This is a real question you have to ask yourself if you want to survive the automotive industry. Are you willing to do what it takes to be successful each and every day to not just work a job, but to build a career? There are many people who started in the automotive industry as a crutch until they found a “better” job. Only a small percentage, however, end up succeeding. National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) studies show that there is as much as a 70 percent turnover rate in sales. That being said, if you apply yourself, a career in car sales can be more lucrative than any other profession – even doctors and lawyers – if you make an effort. Yes, the hours are long and you will be asking yourself whether this occupation is the right one for you. If you stick to your guns and learn, you will see that you are able to make more money in this industry than you ever could with that degree – and not have the student loan debt that comes with it.

Here are ten lessons from my life in the automotive industry that I want to share. I hope these lessons motivate and inspire you to be the best you can be each and every day and you end up with a successful career:

Rule #1

Tough bosses will be hard on you, but never let them break you. I have had some tough a#$hole bosses in my automotive retailing life, but I made a conscious decision to learn something from each of them. Even if it was exactly how not to treat someone. Recognize that you need the same focus on your long game. Sometimes managers aren’t leaders. At the start of your career, it is highly probable that someone simply tells you to “Go get an up!” but offers no training outside of, perhaps, manufacturer-mandated product certifications. Is this fair? No! But not all dealerships are like this and, just as you would select a company outside the auto industry to hang your hat on, the retail automotive industry is no different. Many dealerships simply want warm bodies since they don’t really expect anyone to last long. If you want to be successful and make a great living selling cars, it is important to know not only what your support system is but also what training will be provided by the dealership.

Rule #2

Stop listening to people and be proud of what you do every single day. Selling cars doesn’t seem like a great career choice on the outside, but when you look inside the box you will learn an incredibly diverse set of skills. Through time you can develop amazing people insights that just can’t be learned anyplace else. Some of the overall best salespeople I have ever met all started by selling cars. Don’t buy into the stereotype of “car salesperson.” The fact is that most dealerships and salespeople are ethical and honest. Yes, dealerships need to make a profit just like any other business but most aren’t trying to gouge their customers. In fact, customers are worth more after the sale than they are at the sale. Treat them right and they will keep coming back. There are many examples of customers who love their salesperson, had a great experience and have become brand advocates. I can attest that I have had amazing customers. One that I always fondly remember is Mrs McCook who single handedly was responsible for helping me sell cars to 17 other people through her trust and evangelist effort. Don’t let the perception that many people have jade you into believing that selling cars is a dishonorable profession.

Rule #3

Never stop learning. The second you stop listening and learning, you start dying. If that’s the path you choose, Home Depot is hiring for a cashier. The foundation of success in any industry is evolution. You have to commit to the profession and seek to better yourself. You cannot rely on others giving you those training opportunities. If they do, that’s awesome. But to truly be a success, constantly striving to better yourself is key. You need to take the attitude of Cortez the famous explorer and “Burn your boats” giving you only one path to success.

Rule #4

If you don’t learn from your mistakes, you WILL get fired. And nobody will blink an eye. Being great at sales requires fast adaptation to your environment. Just because it worked the last time doesn’t mean it will work that way in the future. Creating an adaptive framework for how you interact with people will enable you to read people better, communicate more effectively and create a better experience for the shopper while, at the same time, being favored in the eyes of your managers.

Rule #5

Selling is about listening first. If you are doing all of the talking with a shopper, how are you listening and how on earth are you selling? To get this down right, you have to find out what they need! Why do they want third row seats? Why is gas mileage important to them? Is safety a concern for them? What is their current payment? Did they feel that they got a good deal when they bought it? Seriously, ask questions and let them talk the entire time. If you follow this rule, the customer will sell themselves on the vehicle and all you will have to do is talk to them about how it will fit into their budget.

Rule #6

If you are waiting for opportunities to come your way (Standing on the point), you are missing 90 percent of the business you could be developing by working your existing customer network, the service drive and inbound dealership leads. Successful salespeople create their own opportunities. They don’t stand in front of the dealership with everyone else waiting for one to come to them.

Rule #7

Sales is about extending your network of connections through trust and friendships. It isn’t about trying to sell everyone a car all the time. In fact, oftentimes, sales are earned through being helpful by answering questions that consumers have. There are billions of people on social media asking questions all of the time. You don’t have to be in “selling mode” to sell cars. Help people and the sales and referrals will come to you.

Rule #8

If you want to be great at sales, you need to set up the entire interaction with every single customer like a play before they even arrive. This means everything is orchestrated from the second they walk into the door until long after they take delivery. This doesn’t mean you forgot they are coming and are now scrambling to make them feel special. Being prepared delivers trust and credibility instantly as well as providing a roadmap to a successful vehicle sale. Even if plans need to change, you are prepared. Sales is about control. Learn how to control the customer and you will win.

Rule #9

If you are afraid to call and find yourself emailing shoppers instead, STOP! You will not achieve your sales goals. I am not saying you can’t be successful but what I am saying is that if you want to sell a lot of cars you will need to master the phone. Most car shoppers are receiving emails from not only multiple dealerships but also third-parties. Yes, it can get frustrating calling customers who never pick up the phone or call you back. This is the car industry, however. And, not only that, it’s a sales industry. I’m pretty sure that you get frequent calls from other industries trying to sell you stuff like timeshares and whatever. Car shoppers are no different. Make sure that you find a way to set yourself apart from your competition, deliver a different customer experience and, most of all, be able to show the shopper your personality and they will choose you over the million e-mail templates and scripted voicemails they are certain to receive. One last thing here. Stop calling shopper and asking if they are still interested. This is a terrible opening for any conversation. Get creative.

