I was getting ready to write a blog about "Mobile-First," because I had a hunch that mobile phones are everywhere. Well, I cannot claim it is a hunch any longer because when you look around everybody has a mobile phone and more specifically a smartphone. So, I started doing some research and the data blew me away. Between the ages of 19 and 49, 94% of this population in the USA have smartphones.

Yes, that number is 94%! (1)

Well if that is the case, wouldn't rational logic dictate that we start by making sure every digital interaction is mobile friendly? It makes sense as mobile communications lead all other forms of communication. I ask you honestly, as dealer principals, owners, general managers, and service directors, how many of you have gone to your website and tried to perform the functions that you need to perform as a consumer to buy a car or schedule service for your car, or get a tow truck for your car? I think you would be very surprised. And not in a good sort of way!

Everybody goes to their smartphone from time to time and looks at their website to see how it behaves or to answer a question. But one of the big interaction points most people forget, that is initiated from the mobile phone, is texting. Text communications have become prevalent. So, it's not good enough to just have websites that are mobile responsive, they also need to be communications friendly.

Yes, mobile websites have to be communications friendly including all forms of mobile communications and texting communications!  Mobile-first web design is vital.

By that I mean you should be able to text or call from any page on the website, and the text/call has to be intelligently routed depending on which page you are on. The text (because you know the phone number of the mobile phone) should be routed to the right person, depending on whether or not that individual has some sort of an issue open. If a person calls it should be routed to the right person that is currently handling their case. Although, based on our experience, if you made texting truly easy and intelligent on your mobile website, your call volume would drop significantly!

I propose a very simple measure. If you do this exercise honestly and get 80% or higher you are on the right path. Even if there is scope for improvement you would have a mobile-first friendly site that users would like to use. 

Additionally, you can add dimensions like “Easy to Find,” and “Clarity of page,” but for now I think this is a good starting point. 

Each measure is given 1 point and the ability to call is given a 50% weightage, as consumers do not really like to call because they are too busy to be “put on hold.”

 If you are below 80%, please call in your webmaster and get to work!

 For some of you who may not know what a “responsive” web page is, please look at the images below as an example. One shows how it appears on a desktop, the other on a mobile device. The same mobile webpage when viewed on a desktop shows up in landscape mode and fills a large monitor. However, it will also sense a mobile device and reformat itself to portrait mode and stack the text and images on top of each other for easy readability:

Desktop

Mobile

1 https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/

Today's Environment

Do you ever get fed up with the chatbots that keep appearing on websites even after you have shut them down?  Well, many websites could use some chatbot best practices! That is just one of several things I find that need to be fixed on dealer websites to improve the consumer experience.

I don't know how many of you have gone and tried to navigate your dealer website. In many cases it is confusing and an absolute nightmare. It is important to realize that most consumers now access websites on their mobile phones. So, the real estate on your website is extremely valuable!

There's an easy trick you can use to see how it would appear if you were looking at the website on your mobile. One method is to access your website using your mobile phone, but if you are on your desktop, and are using Chrome, you can right-click anywhere on the website and select Inspect. Then, on the top left-hand corner, you'll see an icon with two small rectangles, one on top of the other. When you click on this icon you can simulate mobile websites and cycle through many different iPhone and Android phones!

Anything that pops on the desktop screen is hard to present on a mobile device and is likely to confuse the consumer.

What has history taught us?

I don't know if you all are old enough to remember how Google initially displaced Yahoo as the leading search engine. Look at the images below.

Consumers who grew up with Google’s website knew they only had a few choices and doing searches was super quick and easy.  By contrast, the leader's, (Yahoo) website was cluttered and not very functional.  In this new day and age with COVID-19 and an emphasis on digital interactions, my recommendation is that we need to take a radical approach and de-clutter our websites.  I would urge the Dealer Advisory Councils to advise their manufacturers that the new look and feel of dealership websites needs to be simple and very functional, as there are only three things that a customer wants to do when they visit:

Buy a new/used car

Create an appointment for service

Talk to the dealer staff for anything else.  

