There has been plenty of controversy about cars.com and other vendors taking dealers inventory and feeding them to some really nasty anti-dealer sites such as cargurus.com. I believe that Jim Ziegler has done a great job standing up for the automotive retail community by fighting for what is right. I am seeing dealers cancel cars.com left and right while others just stay neutral about it and ignore the drama.

The question is “should you cancel cars.com?”

I have a very open minded thinking pattern about this topic. While I personally do not like what they were doing with sending customers other dealer’s inventory for less price and the fact that they have been pushing inventory without authorization to other third party sites I have to question dealers how they are monitoring these sources. Gone are the days where you can just “set it and forget it” with the service that third party vendors are providing. This needs to be proactively managed on a daily basis. Internet Managers must have a process for tracking their email leads, phone calls, conversations with customers for individual sources.

Every morning, you should be getting emails from cars.com with a call tracking report of the previous day’s phone traffic. How do you use it? Check the CRM and make sure the calls were logged. Listen to the calls. Make sure your people are doing their jobs so you can monitor your ROI. Do the same for email leads. Also, look at how much traffic these third parties drive to your site as well as how long these visitors stick with your site. This is in essence like “Mad Science” but this will tell you if you need to fire your third party vendors. It maybe a painstaking task that you spend 1 hour a day on but it is important to scientifically know how it working with you.

My strategy is simple, “if your pricing your inventory right and your getting good hits then your lead management process should work hand in hand with that to get more of these leads in the door”. However, if the dealer is not being competitive in the market place then this strategy will hurt them.

I have watched some of these leads come in recently where the consumer mentions they were on cargurus.com but they still come in. I am in no way saying cargurus.com is a good thing as I personally have a had a run in with an internet lead from them that they claimed the car was priced unfairly but yet we still sold the car to that same lead because we built value and worked it. If I am a dealer and I will allow them to exist I will aggressively work to make sure I am competitive and gaining market share.

If you are not getting the traffic you need and getting beat by the competition on these sites then it is time to fire these inventory listing companies because they are not doing anything to help you. I believe that cars.com is not going to go away because of how they positioned themselves in the market. I have found that most dealers believe that they need them and that will always keep them afloat. So my suggestion is that cars.com and these other companies position themselves as being equally friendly to their dealers and their consumers. “Stop biting the hand that feeds you!” Meanwhile, dealers need to properly manage their vendors and hold them accountable. At the end of the day most vendors are true partners if the relationship is being managed properly.

The other day I was in a dealership speaking with an owner.  He said to me "I have 315,000 VDPs" to which I responded "wow, that it is great".  He then said to me "however, VDPs do not cash checks, sales do".  I was so happy to hear that because here is someone that really gets it.  I am not saying that focusing on VDPs is not important.  In fact it is one of the most important things to look that.  I believe that internet managers need to focus on that very heavily to ensure that there are plenty of VDPs in order to convert them into real leads.  

The biggest concern is how should the leads be handled properly?  Is there a proper phone, email, and CRM process?  Are your people trained to sell the sizzle on the phone and build urgency in making that appointment?  Are you creatively working on your marketing (BDC) department to ensure that the leads are being handled with a proper response time?  This is the real concern that dealers have.  While all of the analytics and reports are important in measuring lead generation the need is still there to confirm how many leads came in, how many leads were connected with, how many connections became app

ointments, how many appointments came in, and how many sold.  At the end of the day it is the sale that cuts checks and pays the bills.  My advise is to prioritize what is important and place the main focus on what generates the revenue.  Everything else is just a statistic that can be tweaked on the backend.

As a matter of fact, when being concerned about the Vehicle Detail Page (VDP), automotive marketers need to ensure that not only is the information properly displayed and the images are properly displayed but also to make sure that the proper call to actions are simply to find (email lead submission, chat pop up, toll free number in large font).  This will assist in improving lead generation.

Again, "VDPs do not pay the bills, sales does".

Who is Jason Becker you might ask?  Before I tell you I want to let you know that the reason for this post is because I am tired of hearing people tell me that they cannot do something or that things are impossible.  I hear it from sales professionals at dealerships.  I hear it from people that I meet in social environments that tell me they are looking for a job after I mention the possibility of car sales.  I even hear it from people in my family who sometimes make excuses instead of working to find a solution.  Enough already!

As some of you may know I have a huge hobby involving music and guitars.  In fact you might have seen my videos on YouTube.  Recently, I changed my company (Dealer eTraining) logo to involve a guitar with a the proper theme involving automotive dealerships.  Yes, I am that infatuated with music.

