LinkedIn is rapidly becoming the Facebook of the white-collar worker and you can benefit IF you use it to your advantage. When LinkedIn first began it was comparable to a large conference not serving alcohol; most people just stuck to themselves in the corner and handed out business cards under the table. The Consultants saw this opportunity and used it as a platform to share how “awesome” they were. LinkedIn fought back with groups, Celebrity Influencers, and Pulse to try and keep the content streamlined towards business. It worked, kind of.

Today, the majority of the content you find will either be:

• motivational quotes
• people liking each other’s new profile photo
• job postings
• the same news story shared by 15 percent of your list
• and of course the consultants, still showing off their awesomeness

However, this content makeup isn’t a bad thing; at least there are no baby photos yet! Even though the content is changing, the legitimacy of LinkedIn remains. This means, the more people who use it as their dominant social stream, the more you can do as a salesperson to turn it into your personal CRM.

Now, let me apologize to GMs, DPs and sales managers, as this information will likely go against everything you are trying to do. For the rest, here is why LinkedIn is the best sales CRM:

First Steps

If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile, wake up. Whatever hang-ups you have about being social online are irrelevant. As of May 1, 2014, there are over 300 million members on LinkedIn, 100 million in the US alone. Every second, two new members are added [i], putting you further behind the curve. Unless you’re a C-suite executive, sooner or later you will lose out for not participating if you haven’t already. 

Your Online Professional Profile

Trust is an essential component of the sales equation; customers are very hesitant to open their wallet when there is a feeling of uncertainty. Building trust also takes time – time you should be spending on building value in the product and your brand. Like with a referral, the ideal situation is to have a trustworthy persona established before you even meet a customer for the first time. One vital first step on your way to being trustworthy is to manage your reputation online. This isn’t just for businesses, but salespeople as well. Whenever I meet a new person the first thing I do is search for them online. Your customers are doing the same, whether you know it or not. Having zero presence is certainly not a positive thing; it puts you in the “faceless” category where all the “bad salespeople” exist. 

LinkedIn not only allows you to showcase your professional achievements, but it also acts as a perceived independent third-party advisory to your character. If you are open and honest online, it lends to the belief you are the same in real life, say in a negotiation situation, for example. Even without recommendations, endorsements or shared connections (more on that later), having a profile shows a customer you are accessible, accountable, and most importantly, trustworthy.

Once you have a profile up and running, during your meet-and-greet it should become habitual that you ask if you can connect with your customers on LinkedIn. Remember, over 100 million people in the US have LinkedIn, so roughly one of two people over the age of 18 have it. Best practice is to have the customer add your profile, so when you leave your office to check availability, the first thing they will do is stalk your profile and hopefully add you. Secondly, if they are busy looking you up, they won’t be price-shopping your competitors. :)

Third, it begins to build trust from a third-party source, fortifying the impression you have given off during the greeting process. If they don’t add you right away, you have another opportunity before the customer leaves, or when they purchase the vehicle. You may be surprised that a customer may be more willing to add you on LinkedIn than to give out their email address. The average person is more vain than you think; everyone wants to hit that 500+ followers mark.

The more customers you have in your wheelhouse, the more beneficial the other aspects of the LinkedIn CRM will be.

Recommendations

Online reviews are all the rage right now, and business rely on them more than ever. More often than not however, the reviews benefit the store more than they do the salesperson. Yes, services like Dealer Rater offer individual salesperson reviews, but what would happen if you ever switched jobs? Building your personal reputation on the back of a dealership is like building a house on an iceberg; it may seem sturdy now but if it ever melts you lose everything (more on that later).

Don’t get me wrong, reviews with the dealership are also essential for yourself as a salesperson, but don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Using LinkedIn’s Recommendations allows you to diversify your testimonial portfolio while increasing the trust level of your profile. Any recommendations you receive are connected to someone else’s profile, with a picture, i.e., a tangible, real-life person that was so thrilled with your performance they attached themselves to you. Reviews like this far outweigh anything written by a faceless “John S.” Most customers will believe LinkedIn recommendations more feverously than photocopied pages in a “Why buy here” book because there is accountability of a third-party source.    

Furthermore, recommendations solidify many of the other aspects of the LinkedIn CRM system; best practice is to ask for a LinkedIn Recommendation from every customer you sell a vehicle to. Wayne Gretzky said it best: “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”

Keep Your Contacts

As I alluded to earlier, for a salesperson the number one issue with a dealership’s CRM is that if you were to ever leave, your contacts stay with the company. Your (hopefully) hundreds, if not thousands of customers are locked away while you get shipped off the island. 