If not, sites like Carvana (see below) will be the consumers' choice for buying cars and in the future, these retailers will expand into service too. Notice how Carvana gives you only 2 choices and for everything else they allow you to chat with them.  This is where a chat box on the website does make sense!

If you look at their mobile website, it seems that their site is truly Responsive. This term describes a website that will rearrange the panels when you go from a desktop to a mobile phone, so the website does not need to be built twice. For the modern consumer, your website has to be Responsive.

One idea for the future:

If you do want to put communications options on your website, make sure that the communications are context-aware. So, if you are on a card for a new vehicle, and you click on Call or Chat, the context of where you are on the website should be totally clear to the recipient of the call or the chat. Look at the image below. Again, I urge dealers to de-content their website and leave only those things that are absolutely necessary to bring the customer closer to you.

Moral of the story: “Make it easy for the customer!!”

Today's environment:

Sometimes when I look at an auto dealer website I sit back, scratch my head, and wonder if they have ever scheduled an appointment for dealer service on their website? Not to mention all the bots that pop, and all the flashing offers! It is the farthest from the basic tenets of what makes anything usable today on the internet: convenience and transparency.

For most auto dealer appointment schedulers, by design the dealer wants to collect as much information as they can get, while the customer wants to give as little information as possible but still make an appointment.

How do you bridge this gap?:

It is a very important gap because if you make it difficult, the customer goes elsewhere. Or, maybe they don't go elsewhere, but they pick up the phone and call your call center. Then you scratch your head and wonder why you are only getting between 10 and 15% of your appointments online, even in today's COVID-19 environment.

What should happen:

Ideally what should happen is the customer identifies themselves simply: by either typing their phone number or their email address. You ask them which car they are bringing in (if they have more than one) and present them with a bunch of time slots to make an appointment.

Don't ask them to pick a service advisor!:

You know how many appointments you can make! If you have only five service advisors that day and you can make six appointments per service advisor just put 30 slots up and when those slots are full, move the customer to the next day.

Put up a comment box that lets them just type why they are coming in and if they have any special requests like they want to see a specific service advisor.

Text them back a confirmation stating that you got their request and have their slot reserved. Now read their comments and see if you need to talk to them to confirm that the time allocated will be sufficient and if there is more repair needed. When you do contact them, if you realize that they need a lot more, then offer them a loaner or an Uber voucher.

Just make it easy and make it convenient.

Don't overcomplicate it!:

Their job is to come to your store and your job is to make it easy.

How my ISP does it:

I needed to upgrade my internet from 100Mbps to 500 Mbps. I chatted with my ISP online, and they confirmed the upgrade and said the new charge would hit my credit card once the tech had come in to change and test the new equipment.

The agent asked me to make an appointment for the tech to visit me.

I received a text asking, “do you want to make an appointment?”

I said, “Yes.” They offered me a bunch of slots, I picked one and they sent me a confirmation saying the slot was “reserved” and to send the word “Change” if I needed to change the appointment.

On the day of the appointment, my schedule had changed, and I could not see the technician that day. I sent the word “Change,” they offered me revised slots, I picked another day and the technician came and diagnosed that I needed some further equipment. They asked me to make another appointment via text, and he came that day and fixed my internet. And oh, by the way, on the day of the appointment when he was on the way to my home, I got a text and could track him coming to my house a-la Uber!

Imagine if this is how it worked with online schedulers for auto dealers.

Moral of the story: Take care of the customer!

Long Beach, CA —January 31, 2020 — myKaarma, the leading communications and payments software provider for automotive dealer service departments, today announced the launch of Service Cart. The mobile repair recommendation tool is designed to improve customer transparency and convenience by enabling instant approval and feedback from the customer. This results in higher retention, shorter authorization times, a significant lift in repair recommendation acceptance rates and higher customer pay dollars. Service customers receive easy to understand inspections in the form of a "Service Cart,” and with just one-click can approve technician recommended work. All recommendations are shown with prices, videos, and pictures of the customer’s vehicle shot by the technician, highlighting why the work is needed. Dealers using myKaarma’s Service Cart are realizing more than 40 percent acceptance of additional service recommendations.