Rule #10

Appointment setting and confirmation calls are your life blood. You want to create a sense of obligation with customers. Some will undoubtedly tell you that they are coming in just to get you off the phone. By setting appointments with them, you can start the process of solidifying that they will come in. That being said, confirming those set appointments (whether that is by you or a manager), is just as important. Customers want to feel special. They are about to spend thousands of dollars on a vehicle. We know that they want a new vehicle because, if they were not in the market, you wouldn’t know that they exist. Don’t just leave it as “Ask for me when you come in,” because they won’t. Radio ads say that a person needs to hear the information at least three times before the information sinks in. If you can build rapport with the customer, get them to commit to an appointment and follow up to confirm, they are exponentially more likely to show up. Send them driving directions, send them your picture, send them what other people have said about doing business with you. Build Trust.

In conclusion if you have found yourself in the automotive industry, take a minute and be thankful. You are in an industry that has no ceiling for success. Your drive and ambition will determine everything. Today is not only about honing your craft but also recognizing the opportunity in front of you and continuously improving every aspect of your personal success by continuing to learn and better yourself. I promise that if you do these things, you will find yourself so far ahead of many of your co-workers that you will not only reap the financial benefits but also discover that you’ve made a decision to enter an industry that offers you unlimited potential.

We live in a world where new technology swirls around us at a relentless and often dizzying pace, yet as we look closer inside the automotive industry and one particular area - the CRM - the winds are very calm, and the marketplace solutions aren’t keeping pace with innovation outside of the industry. In a nutshell we are operating in an innovation rut for automotive CRM. We believe that we are about to enter a renaissance that will completely reimagine what is possible with an automotive dealership CRM solution, and we have analyzed seven areas to pay especially close attention over the next twelve months.

Lead Enhancement Data

Dealership CRMs have been receiving lead data in a standardized ADF/XML format since the late 1990s when the standard was first created. Then, about 10 years ago, an alternative format that enabled more data to be transferred to the CRM was created, the STAR format, but the CRM industry pushed back, and it never really took off.

Today the sea of data is exponential, and it can be used to help salespeople engage shoppers with more meaningful communication. Knowing how long the shopper has been in-market, the website shopping history, the specific cars that they are looking at, homeownership status, marriage status, credit, current vehicle in their driveway, hobbies and more. All of this data and more can be compiled to create a comprehensive shopper mosaic that a salesperson can use to create instant rapport and trust, which are both pillars of sales success.

At 360Converge, we believe we will see more of this data appending to lead information over the next twelve months as dealerships realize the power of data and the financial impact it will yield. Some of this data is already in our industry; it just hasn’t found its place at the critical junction points where it will make the greatest impact. We also don’t believe that existing CRMs will remain the automotive industry’s primary CRMs - as they stand - in the market unless they bring this data picture to life for the dealership.

Automated Calendaring

This one area of CRMs has been left virtually untouched since the inception of the digital calendar. Back and forth communication with shoppers to nail down a time to view and drive a vehicle is an absolute waste of precious time for both the shopper and the salesperson, whether through email, text, chat, phone or even smoke signals. Yes, I am exaggerating, but you get the idea. This waste of time is enhanced by the fact that salespeople sometimes forget to ask for the initial appointment, almost never confirm appointments and, finally, totally forget about rescheduling them because they are on to the next opportunity.

Today our world is just entering into automation. This will usher in an entirely new experience for car shoppers and deliver a next-level time management experience for the salesperson. This technology has already been implemented in many other industries. Even my dentist is using automated appointment technology via text for a simple teeth cleaning. It also works in email, and I have personally saved so much time enabling both prospects and customers to select times that work for them to meet within my hours of work. 

We believe empowering the consumer to decide when they want to come into the dealership creates a level of control that today’s shoppers demand. This will deliver more appointments with a higher show rate that can all be automated through email, text messaging and more. By doing this, it will take a fundamental weak link in a salesperson’s process and turn it into a consistent shopper-centric approach that delivers value to the customer and instills trust at the start of the relationship.

Omni channel communication

Unfortunately, most automotive CRMs haven’t embraced open architecture and, with limited APIs and restrictive access, they have become inhibitors of innovation. Dealerships are now forced to run multiple platforms simultaneously. This causes user fatigue, or worse, lack of utilization. It also costs dealerships time, money and, in many cases, delivers a poor experience to the shopper or customer.

Today, dealerships have a base CRM then have to add additional services like call tracking, texting, equity mining, sales & service email marketing and more, creating poorly integrated solutions. After that, they need to add an entire additional layer of platforms like chat, social, website, attribution and the list goes on from there. Technology has only continued to have gone downhill making it almost impossible for a dealership to decide on which vendor to select in fear of the CRMs lacking integrations thus increasing portals to log in to.  

 We believe the only way for the advanced automotive CRMs to catch up to the generic CRMs that dominate the automotive industry is by adopting a complete open platform architecture and transparency. The automotive industry has been secretive by nature for over 100 years, and it is apparent that even the automotive dealership vendors have aligned with this strategy. It only takes one trip to Silicon Valley, however, to see how different things are done and how philosophies are completely the opposite of the automotive norm. Yet if we look at where true innovation is happening, it is painfully obvious it happens through collaboration. Over the next year, we will see a new generation of platform design emerge, similar to Slack or Salesforce, that will enable a cohesive experience for the dealership user no matter what product they wish to plug into their platform.

Mobility First

It is impossible to predict the future or the speed at which new technology will be adopted. When you look at the current top automotive CRM providers, all of their products were built at a time when desktops ruled the dealership environment. Naturally, their technology UI and UX were, respectfully, aligned to serve the marketplace, which makes absolute sense. Mobility was an afterthought with which a consumer would check a box, then the CRM would move some of the same information and functionality down to a mobile device in order to stay in the game.