Keeping a separate copy of your customers in your permanent possession allows you the freedom to travel, if you so wish. The days of the loyal customers following the salesperson are quickly fading away; it is up to the salesperson to maintain contact and not wait for the customer to come to you.

Referrals

The “Introduction” system built into LinkedIn was originally designed for those in the job search, but it is far more effective in generating your own referrals. The larger you grow your network, the more potential customers you are able to reach out to in the 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon. For example, my connections put me within arm’s reach of over 10 million professionals on LinkedIn.

Now, if you have made an excellent connection with a customer, especially if they have written you a LinkedIn recommendation, they will have no problem bridging the connection. The end result is a potentially infinite wheelhouse of referrals at your fingertips. Can your dealership CRM do this for you?

Customer History + Keep In Touch

An integral part of any CRM is to keep track of communications with current and potential customers. LinkedIn provides the same functionality; for every connection you are able to keep notes on their Contact and Relationship, information all kept within your profile.

The system allows you to create notes, set reminders, create custom tags, note how you met, and most importantly, if you tie it into your other systems (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Outlook, etc.), it will also keep a chronological history of all your interactions.

You can then view all of this information in an expanded view of all your connections within the Keep in Touch section where you can sort by Contact Info, Last Conversation, Tag, Company, Location, etc, etc. The possibilities are endless, and quite frankly has practically the same functionality as any dealership CRM out there.

As an example you could use “Keep in Touch” to sort by Last Conversation and reconnect with those whom you haven’t spoken to in the longest period. Or, as another example, you can sort by Company when you hear of a public acquisition, and target all the employees who likely have received a cash buyout. The ones you don’t have direct connections with, you can use Introductions to get them into your wheelhouse as well.

Updates

Several times a week I get an email from LinkedIn telling me who got a new job, or who is celebrating a work anniversary. It also updates me of who has new connections, and who has been looking at my profile. To the untrained eye, this information may seem trivial, but with the LinkedIn CRM you can use this information to sell more cars.

For example, when someone gets a shiny new promotion or job, what is one of the first things they do? Upgrade their vehicle! It’s very easy to congratulate them on their accomplishment, and soft sell them on your services. If you get a conversation started, you can also ask if anyone they know is looking for a vehicle. Prospecting has never been this easy!

Same goes for a work anniversary. If someone is celebrating their 20th year at Company X, or celebrating their 50th birthday, likely they are feeling the need for a “change.” What is a great way to spice up your life? That’s right, a new car!

The LinkedIn CRM does a fantastic job of notifying you of your contact’s big life changes, and allows you to step in and prospect new sales and new referrals. It’s almost criminal if you are not doing this already! :P

Build Your Personal Brand

Once you have accumulated a healthy contact base, built trust with recommendations and are prospecting regularly, the last piece of the LinkedIn CRM is to build your personal brand with content. Just as a good dealership does with their webpage, you can do the same with the LinkedIn CRM.

Whether you create the content yourself (ideal) or are sharing great content from DrivingSales, your gentle touch (shhhh…buy a car) is spreading itself across all your connections. Every time someone interacts with that content, it spreads to their connections (shhhh…buy a car). The more interactions, the more prominence it is given on the site (shhhh…buy a car). The more prominent content, the more your profile is advertised across your 10,000,000+ connections and sooner than later, you get a message saying, “Hey, I have some questions about buying a car. Billy said I should message you.” 

You could share news about the latest concept vehicle, or create a FAQ article about how to keep your car door locks from freezing. As long as you are sharing relevant, high-quality content, your reach will continue to grow. Again, yet another thing your dealer CRM can’t do for you.

Apologies

Again, to the DPs, GMs, and SMs, I apologize for sharing this information, but think of the positive. If your salespeople are prospecting customers and selling more vehicles, how much is there really to be worried about? At the end of the day, we all want the same thing: to sell more cars and make more money.  

Have you tried using LinkedIn as a CRM? What experiences have you had? Are you going to try it? Share your answers in the comments:

Have you ever discovered that you had a dead link on your website, or your inventory was inexplicitly out of date? Your stomach drops, questions buzz around your head: How long has this been down? Did anyone else notice?

Including inventory, the average dealership website is about 700–1,000 pages. At any time, one of those pages could go down and cost you and your organization money. It’s the equivalent to having the door locked to your showroom and not noticing for days. Your dealer site is a living, breathing entity, like a forest. It needs constant attention or it will start to break down, overgrow, crash and ultimately be the author of its own demise.  