Since I am heavily into music and playing guitar I am a huge fan of some of the greatest guitar players to ever live (Hendrix, Clapton, Eddie Van Halen, Vai, Satriani, etc...).  As a student of guitar and a person that likes to be inspired I discovered Jason Becker a little bit later (3 years ago) because it is unfortunate that he no longer plays guitar.  I discovered Jason Becker by hearing other musicians perform his music in tribute, listening to a David Lee Roth album, and seeing videos on YouTube.  I learned that Jason has suffered from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis after being diagnosed at age 20.  The man was a child prodigy and can play anything.  I mean a real wizard.  He found fame as a young up and coming guitar player at 16 and around 20 was recording an album as the guitar player for the David Lee Roth band. He had to cancel plans to tour because of his disease and within a few short years would love feeling in his whole body.

Please watch this video (http://youtu.be/tYIZP1hrfZI)

He eventually would become paralyzed completely and could not talk.  However, his mind worked and with the use of creating computerized devices he was able to compose brilliant masterpiece compositions that he would utilize other musicians to record in order for him to release an album.  His parents created a way to read his eye signals to spell out the words that he needs to communicate.  This is how he functions yet still creates his own success without having a second thought to complain about anything.

Why am I writing about this?  I believe that you can do anything that you want if you put your mind to it.  Stop crying about how bad it is.  If you are alive and well, healthy and in control of the situation then step up your game and maximize your opportunity.  If a man who cannot function one bit can do it then I am sure that a fully capable human can do it.  My advise is to study your profession and become great at it.  The automotive industry is a lucrative profession and can be a positive experience.  I know that it taught me a lot about life and being able to go out and get what I want.

The video you just watched is a news clip.  For more inspiration regarding Jason I suggest that everyone watch the movie "Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet" (http://www.jasonbeckermovie.com). Grab a box of tissues and prepare to get inspired.  The bottom line is that you can do anything that you set your mind on and this is living proof.  If Jason is not dead yet then you should not be either.

It is no surprise that automotive dealers are being bombarded with vendors creating new products (solutions) all of the time.  In some ways automotive retailers are feeling like they are being hurt and their profits are being taken over.  I was at an Acura dealership the other day when the owner mentioned that cars.com sent a 30 day noticed explaining a price increase.  He was complaining about it and his words were "there is no reason to be a dealer anymore when all you have to do is start a software company".  Does this sound familiar?

The reality is that no one can stop an entrepreneur from taking a dream and turning it into reality.  The other reality is that even in the competitive market there needs to be a solution to fit different needs of automotive dealers.  I think that some vendors need to consider looking at creating quality inexpensive solutions for independent dealerships with low budgets as well.  It seems as all of these technology customers are chasing the same business and competition has become fierce.  While I believe that competition is a beautiful thing I often wonder what dealers reactions are when they get solicited more then five times in a single day.

The bottom line is that companies will be popping up and offering solutions.  There will be companies that dominate and others that fail.  There will also be mergers and acquisitions in the industry where companies will grow drastically.  However, the automotive retailing business does not need to lose profits.  The fact is that dealers need to set a budget and work that budget.  Some vendors will make price increases and if the price increase does not justify the ROI then there are solutions to cut tie and move to their competitor.  This happens with website and CRM companies sometimes.  My point is that dealers need to find ways to make the technology work so that they can maximize opportunity and create a better experience for the customer.  Also, stop looking for the silver bullet or the shiny object because in reality the shiny object is all in the performance of management and your people.

I welcome thoughts and comments.  Thank you.

As I watch new episodes of "Bar Rescue" on Spike I am amazed at some of the things that I have learned about the food and beverage industry.  I have been watching this show with a very open mind to understand what I can do to improve my business practices.  What I have found was that this show has business practices that even automotive professionals and managers need to consider taking a look at.  Let's take a look at what I am talking about.

1. "Drinks should always be 1 oz of liquor to 3 oz of mix.  The perfect oz is a 90 degree angle for 3.5 seconds."  This is one of the quotes that Jon has been using.  He talks about this in order to teach bar owners how to save money to increase ROI.  I find that when looking at the automotive sales process dealers have similar issues with untrained or unexperienced sales consultants letting the customer leave without giving management an opportunity to do a proper TO.  In fact I remember being a new sales person and this happened to me.  My manager had said to me, "congratulations, you just cost the dealership $600" with a hint that every missed opportunity costs the dealership $600.  Just like in the scenario of saving money and maximizing opportunities for a bar the proper process and training in the showroom will save the business money invested.