Today, we live and breathe mobile. Look around at every intersection, dinner table, airport, office meeting or Starbucks, and you will see our entire behavior is mobility-driven for good reason. It enables us to be on the go, yet still be engaged, and feel we are a part of the connected Internet culture. Mobility offers us new levels of productivity enhancements that we have never before experienced all while giving us our kick of dopamine with every click. We are addicted, and we love it. This hasn’t yet played out nicely for automotive dealerships. Many salespeople are using their personal mobile devices to communicate with shoppers and customers, and none of this information is finding its way back into the dealership’s CRM. This creates a gap between the technology of yesterday and how a dealership’s sales team does business today.

We believe this mobility-first revolution is here to stay. Dealership CRM technology needs to embrace mobility to unlock its potential. Creating technology solutions that align with existing habits is a powerful way to pave the road to usability. Current CRM providers will need to completely recreate their data and communication infrastructure in order to leverage the mobile-first mentality, but doing so will pay enormous dividends. By turning a salesperson’s mobile phone into a selling assistant through more comprehensive data, including inventory, communication, training and more, the salesperson and customer will be more highly engaged and productive for the dealership.   

Inventory Enhancement

The bedrock of a dealership’s sales success are the vehicles, their products, on the lot. With the increase in the number of models and the sheer amount of technological improvements which have been made in vehicles over the last twenty years, not to mention all the supportive characteristics like safety, it is important to recognize that we have entered an era of product information overload.

Today’s environment is one in which shoppers tend to know more about a particular vehicle than the salesperson selling it. The Internet has created this research tool that is empowering shoppers like never before in the course of an automotive purchase. This shift in knowledge away from the salesperson and towards the customer hurts the dealership’s brand and the confidence its shoppers have when a salesperson can’t explain or describe the vehicle in detail in order to help the shopper either qualify or disqualify a particular vehicle from a potential purchase.

We believe this can be fixed with data that would give the dealership’s salesperson an advantage during the discussion by providing key elements of any vehicle based on extensive data from its VIN within a click on the salesperson’s phone. Through helping the salesperson keep the shopper engaged and informed, while simultaneously building trust during the conversation, a dealership will see increased sales. This data is already in existence, but it hasn’t made its way down into a CRM system as of yet. This new mashup of technology and innovation will have an amazing effect since a growing number of salespeople are new to the business and knowing everything about a dealership’s inventory is impossible.

Friction Reduction

When you log into an automotive CRM today and see TEN thousand uncompleted tasks, you have to wonder what is broken? Is it the salespeople at the dealership? Is it the processes themselves? Is it the technology? Is it the management? At the birth of automotive CRM, it was imperative to create processes that the sales team would follow. Those processes were usually developed by dealerships taking other dealer’s processes and applying them to their own CRM. By adopting processes, the expectation was that the dealership would have complete control and consistency; a shopper or customer would never fall through the cracks or see salespeople miss a step in the sales process.

Today, all of our hopes and dreams about CRMs have turned into a boiling point of frustration for dealerships across America. It seems that none of what I wrote above has become a reality. In fact, it has created an entire set of new issues that dealerships have to grapple with on a daily basis. Salespeople skating deals by entering in slight variations of the shopper’s name in the CRM or senior sales people insisting that the CRM slows them down and avoiding it like the plague has ended up creating a whole new department called the Business Development Center (BDC). In the BDC, we remove appointment setting away from our existing salespeople. This creates an additional cost center a dealership has in order to fix this problem and, hopefully, will deliver some resemblance of the consistent processes that a CRM promised dealerships in the first place. Does any of this sound familiar to you? Doesn’t it sound a little crazy to actually read about the problems adopting a CRM was supposed to fix in the first place? Do you believe it has accomplished that task? 

We believe that these linear and predetermined TASKS are creating huge friction in the automotive sales process. They are also creating complete misalignment with the dealership’s shoppers and customer. What will happen over the next twelve to twenty-four months is pretty simple: dealerships will see big data make its way down to a granular level, which will finally enable the CRM to create actions points (instead of simply creating tasks) by monitoring a shopper’s on and offline behavior then aligning it with an action for the salesperson to execute. For example, John Doe sent a lead into ABC Chevrolet over a month ago but went dark before first contact was even made. Over the last three days, John Doe has visited multiple automotive websites, including ABC Chevrolet, searching for a “Chevrolet Tahoe”, “Preowned”, and “Low miles”. With an advanced CRM, this search would trigger an action for the salesperson to reach out via a phone call. At the same time, an email is simultaneously delivered to John Doe’s inbox with an offer on multiple vehicles that meet John’s shopping criteria. By leveraging machine learning in near real-time, dealerships will reduce friction points along the salesperson’s journey to complete a sale and, at the same time, deliver the right information to the shopper at the right time, so he or she can take the next step. When salespeople follow up repeatedly with shoppers who have fallen out of the market, it creates a negative feedback loop that can motivate customers to stop wanting to pick of the phone. Big data, machine learning and analytics are going to completely change that.

Personalization at scale

Do you remember all the rage in the mid-90s about one-to-one marketing and the future of personalization? It then hit the direct marketing community by storm, quickly followed by finding its way to automotive CRMs in the early to mid 2000s. The problem is that these templates that included personalized data points became an everyday thing and, as humans, we have learned to identify and quickly dismiss them. The human race is highly adaptable, and it is hard to fool any individual for any length of time when the novelty of these basic tools have worn off as people stopped paying attention to them. In addition, dealerships are constantly bombarding shoppers with flashy offers, discounts and savings, and those messages aren’t getting through like they were.

