Everything is moving to digital, does that mean that your location isn’t valuable? New research shows that your physical location could be your most valuable asset in both your offline and online strategies.

DrivingSales is excited to announce that David Bell will be joining us as a keynote speaker during the DrivingSales Executive Summit. 

David R. Bell shows why online retailers are jealous of your location and how to leverage it as strength in your defense against online only retailers. Bell teaches online and offline retailers why “Location is (Still) Everything” for every type of buyer from baby boomers to millennials.

During this keynote session you’ll learn:
-Why Amazon is opening physical stores to compete with businesses like dealerships.
-How to make your physical location a strategic advantage long-term.
-How to build a connected customer experience that increases close ratios.

A graduate of Stanford University and marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, David is an award-winning teacher and researcher. His studies focus on how we use the Internet and related technologies to search, shop and sell – a subject he delves deep into in his bestselling book – “Location is (Still) Everything” (New Harvest, July 2014), which was translated and published in Brazil (2016) and China (2017).

David developed Wharton’s first MBA course on digital marketing and e-commerce, and is Founding Academic Director for Digital Marketing Strategies for the Digital Economy at Wharton Executive Education. He is an investor in several new economy companies including Bonobos (acquired by Walmart), Diapers.com (acquired by Amazon), Harry’s, Jet.com (acquired by Walmart), and Warby Parker, among many others.

His academic articles are published in all major marketing journals – Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, Marketing Science, Management Science – and his research has been recognized with the Frank M. Bass Outstanding Dissertation Award, three John D.C. Little Best Paper Finalist awards, two INFORMS Marketing Science Long-Term Impact Finalist Awards, and First Place Award in the 2014 Production and Operations Management Society Applied Research Challenge.

A New Zealand citizen, David received his PhD from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.

How brilliant marketers find and follow what makes their stories different in a world full of average content

DrivingSales is excited to announce that Jay Acunzo will be joining us as a keynote speaker during the DrivingSales Executive Summit. 

We've practiced the best practices. We’ve tried the tried-and-true. But deep down, we have this creeping feeling our branded content is slightly better at best and copying competitors at worst. Noise competing with similar noise.

What if we could break from all that? What if we created more original, more inspired work? What if we could proactively shape the market instead of constantly react to all the generic advice out there?

In other words: What if we were the exception?

In this fast-paced, inspiring talk, award-winning podcaster and former Google and HubSpot brand-builder Jay Acunzo will challenge us to break from conventional thinking. He'll share stories of innovative marketers who rejected best practices to succeed — and the simple but powerful thinking that guided them. You'll learn how to make a daunting leap between average and exceptional seem more like a smart strategy, and you'll realize the best way forward doesn't require any "guru" or "growth hack."

In the end, you’ll walk away ready to create more differentiated content that grabs attention and drives bigger results despite all the noise. In a world overrun with commodity content trying to reach people, your secret weapon will be knowing how to resonate.

Are you ready to be the exception?

Jay Acunzo is an award-winning podcaster, dynamic keynote speaker, and a guy bothered by conventional thinking. Working as a digital media strategist at Google convinced him that the tried-and-true often leads to stale work. As head of content at HubSpot, he developed a passion to see marketing as a craft-driven profession. Now, as the host of the audio documentary series Unthinkable, Jay spends each week telling the stories of people and companies who break from the convention to do exceptional things.

Over the past decade, he’s built content strategies from scratch for startups, produced attention-grabbing series for publishers and challenger brands, and even scaled a venture capital firm through narrative podcasting. His work has been cited in courses at Harvard Business School, by writers at the Washington Post, Fast Company, and Forbes, and by investors on TV’s Shark Tank.

Today, Jay hosts shows and works with teams who aspire to be the exceptions to all the noise in their niche.

This post was written by Jay Acunzo, who will be speaking at the upcoming DrivingSales Executive Summit in October.

The other day, I was scrolling through some Facebook comments (mistake #1) on a thread about whether self-driving cars would become mainstream. I was blown away by how the debate wasn't whether they'd happen but what reason would prevail for why they wouldn't. Everyone seemed to jump right to the reasons to NOT believe -- or perhaps they even relished in immediately shooting down the very thought.

