Remember the good ‘ol days when you opened the phone book and the best ad won your business?

Well not anymore!  Now, thanks to social media, you have to be on constant alert to promote AND protect your professional and personal reputation.   Sure it looks easy…just go online and post some nice things about how great you are on your website, Facebook and Twitter. It’s a great way to reach the public!  But no one ever warned you about the public reaching back!

There are basically two kinds of online reputation traps you need to be aware of and manage:

1. The public interaction you receive after engagement, and

2. The personal items you and your friends post on your private pages that somehow make it into your professional world.

Online media is a great tool for reaching audiences who weren’t always in your grasp.  Everyone gets the warm and fuzzies when customers go online to say things like “great job Bob!” and “I can’t wait to go back!”  The frightening part about social media is when people go online and say, “Bob is a jerk” or “Tom never takes my problem seriously.”  Or, when people see those pictures of you that wouldn’t even show your mom. Those comments spread like wildfire and it takes a lot of work to resolve the challenges they present.

You need to first and foremost, be proactive.  This is your business, your livelihood…and it doesn’t get more personal than that!  Some DOs and DON’Ts for protecting your reputation online:

o

DO set up some automatic alerts to notify you when your business is mentioned in a review or blog

o

DO list your company in local search sites and make sure it’s complete!  This helps you get better search results and push the negative search results down.

o

DO respond to people who post negative comments to let them (and everyone else who is watching) that you care about customer service.   DON’T try to reason with them online, but DO reach out and begin communicating privately.

o

DO set up some analytics on your site so you can identify demographics, key words used in searches and other metrics that will help boost your ratings.  Google offers some good tools for this and they’re easy to use.

o

DON’T recruit people to write false reviews or trash competitors.  It’s the online form of gossip and most people can see through it, kind of like the bully in the playground.

In closing, don’t let the online world freak you out…it’s here to stay.   It is a key influencer for over 80% of consumers today.  You’ve got to run a business and stay ahead of the buzz to be successful.   Go online… check yourself out!  It’s going to reveal a lot more than looking in a mirror.

Remember the good ‘ol days when you opened the phone book and the best ad won your business?

Well not anymore!  Now, thanks to social media, you have to be on constant alert to promote AND protect your professional and personal reputation.   Sure it looks easy…just go online and post some nice things about how great you are on your website, Facebook and Twitter. It’s a great way to reach the public!  But no one ever warned you about the public reaching back!

There are basically two kinds of online reputation traps you need to be aware of and manage:

1. The public interaction you receive after engagement, and

2. The personal items you and your friends post on your private pages that somehow make it into your professional world.

Online media is a great tool for reaching audiences who weren’t always in your grasp.  Everyone gets the warm and fuzzies when customers go online to say things like “great job Bob!” and “I can’t wait to go back!”  The frightening part about social media is when people go online and say, “Bob is a jerk” or “Tom never takes my problem seriously.”  Or, when people see those pictures of you that wouldn’t even show your mom. Those comments spread like wildfire and it takes a lot of work to resolve the challenges they present.

You need to first and foremost, be proactive.  This is your business, your livelihood…and it doesn’t get more personal than that!  Some DOs and DON’Ts for protecting your reputation online:

o

DO set up some automatic alerts to notify you when your business is mentioned in a review or blog

o

DO list your company in local search sites and make sure it’s complete!  This helps you get better search results and push the negative search results down.

o

DO respond to people who post negative comments to let them (and everyone else who is watching) that you care about customer service.   DON’T try to reason with them online, but DO reach out and begin communicating privately.

o

DO set up some analytics on your site so you can identify demographics, key words used in searches and other metrics that will help boost your ratings.  Google offers some good tools for this and they’re easy to use.

o

DON’T recruit people to write false reviews or trash competitors.  It’s the online form of gossip and most people can see through it, kind of like the bully in the playground.

In closing, don’t let the online world freak you out…it’s here to stay.   It is a key influencer for over 80% of consumers today.  You’ve got to run a business and stay ahead of the buzz to be successful.   Go online… check yourself out!  It’s going to reveal a lot more than looking in a mirror.

Let me preface this post by saying that I’m not trying to directly attack any specific company. I do, however, believe in being straight forward and I’m sure I’ll get plenty of calls and emails about this post; I am 100% ok with that!

