales skills and for that matter neither is “negotiation”.  You wanna be a good salesperson be good at the above, be prepared to a talk about your price what the customer gets and why they should want to pay that amount and buy from you. In many ways you have to be a better salesperson if you are a “One Price” store.

That’s my $0.02 cents…what say you?

I love reading Jim Ziegler’s articles there is a lot of hard core truth in what he writes, most of all you can bet he is passionate and believes and lives every word. While reading this latest article “Coffee’s for Closers” it floored me that we still see this connection between the “PRICE” and the close. What’s even more ironic is that is that what actually “CLOSES” a car sale is as old school as it gets and hasn’t changed in the last 50 years.

You all know what I am talking about…To put in James Carville terms “It’s about the relationship…stupid”

Now I am certainly not going to say that price isn’t a concern, you will address, it but I will say… IT AINT THE CLOSE and I will go even further and say… IT NEVER HAS BEEN.     

Back in march of last year after South By Southwest I wrote a post called “The Currency of Trust” in this post I shared my ideas on how trust was built in a car sale before the introduction of the internet and social media and how the internet and social media is redefining the building of trust today, and therein lies the CHANGE in the sales pr

ocess.

It’s not a change in human behavior for the last 30 years people have been shopping for a car salesperson not a car. It’s a change in how long we now have to engage with customers a change in the channels we engage with those customers in and the way in which customers are starting to use the internet to formulate their opinions of how trustworthy your dealership really is.

This is a part of the “Old School” sales training I received from a set of Clint McGee Auto Sales Training tapes back in 1984 when I first started selling cars…yes I am that old.

The premise of this graphic was that if you took the time with the customer to get to know them, answer their questions, sell yourself, the dealership and the benefits of that car for their needs the “Close” would be relatively short and you would make more gross profit.

You had 3 days to do this over the phone and most of it was accomplished on the lot.

The “New School” and the fool here is the one that ignores this:

The customers process starts earlier because they have access to more information and with that access most feel very uncomfortable if they don’t at least do some research before they buy.

Make no mistake the customer shops for the car first and the dealership a distant second, but now the process of shopping for a dealership can involve multiple channels and there is a lot more opportunity for a lot more “Second Basemen” to be involved in that dealership shopping process.

Ease of access to information about your dealership and the ability to engage remotely has stretched the time a customer is willing to take to shop for a dealership & what used to take place in 3 days can now take as much as 90 days.

Why?

Because the customer CAN…

So what do you do about it?

You do what GOOD salespeople have done for over 50 years.

Listen and help the customer with THEIR needs

Be responsive to information on the customer’s timeline

Be transparent with the information you provide

Be authentic and genuine in your desire to get the customer the best buying experience for them

This again hasn’t changed in 50 years.

So… “Excuse Me” but “One Price”… “No Haggle” these are just tactics they are not sales skills and for that matter neither is “negotiation”.  You wanna be a good salesperson be good at the above, be prepared to a talk about your price what the customer gets and why they should want to pay that amount and buy from you. In many ways you have to be a better salesperson if you are a “One Price” store.

That’s my $0.02 cents…what say you?

You know for last few months I have been hearing a lot about leadership in our industry, about education and how there needs to be more of both, I ABSOLUTELY AGREE!

I met up with Bill Playford at SWSXi (South By Southwest Interactive) for those not familiar with the acronym. We talked about this very thing. I found myself getting very excited at some of the ideas we were discussing, so much so I was writing curriculum in my head as I was driving back to Houston Friday afternoon.

On the way home I made several calls that to be frank…were a total buzz kill on the subject. I was quickly reminded of the agendas of some of the broadcasters, large vendors with money, resources and a voice and the influencers in our industry and the task of bringing true leadership and honest education seemed to be almost too daunting a task for anyone to take on.

This morning I wake up still thinking about this subject and as I going through my normal morning reading ritual and I ran across this post by Seth Godin. Seth has a way in of summing up a topic in very few words I hope to someday master that for now I am not doing very well.

7 Questions For Leaders

1. Do you let the facts get in the way of a good story? Think about that for a second beyond the obvious. What is a good story? It’s a vision right? Are you letting the fact that something isn’t that way right now or that something is hard get in the way of a good story / vision being told? If you are you are killing creativity and innovation in our business…Stop It!