Service Cart includes documented photos and videos, the ability to translate inspections into over 100 languages, declined services follow up through myKaarma messaging, and complete integration with the full myKaarma product suite and notification system.

According to myKaarma CEO Ujj Nath, Service Cart makes dealership customers the focus, resulting in significant financial and customer retention lifts. “There is a reason Amazon represents almost half of all eCommerce trade. It is because they make it so easy for you to interact – two clicks and you can order anything. When we built the Service Cart interface, we made the customer approval process a mirror image of Amazon and just as transparent for the customer. They can view photos and videos of the work needed on their vehicle, and with one simple click the estimate is accepted and the work can start,” said Nath. “Service Cart also introduces a brand-new concept where the customer can request an estimate for some piece of work they feel needs to be done on their vehicle. This is proving to be a revolutionary feature. With myKaarma’s enhanced video attributes and seamless communication choices, dealers are converting a significant amount of additional service recommendations,” Nath added.

Jeff Diers, Parts and Service Director at Planet Hyundai and Genesis, in Golden, CO, runs a busy service department at his Hyundai store, writing around 1,200 Repair Orders a month. He is piloting the system and has seen a 99.74 percent lift in Cash Pay ROs by using Service Cart to text recommendations to customers so they can view the accompanying photos and videos and subsequently approve the recommended work.

“Our Hyundai store has seen a decrease in declined recommendations and a 99.74% lift in Cash Pay Repair Orders for inspections when conducted with viewed media through Service Cart, compared to without. That is a significant increase in profitability. Our CSI has also increased, and we now have one of the highest ratings in our district,” said Diers.

One of the aspects Diers likes most about the system is the advanced communication features, “The platform enables us to assign one number to an advisor which the customer can use to text or call. The fact that the customer does not have to go through a switchboard or remember an extension is huge! I also love the cutting-edge electronic MPI that enables us to communicate back and forth with the customer. They can view photos and videos on their mobile device and then with a simple click approve the recommendations. This has resulted in a huge boost in approvals. If you are not going forward, you are going backward and myKaarma is constantly developing their technology to give us the next bump in our CSI and revenue,” Diers stated.

Service Cart is fully integrated with myKaarma's full software suite which runs on mobile phones, desktop, and tablet computers, offering two main features: end-to-end customer communication and payments. The communications tools are designed to blend seamlessly into a service advisor's daily workflow. They can be used across various mediums of communication, including voice, text, and email. The full platform, service@home, includes pickup and delivery, video walkarounds, and driver tracking, along with the communications and payment features. It is all seamlessly integrated and synced with the DMS.

The software enables service advisors to send photos and videos to customers which more clearly explain their repair recommendations. They can then receive real-time authorization for additional work. Once the service process is complete, customers have multiple options for paying their bills, including online, eliminating any wait at the dealership when they pick up their vehicle.

Service departments that implement myKaarma’s cloud-based software tools enjoy an average lift in dollars per repair order of 37%, a 50% reduction in voicemails left with advisors, a near 100% reduction in authorization disputes, a 33% decrease in loaner car days, and a boost in CSI scores. They also gain access to a comprehensive real-time record of communication with their customers and a bird's eye view of the service department that allows them to manage their operations more efficiently.

For more information visit: www.mykaarma.com, call 562-287-5527, or drop by booth #6243N at the 2020 NADA Show in Las Vegas, NV, February 15-17. To schedule a demo at NADA click here:

About myKaarma:

myKaarma is a cloud-based software company that focuses on enhancing the retail experience of service customers and increasing franchised dealerships revenue. The myKaarma platform provides 21st-century technology for digital conversations (Text, Email, Voice, video, photos) and payments (Mobile, Point-of-Sale) with auto-reconciliation. The full platform, service@home, includes pickup and delivery, video walkarounds, driver tracking along with the communications and payment features all seamlessly integrated and synced with the DMS.

myKaarma Media Contact:

Sara Callahan

Carter West Public Relations

727-288-2159

Would you like to hear a ridiculous, unbelievable ROI statement? Well, one luxury brand dealership integrated technician videos into its service processes and, in only seven days, made +$250K in customer pay recommended work revenue. In fact, 80% of all closed repair orders for the week had a technician video sent to the customer.