With automation being all the rage today, bots are driving us deeper into creating a vanilla robotic experience for the shopper. This will have benefits, but it will also come at a cost. You have to ask yourself a couple of important questions: How will dealerships be able to stand out in 2020? How will they reach into the soul of every shopper and customer and touch them in a meaningful and impactful way that not only moves them into conversation but, more importantly, into an experience that builds trust?

We believe personalization at scale is not only possible, but that it is also inevitable. Personalization requires taking the lifeless logo of the dealership’s brand and augmenting it with the dealership’s smiling employees’ faces. Human connection is a powerful currency that delivers every single time. The average dealership has sixty-six employees, and by curating employee’s stories, it enables shoppers and customers to personally connect and communicate with the dealership. Whether the questions are about repairing or replacing a part, keeping their car clean, removing road tar or learning about the latest features in the upcoming model, these answers will all be driven by the next generation of CRM platforms.

In conclusion, you probably understand that automotive CRM is about to enter a period of renaissance. The areas above are just the beginning of a cascade of changes in how salespeople will interact with shoppers and customers, and the tools that they will leverage to do so. While existing CRMs may still bring a level of ROI for the dealership, data, bots and personalization will start to change shopper and customer expectations and redefine how the automotive sales process will work. Stop focusing on things from the past or cobbling together technology that creates more work than reward. Ask yourself two hard questions. Is your current technology reducing friction for both the customers and the dealership’s staff? Are you creating experiences that create rapport and build trust that will last a lifetime with every single shopper and customer your dealership touches each and every day? 

That is the only path that will lead to future success.

Sometimes you just need to get punched in the face to wake up. For too many days in a row, I went to work doing the same thing over and over like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day.

There are two routes to achievement in your life. The first is conformity in which you follow the crowd down a conventional path and maintain the status quo. The other is originality, which is the road less traveled in which you champion new ideas that go against grain but make thing better.

Over the past few years I have been living comfortably with conformity and not challenging myself to risk.  Because I have built a few companies that have been successful I didn’t feel the need to dare to think differently. My management style and philosophies have created cultures where employees are engaged and invested in the company’s success. By not allowing my true nature and beliefs to come into actions I realized I was not being the leader or entrepreneur I wanted to be instead I was costing myself personal growth and mental freedom.

Here are a few takeaways I hope inspire you to make a change in your life to move past the person you are now and to take a chance to become the person you are truly destined to be.

Be uncomfortable at least once per day. That could mean doing something that you don’t have confidence in or something that you just seem to always put off one more day. Lean in and just do that one f$%king thing and you will be a better person. I promise.

Don’t let other people control your path. People will line up around the block to tell you why you can’t do something, and all the reasons why you or your idea will fail. Just smile and do the work needed to prove that you can do anything you set your mind to accomplish. I didn’t say prove them wrong. One of the great things I have learned is what other people think doesn’t matter when it comes to personal growth.

Use negativity as jet fuel. When someone makes a choice to attack you or your business, you have two choices. First, you can play their game, which does nothing more than distract you, or you can just take all of their negativity and refocus it to your advantage. This is how Akido masters use the energy of their opponent’s movement for their own sheer dominance during a confrontation. Do the latter.

Mountains aren’t climbed in minutes. Doing anything great will take an enormous amount of your time and energy. Just when you think you are at the summit, you will realize that there is another mountain behind the one you just climbed challenging you. I believe that the real love is in the journey, not the destination.

Turn failure into your friend. To truly be successful you have to have failure on your path. For some ventures, it will take a ton of failures before you find the breakthrough that changes everything for you or your business. One thing that has always resonated with me is the concept of learning to callous your mind. Train your mind to turn failures into learning experiences.

Lay one brick at a time. I meet plenty of people that tell me that they have so much to do and don’t know where to start or can’t find the time. Being overwhelmed is real, and it can paralyze you. I want you to go to the nearest giant brick building in your town and look at it really hard and think about this. That building was built one brick at a time. Someone laid one brick next to another brick over a long period of time until, guess what? They had a giant f$%king building in front of them. This is how businesses get built and fortunes get made.

Now, I greet every day as a true gift as well as an opportunity to pursue my dreams and aspirations to build technology that empowers others to become better at their jobs. No matter what has befallen you up until this moment, only you can decide what your future will be.

Are you willing to move ahead no matter what you face? Are you willing to leave your comfort zone to purse what truly inspires you?

Everything you want in life is waiting for you. What will you do about it?

Dealerships are always struggling with the decision on whether they need a BDC or not. Some try and succeed, but others try and fail. Why does this happen? How is one dealership’s BDC succeeding when other BDCs are failing and returning to status quo after a significant investment? The following are four reasons BDCs fail and solutions for making your BDC a success.

1. Is your team struggling with accurately entering data into your CRM? Do you always feel like a “Data Entry Cop”?

This is a super common problem when salespeople’s goals aren’t aligning with the those of the dealership. This struggle point isn’t uncommon in the dealership. The dealership wants data in order to track and measure ROI on marketing expenses, and the salespeople just want to just sell cars. This problem can be fixed through a couple of ways. The first way is that dealerships can use a pay-plan driven strategy to get the salespeople to do what the dealership wants by connecting their pay plans to showed appointments. By doing this, you are aligning behavior to money which can be a powerful motivator. Unfortunately, this strategy is just a band aid. Dealerships are treating the symptoms but aren’t addressing the root cause of the illness. Let’s ask a different question. Why aren’t salespeople entering information correctly into CRMs? If you step back and evaluate, the answer is clear. The salespeople don’t see the true benefit. The average salesperson doesn’t look at the people they sell with a personal LTV (Life Time Value). Instead, they are just a short-term sale and immediate income source. This philosophy is at the core of what separates the best salespeople in the nation from the masses. If the average salesperson looked at selling cars like an insurance agent looks at selling insurance, data entry issues would be a thing of the past.   