2. "When customers order drinks like vodka and cranberry, always suggest premium liquor with that.  About 25% of the time you will sell a more expensive brand and that's 25% more cash in your pocket".  This quote can apply to many parts of the sales process including selling add-on accessories, working with a trade in, or even selling products in the finance department.  As a sales professional it is simple to improve profits, get a customer more excited, and provide more value to them by just simply offering to take a look at some more options.  The service department does this be offering to take care of something on the current vehicle sooner then later.  This is a method of up selling.

3. "Redesigning the menu can immediately increase your profit.  Proven techniques by like boxing and shadowing your dishes can increase sales by 10% overnight and it encourages people to go for more expensive items which is the name of the game."  We have all been taught to offer our customers choices and that is a huge part of why finance managers design a menu to sell from.  While selling the most expensive package on the menu will improve the gross profit of a deal it will also offer the customer more added value.  The same added value that will keep them coming back to your dealership for service, future vehicles, and even offer you referrals.  This is the art of letting the customer up sell themselves.

4. In some episodes of the show, Jon Taffer says that "statistically guests will stay 52 minutes longer when they have a mean" when he stresses the importance of offering a food menu.  As a bar consultant and expert he teaches bar owners how to make profits using these technique to up sell guests.  The automotive business is constantly growing by up selling.  When it comes to sales think about that customer that purchased a vehicle to own for a long period of time but did not buy an extended warranty. Also, when offering to take a look at accessories and showing customers the nice things they can do to make their vehicle look and drive nicer we are up selling.  In service, advisors are always up selling when technicians notice that something will have to be replaced soon by offering the guest to get it done now instead of waiting.  Obviously, the business office is in charge of signing up guests and also offering them more value while up selling them in order to improve the gross profit of the deal.  What about vendors selling to dealers?  A dealer signs up with a vendor for a product and starts to use it successfully but to keep up with competition the company creates a new package to present to the dealership.  This is also an up sell.  

Alright, so 3/4 of the Jon Taffer quotes that I related to that automotive industry involve up selling and improving profits while the first statement involve process management.  The bottom line is that every industry practices up selling and there is nothing wrong with it.  A business will grow and maintain success through proper process, marketing, and sales techniques no matter what industry it serves. 

I would like to welcome comments and opinions to this discussion.

It is Monday evening and you are back from the 2013 NADA convention.  You have travelled across the country to attend workshops and meet with vendors to review the latest and greatest products in an effort to improve your own business.  At this point, you are happy to be back because you feel like you lost a few important days of being productive and running the dealership.  Tomorrow you will be back at the dealership playing catch up and putting out fires.  This process will take you through the end of the week.

In all this time, have you reflected back on what you have learned?  At this point, have you retained any of the information that you sat through or did it go through one ear and out the other?  That's right the NADA Convention is now over, so now what are you going to do next?  Will you continue to go one more year facing the same challenges or are you going to make a difference?

As you read this and think, "what's with all the questions", think about the reality of what you deal with at your dealership every day.  You have at least seven departments to worry about with a number of employees to take care of.  Each department has their strong points while at the same time they have their flaws.  As a dealer or general manager you need to be organized and prepare to address everything while continuing to operate a profitable business to ensure that production does not stop.  You have managers under you who need to be capable of managing their people, processes, and internal issues.   These managers need to be made aware of what new ideas or products you want to bring to the table.  

This is where effective communication needs to take place amongst management every single day.  Do not be that dealer principle or GM that just keeps to them and demand to see results.  Today's successful dealerships need to have upper management involvement and ideas need to be expressed. It is important that everyone in the dealership operates with an open mind or at least gets trained to be open minded.  The industry continues to transform ways that business is done.  I look at companies like "IntellaCar" and I am amazed at how simple they made their tool in order to create a better, more efficient sales process for the modern sales professional.

Ok...you get the point but how do you get started?  How do you put into place what you learned and experienced in one solid action packed three day weekend?  In the 10 years that I have been working in the automotive industry I have come to learn that building success is no different than building a science project.  It involves the will to improve, a solid action plan, a systematic process, and an open mind.

Here are some simple steps to help automotive dealership executives get started on building their future success:

1. Examine the problem that you are looking to fix

2. Refer back to your notes and discussions from the NADA convention

3. Consider how the things that you learned will benefit your operation (your people, your market, your expenses, etc...)

4. Address this with your management team and get input

5. Create a process utilizing what you are currently doing and adding some new ideas that you feel can make a difference

6. Implement this plan in the dealership

7. Measure your results for 1 month

8. Modify your process as needed for more efficiency

9. Work your plan without deviating from it.

10. Enjoy your success and move on

If this sounds crazy or does not make sense to you then think about how your sales team operates every day.  The sales department follows a process driven road to the sales which have become systematic.  Your plan of improvement needs to be systematic in the same way.  