Why do technician videos work?

They create transparency and build trust because the customer hears the diagnosis and the recommended repair from the "horse's mouth" (the technician), and by the way, the video is in the technician's own words without needing a theatrical production crew! The majority of customers don't understand most service recommendations and will choose to decline so they can leave and ask family or friends if the specific repair recommended is needed. Videos build trust and dramatically improve acceptance rates.

Videos are the most effective form of communication, second only to a customer standing in the repair bay and talking to the technician. Seeing is believing.

I know what you're thinking, "I don't run a luxury dealership, and my repair order estimates are drastically lower than a typical luxury dealership." Well, lucky for you, I have some data from non-luxury dealerships as well.

A low-to-midline dealership added technician videos into its service process and within 25 days achieved a $15,800 increase in customer pay revenue. Also, that was with just 30% of all RO's having a technician video sent to the customer. So, now can you see the opportunity for increased service revenue?

Dealerships that adopt technician videos should expect sustained growth as the technicians get used to the process and increase the use of video to the 100% mark, which is the recommended best practice.

Once you build transparency and customer trust around what the technician is recommending, customers are much more likely to approve the recommended work.

How many hoops do you have to jump through to get a $5k-$10k increase in service revenue? And at what cost? Traditional mailer or email list marketing? Expensive local print, radio, or TV advertisements?

Try this!

Implementing a process that allows your current customers to accept recommended repairs through technician videos is much more effective. It is also significantly less expensive than spending money on service marketing, attempting to lure customers back into the dealership after they have left.

Most marketing doesn't include individual one-on-one conversations. Technician videos do. Consumers are much more likely to respond to, trust, and accept service recommendations when they are specific to their vehicle. When they can view and understand the needed repair; and when they are personalized and sent in a way that the customer prefers, be that by email or text; they respond in a much more favorable fashion.

If you adopt technician videos in service, your dealership could reduce much of its service marketing budget while, at the same time, increasing service revenue. 

Isn't that the ultimate goal?

I have been studying Amazon and unknown to me, they seem to follow the same principle that I promote to dealers. I call it the Circle of Convenience and Trust.   

Amazon obsesses about convenience. I am sure some of you suffer from the "brown box syndrome." A brown box arrives on your doorstep every day. Amazon makes it so easy that I sometimes order something in between two meetings -- in just 30 seconds. Amazon’s ease of use is working for them. Check out these numbers!

But all of this would mean nothing if Amazon didn't offer such a high level of transparency and did not push that in their marketing. They inform you when the package has shipped, you can track it to your house and, when it is within your vicinity, they even show you the delivery van a-la Uber!

Today's consumers are so used to this type of convenience they now expect it from every retailer including your dealership. The most forward-thinking dealers are responding with services such as pick-up and delivery for vehicle service. I have seen this done many times and it dramatically increases CSI and service department profitability. Today's customers prefer to do business with you from the convenience of their homes.

Every retailer is getting in on this game. Panera Bread recently rolled out its delivery program across the United States, and now delivery revenue is 30% of all digital sales. And that's for sandwiches and coffee! Domino’s Pizza even allows consumers to order their favorite pizza without doing anything! Just open the app and, via a countdown, you can place the same order, have it delivered to the same address and pay for it by the same credit card! Talk about 0-Click ordering!!

While getting a pizza, sandwich or burrito delivered may save you 10-30 minutes over going to the restaurant to pick it up, when it comes to vehicle service, pickup and delivery can save your customers considerably more time.