I’ve been dwelling on this subject for several weeks now. With my short attention span, I normally move on in a matter of days, but this is a topic I can’t seem to shake so easily. Are we becoming so focused on meeting these industry ‘standards’ that we are losing sight of the actual customer experience? I currently have a Mazda point outside the Dallas- Fort Worth metroplex and recently attended an Internet Mastery Workshop. The workshop included results of a 3-part Internet mystery shop, website evaluation, reputation management, social media, etc. Now I’ve been to these before and normally I take the information provided, evaluate what changes I think are needed, and shrug off the rest. Let me give a little bit of history before I go any further…  I have a very strong internet team in my Mazda store. We are currently #1 in our region for closing % and #5 nationally for the rolling 12 months. We are also in a VERY competitive market in DFW, with 9 Mazda stores within 50 miles of my doorstep. We carry the highest CSI regionally and are always in the top 20 nationally, so I take great pride in the job my guys do. With all of that being said, you can imagine my frustration when my mystery shop book came around and the 3 scores for the internet shops were 60, 62 and 36! I reviewed the booklet that breaks down all of the mistakes we made (and of course they show only the mistakes, never suggestions on how to do it the ‘right-way’). I started playing out in my head the talk I would need to have with the guys on how they are doing a sub-standard job (according to this mystery shop).

When I returned to the store, I was all ready for my ‘review’ of the horrific mystery shops with my team, when all of a sudden it hits me… who  are they to say my team is doing such a bad job? If our results are really topped out at 62 high score, maybe the grading scale or the evaluation criteria are the issues. I started thinking back over the last 5+ years about all of the changes that have been done and undone. All the time spent on making adjustments and transitions and the hours of ‘reviews’ with employees, when I realized none of those things have EVER improved our closing %’s or sold  more cars for us.  It had simply wasted a lot of time and energy. Before anyone starts jumping up out of their desk chairs thinking I’m saying that processes and procedures aren’t important, let me clarify, that is not what I am implying.  I believe in ongoing training and that processes/procedures are the backbone of any well run business. However, I also feel like our industry has gotten so wrapped up in following these ‘industry standards’,  and too much effort is spent hitting quotas and targets, rather than doing what it takes to sell cars.  Or that our auto responders hit exactly 1.25 minutes after the lead was submitted, because we are told those things will get us to 20% close ratios with 40% appt set averages;  we’ve become somewhat robotic.  It’s RIDICULOUS!!!!! All that time spent trying to be perfect could actually be used in contacting another 2 people a month. At what point do we as dealers (you know, the people that ACTUALLY sell the cars) find the balance between adhering to necessary controls, and taking actions that we know will best benefit the customers and our dealerships?

Let me preface this post by saying that I’m not trying to directly attack any specific company. I do, however, believe in being straight forward and I’m sure I’ll get plenty of calls and emails about this post; I am 100% ok with that!

I’ve been dwelling on this subject for several weeks now. With my short attention span, I normally move on in a matter of days, but this is a topic I can’t seem to shake so easily. Are we becoming so focused on meeting these industry ‘standards’ that we are losing sight of the actual customer experience? I currently have a Mazda point outside the Dallas- Fort Worth metroplex and recently attended an Internet Mastery Workshop. The workshop included results of a 3-part Internet mystery shop, website evaluation, reputation management, social media, etc. Now I’ve been to these before and normally I take the information provided, evaluate what changes I think are needed, and shrug off the rest. Let me give a little bit of history before I go any further…  I have a very strong internet team in my Mazda store. We are currently #1 in our region for closing % and #5 nationally for the rolling 12 months. We are also in a VERY competitive market in DFW, with 9 Mazda stores within 50 miles of my doorstep. We carry the highest CSI regionally and are always in the top 20 nationally, so I take great pride in the job my guys do. With all of that being said, you can imagine my frustration when my mystery shop book came around and the 3 scores for the internet shops were 60, 62 and 36! I reviewed the booklet that breaks down all of the mistakes we made (and of course they show only the mistakes, never suggestions on how to do it the ‘right-way’). I started playing out in my head the talk I would need to have with the guys on how they are doing a sub-standard job (according to this mystery shop).

When I returned to the store, I was all ready for my ‘review’ of the horrific mystery shops with my team, when all of a sudden it hits me… who  are they to say my team is doing such a bad job? If our results are really topped out at 62 high score, maybe the grading scale or the evaluation criteria are the issues. I started thinking back over the last 5+ years about all of the changes that have been done and undone. All the time spent on making adjustments and transitions and the hours of ‘reviews’ with employees, when I realized none of those things have EVER improved our closing %’s or sold  more cars for us.  It had simply wasted a lot of time and energy. Before anyone starts jumping up out of their desk chairs thinking I’m saying that processes and procedures aren’t important, let me clarify, that is not what I am implying.  I believe in ongoing training and that processes/procedures are the backbone of any well run business. However, I also feel like our industry has gotten so wrapped up in following these ‘industry standards’,  and too much effort is spent hitting quotas and targets, rather than doing what it takes to sell cars.  Or that our auto responders hit exactly 1.25 minutes after the lead was submitted, because we are told those things will get us to 20% close ratios with 40% appt set averages;  we’ve become somewhat robotic.  It’s RIDICULOUS!!!!! All that time spent trying to be perfect could actually be used in contacting another 2 people a month. At what point do we as dealers (you know, the people that ACTUALLY sell the cars) find the balance between adhering to necessary controls, and taking actions that we know will best benefit the customers and our dealerships?