If you organize yourself and your priorities and put a focus on this for just 30 minutes per day for one whole 5 day work week that equates to 2.5 hours of solution building and laying out the foundation for success.  These 2.5 hours will show you instant ROI for your trip to the NADA convention.  Please do not get me wrong and think that this is easy.  If it was easy then everyone in the world would be aiming to be more successful and profitable. 

At this point, it is time to get started.  Start with addressing your problems and concerns.  Invest the time to review what you learned.  Get with your management team and start building your success.  Find what works for you and embrace it.

Welcome to Part 3 of a live dealership case study in which I am working on.  It has been two weeks since Part 2 was published.  I was away in Chicago consulting another client and also handling the Internet Sales 20 Group.  I came home to a major hurricane which slowed things down considerably.  But here is what we were able to accomplish.

CRM:

We have been working on pre-installation processes with eLead by installing email headers, templates, and other important parts of the CRM.  It has been a simple process as the CRM company is accommodating.  eLead will be spending the week at the dealership training and installing the CRM at the dealership which means we will be live in a few days.

Website:

Once again, the major challenge is that it is OEM mandated and certain things are not able to be done while others are being developed as we speak.  As much as I respect what OEMs are doing to make all dealers in the same brand unified I feel that they make it difficult for a dealership to create a unique image to stand out from the competition.

We are in the process of updating employee pictures.  This is a tough task because the owner wants all pictures to be the same exact size.  The challenge is getting the pictures to show up on the website in the same size.  I am still trying to figure out with the vendor what is going on and this is the one time where I feel they are not helping me as they should.

We drastically improved the way the specials pages look with come great content and even more specials.  We started to add video testimonials to the website which was a challenge also because the videos did not want to upload from my end.  In addition, we made proper changes for the new month and any news pertaining to changes.

Social Media:

I have begun to focus on Facebook this past week.  I have been posting engaging content and getting people responding it.  In terms of twitter, I know we have followers but for some reason I am looking for the login which no one can seem to find.  I might have to setup a new account but I will give it a week before I do it.

I have continued to blog and syndicate content.  The content has been getting some views which tell me that people are reading it.  We had an announcement from the OEM that there is a hurricane relief discount available to people in certain areas that lost their vehicles to flood and hurricane damage.  I was quick to post it and promote it on facebook before any competing dealer can think of doing the same, if they normally do it.

Videos/Pictures:

It was disappointing to me that when I left for a whole week and asked sales people to start getting their own videos and pictures that not a single person took an action.  They got all excited about the fact that they can brand themselves but they took no action at all.  I addressed that with management because the process takes all of one minute and I am even here to get the content up.  All they need is to have a form filled out, snap a picture or capture a 30 second video and have me handle the rest.  I hope that they fix the situation and get to it.  However, one person did get a picture for me that is now posted.

I added more content to the Flickr account.

Traditional Advertising:

I have not had to be involved with this.

Online Reputation Management:

I discovered a challenge that I have never had before.  In all of my years doing this I was always able to grow a dealership’s online reputation without problem.  I sat in and listened to reasons why the service department has a hard time getting reviews and I am noticing from the sales department why they are not doing.

The sales department is not pushing for it at all.  The service department explains that whenever they ask for a review to get posted that customers do not want to post it.  The understanding that I am getting is that a lot of the customers here are generally in aged in the mid 40s and range as high as 70+.  They do not want to leave an email address and they prefer to leave a survey in pen and paper.  This raises a challenge to me, a social and digital warrior that believes that everyone and everything should be online.  I am thinking that we need an iPad in service and sales with a 4G connection and we should work closely with the customer to get what we need by guiding them or assisting them.  It is obvious that post cards with links to review sites do not work well for the customers as they do not pay attention to them.

I have never been a fan of spiffing customers for reviews.  However, cars.com has a really neat format of how to generate reviews.  Cars.com offers to place customers into a contest where the customer has a potential of getting $100 for leaving a review.  There is an email template for it.  I am thinking of also creating a process strictly for cars.com to let customers know about the offer not just as delivery but also after delivery where they can be guided through.  I mean, “Who wouldn’t want a chance to get $100?”  It is also my goal to learn from cars.com if the review can somehow be syndicated just like the way DealerRater does it with google.

If anyone has suggestions of how to get reviews from customers that are more mature and not as computer savvy, I am open to some responses on here.