So to maintain this web forest you must live deep within it, making sure each tree is healthy, touching each one, maybe giving out a hug from time to time. Before you know it, it’s been months or even years since you have been outside your forest and the outside world is a strange and foreign place. This leads to bubble-ism, where you forget that what you know and what the customer knows are very different things. 

One of the most important and often undervalued skills of an Internet Manager/Director/Park Ranger is the ability to step out of the automotive bubble and think like a customer. You must never forget that a customer entering your website forest for the first time doesn’t know their way around, doesn’t know where they are going, has a button they can press to eject instantly and are constantly afraid of being attacked by bears. So as the Park Ranger, you must not only ensure your forest is healthy, but that your pathways don’t lead customers into the bear’s den.

I often recommend to fellow Automotive Park Rangers to take some time out of the office to have friends and family outside the industry test their websites. Often, the results are a striking realization that you have overlooked something very simple yet crucial to the success of your e-commerce operation. Watching someone not being able to find your inventory in the first 30 seconds can be a frustrating experience.

Surprisingly, even though I am always advised this is a terrific idea, no one ever actually follows through. Success lies deep within executions, but we always seem to be too busy to execute anything. So instead of fighting human nature, I have found two alternatives for those who are “too busy” to get the ball rolling on User Experience Testing.

1. Peek

I can’t remember how I even stumbled onto this site, and until it delivered I was extremely skeptical that it would follow through. Three days later (as warned beforehand) the results came back to my surprise and excitement. Peek, is a service where they will provide a 5-minute website review from a random individual for FREE. Yes, free. Why is Peek free?

According to the website, “We believe the web would be a better place if websites were built with the input of the people using them. Out of this belief, the UserTesting research platform was born. Peek is free because we think the best way to spark your interest in this platform is to let you see the magic of usability testing in action.”

This is partially true; the real reason is once you get the first 5 minutes, you will be so enamored you will want more thorough and targeted testing. Not a bad idea, but the free version is a great place to start.  You can see the Peek results for DrivingSales.com here: (http://peek.usertesting.com/result/6371063851970?autoplay=true)

2. Usability Hub

You don’t always need to test the full functionality of your website; sometimes it’s an advertisement, a VDP form or a new special you are running. Usability Hub works as a crowdsource platform where users can either purchase credits (starting at $20 for 100 responses) or earn them by participating in tests themselves. The community plan (free based on participation) can also be accomplished with a team. You can get your entire department to participate in tests, which you can turn around to test your own content.

Usability Hub provides you three separate tools that you can use to test your marketing material on other testers. You can test one at a time, or with hundreds of testers at once, depending on how many credits you have. 

1. Five-Second Test – Just as it sounds. A user is presented with a screenshot for 5 seconds, and then is asked to record what they remember based on the question you ask, e.g, "What brand do you think this dealership sells?" or "What was the dealership name?" This test can be used on a newspaper advertisement (yes I know, some people still do), email marketing campaign, or a landing page. It allows you to see what people recognize and resonate with in the first crucial 5 seconds of seeing your material. 
2. Click Test – Shows your material to the tester and records where they click based on your instruction. “Where would you click to find new vehicle inventory?” or “Schedule an oil and filter appointment.” The end results provide you with a click map showing where the users end up, and equally as important, how long it took them to get there. If you are working with a new VDP page, landing page, or call-to-action form this type of user experience testing is invaluable.
3. Nav Flow Test – The most robust challenge to your pride, testers will attempt to navigate through your site to reach an end goal, which you determine. The results show you where the testers succeed and failed. These results can highlight potential problems or catastrophes before you launch your product to the web world.

These are great free resources to take advantage of to start down the path of User Experience Testing, something that you may not think is valuable until the testing outlines a major flaw before it does any damage. 

Once you get into the flow of taking tests yourself, you can earn 1 credit per minute. Before you know it you will have enough “karma” credits to test your own product. Remember, the quality of your participation will equal what you get in return.

These are just two ways that you can improve the sustainability of your forest and become a better park ranger. Remember, kids, only you can prevent forest fires.

Have you tried testing your dealer websites? What experiences have you had? Are you going to try it? Share your answers in the comments:

This week, Twitter confirmed the long-standing rumors of a “face-lift” and launched its new Profile Page design. Currently the switch is "opt-in only" for existing users, yet all newly created accounts are automatically defaulted to the new look. 

The look itself isn't drastic. In fact, it's very familiar in that it "borrows" many elements from its social competitors (e.g. Facebook, Pinterest, G+, etc.) 

The news evoked a collective groan from marketing professionals (myself included, initially), as seemingly each week another social media channel is changing its" look." The amount of time required to update the profiles of all your social channels is a full-time job in itself these days.