I take for granted working in tech and, mainly, with startups my entire career thus far. I think the best part of the startup world is the collective openness to new possibilities. Whereas most people scoff "no chance" at something new and crazy, we say, "what if?"

Damn, I love those two little words so much.

Self-driving cars? No chance they replace regular cars, right? Too much infrastructure and they could crash! "Yeah but what if?"

You're a media company, but you aren't gonna run any ads? That'll never work. "But what if?"

Artificial intelligence? I mean, have you SEEN Terminator? Or... "Yeah, but what if?"

Virtual reality? Augmented reality? Machine learning? Clean energy? Electric vehicles? Noooo chance. "BUT...what if?"

Here's another: WHAT IF you chose to be optimistic? WHAT IF you broke from conventional thinking, if only in your mind at first? WHAT IF you allowed for new possibilities?

This post was inspired by the following episode of Unthinkable, Jay's podcast about people who question conventional thinking at work and trust their intuition instead. You can listen below or subscribe to the show here (iOS users) or here (Android users). 

Listen Here

Written by David Bell who will be speaking at DSES in October.

Very exciting times of late with June 16th being the day Amazon and Wamart announced acquisitions that preview the future of retail and commerce. Amazon, the online-first behemoth, bought Whole Foods for $13.4b. Walmart, the world’s largest retailer with about $483b in sales, purchased Bonobos for the relatively modest sum of $310m. Bonobos, founded in 2007 as Bonobos.com by two Stanford MBA classmates and initially online-only, has the distinction of being perhaps the first Digitally Native Vertical Brand, or DNVB, for short. The DNVB starts online, then adds offline as appropriate, and often as a “showroom” that is heavy on experience and light on inventory for immediate sale.

All this activity happened against the backdrop of dire predictions by Credit Suisse: 2017 is likely to see 9,000 imminent store closings.

So, offline appears to be “dead and dying” yet “alive and thriving” at the same time!

Understanding this (apparent) paradox is the key to the future of retailing. In my view, the offline world will not disappear, but it will be dramatically reshaped from a “large footprint, selling plus fulfillment environment” to a “small footprint, experience-centric environment.”

Earlier this week while attending Alibaba’s “10th Netrepreneur Conference” in Hangzhou, I heard Daniel Zhang, CEO of Alibaba, express the idea quite eloquently: “offline assets contribute greatly to any online business.”

In fact, the old retail mantra of “location, location, location” is evergreen, but with a digital economy twist. Legacy retail is about location of stores, and e-commerce is about the location of customers. The retail experience of today and the future is about determining the location—online or offline—of appropriate set of retail experiences, products, and elements that will delight customers.  

Getting this “location” decision right will determine the success (or otherwise) of everyone involved in the retail space. Interestingly enough, the world’s most valuable company, Apple, offers a preview of the gains to be had from controlling customer experience. Some of us are old enough to recall Apple as a company with miniscule market share and on the verge of collapse. Among the many things Apple has done right, bold entry (as a manufacturer), into the retail space has proven to be one of the most prescient and beneficial.

I look forward to discussing the new “location” elements of retail and all they entail, with all of you in the fall!

David Bell.

Congratulations to Scott Larrabee who had the top blog in June! Scott's blog, "My Personal Top Ten Quotes For Salespeople" was full of great ideas and quotes on how to keep yourself motivated. We talked with Scott more about how to stay motivated and inspired within the dealership world. Here's what he had to say.

Q: Why is it important for salespeople to find ways to get motivated?

A: I believe to be successful in sales you need a lot of positive energy. You need to be willing to give, give, give and go the extra mile for your customers. In today's marketplace it's way too easy for your customer to go down the road and buy something very similar to what you sell for a similar price. People want an experience when they decide to take the time to visit your dealership. If you are a demotivated salesperson, you are going to sell 6-8 cars a month, make $45,000 -$50,000 a year, work 50 hours a week and hate your life. You'll blame it on the job, tell people how bad selling cars is, but in reality it's usually lack of personal motivation that really did you in. If you are in auto sales, you need to realize you are a business within a business. Your level of personal motivation is going to determine your level and quality of actions, without motivation you will not succeed in this business very long before you burn out, that's why I believe motivation is critical for salespeople to figure out.