2. Does your dealership set a lot of appointments but lacks a proportionality high level of showroom visits?

This is an issue that is rooted in a few potential areas. The first could be pay plan structure; the second could be in the quality of the appointment conversation and, finally, the third could be in the lack of management involvement in this part of the shopper’s journey. Any or all of these could be affecting the outcome. Let’s break these down in a little more depth in order to extract some insight and potential action steps. The first is pay plan and how much financial weight is put on the appointment compared to how much the rep receives for the actual sale, if any. Appointment setting really sets the pace for the transaction, so it is critical that dealerships get their pay plan formula in order to drive results. Paying BDC reps to just set appointments uncovers the age old saying: people work their pay plans. Design a pay plan that gives the BDC rep skin in the complete game and holds them accountable for too many missed appointments.

Second is the quality of the appointment-setting conversation. Selling a customer on an appointment is not only selling an opportunity to drive the vehicle but also to learn about all the features in a personalized experience for the shopper. I really like something Mitch Gallant, GM of Capital Ford Lincoln, is doing. His method personalizes the test drive experience for the shopper by enabling them to select their drink of choice for when they arrive for the test drive. This creates commitment between the shopper and the appointment setter for a minimum investment. Mitch is leveraging psychology at its best.

Finally, another opportunity is always the management appointment confirmation call. This allows a couple critical things to take place. First, it establishes a relationship between a manager and the shopper which begins a relationship that will come in handy during negotiations. Second, it provides the manager with the opportunity to ask a few questions in order to really understand the shopper’s needs and make sure that the appointment is aligned correctly for a sale. Managers need to get involved early and stay involved. By doing so, they can remove friction points along the shopper’s experience and be more effective in increasing the chance that the shopper shows up for their appointment.

3. Do you find yourself constantly saying the same things to your team to help keep them on pace each month?

Welcome to management, folks. This is a core fundamental part of management: the constant reinforcement of behavior. At no point in time is your sales team going to wake up and just get it. They will need constant direction and leadership to continue to drive the direction of your BDC. I label this job security. Instead of it being a struggle in your management responsibilities, turn it into the best aspect. Train your staff on one aspect of the department duties. Let’s say it is “Overcoming Objections” during an initial phone call. Lay out a simple 10-minute training plan that outlines the “Top 3” shopper objections that your sales team are hearing from shoppers. Deliver the training then reverse the script on your team. Elect one of the team members to create the same training outline that you just delivered but with three other objections and then have them deliver it to the whole team in a week. Keep doing this until everyone has them down then move on to the next topic. You will find that you get tons of new insights from your team and the conversations become much more open. The team will get to learn from different voices which will be reinforced over time. This is how you make an amazing team that works together and that delivers results.

4. Are you spending hours and hours per month compiling reports trying to make sense of departmental data?

This is what I like to call “TPS Report” HELL! This is the one area that seems to be getting more and more complicated as we consume increasing data points within the dealership. Even though we have the potential to track everything within the dealership, you have to ask yourself what are your true “Vital Signs.” Basically, what are the top five most critical data points you want to measure and analyze in order to run your BDC correctly? I would have this mastered first before ever layering on more complexity. After speaking with so many stores, I find many dealerships living in data hell. Take a deep breath. Step back and truly grasp the most important things for you and your BDC.

By truly evaluating and adopting these four practices, dealerships will be well on their way to seeing a successful BDC that increases revenue rather than one that fails to provide the revenue it was expected to. 

This question was posed by a great dealer friend of mine, Todd Caputo from Sun Chevrolet the other day. Are dealers spending so much money and time on technology, implementation and the management of all these tools that it is distracting them from the fundamentals of the business of selling cars at a profit and managing the customer relationship.

With industry-wide disconnect and fragmented technology providers, dealers are forced to use many systems that all cost money, have over lapping functionality and don’t communicate very effectively. This nightmare scenario wastes countless hours and delivers a poor return on time investment. All while technology vendors create confusing metrics to protect their business at the cost of dealership efficiency.

Let’s focus on one part of this discussion today. The human capital part. This is an often-overlooked part of our business as we are usually just focused on our typical KPIs:

    *Leads converted to appointments.

•     *Appointments to showroom visits.

    *Showroom visits to test drives.

•     *Test drives to write ups.

    *Write ups to sold units.

Let’s think different and ask some fun questions. How are your people using their time? Maybe you have ten salespeople and two managers… a total of twelve people in your variable sales department. This translates to a 40-hour work week per employee which would give you a total of 480-unit hours of work time for the week. How are these hours allocated? Does each team member have a plan for time utilization?

    *We can dive into so many areas here:

    *Product education training

    *Sales process training

    *CRM updating and maintenance

    *Lead follow up

    *Vehicle Demonstrations and delivery

When we can create activity work buckets, we can see much more clearly how our people are using their time. Don’t be surprised if you find a ton of wasted time. I do this experiment for myself every few months to get a reality check on my time and effort and where it is being directed. I write down everything have done for the week in fifteen-minute block increments like an attorney does for billable time management. It is an eye-opening exercise to see how much time is being wasted doing nonproductive things that aren’t align to with business goals.

What I am getting at here is that your “People Capital” is crucial to your success, but sometimes we are so focused on the technology that we miss the hidden cause of missing our goals, which are lack of effective time management for ourselves and our team.

You may discover that your current technology is a huge time suck because it is creating inefficient processes that are eating up your most valuable currency. You may also discover that it takes five clicks to do a task when it should only take one or two, yet this task needs to be done 100 times per day.