How long does it typically take your customers to drive to the dealership, wait in the service lane to get checked in, talk to a service advisor, get a loaner vehicle, and then drive back to their office or home? 1 hour? 1.5 hours? Then you have to add in the time it takes to return to the dealership, drop off the loaner, finish the paperwork, get in their vehicle and drive to their home or back to the office -- Another hour? Maybe 1.5 hours? And that's if there are no surprises, bad traffic, advisor at lunch, etc., etc.

If it is important to your customers to save 20 minutes in their day by getting food delivered, how can your dealership expect them to give up 2-3 hours to drop off and pick up their vehicles at your dealership? My best bet is that, in the case of regular maintenance, they will avoid your dealership altogether and take their car into the closest Jiffy Lube!

Think it’s too expensive to provide a pickup and delivery option? In some dealership’s pilot programs, I have seen a 57% lift in RO dollars per vehicle that is picked up, serviced, and then delivered back to the customer.

Pickup and delivery isn’t just for a dealership’s “elite” customer base. This service should be for all your customers. They all shop on Amazon and eat at Panera Bread and Dominos and so EXPECT this type of convenience. Customer convenience is a competitive advantage, whether you are selling burritos or servicing /selling automobiles.

Don’t let the cross-town competition steal your customers because they provide a more convenient service option. The longer your dealership waits to accommodate your customers, the harder it will be to catch up and get those customers back. 

Many businesses focus on improving customer convenience as a means to expand their reach and volume of commerce. It’s not just Internet companies such as Amazon, but some of the most substantial brick and mortar chains, including Wal-Mart, Costco, Best Buy, Office Depot and several major grocery store chains. Adding options that increase customer convenience & transparency produces substantial increases in revenue due to broader market size and radius, along with increased market share for local stores. Not to mention the fact that your recommendations are approved due to the higher level of trust from increased transparency.

A great case in point is Costco, the sixth most valuable retail brand in the WORLD. In 2018 it increased e-Commerce business by 32.2%; an additional $5.8 BILLION in revenue. Similarly, the electronics chain Best Buy (which many wrote off as doomed to fail because of Amazon), changed its strategy and embraced customer convenience. As a result, it saw a revenue increase of $1.21 BILLION in the 2nd quarter of 2018. It certainly sounds like customer convenience is working, right?

A 2018 Quest for Convenience Report by Nielsen studied the six factors driving consumers’ quest for convenience. It found that today’s consumers want convenience at every stage of shopping and brand engagement with products and services. According to the study, a primary factor which affects consumer choice is how you solve consumer needs through convenience. Do you make it easy, useful and straightforward? And in doing so do you help the consumer make better use of their time, or give them time back?

Another critical point found is that businesses should get ahead of the curve by thinking convenience in everything they do from home delivery to loyalty data to machine learning.

Consumers are busier than ever, and convenience is now the leading factor that affects who they chose to do business with – you or your competitor across town. Today, even local grocery stores offer online ordering where a customer can just drive up, and an employee loads their car up with groceries, or if they prefer, deliver it to their home. This is slowly transforming into the normal versus the “new thing.”

It’s time to think differently about how to make the customer experience more convenient for your service customers. Offering Pickup and Delivery is a natural extension that customers are familiar with and already appreciate. Who wouldn’t want to have a dealership pick up their vehicle from their home or office, service it and return it without them ever having to leave the premises?

The auto service, Fixed Operations, side of your business is the money maker. Adding online convenience-based service options for your customers will grow revenue, add more local customers, expand your PMA, drive new customer acquisition and increase your bottom line!

Not sure where to start? A good place is with online scheduling and Pickup and Delivery, as I mentioned earlier. One other thing that is easy to add is technology that ensures customers can communicate with you and you with them via their preferred method, be it text, email or phone.

The name of the game in this modern world is convenience and transparency. Failure to keep up, adapt, and provide what your customers want will merely mean you lose business to competitors that do.

While in this blog, the focus was on convenience, in my future blogs I will talk about transparency and the feedback loop.

Does your service department software remove friction for your customers but add friction for your staff? Perhaps that is why we see so many software companies come and go in this industry.