Dealership Process and Operations:

While walking around the dealership looking for things that needed improvement I noticed a binder with parts specials that looked sloppy.  I took it upon myself to let management know about this and created a new professional looking binder with better specials and more transparency.

I have been spending time watching how the sales department functions from how sales managers are managing their people to how they work deals.  I have to say that when it comes to working deals and selling cars they do a great job and they have decent grosses.  The managers get involved in deals and are aggressive to sell cars.  This dealership is generally number one in its district.  The other things that I have been observing are how the one internet coordinator functions throughout the day.  The GSM complains about the coordinator because he finds him playing on his cell phone a lot.  The fix to the problem was that I monitored CRM activities in the old CRM and read comments along with emails that were being sent to the customers.

I noticed something interesting and disturbing.  When an internet appointment comes in the internet coordinator sits with them and talks with them sometimes as long as 20-30 minutes.  When I approached management they agreed and said that it needs to be fixed.  I had the perfect fix for that.  At the Internet Sales 20 Group, Ralph Paglia introduced the “Showroom Appointment Reception Agenda”.  This form is a professional way for the coordinator to meet the customer that they communicated with.  What is amazing about this form is that it explains in a quick and transparent fashion what the customer will accomplish on this visit which is a 4-5 step process.  The coordinator turns over the customer to a sales consultant and moves on with their job.  This takes 1-2 minutes.  We are implementing this as of this week as the new CRM is installed.  There were major changes made to the document that Ralph provided which I will describe in the next section.

Call monitoring is not very strong in the dealership.  The dealership relies on cars.com and their website provider to have toll free numbers.  It is amazing that the newspaper always had a local number.  No one really ever listened to phone calls.  In fact, all sales calls are being handled by sales consultants and not the internet coordinator.  This is a whole other issue that I will be tackling soon if I get the chance to.  The way I monitor the calls is I stand in the showroom and listen to the sales consultants talk to phone ups.  I then log into to my limited tools and listen to the conversation.  My plans are to do the same with service and parts soon.  While taking many notes, I have discovered flaws in phone skills and will be planning on phone training sessions at this dealership after the CRM is installed. 

Ownership Challenges:

The only real challenges in the improvement and transformation of the dealership are dealing with ownership in this case.  The dealer principle is not hands on yet has very interesting opinions to how things should run.  As far as sales and service is concerned, she lets the managers do their thing and make money for the store.  But when a highly paid expert that has built numerous success stories is brought in a challenge is created.  Now, I am not saying that challenges are not fun.  This is a unique challenge where I am working with a personality that involves me trying to figure out how they think. 

Every best practice email installed needs to be edited because the writing does not work for them.  This stalled the processes of installing emails into the CRM by two weeks.  Take website content, wording of some serious best practices just never work and they need to be changed.  My challenge is that I need to change content and write it as if I was this other person.  Again, it is an interesting challenge.

The best practice implemented by Ralph Paglia was another example where 60% of the content was rewritten and another 20% was omitted just to satisfy their feelings.  Now I am not saying the document became a bad document but it had changed the TO process from internet coordinator to sales person in a way that I personally would have done differently.

I respect the challenge and although at some point it is frustrating it is what makes me better at my job and what ultimately brings more success to the dealership.

That is all for Part 3.  If anyone has questions, always feel free to contact me. 

http://dealeretraining.com/

https://www.facebook.com/dealeretraining

http://www.drivingsales.com/ratings/companies/dealer-etraining

As I write this article, I am in literally sitting at an Internet Sales 20 Group where my colleagues and I are sharing best practices with over 50 dealers.  It seems that auto dealers are concerned more about their online reputation now than ever before.  While it is great to see dealers place a focus on it there still needs to be a structure in place that will create a strong reputation for the dealership.  Once a structure is in place, managing an online reputation is actually a very simple process.

The big issue that dealers are having is that they are losing their Yelp review visibility.  They have been focusing so much on Yelp those they had a lot of reviews get posted and then taken down.  This is a similar problem to have been going on with Google.  Let me explain the problem.  We all know that our industry has been labeled in negative ways by consumers for many years now.  Well, just like the consumer put a label on us, the review sites have done something similar by being cautious with what gets put out there.  When dealers are getting a lot of reviews coming in within a short period of time, sites like Google and Yelp get weary of the situation and question the validity of the reviews.