2. What do you do with people who disagree with you…do you call them names in order to shut them down? THIS ONE YOU REALLY NEED TO PAY ATTENTINON TO! Who do you know that is doing this regularly? Get away from that person, this is happening all too often and on some blogs more than others. Bottom line we should be welcome disagreement and healthy debate, when that debate is constructive. People are allowed to have opinions and you are allowed to have yours. In today’s world we are all allowed to express them and there is nothing wrong with this process. It goes wrong when you start the name calling and the personal attacks in an attempt to belittle that person. You have an opinion express it…don't be offended if someone else has a different one, don't expect someone else just to roll over if you disagree. STOP BELIVEING AND READING YOUR OWN PRESS. Cars are gonna get sold with or with our any of us.

3. Are you open to multiple points of view or do your demand compliance and uniformity? Too many of us are not we go beyond constructive debate and defending our position to the point of my way is the only way.

4. Is it ok if someone else get the credit? – Think about that… is it really?

5. How often are you able to change your position? – None of us knows it all is it possible that someone has a piece to the puzzle you don't is it possible that you could be wrong? This doesn't mean you don't have conviction or believe in your position, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t defend it. Just make room for the possibility and keep your mind open.

6. Do you have a goal that can be reached in multiple ways? – Fact is every goal can be reached in multiple ways. There is no one best way to anything anymore. Just because your goal has to change to include others doesn’t mean it can’t be reached it’s just another path to get there.

7. If someone else can get us there faster, are you willing to let them? Are you? How often do you stand in the way of someone because you don't like them or think you don't? Do you even know them?

There is no doubt that we need more leadership that can take these 7 questions above to heart and really work to improve the industry and thereby improving their business along with it. We all need to ask ourselves these questions and honestly answer them.

Larry Bruce @pcmguy

You know for last few months I have been hearing a lot about leadership in our industry, about education and how there needs to be more of both, I ABSOLUTELY AGREE!

I met up with Bill Playford at SWSXi (South By Southwest Interactive) for those not familiar with the acronym. We talked about this very thing. I found myself getting very excited at some of the ideas we were discussing, so much so I was writing curriculum in my head as I was driving back to Houston Friday afternoon.

On the way home I made several calls that to be frank…were a total buzz kill on the subject. I was quickly reminded of the agendas of some of the broadcasters, large vendors with money, resources and a voice and the influencers in our industry and the task of bringing true leadership and honest education seemed to be almost too daunting a task for anyone to take on.

This morning I wake up still thinking about this subject and as I going through my normal morning reading ritual and I ran across this post by Seth Godin. Seth has a way in of summing up a topic in very few words I hope to someday master that for now I am not doing very well.

7 Questions For Leaders

1. Do you let the facts get in the way of a good story? Think about that for a second beyond the obvious. What is a good story? It’s a vision right? Are you letting the fact that something isn’t that way right now or that something is hard get in the way of a good story / vision being told? If you are you are killing creativity and innovation in our business…Stop It!

2. What do you do with people who disagree with you…do you call them names in order to shut them down? THIS ONE YOU REALLY NEED TO PAY ATTENTINON TO! Who do you know that is doing this regularly? Get away from that person, this is happening all too often and on some blogs more than others. Bottom line we should be welcome disagreement and healthy debate, when that debate is constructive. People are allowed to have opinions and you are allowed to have yours. In today’s world we are all allowed to express them and there is nothing wrong with this process. It goes wrong when you start the name calling and the personal attacks in an attempt to belittle that person. You have an opinion express it…don't be offended if someone else has a different one, don't expect someone else just to roll over if you disagree. STOP BELIVEING AND READING YOUR OWN PRESS. Cars are gonna get sold with or with our any of us.

3. Are you open to multiple points of view or do your demand compliance and uniformity? Too many of us are not we go beyond constructive debate and defending our position to the point of my way is the only way.

4. Is it ok if someone else get the credit? – Think about that… is it really?

5. How often are you able to change your position? – None of us knows it all is it possible that someone has a piece to the puzzle you don't is it possible that you could be wrong? This doesn't mean you don't have conviction or believe in your position, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t defend it. Just make room for the possibility and keep your mind open.

6. Do you have a goal that can be reached in multiple ways? – Fact is every goal can be reached in multiple ways. There is no one best way to anything anymore. Just because your goal has to change to include others doesn’t mean it can’t be reached it’s just another path to get there.

7. If someone else can get us there faster, are you willing to let them? Are you? How often do you stand in the way of someone because you don't like them or think you don't? Do you even know them?

There is no doubt that we need more leadership that can take these 7 questions above to heart and really work to improve the industry and thereby improving their business along with it. We all need to ask ourselves these questions and honestly answer them.

Larry Bruce @pcmguy

This NADA was riddled with the Microsite buzz or at least where I was. I heard more than a few sessions on this topic and it amazes me sometimes that these “Experts” who talk about microsites and conversion still think that if you just throw a Microsite out there it will instantly get traffic or if you build a lot of them somehow visitors will just trip into them.