Q: Why is it easy to get discouraged with sales?

A: Honestly, I believe there are few factors here but I think a lot of salespeople take rejection personally, and it demotivates them. I think too often salespeople will allow a rejection of an offer affect how they view themselves as a salesperson. It's common to hear a lot more NO's than YES's, especially if you're new to selling. You have to persevere through this part of your career, this is where you "pay your dues" as they say and build your business. I can almost always tell who will make it and who will not by a persons level of motivation when they start, it's amazing how much better the self motivated people are in this business than those who aren't self starters!

Q: What are some tricks you recommend for staying motivated?

A: I find the best way to stay motivated is to WIN! Win in life, go after everything with your best shot, whatever that looks like from day to day. I find if you just hold yourself accountable each day to doing your best for that day, you will be more motivated and have much more success. Some days you will be more motivated than others, but always look to win in your personal life, win with your spiritual life, win with finances, and win in your sales career. I promise when you do this you will be very motivated!

Now here's 3 tips to help you Win in all these areas:

1. Set Goals and Write them Down!

2. Read, Read, Read! (If you don't like to read get then get books on tape or watch video, point is LEARN!!)

3. Be Grateful for what you have, make a list of everything your grateful for and review it often! 

Q: Do you think there's a difference between Inspiration and Motivation, and what is it?

A: I do think there's is a difference between the two, they even have different definitions! I have been inspired to do MANY things in my life. I have had moments of insane creativity hit me where I am thinking so clearly about something I seem to have the whole world all figured out. But often in those same moments, I do absolutely nothing to make that creative thought, that inspiration... a reality. I lacked motivation. Salespeople do this all the time and I believe the ones who have figured out how to take action on these mental stimulations, these inspirations, are the great successes of our industry!

Q: How can you motivate and inspire others on your team?

A: I think the best thing you can do to motivate someone is realize you can't motivate them unless they want to be motivated. We have to motivate ourselves because only we know what truly motivates us. So, what I find effective is help is not to demotivate people, and be a positive contact for them. Encouragement goes a long way to helping people find or simply maintain personal motivation.

Q: How can dealerships have motivation and inspiration in the store every day?

A: Be consistent. Hold salespeople accountable. Offer excellent, daily sales training. Hold meetings that matter. Don't waste time. Don't manage, Lead. Praise more than you criticize. Refuse to tolerate negativity. Be fair. Make sure everyone in the dealerships knows their role, and how it effects the entire process. Set big goals that push the dealership staff to its potential. Encourage self development. Those are just a few ideas...

Q: How can meetings be more motivational?

A: Make them short, to the point, positive, and share success stories. Those things alone would improve 90% of sales meetings on Saturday morning's! 

Q: In the automotive space, who are your top influencers or people you look to for inspiration?

A: Right now I would say Grant Cardone is the top person I follow for inspiration. When I started working for Darling's Auto Group back in 2012 I had never sold cars before in my life. Darling's was a Cardone dealership using and following his system so that was the first time I had ever heard about GC. In May 2016 for my birthday I bought myself The 10X Rule. After reading that book I was hooked on Grant's material and have been since. I even convinced my GM that we needed to up our commitment to training and get our store on board with Cardone On Demand, which we now have. The one thing about GC, he never runs short on inspiration, motivation, or positivity! 

Q: Who would you say is your top mentor or motivator when it comes to sales?

A: The honest answer is a boring one but it's the truth, myself. When it comes to sales I have to find reasons to be motivated and motivate myself. As Zig Ziglar use to say, "motivation is like bathing and eating, neither last that's why it's recommended daily!" I definitely get inspired by people like Mike Davenport who are doing what I do at a whole different level, and that reminds me that there is so much more potential. Reaching for my potential really motivates me, I'm never truly satisfied. I am also very motivated to give my family a great life and to make them proud. Those are great motivators for me! 