Opportunity is all around in order to figure out how to leverage your technology in a way that maximizes your return-on-time. One this is for certain, all of us only have 24 hours per day and that is the one currency that nobody can get back, slow down or alter.

Here are two different ways you can apply this at your dealership to better understand how time is being utilized (or underutilized) at your dealership.

• Observation- Observation requires sitting and watching your team at work and really understanding what they are doing at a granular level. This means down to the amount of clicks it takes to accomplish repetitive tasks. An example of this could be observing that your CRM requires three clicks to find a customer profile. After that, the salesperson has to reach over and dial the phone number on the desktop phone then has to click into a notes field to update the customer record followed by clicking two more times to create the next task.
• Self-Observation- Empower your team to write down and track exactly what they are doing down to the most mundane detail of their processes. This may take a little explanation to sink in to for them and I have found you will need to explain it multiple times to your team until they start giving you the feedback that you need. This can be highly effective and a fast method towards finding some real time sucking activities and inefficiencies in your processes that are costing you money and results.
   

This is just the tip of the iceberg of what you can accomplish when you start to understand the precious asset of time and its impact on your dealership’s success. “Return-on-Time” should become a staple of what you are tracking which will maximize your team’s performance on the variable side of your dealership.

The funny thing is that we have been tracking this stuff forever in fixed operations with our understanding of job labor hours, shop-load time etc. Now is a great time to start applying it to the variable side of the business.

I would love your comments and thoughts and thanks for taking the time to read and share this article.

Leveraging Facebook Marketplace to help you sell more cars isn’t difficult if your dealership does it the right way. In part 1 of this series, I talked about the importance of choosing the right partner to maximize success. In part 2, I discussed why effective communication is vital to optimizing that success. But, unless your dealership sells rare cars, your listings will be among hundreds available to consumers. That’s why, to sell more cars on this platform, it will be crucial to understand the abilities, limitations and best practices of Facebook Marketplace to both optimize your listings and make them stand out.

One of the most important things that help any vehicle stand out — no matter which platform — is detail. Consumers aren’t going to browse through hundreds of Honda Civics to find one that appeals to them. The edge dealerships have over private sellers is that there is more trust from consumers knowing that dealerships will have performed inspections and repairs before putting a car up for sale. Some dealerships will even offer warranties on purchases. Peace of mind is important to consumers, and while private parties may be willing to sell a vehicle for less, consumers are willing to pay more for a car that’s more mechanically sound.

Consumers Trust What They Can See

When car buyers are searching for used vehicles, they can sometimes get overwhelmed by the sheer number of cars available in their area even if they’re searching for a specific make and model. Although Facebook Marketplace’s default search setting is within a 40-mile radius of the consumer, that search can result in hundreds of vehicles that include dealership, independent, and private party listings.

In order to compete with all of the other franchise and independents in their area, dealerships need to ensure their vehicle listings are as attractive to consumers as possible. Dealers should be just as vigilant in merchandising their inventory on Facebook Marketplace as they are on their website and their third-party partner sites. By doing so, they will be leaps and bounds ahead of any private party listing that merely exists because private party sellers aren’t as knowledgeable in merchandising and the dealerships offer more confidence in quality.

Best Practices for Facebook Marketplace Merchandising

When talking about best practices on any third-party site (including Marketplace), we need to include the capabilities of the site as well. The following are the merchandising abilities Facebook Marketplace currently offers:

1. A Single Listing Partner - Facebook recommends that dealers leverage a single approved partner for Marketplace to optimize listings. By choosing multiple partners, Facebook advises that dealerships could get subpar results and inaccurately attribute sales.
2. Don’t Limit Inventory - Some dealers choose to only list unusual, rare or inexpensive vehicles which limits the exposure of the dealer’s inventory. Facebook’s advice? List all used cars to gain as much exposure for the dealership as possible.
3. Vehicle Descriptions - Many dealers either don’t include vehicle descriptions or only include information from the Maroney sticker. Shoppers don’t want to read through every option the car has, but rather the history and unique features included
4. Pricing - Facebook suggests that dealers list vehicles with actual prices rather than down payment, payment of APR specials. That information can be listed in the description but is not appropriate for the price in that area of the listing.

What Can a Dealer Do to Merchandise Vehicles Effectively on Facebook Marketplace?

1. 1. Images - The automotive industry has quickly evolved from a single photo to today’s standard of 30-40 images. Facebook recommends 15-20 photos (2 photos minimum) with a resolution of 960x720 or better. My advice is to use those photos to highlight the exterior of the vehicle (from all angles) as well as all of the unique features the car has. Got navigation? Snap a picture of the navigation screen. The same goes for any feature. Consumers don’t want to have to read through a hundred features to find out if a car has whatever feature they’re looking for. And, as tempting as it may be, Facebook says that dealerships should NOT include any overlays or dealership branding in their photos. Let the vehicle speak for itself; consumers are more likely to look at it and consider it.
   2. Communication - Just as I advised in Part 2 of this series, the key to maximizing sales and motivating consumers to engage with your dealership is prompt and relevant communications via Facebook Messenger using an approved chat provider. Unless you have a full-time BDC that is trained and available at all times to interact with consumers who have questions, sales can be lost and captured by a competing dealership.

I hope this blog series has helped you understand the opportunity Facebook Marketplace offers dealers regarding increasing sales and inventory turn. While starting a new listing service can be daunting, it doesn’t have to be. The right partner can help you accomplish all of the things I’ve mentioned and assist your dealership by providing leads that are low-funnel and ready to buy.

1. The Power of Marketplace: How to Achieve Success on Facebook Marketplace - Facebook

In the first part of this series, I shared why Facebook Marketplace can help dealers sell more cars, the ways in which they can get started, and the questions they should be asking their vendors when getting this set up.