Just quit it…Please!

Don't ruin a good thing before it ever gets started with these crazy notions of volume of sites and bad content.

A Microsite is:

1.       Written and designed for a specific audience

2.       Optimized to the visitors intent

3.       Fulfills the promise made by the ad that drives the traffic

4.       Simple easy to navigate with a specific purpose

5.       Ultimately visitor generated through testing

A Microsite is not:

1.       A deep link landing page within your Random Access Website

2.       A duplicate of your Random Access Website

3.       A copy of a vehicle brochure online

4.       A duplicate of a vehicle listing (Your VDP)

I have heard there are now vendors duplicating the VDP (Vehicle Display Page) of your website or online listing into a Wordpress site and calling this a Microsite… Are you kidding me!

That’s just what you DON'T want to do: take something that is converting terribly, pay more money to duplicate it several times so we can get bad conversions for more money in other places…REALLY?

Dealers please understand what your goal is with conversion marketing through microsites before you jump in with these crazy Microsite schemes.

Vendors that are pushing this, stop understand what a Microsite is for before you get into conversion rate optimization. Don't just jump into this because it’s the buzz word of the day.  

Larry Bruce @pcmguy

This NADA was riddled with the Microsite buzz or at least where I was. I heard more than a few sessions on this topic and it amazes me sometimes that these “Experts” who talk about microsites and conversion still think that if you just throw a Microsite out there it will instantly get traffic or if you build a lot of them somehow visitors will just trip into them.

Just quit it…Please!

Don't ruin a good thing before it ever gets started with these crazy notions of volume of sites and bad content.

A Microsite is:

1.       Written and designed for a specific audience

2.       Optimized to the visitors intent

3.       Fulfills the promise made by the ad that drives the traffic

4.       Simple easy to navigate with a specific purpose

5.       Ultimately visitor generated through testing

A Microsite is not:

1.       A deep link landing page within your Random Access Website

2.       A duplicate of your Random Access Website

3.       A copy of a vehicle brochure online

4.       A duplicate of a vehicle listing (Your VDP)

I have heard there are now vendors duplicating the VDP (Vehicle Display Page) of your website or online listing into a Wordpress site and calling this a Microsite… Are you kidding me!

That’s just what you DON'T want to do: take something that is converting terribly, pay more money to duplicate it several times so we can get bad conversions for more money in other places…REALLY?

Dealers please understand what your goal is with conversion marketing through microsites before you jump in with these crazy Microsite schemes.

Vendors that are pushing this, stop understand what a Microsite is for before you get into conversion rate optimization. Don't just jump into this because it’s the buzz word of the day.  

Larry Bruce @pcmguy

Who are we putting in charge of our business?

As I watched this video of Groupon’s CEO Andrew Mason apologizing for a business in Japan that couldn’t handle the orders that Groupon generated for them over New Years I couldn’t stop thinking; VIDEO

“Here is a vendor that set a marketing strategy in place for a business using price positioning and email executed on it and then when the business wasn’t prepared to deliver, HE’S apologizing to HIS customers for it?” A nobal gesture.

This is amazing, these businesses that work with Groupon have virtually no margin in what they sell through that channel, they are told what they need to price or discount their services at to work with Groupon and all the while making the customer more and more loyal to Groupon, Yes Groupon looks at the customers at their customers not the businesses customers…

How did Groupon get their customers? Do they have a product to sell? NO they got those customers on the backs of the business they convinced to deeply discount their product to get Groupon the loyalty they have at the businesses cost not Groupon, in fact Groupon got paid to do it.

"Groupon bought its loyalty with money from its clients"

HMMM who does that sound like in the Retail Auto Industry?

Wake up dealers take charge of your own marketing or you’re going to end up like these small business sheep that follow Groupon to the slaughter.

Who are we putting in charge of our business?

As I watched this video of Groupon’s CEO Andrew Mason apologizing for a business in Japan that couldn’t handle the orders that Groupon generated for them over New Years I couldn’t stop thinking; VIDEO

“Here is a vendor that set a marketing strategy in place for a business using price positioning and email executed on it and then when the business wasn’t prepared to deliver, HE’S apologizing to HIS customers for it?” A nobal gesture.

This is amazing, these businesses that work with Groupon have virtually no margin in what they sell through that channel, they are told what they need to price or discount their services at to work with Groupon and all the while making the customer more and more loyal to Groupon, Yes Groupon looks at the customers at their customers not the businesses customers…

How did Groupon get their customers? Do they have a product to sell? NO they got those customers on the backs of the business they convinced to deeply discount their product to get Groupon the loyalty they have at the businesses cost not Groupon, in fact Groupon got paid to do it.