Twitter's new look is more than a fresh coat of paint; there are several functional elements that you can use as a marketer to your advantage. Furthermore, the switch can be the signal for a fresh start to your social approach. I bet dollars to doughnuts there are at least a few things on your social to-do list that just need an excuse to get started. 

Here are my 7 reasons to adopt the new Twitter Profile right now. In the comments, share which you feel are most important and let me know if I left anything out:

1) Embedded Tweets

Easily the most important upgrade, you now have the ability to "pin" any tweet to the top of your profile feed. Simply click on the 3 dots ". . ." within any tweet and choose "Pin to your profile page."

This "pinned" tweet is eventually pushed down with new content you add, however if you are diligent you can use this new upgrade to feature a positive customer testimonial or the BIG SALE you are having on Saturday. 

2) Big Banner

Your profile page is viewed more frequently than you think and often will be the deciding factor on a new follower conversion. If your page is badly designed or out of date, your conversion ratio will decline. 

The "Big Banner," which is very similar to the latest G+ and Facebook design, gives you more real estate to advertise your brand effectively in that crucial two seconds you have to convince a user to move deeper into your funnel. Furthermore, the larger size (1500 x 500px vs. 520 x 260 px) allows more freedom than the previous to show off what makes your brand unique. Here is a quick tip: don't post an image of the latest new car model – everyone does that.

3) Accountability

Another concept "borrowed" from Facebook: the new profile prominently displays both your Twitter "start date" and Twitter statistics (e.g. Tweets, Photos/Videos, Following, Followers, and the new "Favorites”). What this does is paint those who just jumped on the social bandwagon with glow-in-the-dark, DayGlo orange paint. Instantly, those who are long-standing members of the community will be rewarded for their tenure. Those who just started last week won’t be able to hide.

The accountability component will also change how marketers will use their Twitter accounts. Suddenly your Followers/Following ratio is hanging on your front door rather than in a back room. Ideally your goal is to have more Followers than Following, and if you are too far in the red it will look foul on your brand. You want to be a leader, not another follower.

4) No Backgrounds

The "official" reason why Twitter removed the backgrounds is unknown, but it is very easy to come to the conclusion that nobody else was doing it. White backgrounds are the norm, and allow for pictures and videos to be highlighted. What better way to highlight your struggling Vine video service than to remove all the clutter around it? j/k :P

There is also now a sense of uniformity. If you can remember MySpace, you may recall that giving users too much leeway on the design side can be disastrous. 

5) Algorithmically-Resized Tweets Based on Interaction

Simply put, tweets with more interaction will appear larger than those without. Not just in the physical size of the "tweet box" but the font as well. This is a fantastic upgrade to Twitter's platform that will automatically weed out the low-quality content. This also raises the accountability bar on marketers: if your content is bad, you will further fade into the distance.

6) Who You Follow Appears on Your Timeline

Another reason to stay sharp with your Followers/Following process. As you add new people to your Following list, their profiles will appear in your timeline. Following the wrong person could (in a worst-case scenario) become a PR disaster. 

On the flip side, the more customers that follow you, the more you will be displayed in their profiles. 

7) Gallery View for Photos/Videos and Following

Another "borrowed" feature from Pinterest is the new gallery-style view of both your Photos/Videos and your Following list. From an automotive perspective, this opens a wealth of opportunities to feature delivery photos of your customers, or maybe a resurgence into displaying inventory. I would love to see someone try using Twitter as an inventory feed, and direct customers to their Photo/Video gallery page. 

On the Following side, again you have to be more careful than ever. Your Following gallery is automatically organized by last person followed, so if you add a few nefarious accounts without thinking it through, it will be prominently displayed at the top of your list. 

The saying, "If you're not riding the wave of change...you'll find yourself beneath it," is more true with every passing minute, so get yourself started NOW. Log in to Twitter and head to Settings > Profile, and a dropdown should give you the option to switch and walk you through the process.

Which of these 7 reasons do you feel are most important? Have I left anything out? Share your views in the comments:

The latest installment of Google Analytics Academy: Google Analytics Platform Principals launched last week, and is open until March 27th, 2014. The first installment (and suggested pre-requisite), Digital Analytics Fundamentals, finished at the end of 2013, but the self-study module is available here: https://analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com/course01.

Google is offering these complimentary certification courses as a grassroots means of getting more people to use their Analytics product. The more users, the more data for Google, which they then use to sell advertising back to us. 