Q: Do you think money is the most important motivation at the end of the day?

A: They say a man who says he doesn't need a lot of money will lie about other things too. But no, I don't believe money is the most important. Personally money isn't the motivation for anything I do, but I  think money is important for what it represents. Money represents freedom, and freedom means more time. Time is our most important asset, and it's the only thing you can never get more of. So yes, money is important and it can be very motivating for some, but for most money represents something. Now if I was a sales manager in a car dealership I would want to know what money means to each and every single one of my salespeople so that I could use that personal motivation to fuel them on a regular basis! 

Your dealership marketing manager has a tough job. They’re fighting lots of different opinions, in an industry that still has one foot in the traditional marketing door, and one foot in the digital marketing door. These marketing managers are working tirelessly to help dealerships grow, and there a few phrases they regularly hear that make them wonder what they can possibly do!

1. The Internet is just a fad. I may or may not have actually heard this from a dealership GM at one point in my life. And it was CRINGE WORTHY. The Internet is here to stay, and it’s in our best interest to harness the awesome abilities that it gives us.
2. Let’s put flames (or something else cheesy) in that ad! There are some awesome ways to make an advertisement pop, but some of the cheesy ways aren’t exactly the best. Flames, balloons, and fireworks are cool, yes, but we need to make sure we’re using them in a way that doesn’t make the ad look ridiculous!
3. I don’t want a social media account for the store. If you’re not on social media, you’re already insanely far behind. The quicker you get social media accounts for your dealership, and are actively working to engage your followers, the better off you’ll be!
4. Let’s add something else to the website homepage. Automotive websites are notoriously cluttered and sometimes difficult to navigate. We should focus on streamlining our web presence and putting the things on the homepage that customers are really looking for, as well as giving them paths to go deeper into the site.
5. The automotive industry can’t do that. While it’s true, marketing in automotive is different than other types of marketing; there are very few marketing tactics that just don’t work for automotive. Marketing managers want the chance to try out techniques used in other industries, keep up with where marketing is moving as a whole, and implement new growth into automotive. 

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY SEARCH ENGINE LAND

A new study released today by Ahrefs shows how featured snippets have a negative impact on clicks to the first organic search result.

Ahrefs analyzed two million featured snippets and found that the first organic result shows a significant drop in click-through rate when a featured snippet is present. Without a featured snippet, the first result gets a 26 percent click-through rate. With it, it only gets a 19.6 percent click-through rate, and the featured snippet gets an 8.6 percent click-through rate.

The study also shows that the presence of a featured snippet means fewer clicks overall for the organic search results.

Out of the 112 million keywords that Ahrefs analyzed:

• 12.29 percent of search queries have featured snippets in the search results.
• Only 30.9 percent of featured snippets rank at the very top placement in the organic results.
• 99.58 percent of the featured snippets are already in the top 10 positions in Google.
• The vast majority of featured snippets are triggered by long-tail keywords.
• Wikipedia has by far the most amount of featured snippets in Google.
• Featured snippets often change sources.

This follows another featured snippets study we posted last week that looked at 1.4 million queries and hundreds of thousands of featured snippets.

I have only summarized some of the findings from the Ahrefs study, so check out the full results over here.

DETROIT, May 25, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The new vehicle retail sales pace in 2017 is expected to be lowest for the month of May since 2013, according to a forecast developed jointly by J.D. Power and LMC Automotive.

With one additional selling day in 2017, retail sales in May are anticipated to reach 1,222,000 units, a 2.9% decrease compared with May 2016 on a selling-day-adjusted basis. The seasonally adjusted annualized rate (SAAR) for retail sales in May is expected to be 13.4 million units, a decrease of 212,000 units from a year ago. With the slowdown expected to continue in the second half of the year, LMC Automotive is reducing its retail light-vehicle sales forecast for 2017 to 13.9 million units.

(in millions of units) Source: Power Information Network® (PIN) from J.D. Power

Incentive spending for the industry continues to rise, and through the first 11 days of May was $3,583 per unit, the highest level ever for the month of May and up $241 from May 2016 ($3,342). Incentives as a percentage of MSRP were at 9.9%, and on pace to exceed the 10% level for 10th time in the past 11 months.

