This morning I sat through a training/refresher course hosted by the Central Atlantic Toyota’s Internet ad agency, PIVNet. Usually I loathe these types of meetings, but Toyota does things so pro-actively I enjoy theirs.

As an employee of a dealer group who carries multiple franchises, I get to work with many different automotive “cultures.” Of the manufacturers I work with, nobody does Internet marketing as well as Toyota. They are leaps and bounds ahead of the pack. They do not dictate which third party vendors a dealer must use (Scion being the exception), and they do not cram a ton of compliancy standards down our throats. Do not get me wrong, Toyota has compliancy standards, but those standards make sense. Toyota contributes DMA money toward dealers’ Internet expenses and provide numerous things to help dealers be better online.

Why are other manufacturers so far behind in this regard? Some manufacturers actually handicap our ability to do business by forcing so many things upon us. It makes me believe some manufacturers view retail sales as a very simple business, and dealers are just lazy or incompetent. Why do some manufacturers force us to use their CRM tool, their site design company, and change compliancy standards for the Internet? I can understand some circumstances of the past when dealers fought the Internet, but this is not fully the case today. Why do these manufacturers continue to practice old-school ruler-slapping? Why not just take the approach they had before the Internet: if you don’t sell the cars, and keep up your customer service, we take your franchise away? Give us some compliancy standards, and step back. Or better yet, take the Toyota approach and help!

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Sorry for the lack of postings and comments over the last week. I was in NYC for a few days attending the Mercedes-Benz Internet Marketing Dealer Advisory Committee.

It is an honor and interesting committee to be apart of. It’s made up of about 10 dealers, most of which are GM’s and/or owners with only a few actual Internet / BDC managers. We also have several people from Mercedes-Benz corporate; Justin Colon and Inigo Mazquiaran (head of Internet Marketing for Mercedes-Benz USA), several regional marketing managers, a few guys from the IT department along with Bill Hunt and Mabel Estrella from Critical Mass.

The topics of conversation gets interesting, especially when you have such a mix of younger and older thinking in the same room. It’s common to hear the old school voice their opinions about many of the subjects like; dealer search on the MBUSA website, new vehicle display on your dealer websites and SEO/SEM guidelines, just to name a few.

The best part of this committee meeting is that it gives me plenty of topics to blog about.

One topic of heated conversation was the displaying of new car inventory on your website. Many of the dealers on the committee are against showing their actual new car inventory on their website. I understand why; we can usually get whatever the consumer wants even if we do not have it in stock. However, the average consumer is looking for instant gratification and dealers risk loosing one of “our customers” to the dealer that has the car in stock.

So what is the answer? Do you display new car inventory or not?

The latest statistic according to Kelley Blue Book Marketing Research shows that consumers want to see dealers list their new vehicle inventory online. Well of course they do!! They want instant gratification AND if you are not already aware, my generation and this upcoming generation are NOT loyal to anyone!! So if you don’t have the car…we will go the dealer that does.

Is there a way around this while also serving today’s consumer?

What about “virtual inventory”?

Does a vehicle configurator fill this void?

I thought I knew the answer to this but now I’m not sure. Since I’m a smaller store and I go up against some really big dogs less then 50 minutes away, I use an inventory tool (shameless plug for Homenet IOL here) that allows me to “lock inventory”, building my own virtual inventory. I sometimes lock a car as in-stock if I know I have another vehicle like it in transit from the port. This allow me to get my inventory in front of the consumers before it hits the showroom floor, while also allowing me to have a larger selection of vehicles to display.

If you are reading this again, you will notice that I have made a few changes and deletions to the last few paragraphs. After reading it for myself several times, I can see where a few readers are coming from with their comments. I have also given some deep thought into the practice of locking particular vehicles in stock and concluded maybe some of my readers are right. I’ve thought long and hard about this and somehow I took 2 steps backwards and maybe became a product of that  “old school” dealer mentality; something that I’m not an advocate of. I want to thank DealerRefresh readers for their opinions and feedback but mostly for bringing me back to reality!

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A dangerous this world has become. Its 11:54PM on a Wednesday night and I’m sitting here writing my next posting for DealerRefresh (that will be posted soon after this). I’m sitting here listening to a MP3 that I downloaded from allofmp3.com (some rock’n Russian MP3 music site). But somehow the MP3 has become corrupted and a few songs are not playing throughout. I love this album so much that I jump onto Amazon.com, search for “Gabriel & Dresden” and in less then a second, there it is! Not only is there the album that I want to buy but also a recommendation for another re-mix album that I was not aware even existed. In less then 1 minute I have spent over $40.00 (but with free shipping) on 2 CD’s. My god, how awesome is that?

