By Boyd Warner, CEO, AutoAlert, Inc. -- I like bing.com’s definition of mother lode – “a plentiful supply of something.” That’s what data mining technology for your dealership should provide you, a plenty supply of sales opportunities.

Data mining describes methodologies for analyzing data to find valuable nuggets. If you’re going to analyze your customer database, the nuggets you hope to unearth are consumers whose vehicle profiles, equity positions and vehicle histories make them prime prospects for your sales calls.

Yet knowing this rich vein of potential car sales is there and extracting its value are not the same things. As in any endeavor, success is borne of ambition supported by the right tools. In fact, some data-mining ideas available today only identify the data; how to convert it into cash is up to you.

Data mining to increase vehicle and service sales should not only help you find your own  mother lode but give you the tools to extract the gold easily enough that even novice miners will produce great results. Fortunately, these tools exist:

• A true data mining mentality
• The right data mining equipment
• A tested data mining strategy

Data mining’s not for everyone: You can buy all the right equipment and look like a miner or you can roll up your sleeves and be a miner. The latter is work. It’s effort. It’s fruitful. While the data mining technology itself is important, it’s what you’re willing to wrestle from it that matters. Dealers who generate additional car sales month after month using the data mining processes embrace the concept fervently and work the process. Their results are telling, up to 100 or more additional vehicles sold a month.

The right equipment matters: A lot of products today promise “data mining” functionality. That a technology can analyze data isn’t necessarily data mining. The right data mining equipment helps you dissect your database to find the right customers who are interested at the right time to buy from you now. The right data mining equipment is like a treasure map – it tells you where the gold is, but doesn’t help you dig it up and carry it way.

A strategy for success:  Without a strategy for putting data mining to work for you, what it often produces is mere slag. Look carefully at the data your process produces. What does it tell you? Now develop a strategy for putting that data to use. For instance, if the data’s to uncover out-of-warranty owners, what’s the strategy for converting the facts into cash? 

Finally, as you move you’re your data into action, carefully consider using written talk tracks to guide your prospectors carefully through the nugget extraction phase of the process. Consider how this track might be worded so customers called clearly understand the value of your offers. Dealers using scripted calls for data-mining marketing say sticking to a written phone script is the straightest path to customers saying “yes.”

Data mining is a great way to strike your mother lode – a plentiful supply of customers simply waiting for your team to call them. The right data mining strategy equips your team to best present welcome news to your customers to help you carry away this found treasure to the bank.

Boyd Warner is CEO of AutoAlert®, Inc. (www.autoalert.com), the most advanced lead generation solution available on the market today. Contact him at boyd@autoalert.com

– by Boyd Warner

The car business seems enraptured by the phone these days, but rarely for talking to customers, and this loss in sales and productivity is really too bad.

Texting is fast and hip, but using the telephone to actually talk with customers can be a most potent competitive advantage and using the phone to engage existing customers can be especially rewarding – for everyone!

To gain such rewards, we have to become comfortable with actually talking on the telephone again. Gaining experience and confidence using the phone to conduct business is acquired when given special attention and dedication.

There’s an old phone sales axiom that the telephone can become a 64-pound weight when used for making direct sales calls. It can often feel more like a ton of weight when faced with lifting it up to call someone you don’t know and who doesn’t know you, especially when you cannot provide any specific value for having interrupted their day.

Avoiding the phone is like avoiding a customer who walks into the showroom.

Currently there’s no reason to make cold calls without having foreknowledge of what will grab the customer’s attention. With these advantages going for you, the phone can seem as light as a hundred dollar bill.

Proper preparation using the telephone to sell vehicles and service can make your job productive. Learn to reach out to customers who’ll readily receive your calls, listen to you long enough to decide if there are actual benefits and then accept your offers.

Think outside the box; don’t give listeners predictable car-sales pitches. Forgot those words we love so much, like “deal” and “special offer” and “trade-in”. Instead of calling to sell something, let the customer know right away:

• You’re calling to buy – their existing vehicle. You currently have a demand for vehicles like theirs; as compensation, propose a newer model for about the same monthly payment

• You’re calling to protect them – from making a costly mistake. Your records show their leased vehicle mileage is going to exceed their contract limit, costing them X dollars in penalties. You can eliminate those potentially expensive fees and move your customer into a newer model for about the same payment

• You’re calling to offer peace of mind – the customer’s factory warranty is expiring soon and you can offer a commensurate vehicle service contract with additional protection for many more years to come.