With today’s transformation from a dealership-centric focus to one that is more customer-centric, technology companies are rapidly developing solutions that create better customer experiences. This is indeed necessary for a society that is hyper-focused on convenience and even more focused on saving time.

Customer experience software solutions are definitely something your dealership should have, and if you don’t, you should be looking into them. But merely investing in a software solution that makes the experience better for the customer isn't enough. It is essential to understand that the "customer experience" part of the solution doesn't happen just because the vendor tells you that the software makes it so.

Dealership employees are a vital link in the chain that powers that software, creating the desired experience. As they say, a chain is only as strong as it's the weakest link. If the software your dealership adopts is designed to improve the customer experience but just ends up making things difficult for your staff, creating internal friction, you won’t see the desired outcome, and the solution will ultimately fail.

Service staff just won’t use a complicated system set up in a completely different way to their service workflow, creating friction. Who wants a software where you have to “do work to do work?”. Some systems are so hard to use that employees end up using a clipboard or a post-it to record their notes and then try and catch up later. An average advisor has as many as 15-20 different responsibilities, and so it is not surprising that these tools just don’t’ get used.

In addition to improving the customer experience, any service department software needs to make it easier for your staff to record their work, create reminders, etc. – removing friction on their end just as it does on the customer’s end. Only then will the links in the chain be strong and the technology solution operates smoothly. The ultimate benefits should not just include improving customer experience and retention, but also decreasing turnover, workload capacities, and throughput.

I have personally seen that the way most successful dealers run a frictionless service department is by ensuring that their service advisors do NOT have to focus on the inane and mundane, but instead on what is important to their customers.

By placing the customer front and center, this automatically brings about the desired results and increases acceptance of recommended work, because the customers get the attention they need and want. They feel that the service advisors are being transparent, and the service advisors can build the trust they need to achieve service recommendation success.

Take an inside out view of your technology and analyze all of your software from both aspects – customer and employee friction. If it doesn’t reduce both in this simple analysis, then it is likely to fail entirely at improving your service operation.

service@home™ extends service department access to meet the demands of today’s busy customers

LONG BEACH, Calif.,-- January 24, 2019 -- -- myKaarma, software that helps dealerships communicate better with their customers at every stage of the service process, right from check-in through to payment, today announced the launch of service@home™, which helps auto dealers deliver exceptional customer service to anyone unable to visit the dealership for their service needs. myKaarma’s service@home™ extends its products capabilities beyond a dealer’s service department doors.

According to myKaarma CEO Ujj Nath, dealerships need to adapt to consumer expectations which companies including Amazon, Uber, Google, and Costco have trained today’s customers to expect. “Using our service@home™ technology provides auto dealer customers with the simplicity of getting walkarounds with pickup and delivery features. service@home™ offers customers the option to have the service department pick up their vehicle and bring it back for service without disrupting their daily schedule. It’s a simple transparent process for the customer and the service department,” Nath stated.

The process is as follows: The customer makes an appointment. A driver is then dispatched to pick up the customer’s vehicle at the time and location they requested. The service@home™ platform live tracks the driver's route which can easily be viewed by both the dealership and the customer. Once the driver is at the pickup place, they conduct a video walkaround to confirm the condition of the vehicle.

The driver then returns the vehicle to the dealership (routing is live tracked again, reassuring the customer with transparency) where the RO is opened.

The service advisor is in constant contact with the customer through myKaarma’s communication features (text, voice, email) and can send pictures and technician videos about additional recommended vehicle repairs.

Customers receive a notification when their vehicle is completed, and an invoice is sent. Customers can pay online, or when the vehicle is delivered back to them.

“Today the vehicle drop off and pick up process at dealerships is very archaic. Customers want convenience and transparency based on their busy schedules and how they want to do business in the digital age. service@home™ from myKaarma solves these pain points while increasing customer satisfaction and revenues for your dealership,” Nath stated.

For more information, or to schedule a product demonstration, stop by booth # 6459W at the 2019 NADA Show in San Francisco, CA, Jan 25-27, 2019, or visit www.mykaarma.com .

