It’s a Friday evening and a lead comes in from Dealix or AutoUSA at 8:12 pm.
You call the customer right away (cause you know Friday night leads are
Saturday morning appointments), you get them on the phone right away
and schedule the appointment for Saturday morning. The customer arrives
(late of course) and you demo the
car, ask for the sale and close the customer. The end of the month
rolls around and you hand in your MTD Sold sheet to the GM. The General
Manager reviews your sales sheet and says..

"Well, I’m not sure if we should count this customer, they would have bought here anyways since we have sold them a car before."

The blood pressure rises, your face gets beet red and you say..OOkkayy.

You’re thinking to your yourself..You prove to me that they would have bought from our dealer anyways! BUT on the flip side, YOU prove to the GM that they would have NOT bought from the dealer anyways.

So lets look at it
this way..

What if..a customer lives in your hometown and also bought
their last vehicle from you. They’re on edmunds.com shopping for their
next vehicle and narrowing down their choices. They decide to submit for a price quote from your dealer AND the next closest dealer. Your dealer isn’t up on their game (or better yet, your dealer doesn’t
even purchase leads from that 3rd party lead provider and you never
even get the lead), your competitive dealer gets the lead and makes the
phone call right away. The customer answers and the sales person is
GREAT on the phone…building rapport and making great conversation.
Lets say the customer even says…"well, I like to keep my business
local and I have bought my past cars from the local dealer" (yea, I
know I’m digging deep
here). The Internet sales person on the other end says "you know Mrs
Smith, I totally understand and I appreciate the fact that you like to
keep your business local BUT we are having a HUGE sale this weekend and
I know I can save you thousands of dollars that your local dealer can’t.
We are a much larger dealer and are able to give larger discounts..what
time Saturday morning can you come in?"

SO..you tell me, would that customer have bought from your dealer anyways?

Here is another great article from Cliff Banks. “E-Mail or Phone? Don’t Let the Customer Decide”.

Not sure what it is, but Mr. Banks articles always stick out (for me atleast) and this was another one that I felt as it I should post about. I don’t even know Cliff Banks but if you happen to read this, shoot me an email or call me!

This article talks about 2 difference perspectives when using email or the phone for contacting the customer. There is no doubt in my mind, the quicker you can get the customer on the phone the better your chances are making the appointment and getting that consumer in the showroom. I know when I’m on the consumer side, once I set an appointment, my shopping process slows down. I have an appointment and I no longer need to shop as much. That’s just the mental state that my brain goes into.

YES, you will always get that customer that gets offended or just wanted to communicate via email. I think many times (and I’m guilty of this myself at times) we focus too much on the minority rather then the majority. Majority of your customers actually appreciate a phone call.

Take a moment and think about this for a second, if you put your legit phone number in a form, are you not expecting or at least inviting a phone call? If a consumer fills out a form on your website or any other 3rd party site and they include their legit phone number, they don’t mind getting a phone call.

The consumer that wants information or pricing without a phone call will just leave the phone number portion blank or fill it in with a bogus number. It’s that simple!

In all of my years in internet sales I bet I can count on 1 hand the amount of customers that were upset that I called them. And that’s such an easy objective to overcome.
Make those phone calls!

This reminds me of an older posting of mine “My Lending Tree experience”

The Internet Sales Manager at our Toyota dealer had pointed out to me that my Mercedes dealer website was indexing in the top 5 positions on Google for “Hagerstown Toyota Camry”. She was astounded and upset at the same time (I thought it was funny). She kept trying to get out of me how I could get just one of my used Toyota’s to index just as high as her Toyota website, but that’s another posting.

While I was on Google, replicating what the Toyota ISM had seen, I found something interesting. A small 3 form search box showed up with Location, Make and Model. This is the first I had seen this search form. It’s obvious that Google it testing different ways of tying google base into their search. Take a look;

Once you submit your search criteria you are taken a more advance google vehicle search with result listings and a corresponding map for the location of the vehicle.

Getting your vehicle inventory into Google base is something you should seriously look into if you’re not already doing so. Cars.com, Automotive.com, ebizauto.com and a few others out there have some direct feeds to google base. If you have the knowledge, you could set up your own feed as well..it’s free! Consumers can also subscribe to the RSS feed, letting know when new listings appear!

The NADA dealer 2007 convention will be held in Las Vegas on February 2007 – 3rd
through the 7th.

If you are an exhibitor that offers products for “Internet Sales, Internet Marketing, CRM / ILM, Websites etc for dealers, post your Business Name, Products and Services here if you will be attending NADA 2007!
- Consider it free advertising and a link to your website!

Advance registration is open
for NADA’s 90th annual Convention and Exposition on their website.

To quote the NADA page..”Your competition will be there. More than 25,000 industry professionals count
on the NADA Convention for the full spectrum of innovations in education,
equipment and emerging technologies. With 600+ leading product and service
providers spanning more space than at any other automobile dealer trade show in
the world in 2007. NADA offers the ultimate in comparison shopping and
face-to-face meetings with suppliers.”

Are you attending?
If so, let my readers know!

Last year Search Engine Optimization (SEO or SEM) was the HUGE
craze. What will this years NADA Convention for dealers in 2007 bring?

Again; If you are an exhibitor that offers products for “Internet Sales, Internet Marketing, CRM / ILM, Websites etc for dealers, post your Business Name, Products and Services here if you will be attending NADA 2007!

I just bought the new
BlackBerry Pearl phone and was surfing the internet on it’s browser. The phone came pre-linked to Mobileplay.com. I was impressed with all the features the site had to offer for mobile browsers but what caught my eye the most was the small banner ad at the top of the Mobileplay.com home page.

Before I go any further, I have to say..if you are in the market for a new phone and you are an Internet Sales Manager, you have to seriously check out this phone. Ten email accounts plus business email!!

Anyways…at the top of the Mobileplay homepage was an Acura ad for the new MDX. When you click on the ad, it takes you to a mini landing page where you can enter your email address for more information and to keep updated via email.

Props to Acura for some truly forward thinking in the advertising arena. Here are some screen shots of the ad…

I thought this was a great idea! What are your thoughts?