 Now that your dealership’s inventory is live on Facebook Marketplace, there’s no doubt that consumers will find vehicles they're interested in and reach out to your dealership with questions. As I mentioned in part 1 of the series, how you handle these interactions will directly impact the success you have. Dealers are used to automating responses and processes to follow up with the leads coming into their CRM. Yet, while dealers spend a bunch of money to turn those interactions into to sales, the industry is still seeing close ratios as low as 12%!

Winning Over a Customer is About More than Simply Communicating

The same goes for phone “ups.” Salespeople are rarely trained on how to talk to customers on the phone and can, at times, turn customers off by simply not providing the information requested. Those customers who took the time to call the dealership end up frustrated that their needs weren’t satisfied.

Text-based communication is no different except in one area: the customer has complete control. If the people you empower to interact with customers via live text-based communication don’t know how to communicate properly, you’ll simply see customers cancel the chat and disappear into the ether.

Customers intuitively know when the e-mails they are receiving are automated. The same thing goes for scripted text-based conversations or the new thing, chatbots. When customers reach out to your dealership via any form of test-based communication, they are expecting to communicate with a real person and will quickly learn whether the “person” on the other end of the chat is a live person or not.

Responding Quickly and Properly Will Increase Sales

If you’re going to utilize Marketplace to increase sales, customers can only interact with the dealership via Facebook Messenger. The dealership, of course, can choose to utilize an approved chat service to have conversations on Marketplace. Regardless of which means of text-based communication a dealer chooses, prompt communication is vital. Imagine a customer calling into your dealership and nobody answering the phone. When a customer reaches out to your dealership via Messenger or chat and nobody responds, you end up with the same… exact… result.

Customers don’t want to be met by a voicemail, robot or, even worse, silence. The mere fact that they are reaching out to you should indicate that they are low-funnel shoppers ready to buy. And those are exactly the people that you want to talk to. Facebook Marketplace is no different than a customer calling in on a VDP from a third-party website or your own website. Dealerships who choose to list their inventory on Facebook Marketplace need to be aware that potential customers will be reaching out to them and the best part? The only reason that they are reaching out is that they are interested in a vehicle that you have in stock. Marketplace customers aren’t people reaching out inquiring about dealership hours, service appointments or other issues. Those individuals will go directly to your website. These are car shoppers that are interested in buying a vehicle. And you have to admit that those are the most attractive conversations that your dealership could have with a customer. On top of that, these are customers interacting with you LIVE, not email addresses or phone numbers that don’t work so it’s especially important that whomever you charge at your dealership to handle live chats is trained to maximize opportunities.

Potential customers want information. Period. If your salespeople or BDC is not equipped to give them the information that they want, they will simply discontinue the chat and seek the information elsewhere. Consumers on Facebook Marketplace want to be able to communicate with your dealership, but they still expect a prompt response that satisfies their needs and answers their questions. Failure to do so can easily jeopardize the chances that your dealership builds rapport with the customer and, ultimately, the sale. 

Facebook Marketplace, while new on the scene, has quickly turned into a valuable sales channel for dealerships. Many dealers are finding great success in engagement as well as sales with consumers. Not just another third-party listing site, Facebook Marketplace has capabilities many other platforms don’t have. Chief among them is the ability for interested car buyers to communicate with dealerships in real time through Facebook Messenger.

Manually listing cars on Marketplace can be an arduous and time-consuming process, which is why many dealerships pick and choose the vehicles that they think would be most attractive to car shoppers on Facebook. The problem with that is dealers are missing sales as we’ve seen car shoppers interested in a wide variety of vehicle makes, models and price ranges.

Dealers do have an alternate option, however, and it's not one that many are unfamiliar with… having their vehicles listed automatically just as they are already doing with their inventory. Dealers need to understand, however, that automated listing can only be accomplished via Facebook approved vendors and, even then, some vendors have limited capabilities regarding what they can actually automate. For example, some vendors can automatically send inventory but not rich content like images.

There are more than a few Marketplace inventory partners available, but dealers should be asking these partners which services and features they are able to automate and service. Also, just being able to upload inventory isn’t satisfactory. Today’s consumers want the ability to communicate with dealers about specific inventory listings – and they want to be able to do that without the need to leave Facebook. This can only be accomplished via Facebook Messenger or via live chat. Yes, consumers can use Facebook Messenger without the need for live chat, but the problem is that someone at the dealership needs to be monitoring Facebook Messenger for incoming inquiries and the only people that could do that need to be admins of the Facebook page.

Another critical thing for dealers to be aware of is that only certified pre-owned inventory can be listed, not new vehicles. The listings will only appear on Facebook Marketplace, not on the dealership’s Facebook page. Dealers should understand that Facebook Marketplace isn’t a sales channel like eBay in that actual sales can be made but rather a channel in which car buyers can engage with dealers and start conversations that lead to a sale. Of course, today’s car shoppers won’t wait very long for responses before they move on to the next vehicle they’re interested in whether that’s a similar vehicle or a different make or model so paying attention to messages and interactions is a key component to success on Facebook Marketplace.

A great feature of Facebook Marketplace is that car buyers are only shown available vehicles within a 40-mile radius of a car shopper’s location. This allows a dealership to know that inquiries are coming from local shoppers and not individuals in other states for the most part. Of course, consumers can change this filter, but the majority of consumers shopping on Facebook Marketplace will be in a dealership’s area aside from some unique inventory items or rare vehicles.

Facebook’s advice is that dealers should avoid working with multiple Marketplace partners, so dealers should not be relying on multiple vendors to put together the puzzle pieces (i.e., one vendor for the actual listing while a separate vendor for images or chat services).