• You’re calling to save them frustration - your records show their aging vehicle has become increasingly costly to maintain properly and you have a fine selection of certified pre-owned units they might want to consider. These include late model vehicles complete with lower miles and the balance of factory warranties or with vehicle service contacts included.

Does romancing the phone like this truly generate additional business? It certainly does when the sales staff is comfortable speaking to customers by phone and they can follow a basic key-points talking script. They should also have sufficient industry experience or commensurate training to answer customers’ basic questions.

Texting is here to stay, yet when it comes to using the phone as a selling tool, nothing beats dialing up customers and offering real value to their lives.

Boyd Warner is CEO of AutoAlert®, Inc. (www.autoalert.com), the most advanced lead generation solution available on the market today. Contact him at boyd@autoalert.com

The Myth of ‘Plug and Play’

By Boyd Warner

Used to be, in antiquity, before technology permeated our lives, vendors of the newest digital solution used the phrase “plug and play” to describe how easy their stuff was to use.

Really? Has that been your experience?

We can get lulled into the myth that technology products are genies in bottles, ready to unleash our demand in an instant. Reality proves that productivity tools are truly productive only when used properly.

Here’s the first point: If the vendor offers product training, insist that everyone who will use the product gets that training. Hold them accountable for really knowing what the product can do and how to get that performance out of it.

Here’s the second point: Match the right individual or individuals to the technology. Would you assign someone with low social graces to be your greeter or assign someone crippled by phone-phobia and lack of empathy as your customer service representative?

Today’s car dealership technologies are indeed plug and play, yet they work best and deliver the most when the human beings assigned to use them are trained and motivated to maximize the process.

You’ve invested in the bells and whistles – do the same for the skills and abilities of those you make responsible for their performance.

Boyd Warner is CEO of AutoAlert®, Inc. (www.autoalert.com), the most advanced lead generation solution available on the market today. Contact him at boyd@autoalert.com

By Boyd Warner

It took a ripe apple dropping on Sir Isaac Newton’s head for gravity to shoot to stardom. Sales to existing customers are waiting to drop on your head, if you’ll simply look up, maybe propelling you to stardom yourself.

In every dealer’s existing customer database are bushels of ripe apples ready for picking, if you can present them with the right offer at the right time.  Will you pick them -- or will they fall under another dealer’s tree? I want them to fall under yours.

Today this ripened fruit is perhaps better described as opportunity discoveries. The idea is to be the first dealer to present the right opportunities to the right customer with the right offer at the right time.

Here are five kinds of opportunity discoveries ripe for picking by your dealership:

• Owners of in-demand models: These are customers owning or leasing the kinds of high-quality vehicles very much in demand in your market – those you sold and serviced and that will make great candidates for certified pre-owned models. Source customers whose vehicle equity, mileage, model type or year might let you move them into a newer model; you sell them again and get theirs in trade
• Owners facing lease- or finance-end: These are customers who you want to start calling sooner than later, depending on their term end, to start showcasing how you might move them into a new model for similar rates and terms. By calling these customers earlier than the finance companies, banks or other dealers typically do can help you retain their business.
• Owners risking high-mileage penalties: Here’s an idea – call these customers to help them avoid costly overage penalties; they’ll appreciate the heads up. You gain their trust and an opportunity to move them into another leased or finance vehicle to avoid those penalties
• Owners of nickel-and-dimers: These customers own vehicles having high mileage and you’re seeing them in your service department more and more frequently. Identify those vehicles that fit certain customer-pay metrics and offer to help them avoid those costs in the future by offering re-purchase opportunities
• Owners of vehicles nearing warranty end: Identify warranty-end customers and invite them to extend their peace of mind through a service contract through your dealership.

Selling to customers using unique opportunity discover marketing breaks the resistance consumers have to car dealer calls and instead pleasantly startles them into wanting to hear you long enough for you to slide the bushel basket their way.

Boyd Warner is CEO of AutoAlert®, Inc. (www.autoalert.com).