Yelp has been archiving reviews and showing very few.  It has been really upsetting dealers and I have heard this numerous times in the last two days.  I am here to tell you that there is nothing to stress over.  There are many schools of thought of how to manage the dealership’s online reputation.  I believe that dealerships need to diversify their reputation.  What do I mean about “diversify”?  Just like when you’re building a financial portfolio to manage investments of stocks, equity, money markets, and your bank account.  You need to have a strategy for managing reviews.  While Yelp and Google are great; they are only a few key players.  Take a look at Edmunds.com, Yahoo local, Cars.com, AutoTrader, DealerRater (it still works), Edmunds.com, City Search, and Merchant Circle just for starters.

It sounds like a lot of sites to be on but hear me out.  Create a strategy where every week or two the dealership focuses on having reviews posted on a different site.  For example, week 1 reviews are to be put on Google, week 2 we focus on DealerRater, week 3 we focus on Yelp, week 4 is for Yelp, and so on.  Now that you diversified your reviews take it one step further, create numerous blogs using platforms like Posterous, Tumblr, WordPress, and Google’s BlogSpot.  Once they are created, you can tie them in with facebook and twitter.  Now you can copy over the reviews into the blog format and repost them.  These build a huge buzz online while spreading your content all over the internet and improving your search engine rankings.  Take it even one more step further be developing a strategy to get live video testimonials from customers who buy and services vehicles at the dealership.  That strategy is simple and will go a very long way.  These videos should also be syndicated on blogs after posting them on Youtube and other major video sharing sites.

Welcome to Part 2 of what is a major real live hands on case study.  Last week I wrote Part 1.  For those of you that missed it, click here to catch up on what you may have missed.

We ended last week with starting to get more social media plans installed.  We also started a picture and video policy.  However, The major thing was CRM and digital marketing this week. 

CRM:

I narrowed down three choices of CRM companies that integrate with the DMS that dealership is using.  It is not a common DMS like ADP, Reynolds, or Arkona even.  We learned that the DMS only works properly with only 3 CRM companies.  The CRM Companies are eLead, VinSolutions, and CAR-Research.  All three companies have something great to offer.  We made the decision to stop being the pilot for the DMS company that was using this dealership to develop their CRM.  They are light years away from where everyone else is in the marketplace.  I came to a conclusion that we have no accountability in the dealership and nothing can be measured.  I noticed that the sales desk does a great job and so do F&I.  Now with processes, accountability, and reporting I think that this store can sell and additional 10-20 units per month.

After numerous conversations and demos of CRM products we decided on eLead.  I have been a customer of eLead in the past and have great relationships.  I wanted VinSolutions because Vin had some cool features that no one else has.  However, the owner of the dealership liked the functions of eLead and felt that it was simpler for the showroom.  Their opinion was that Vin worked well for someone on a high level like me.  I liked CAR-Research too but we all agreed that for what we need eLead would be the right fit.  Also, eLead has agreed to do install in the beginning of November where no one else could accommodate the owner's quick need.

Next --->

Website:

So we signed a contract for the CRM and that is in the works.  The next aspect that is important is to really make the dealership website great.  The challenge is that it is OEM mandated and certain things are not able to be done while others are being developed as we speak.

We have begun the process of changing and updating employee pictures and bios.  The way that we get employee bios is that we have a questionnaire in their employee packet that they need to fill out when they start employment here.  I revised the questions to make better bios.  The owner liked how another dealership on the West Coast had their staff page so we started to research how we can get a similar page built.  If I can get the owner to agree in the near future, I would like to add videos next to the employee picture and bio of each employee.

We are reconfiguring buttons on the website to make it easier to navigate and have better call to actions.  We want to stand out from competitors and really be unique.

Other best practices that I started working on are basically because I love the way that Checkered Flag in Virginia Beach has their website providing major transparency with things like a "women's page" or a page explaining "taxes and fees".  This dealership is active in the community so we are working on making these efforts stand out as well.  I have been working on content because I do not want to be a copycat but I love the ideas and would love to use them since very few (literally) dealers on this planet are that much outside the box.

I noticed that the dealership had no specials for pre-owned and service.  I got with the used car manager and we had 8 vehicles that are aged units that he wants to just sell and move on.  I created specials with comments.  The page got filled up nicely and now the site has more great content.  After that I got with service manager and went over some promotions that he gave me.  The site now has 7 service specials.  That's right I said "SEVEN".  Dealerships miss out on opportunities by not updating service specials or keeping 1 generic special.