Keep these things in mind when beginning to explore how to use Facebook Marketplace to your dealership’s advantage as a new sales channel. Facebook Marketplace offers unique capabilities and can be a very successful sales channel if properly implemented and monitored.

Keep an eye out for part two of this series in which we’ll discuss how to engage customers to maximize results and increase conversions.

It hasn’t been that long ago that customers were only able to handle customer service issues in person or by phone. Now, of course, there are many options for customers including social media, chat or through reviews. What would you do if a customer were standing in front of you paying you a compliment? Hopefully, you would thank them for the compliment and their business. If that conversation were negative (i.e., a complaint), most companies would attempt to make it right for the customer or, at the very least, apologize. In many cases, however, these customers who are reaching out to a business via social media or online reviews go unanswered.

An excellent article on AdWeek shared that businesses shouldn’t ignore customers but rather think of these communications as part of their marketing efforts. Every interaction with a customer, whether face-to-face, via social media or through an online review, present an opportunity to interact with a customer. And not only communicate with that specific customer but show other customers or even potential customers that you are paying attention.

What normally happens in dealerships?

Dealerships are highly sensitive to reviews. Whether those reviews are via a manufacturer’s CSI survey, social media or online, the wrong review can directly impact the dealership’s revenue. We know from Google that part of a car buyer’s decision-making process involves choosing whom to buy their vehicle from. The customers are super low-funnel, meaning that they are at the point where they’ve done their research, selected a car, and are now ready to buy. Bad reviews can easily cause a customer to stop considering your dealership and move on to the next one thus directly causing that dealership to lose a sale.

So, what should a dealership do to avoid this?

Many dealerships will pay attention when a negative review is left. They may or may not act upon it and respond in an attempt to solve the customer’s issues. The other end of the spectrum, of course, is that the manager reading that negative review already knows the customer’s complaint and simply ignores it.

Regardless of whether the dealership can resolve the issue or not, by merely responding they’re showing the customer that they’re listening. And not only are they showing that customer, but they are also showing other potential customers trying to decide which dealership to buy from that the dealership cares.

What about positive reviews?

Often, positive reviews from customers don’t get responses. Sure, dealerships see them, managers may share customer compliments with employees, and everyone is happy and high-fiving each other. While all of those things are great, there is one part of the process that is missing… the customer.

Dealerships should think of positive reviews or customer interactions via social media just as if the customer were standing in front of them complimenting them. By not acknowledging the customer who took their time to say good things about the dealership, the customer may feel ignored. However, if a dealership takes the time to respond to these compliments, even if only to thank the customer, the customer feels appreciated. This is how brand advocates are created.

The best thing a dealership can do is to ensure they’re responding to all customer interactions – whether those are via social media or an online review. By doing so, they’re showing both customers and the rest of the world that they’re listening. Those interactions can easily either create a sale or lose one. It’s not just excellent customer service but also the one thing that dealerships spend a ton of money on… marketing. And that’s how you not only retain customers but also how to influence new ones.

There are a plethora of training programs and trainers in the automotive industry many of which have different styles, advice, and opinions. Often, those opinions vary widely. While training is indeed something I advocate in dealerships both as an ongoing initiative and for new-to-the-industry employees (no matter which department), no business can function as a singular unit when everyone has been influenced — and are operating — by many philosophies.

Let’s be real. Our industry has a turnover problem — especially in sales. Hiring a green-pea, showing them how to do a foursquare and then instructing them to go “get an up,” may sound very old school. But it is still the status quo in many dealerships. For those dealerships that do have training integrated into their cultures, great job. But not all training is equal. I’m not necessarily advocating one training system over another… they all have their own pros and cons. What I’m saying is that leadership within the dealership needs to decide what culture, customer experience and values that they want first… then choose a training curriculum that is complimentary.

Even though it’s great that your dealership has decided to provide training materials in which veterans and green peas can learn from, everyone needs to be on the same page. How is a sales manager desking a deal supposed to know what close a salesperson is using in the box and how to showcase the next set of figures if they don’t know what the salesperson is telling the customer? It’s like a football team in which each position studied a different playbook. Neither the coach, quarterback or positional players will know what their teammates are supposed to do!

Mentorship programs have been, and are used, by many of the most successful companies in the world. To great success. Why? Because, as leaders, we all know that there are people in any organization that exemplify the quality standards, culture and customer experience that we want our customers to travel through. The shallow answer is a business should train and pair their new employees with the existing ones that make all of the profit. But that isn’t always the right one. Why? Because those judgments are typically made based on immediate gross profit. Sure, that 20+ car per month salesperson may slay it and have excellent gross in their deals. But what is the long-term effect? Are they sacrificing long-term relationships for short-term gross profit at the expense of a reduced lifetime customer value? While it might be great that your salesperson is closing deals with high front ends, many of those customers could be worth much more over their lifetime if they were treated differently.

Designing a mentorship program isn’t time-consuming, but it does take thought. The biggest question that you should ask yourself when choosing potential mentors, in each of your dealership’s departments, is who best represents the culture and values of your dealership that you want to instill in your new hires. You’d be surprised at the answer you may come up with.

Once you know what you want your company to be, how you want your dealership to be perceived by your customers and have created processes that reinforce those ideals, the employees that will be the best mentors typically glow like a hot sun. These are the employees that you want to strengthen, guide and mentor your new employees (whether those be veteran or green peas) so that your dealership is operating in unison, as a team, and under the same philosophies.

Establish a mentoring program in which these previously identified employees can help mold your green peas into models of themselves thus reinforcing the foundation that you’ve created. When you do, you'll find that it’s easier to not only operate as a team but also in a way that exponentially advances your business branding and goals while solidifying your customer experience into one that’s consistent and repeatable.

And that’s how you win in retail.