"Groupon bought its loyalty with money from its clients"

HMMM who does that sound like in the Retail Auto Industry?

Wake up dealers take charge of your own marketing or you’re going to end up like these small business sheep that follow Groupon to the slaughter.

Read an article yesterday in Automotive News about Microsites and Acton Toyota "1 Web site? Why Stop there?". I was absolutely thrilled to see that Post-Click-Marketing is finally getting some long overdue credit in the space and from Automotive News to boot.

However Acton hasn’t even scratched the surface with Microsites and Post-Click-Marketing and in fact in many cases is doing it the wrong way and is wildly successful even when handicapped. This should prove without question that your dealership needs to consider a strategy around microsites and conversion optimization.  

The good news is Acton is beginning to understand the basic premise behind what a Microsite is supposed to do:

"Focus the visitor on a specific offer and message"

However to do that there is so much more that should be done and isn’t being covered in the Automotive News article. Below are a few rights and wrongs about what can be taken away from this article and microsites.

·         Doing It Right – Acton is using a Microsites focusing messages on Warranty offers and Lease Specials, Great but there is so much more, product specific offers, social programs, push marketing offers I could go on but I don't want this post to get out of control.

·         Doing It Wrong – These sites cost as little as $2000…WHAT THE?… if you have $2000 invested in a site you can’t walk away from it if its not working, that much money also indicates too much time investment in the Microsite and changes are not going to be easy all very bad for a Microsite. A Microsite, Landing Page or Conversion Path needs to be light, agile (created in an hour or 2) and most of all disposable.

·         Doing It Right – They are separating the sites as stand alone, not as pages within their RAW (Random Access Website). This does help the sites with their own individual SEO and it does help the main website with back links increasing its SEO value.

·         Doing It Wrong – The main value of an offsite Microsite is that you can eliminate distraction and guide the customer down the path to conversion, that’s what microsites do they convert. As you can see from this image of the lease site this is a copy of their main site with all the Random Access distractions and navigation of the main site. How many people get lost and pulled away from the message of the site with this distraction? Answer…A LOT!  

·         Doing It Right – Acton has dedicated people handing the lead conversions that come from their three sites that are getting 14000 visitors per month according to Automotive News and this staff is on a separate floor from the main sales staff. According to GM Mike Hills “It’s a business with in a business”. The team at Acton is made up of 9 dedicated Internet Sales People, 2 Online Sales Managers, an e-Commerce Manager and a fulltime graphics designer. This is a good staff size for a store this size.

·         Can’t Say “Doing it Wrong” here as I don't know what the specific duties of each of these people, I will offer a bit of experience here instead, 3 managers are “Over Kill”. According to the article the store is selling 350 to 400 units per month and only 35% of the leads are handled by the Internet team, so what do these 3 managers do?

A suggestion: Instead of having 3 managers have one in that team be a data analytics director and the other be the team lead, this will give you a significant advantage assuming you are setup to capture all the Web Session data needed to optimize each Microsite. The e-Commerce manager should work with the analytics director and the Team Lead weekly to get the data analysis and cross reference that with what the Team Lead is seeing and hearing from the team to plan test waves, site offers and changes based on visitor behavior.

·         Doing It Right – Acton Toyota is updating content virtually in real time. A great advantage of Microsites if they are set up right is that dealership personnel can update the content in a matter of minutes.

·         Doing It Wrong – Form what I can tell from these sites that Acton has, without some significant back end tools to change the content on these sites it will require a developer to do it. Ideally you want to be able to change your site without IT involvement, “This puts marketing back in control of  the online marketing process”

·         Doing It Right – Clearly from reading the article Acton’s e-Commerce Manager has thought about the content from the perspective of the user. All too often I see dealers go into this process thinking “What do we want to tell our audience?” instead of thinking “What does our audience want to hear?” Kudos to Brun for having that perspective and approach.

·         Doing It Wrong – It’s not enough just to think about the content from the user perspective you have to know it’s what your users want. A 4% conversion rate is ok and double what the most in the industry are getting but there is much more conversion available when you start letting the visitors tell you what's working using split testing instead of trying to guess.

To wrap this post up while there is no doubt that Microsites are expanding the reach of Acton Toyota and will expand the reach of your dealership, don't get pigeon holed into thinking that that’s all microsites do. Expanding your reach is a side benefit the real benefit in microsites is conversion optimization, customer experience management and the ability to produce, test, optimize and repeat with minimal effort in virtual real-time time and ideally no involvement from development.