A true example of how my generation shops and the power of the internet at work.

Some might ask..”Jeff, why did you not just download it from iTunes and have it within seconds?” Because I hate itunes and why should I spend over $10.00 for an album with less then CD quality when I can own the whole album for the same price and compress it into any format I want?

Why did I post this? Cause I can, and to also show how my generation goes about buying stuff.

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First off, I would like to thank Jeff for giving me the
opportunity to be a guest author on Dealer Refresh.

As an eleven-brand franchised dealer, I get to work with
many different business ideologies.  From Korea to Germany the ideological differences can be just as extreme as the geographic distances between these OEMs. These ideologies are also displayed by their customers. To make things more convoluted is the regional demographic differences within the United States. It is true that some areas favor specific brands to other ones. In plain terms, each brand has its own personality.

Over the past 5 years I have watched Internet traffic patterns shift all over the various brands we carry. Our dealer site has grown exponentially in traffic, but our lead conversion rate has remained relatively the same. I attribute this to a major decrease in VW, Audi, and Scion leads while brands like Toyota, BMW, and Honda have jumped up quite a bit. Volkswagen, Audi, and Scion are said to have the highest Internet-using clients of all the brands we carry. Why are these customers no longer submitting inquiries? I can see these customers are still browsing our website, and for a long period of time.

I came up with the idea that these customers have realized that there are not too many advantages to using the Internet department when purchasing a car. I’m not speaking about my dealership, but the industry in general. The most savvy Internet customers have already gone through the “traditional Internet-lead process” for one or two cars, and may have figured out ways to side-step the Internet department.  With the vast amount of information available, is there a need to go through the Internet department if they are just going to work with someone else on the showroom floor? Have these people developed the belief that the Internet department is not going to provide any better price than can be negotiated on the floor?

How do we pull the most savvy Internet customers back to the lead pool? Do we want to?

I have an opinion, but I would like to hear from the community first.

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Back in August of 2006, I was mystery shopping on Edmunds. I wanted to see what type of responses I would get if I requested a price quote for a Mercedes-Benz E350. I of course figured I would get my own lead (since I purchase my New Car lead from AutoUSA), but was hoping that I would get a response from one of my competitors as well.

I did receive my own lead and rightfully so. I called up my AutoUSA rep and explained that it was a test lead and they had no problem replacing it with another valid lead.

Then in Feburary of 07, something weird happened and  AutoUSA sold me the same lead again..same name, same car, everything exact. Keep in mind, I NEVER used the same name to shop for another vehicle within that time frame. At first I thought it was a glitch with my eLead CRM. But when I logged into my AutoUSA account and there is was! 

I found this to be a little disturbing and was very disappointed in AutoUSA since I usually get my best leads from them. Receiving my own lead after mystery shopping was expected. Buying the exact lead again made me question.

Monday morning 4/29/2007 I log into my CRM only to find Maire Zahn, the same lead in there AGAIN! Same name, same vehicle, SAME LEAD! Let me point out again, I DID NOT USE this name to mystery shop. It would have been Sunday and I was doing yard work all day so there is no way I used my Sunday to mystery shop dealers.

Basically I had been SOLD the exact same customer lead 2 times over from AutoUSA. I’ve heard this happens quite often from someone that is a veteran in the 3rd party lead business. Apparently it’s common practice for many Lead vendors to resell leads to dealers after a period of time of the initial request. Their thought is; since many dealers do not execute the right amount of follow-up and in order to uphold their services and reputation, it’s a good idea to resell the leads after a period of time. Maybe they run the customer leads up against a DMV database of customers that have bought vehicles in the last 90 days?

Anyways, I again called my AutoUSA Rep to point out the fact that this was the second time. For some reason, he quickly got on the defense and said (and I quote) " That’s part of the business". WOW, I was not expecting that type of response. I was only calling to point out what happened and maybe who they are buying this lead from is reselling to them. Whatever the case maybe, something isn’t kosher here.

I’m not accusing AutoUSA of anything specific here and I’m really surprised I’m having this issue with AutoUSA. Like I mentioned before, I usually get my best leads from them. BUT I am disappointed that a quality lead provider is participating in such possible tactics.

Have you experienced this? What’s your feedback?

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