Social Media:

I have not begun to focus on Facebook, twitter, and G+ but will add my focus when I get back from Internet Sales 20 Group next week.  However, I have created a blogging strategy that I love.  It includes content syndication and it spreads the content virally.  For those of you that would like to know how I do that, just take a look at how I have been marketing my own business (Dealer eTraining).  I believe that content needs to be visible and easy to find.  I have employed the same strategy to brand my own name and get known by industry people at conferences in the last 4 years.  The strategy is to connect multiple social networks and blogs together using one platform.  For blogs, I use posterous, blogspot, wordpress, and tumblr.  I will have the dealership outsourced graphic designer work on designing these blogs so they look amazing.  We have been adding content that includes videos, pictures, spy photos, community events, celebrity information, interesting news, dealership information, and just anything that will catch people's eyes and create engagement.  It has only been 1 week so I cannot report changes yet.  However, over time we should see a big increase.  Every blog is optimized with proper keywords, backlinks, and content.

I got the dealership signed up with Pinterest and read a lot on it.  I saw what Jim Ziegler has been teaching and saw how major Pinterest players operated to drive traffic.  I implemented the strategy and it took me all of 2 hours.  The Pinterest profile now has over 50 images and some were re-pinned while others were originally and strategically posted to drive traffic to the dealership website.  As time progresses we will continue to optimize the profile even further.

Videos/Pictures:

I got started on a basic cost effective VSEO strategy.  Last week we implemented a strategy to have sales people fill out a form.  We revised the form to have 8 questions with a waiver.  We have started gaining traction and filmed a few happy customers.  The testimonials got uploaded to not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 of the most power video search engines out there.  We took these testimonials and created blog content on our syndicated channels as well.  We used sites like youtube, vimeo, daily motion, and metacafe.

I did some research the other day to see which photo sharing sites are best for seo and everything else and as always Flickr was the choice.  I started a Flickr account and had 40 pictures optimized for starters.  I also connected Flickr with Pinterest as they work well together.  I discovered this by researching it and reading about it.  We take pictures of guests at delivery time.

Traditional Advertising:

The dealership advertises in the local newspaper on weekends.  Last week when I was given the advertisement I saw a few major things missing.  The dealership advertised their local number and there was no call tracking to see how many calls we get off the advertisement.  Well I noticed that our current call monitoring solution has 2 extra phone numbers not being used so I placed one of the numbers to start tracking those calls.  I also saw no QR codes (no surprise).  A lot of dealerships still do not know much about it.  I looked over the ads for all competing dealerships in the area and no one else had QR codes.  I created a QR code for new car inventory on the dealer website as well as a separate one for used inventory and placed them on the add next to new and pre-owned.

Local Brochure:

The owner of the dealership was getting her nails done and saw a plain brochure at the salon.  She brought it to my attention and would like something similar but created.  I started working on ideas on how to digital enhance it with QR codes, social media, and an online reputation, all in a fold-able brochure.

Dealership Process and Operations:

Last night I was handed a book from the OEM that goes to the owner of the dealership.  It talks about performance of sales, internet lead management, and service.  It has national averages, store averages, and goals of what needs to be accomplished.  I even got to read the customer comments to gather an idea of what practices that I need to fix and train on in the store so that we can improve the customer experience in the store while creating better communication.  In the next few weeks I will be training various departments on CRM, communication, and best customer practices.

So far...that is all we have for the first 2 weeks.  I feel like we have already come a very long way.  It is exciting for me because I get back to my roots of not only digital marketing and managing Internet operations but I get to focus on store processes.  I really love what I do and I am passionate about it.  If anyone has questions, always feel free to contact me. 

http://dealeretraining.com/

https://www.facebook.com/dealeretraining

http://www.drivingsales.com/ratings/companies/dealer-etraining

Welcome to Part 1 of what will be a major real live hands on case study.  Less than 2 weeks ago, I was contacted by a dealer principal of a dealership within an hour from my home.  The owner is a female and a real entrepreneur that is a partner in two other dealerships and also owns a wireless retail business with multiple locations.  The store is a family environment and has been in business for over 30 years under her control.

She was looking for someone to come in and really help the dealership with all of the marketing efforts.  This includes communications, vendor relationship, and advertising budget and oversees the internet sales operations of the store.  This was because she wanted to get a better grasp on things and make improvements.  The person in this role would also be in charge of events for the store as well as local events.

As we make progress in the dealership, I think it would be great to document and write out the changes on a weekly basis.  Consider it like a new chapter of a book to entertain yourself and learn how you can make positive changes in a dealership that bring improvements on many levels including profitability, accountability, a better brand for the OEM, and a better image for the dealership as a whole.  This will include helping to create more proactive employees.

We will not be disclosing names of employees, or the dealership for various reasons.  I want to keep it exciting and new.  When the time is right all will be revealed.

So let's get started...