"While consumers will see substantial discounts this Memorial Day weekend, they are not expected to overcome the slowing demand in auto sales," said Deirdre Borrego, senior vice president of automotive data and analytics at J.D. Power. "The holiday weekend is one of the heaviest trafficked car-buying periods and, in 2016, the Friday-Monday selling period accounted for more than 20% of May retail sales."

Despite maintaining record incentive levels, the average days to turn for the industry is above 70 days for the first time since 2009. More than 27% of vehicles sold so far in May sat on dealer lots for more than 90 days, up from 25% last year. "Continued elevated incentives reflect the challenges of balancing record levels of inventory and are likely to remain elevated unless production is adjusted to meet consumer demand," Borrego said.

J.D. Power and LMC Automotive U.S. Sales and SAAR Comparisons

1Figures cited for May 2017 are forecasted based on the first 17 selling days of the month. 
2The percentage change is adjusted based on the number of selling days in the month (25 days in May 2017 vs. 24 days in May 2016).

• The average new-vehicle retail transaction price to date in May is $31,419, a record for the month, surpassing the previous high for the month of $30,886 set in May 2016.
• With record transaction prices for the month, consumers are on pace to spend $38.4 billion on new vehicles in May, about $1 billion more than last year's level and a record for the month.
• Average incentive spending per unit to date in May is $3,583 per unit, a record for the month, and surpassing the previous high for the month of $3,342, set in May 2016. Spending on trucks and SUVs is $3,358, up $187 from last year, while on spending on cars is $3,942, up $344.
• Trucks account for 61.7% of new-vehicle retail sales so far in May—the highest level ever for the month of May—making it the 11th consecutive month above 60%.  
• Days to turn, the average number of days a new vehicle sit on a dealer lot before being sold to a retail customer, reached 71 through May 14. This is the highest level for any month since July 2009 (80).
• Fleet sales are expected to total 320,300 units in May, down 5.8% from May 2016 on a selling day adjusted basis. Fleet volume is expected to account for 20.8% of total light-vehicle sales, a decrease from 21.3% in May 2016.

Jeff Schuster, senior vice president of forecasting at LMC Automotive, said: "On the surface, continued downward pressure on auto sales since the beginning of the year is troubling. However, we believe some of the weakness year-to-date has been exaggerated by jitters over policy risk with the Trump administration. If uncertainty dissipates and tax cuts are initiated—or OEMs engage higher incentives—stronger demand could return for an encore performance in the second half of the year. However, the industry still must deal with negative effect of a growing used car market and the notion of rising interest rates, both of which are real risks to future volume and potential growth."

A reassessment of market indicators and uncertainty risk has led to a reduction in the outlook for this year. LMC's forecast for 2017 total light-vehicle sales has been cut to 17.2 million units, down from 17.5 million previously and a decline of -2.0% from 2016. The retail light-vehicle outlook has also been cut from 14.2 million units to 13.9 million units, a decline of -1.4% from 2016. The reduction in fleet volume has outpaced that of retail with fleet volume expected to be down -4.5% from 2016.

About J.D. Power and Advertising/Promotional Rules www.jdpower.com/about-us/press-release-info 
About LMC Automotive www.lmc-auto.com.

Media Relations Contacts 
Geno Effler; Costa Mesa, Calif.; 714-621-6224; media.relations@jdpa.com 
Emmie Littlejohn; LMC Automotive; Troy, Mich.; 248-817-2100; elittlejohn@lmc-auto.com

No advertising or other promotional use can be made of the information in this release without the express prior written consent of J.D. Power or LMC Automotive. www.jdpower.com/corporate  www.lmc-auto.com

Check out what Candice Crane from Hireology has to say about the future of automotive retail, and what she believes dealers can do now to prepare for their future.

Hear from Tony Harris of the Harris Automotive Group, as he tells us what's ahead for automotive, what dealers should be doing to prepare, and how Presidents Club is helping the auto industry progress.