This is a great start but there is so much more potential. A dealership needs to be looking at having hundreds of microsites not just few.

Hope that helps,

Larry Bruce @pcmguy

Read an article yesterday in Automotive News about Microsites and Acton Toyota "1 Web site? Why Stop there?". I was absolutely thrilled to see that Post-Click-Marketing is finally getting some long overdue credit in the space and from Automotive News to boot.

However Acton hasn’t even scratched the surface with Microsites and Post-Click-Marketing and in fact in many cases is doing it the wrong way and is wildly successful even when handicapped. This should prove without question that your dealership needs to consider a strategy around microsites and conversion optimization.  

The good news is Acton is beginning to understand the basic premise behind what a Microsite is supposed to do:

"Focus the visitor on a specific offer and message"

However to do that there is so much more that should be done and isn’t being covered in the Automotive News article. Below are a few rights and wrongs about what can be taken away from this article and microsites.

·         Doing It Right – Acton is using a Microsites focusing messages on Warranty offers and Lease Specials, Great but there is so much more, product specific offers, social programs, push marketing offers I could go on but I don't want this post to get out of control.

·         Doing It Wrong – These sites cost as little as $2000…WHAT THE?… if you have $2000 invested in a site you can’t walk away from it if its not working, that much money also indicates too much time investment in the Microsite and changes are not going to be easy all very bad for a Microsite. A Microsite, Landing Page or Conversion Path needs to be light, agile (created in an hour or 2) and most of all disposable.

·         Doing It Right – They are separating the sites as stand alone, not as pages within their RAW (Random Access Website). This does help the sites with their own individual SEO and it does help the main website with back links increasing its SEO value.

·         Doing It Wrong – The main value of an offsite Microsite is that you can eliminate distraction and guide the customer down the path to conversion, that’s what microsites do they convert. As you can see from this image of the lease site this is a copy of their main site with all the Random Access distractions and navigation of the main site. How many people get lost and pulled away from the message of the site with this distraction? Answer…A LOT!  

·         Doing It Right – Acton has dedicated people handing the lead conversions that come from their three sites that are getting 14000 visitors per month according to Automotive News and this staff is on a separate floor from the main sales staff. According to GM Mike Hills “It’s a business with in a business”. The team at Acton is made up of 9 dedicated Internet Sales People, 2 Online Sales Managers, an e-Commerce Manager and a fulltime graphics designer. This is a good staff size for a store this size.

·         Can’t Say “Doing it Wrong” here as I don't know what the specific duties of each of these people, I will offer a bit of experience here instead, 3 managers are “Over Kill”. According to the article the store is selling 350 to 400 units per month and only 35% of the leads are handled by the Internet team, so what do these 3 managers do?

A suggestion: Instead of having 3 managers have one in that team be a data analytics director and the other be the team lead, this will give you a significant advantage assuming you are setup to capture all the Web Session data needed to optimize each Microsite. The e-Commerce manager should work with the analytics director and the Team Lead weekly to get the data analysis and cross reference that with what the Team Lead is seeing and hearing from the team to plan test waves, site offers and changes based on visitor behavior.

·         Doing It Right – Acton Toyota is updating content virtually in real time. A great advantage of Microsites if they are set up right is that dealership personnel can update the content in a matter of minutes.

·         Doing It Wrong – Form what I can tell from these sites that Acton has, without some significant back end tools to change the content on these sites it will require a developer to do it. Ideally you want to be able to change your site without IT involvement, “This puts marketing back in control of  the online marketing process”

·         Doing It Right – Clearly from reading the article Acton’s e-Commerce Manager has thought about the content from the perspective of the user. All too often I see dealers go into this process thinking “What do we want to tell our audience?” instead of thinking “What does our audience want to hear?” Kudos to Brun for having that perspective and approach.

·         Doing It Wrong – It’s not enough just to think about the content from the user perspective you have to know it’s what your users want. A 4% conversion rate is ok and double what the most in the industry are getting but there is much more conversion available when you start letting the visitors tell you what's working using split testing instead of trying to guess.

To wrap this post up while there is no doubt that Microsites are expanding the reach of Acton Toyota and will expand the reach of your dealership, don't get pigeon holed into thinking that that’s all microsites do. Expanding your reach is a side benefit the real benefit in microsites is conversion optimization, customer experience management and the ability to produce, test, optimize and repeat with minimal effort in virtual real-time time and ideally no involvement from development.

This is a great start but there is so much more potential. A dealership needs to be looking at having hundreds of microsites not just few.

Hope that helps,

Larry Bruce @pcmguy