It has been five days since I got involved with working with the dealership.  Here is what I gathered so far.

The sales department:

1 General Sales Manager (3 Years longevity))

1 Sales Manager (9 years longevity)

1 Finance Manager (few years longevity)

8 Sales Consultants (1-5 years longevity)

1 Internet Coordinator (was 2 but 1 quit during the week) - Here for over 1 year,

The dealership sells around 100 units per month with 60-65 being new and 30-40 being used at around a $2,000 average per car.

Website: Dealer.com (OEM Mandated)
Digital Marketing: OEM Mandated
Social Media Presence: Facebook and Twitter with limited engagement
CRM: A test pilot CRM for this dealership.  The CRM is a new product that comes as an add on to the DMS.  The DMS is not a well known common company.  The DMS works great but the CRM gives nothing but trouble.  It is missing more than 50% of the features that it needs to be fully functional.  In addition, it is server based.

Process: No set process.  No tracking of phone calls, internet leads, appointments, set, show.
Sales Process: Sales works well as the GSM does a great job putting deals

The Service Department

1 Service Manager (over 13 years here)

3 Service Advisors

1 Parts Manager

2 Parts Counter Reps

The first order of business:

1) Fix and properly optimize Website

2) Fix and properly optimize CRM

3) Get involved in all marketing and advertising initiatives (meet the vendors)

4) Create plan to measure advertising activity

5) Get sales department on board with reputation management and video testimonial strategy

What have we accomplished in the first 5 days?

Website: We did a full scope of the website and communicated with the Dealer.com rep.  We started to make plans to make certain changes and additions based on some best practices that we found from other dealers on a national level.  Right now we are creating content to be approved by the owner of the dealership before we push it to get setup and go live.

CRM: We discovered that the CRM has been holding the dealership back for over 1 year now.  Everyone in the store complains about it and for the first time we see why.  We had internet leads not coming through.  We had server crashes.  The tool does not allow for certain functions to happen.  I was able to convince the owner to look at options.  We started evaluating other options and will soon come an agreement.  Meanwhile, a major conference call with the current CRM Company included the development team and key executives.  This call allowed me to tell them everything that I need; I used examples from VinSolutions, iMagic, eLead, HigherGear, WebControl AVV, and a few others.  I was told that they will build it for me and within months I will see changes while other changes will take place within a days.

Advertising: Had numerous conference calls with OEM, local newspaper representative, cars.com, Digital "Behavioral" Marketing services reps, and CRM to review and learn analytic reports.

Management: Work closely with General Sales Manager to help take his mind off of a lot of advertising issues.  Create a plan to work together and help each other in building the success of the dealership further.  The GSM is fully on board with everything and is also a key decision maker in the store.

Owner: Very open minded and over worked.  She is involved in tell me what she wants to accomplish.  When trying to setup proven email templates and process she got involved and made opinions of her own where some of the templates she was not fond of and others we made changes together as a team.  As the relationship grows she will relinquish more power when she feels comfortable.  Based on our conversations and my actions with vendors she is starting to understand that I am the real deal and I know what I am doing.

Internet Department: Once the CRM situation stabilizes we will be able to get processes in place and know what we are dealing with in terms of lead count, tracking, and performance.  We will then try to build up the department accordingly.  The current Internet Coordinator explains his views and hope for better changes,

Sales People: They are excited to see a marketing initiative come into place that will help them market themselves at a level they never thought possible.  It is an easy going environment and when it is slow no one is being proactive.  As we implement digital strategies and train them on effective prospecting techniques we should see them become better modern sales professionals.  Eventually we will train them to use their digital tools in order to be better.

Social Media: We are creating video channels on various networks (YouTube, daily motion, metacafe, video).  We are also starting to gather images and create a flick account.  The twitter and facebook page is being managed by our graphic designer.  We met and will be creating neat logos and advertising campaigns.  We will soon take over managing the facebook and twitter while planning on creating syndicated blogs in the next few days.

Reputation Management: Created Quality Control Survey that every customer in Sales needs to read and fill out.  The Survey has 7 questions that includes rating dealership experience, commenting on it, recommending the sales professional, and learning what they liked the most about their experience.  In addition, we ask for permission to take a photograph of them with their new car to be emailed to them and used in social media.  We also ask for permission to take a video testimonial.  It comes with a disclaimer notice which the customer will sign.  Afterwards, we will either take a picture and video or we will not based on the customer's permission.  I had explained to the sales consultants how some of the most successful sales people in the business do it and they were very much excited.

So far...that is all we have for the first week.  Stay tuned as we make forward strides in the dealership.