Having completed the Fundamentals course in December, I felt compelled to continue the process, if not only to receive the fancy Google certificate. More importantly, I wanted to report back on my experience to assist those who are interested but undecided whether it is worth the time to complete.

With that said, I consider myself an above-average Google Analytics user; not a novice but in no means an expert. I went into the second course with an open mind, as the initial course was too basic to wet my whistle.

Overall I recommend anyone involved with e-commerce and Internet sales or anyone looking to advance their knowledge base to take the time this month to complete the second course for the following reasons:

1. Certificate of Completion: I must admit, this alone is worth the 2—3 (Google suggests 4—6) hours it takes to complete the course. Whether you are in the job market, looking to impress your boss, or like me, simply enjoy collecting achievements, Google provides a completion certificate when you score over 80 percent on the final assessment. Providing you finish the course before March 27, Google will award you an online certificate, which you can print or attach to your LinkedIn profile.
    
2. You will learn something: Even though I would consider this course a 3 out of 10 on the difficulty scale, I did walk away with new knowledge. The composition of the course focuses on basic principles, but with sprinklings of intense code examples. It does feel a bit like they jumped from first grade, to eighth, and back to second. For example, the course has a large focus on how Google gets the information from your source (i.e. website) to Analytics (basic), but also looks at examples of how to identify parameters in code and how to input data manually. 
    
3. There is plenty of extended learning: All of the units contain links to “Explore Related Topics,” “Read More on This Topic,” and most importantly, “Take Action in Your Account.” The additional learning is beneficial to both those looking to dive deep into the lessons and those who need additional experience in order to pass the final assessment. The “Take Action in Your Account” option is most important, as executing what you learn is the hardest challenge of all, “Strategy gets you on the playing field, but execution pays the bills.”—Gordon Eubanks
    
4. As Google describes: “When you know how Google Analytics works, you’ll be able to make informed decisions about how to collect the data you need and understanding the platform will help you better interpret and analyze your data since you will know where the data came from and why it looks the way it does in your reports.”
    
5. The Learning Community is pretty good: If there was ever a reason to finally sign on to Google+ this is it. The community is comprised of a private forum (with very strict rules, unlike Google’s video counterpart), live Google+ Hangout events with Google Engineers, a variety of video resources, and general G+ community. Not only can you get help with the course itself, but you can also find like-minded Google aficionados to add to your digital friends repertoire. 
    
6. There will be more: Google plans to release several more Analytics courses, and they are not skimping on anything.  The Analytics Academy is comparable to any online course system I have been a part of. Jumping on board when the ship is close to shore is a lot better than trying to catch up when it’s fully at sea.

Overall, there are many benefits to participating in the Google Analytics Academy whether you are looking to learn the basics, expand your knowledge or simply to add another notch in your resume.

As for the ROI on your time, the few hours spent away from putting out fires at the dealership is definitely worth it.  Even if it’s to accomplish something in a world where we are currently chasing a never-ending target. 

Head on over to check it out: https://analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com/

If you already have, what are your thoughts on the Analytics Academy?  What did you get out of it?

Let me know in the comments:

IKEA has announced a new limited edition PS (Post Scriptum) 2014 line designed for the new urban hipster. This new line was derived from an IKEA-commissioned market study that identified 1 in 5 of urban dwellers now live in a space smaller than 323 square feet. The collection is also designed around the "on the move" principal, which allows for all each piece of the 51-strong collection to be easily transported.

"We were thinking about the needs of the young urban generations that often forgo space to follow their dreams in the big cities," said Gemma Arranz, interior design manager for Ikea UK and Ireland.[i]

Why this is important for us is that the collection is designed to be transported by foot, bike or public transit and not by vehicle.

This concept speaks to the millennial data we have been listening to for years but never paid much attention to. After all, worrying about the next generation of buyers is a distraction from hitting this month’s sales target, right?

As a millennial myself (very top-end) I can confirm that we are on the move, but in line with IKEA's new collection, we are too broke to move out of our rented basement apartments. In fact, looking around my close circle of friends, I can count on one hand how many of us own our own vehicle. None of them were purchased new, and almost all are over 6 years old. What is more alarming is that less than 60 percent of my fellow urbanites have a driver’s license, let alone their own set of wheels.

Now, to be fair I do live in downtown Toronto, where even our flawed public transit system can handle the majority of day-to-day transportation. However, it doesn't change the fact that is just over the horizon: millennials will be a challenge sooner than later.

IKEA is heading down the millennial road right now, other major brands and industries are soon to follow. What are we doing as an industry to compete? Just look at the commercial they released to promote this new line. Notice anything missing?