About myKaarma:

myKaarma is a cloud-based software company that focuses on enhancing the retail experience of service customers and increasing franchised dealerships revenue. The myKaarma platform gives dealerships the ability to offer 21st-century technology for digital conversations (Text, Email, Voice, video, photos) and payments (Mobile, Point-of-Sale) with auto-reconciliation. The full platform, service@home, includes pickup and delivery, video walkarounds, driver tracking along with the communications and payments features all seamlessly integrated and synced with your DMS

myKaarma Media Contact:

Kent Mihlbauer

562-349-1356

Kent.Mihlbauer@myKaarma.com

Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently tweeted that he wanted to take Tesla private, which has garnered a lot of attention. Hey, I realize that Tesla as a company can be a polarizing issue in our automotive industry. But this is something you may want to pay attention to.

Here’s why:

Public company CEOs are notoriously beholden to quarterly projections. If you’re not familiar with the stock market, every quarter, the CEO and CFO of publicly-traded companies have a “earnings” call with an analyst to share financial performance, projections etc., and additionally they provide “guidance” for the upcoming quarter.

Truth be told, secretly most CEOs of public companies hate this practice because to compete they are often focused on research and development with an eye on long term viability, rather than the next quarter profit. Similar to meetings dealers have with their District Operations Managers (DOMs), except that these dealer calls happen every month with questions such as: “How many units will you sell next month (new and CPO?); and “How much revenue is expected in fixed ops?” etc.

The answers dealers give to their DOMs are very similar to the answers tech companies give to Wall Street… they are guesses. No dealership knows without a doubt exactly how many vehicles they will sell next month. They simply set goals by forecasting based on sales achieved at the same time the previous year, combined with inventory quantity, dealership traffic, promotions and staff talent. But, in the end, it’s all just a guess. Just like the answers these large tech companies are forced to give.

Take a look at Amazon. Jeff Bezos lost money daily. When investors asked “why?” he responded that if Amazon stopped R&D expenses they would be profitable the next day but it’s future would be more profitable by continuing to invest in R&D until they had a rock-solid base, then they could make money. And now they have topped almost a trillion-dollar valuation. In fact, according to TechCrunch, Amazon now accounts for an astounding 49% of e-commerce in the United States.

Tesla is following a very similar path. It is also mainly a R&D company, constantly innovating and coming up with new, crazy but viable ideas. It is also losing money on a daily basis. But it continues on the R&D path.

When market analysts and Wall Street come knocking on Elon Musk’s door, he’s barraged with the same questions thrown at Amazon. Perhaps his Twitter announcement about going private is his way of voicing frustration about having to answer these questions with guesses. By taking Tesla private (he has since backed away from this position as wall street also controls his capital raises), he can perhaps avoid answering these questions and simply continue to innovate.

Only time will tell. Business plans and net worth for R&D-based companies are always predictions and guesses, not precise. When you miss estimates, Wall Street will kill you, but it also has a short memory and, should Tesla succeed, it will be forgiven.

So, getting back to why dealers should care. Well, here’s the deal: As much as you may dislike the distribution model Tesla is trying to achieve, if Tesla and Elon succeed, dealers like you will have to live with it.

I believe Tesla only need achieve a 2% market share to make it a viable and authentic automotive manufacturer. As of July 2018, it has already achieved a 1.44% market share, exceeding sales of the BMW 2,3,4 and 5 series; Mercedes C, CLA, CLS and E-Class; Audi A3-A7; Lexus ES, GS, IS and RC; Cadillac ATS, CT6, CTS and XTS; Infiniti Q50 and Q60; Acura RLX and TLX; Volvo 60 and 90 series; and Jaguar XE and XF!

Love them or hate them, it certainly appears that Tesla is successfully gaining ground – and quickly.

While you may not be a fan of Tesla, you certainly should be planning for the day Tesla becomes a true automotive manufacturer (in terms of market share). I would advise you to start now and invest in making your dealership a convenient & transparent place to do business and invest in the long term!