First off, I must admit this article is purely speculation based on rumors – it is about the future, and not set in stone.

Two things have come up this week, which are major concerns for me. One deals with the two big DMS providers: Reynolds & Reynolds and ADP. The second is something I heard about Toyota. We all know privacy laws have become more stringent than ever and continually evolve to encapsulate wider venues almost daily. It was simply a matter of time before the DMS providers had to jump on the privacy band-wagon by creating their own set of requirements.  This should be nothing new for a Reynolds & Reynolds dealer. Mostly this will affect third-party vendors. As an ADP dealer I am beginning to become familiar with their upcoming process. It seems as though they are offering vendors two steps: 1) The vendor has to purchase an API to gain DMS access (about $80,000) and 2) become certified through ADP (about an 18 month process…currently). Fortunately, dealers will be able to send out some information to vendors, but the more DMS information a vendor interacts with the harder it will be for that organization. I foresee the next few years being difficult in working with DMS information and vendors. We will have a short list of approved vendors to choose from.

To further shorten that list is the second part: our manufacturers. This part fully comes from the rumor-mill, but I heard Toyota is considering a new mandate. The mandate will require dealers to only use approved CRM/ILM vendors. This will be more stringent than what Honda currently does. Honda only wants to monitor certain areas of how Internet leads are handled, so they require a dealer to use a pre-approved list of vendors or offer dealers to pull leads through their own Honda Interactive Network. From what I heard about Toyota, they are considering only passing leads to dealers who use one of their pre-approved CRM/ILM vendors, and not offering any other alternatives to access Toyota leads. Speculation on the rumor vine, also states Toyota will take things even further by requiring the whole dealership use one of these vendors. Toyota is interested in not only how Internet leads are handled, but showroom traffic as well. Typically Toyota sets the franchise premises, so it is only a matter of time before other OEM’s move in the same direction.

If speculation becomes fact, this could mean dealers have an extremely short list of vendors to choose from. And dealer groups could be even more limited as one manufacturer requires a particular CRM/ILM that another manufacturer may not.

Can you see what a mess all of this could put all of us in?

P.S. One more time, this is purely speculation from the rumor-mill. I mention it on DealerRefresh to give everyone a heads-up on a potentially difficult future.

Premium Partner with AutoTrader - Again!

Well I did it again. I signed up for another year as a Premium Partner with AutoTrader for their 2007 product.

I was tempted to drop down to the Featured Listings package or get rid of AutoTrader all together and shift my budget over to Cars.com. Not because AutoTrader doesn’t perform well for us, but due to the increase in pricing. We are a smaller dealer and I’m lucky to have 50 used cars on the lot at any given time. Once you take the monthly price and spread it out amongst all my used cars, I was already spending more then I like per car for advertising.

What keeps me going with AutoTrader is the positive ROI I’ve been able to track using the service. Even with the high cost per lead and advertising cost per car, the ROI makes total sense to continue on for another year. Though if they keep hiking their price, this may be my last signed contract.

My biggest complaint I have with AutoTrader is with the price increase each year, they try to sell me on the new “added features” that do nothing to sell me more cars. Like adding the ability to add more photos of your dealer for your dealership profile or the new “Reduced” icon that shows up when you change your pricing (being a Mercedes dealers I think it sort of cheapens the car).

The new Print Vehicle Brochure is a decent addition but the load time for the brochures can be horrendous for slower computers. They should allow the consumer the option for a full or mini brochure (cutting some of the photos and having the option omitting the Carfax).

The best part of the new 2007 product is the new Admin! (if it would only work, but I’ll touch on that later). Now when you log in, you get an inventory age report along with a list of your Top 10 New and Used vehicles. But there’s a problem with the Top 10 reports and something I have been complaining about for along time. The Top 10 reports shows how many times a particular vehicle has shown up in searches BUT it’s for the entire time the car has been in inventory. Obviously if I have a car in inventory for 3-4 months, it’s going to be higher on the list then say a car that’s been listed for only a week. AutoTrader needs to allow us to designate a time period for this report to have any real value.

The most impressive feature is the Market Comparison. While viewing your inventory list screen you get an overview of the average price of similar inventory listed on AutoTrader. This allows you to see how your vehicles compare to the competition. Of course these are just averages, but when you drill down to the vehicle specifics and click on the Market Comparison tab, you get a full list of your competitive inventory while allowing you to click and view the actual vehicle listing. This is something I do before spotlighting a car but I would have to search from the consumer side of AutoTrader. I can now stay inside of the AutoTrader admin, compare my inventory and pricing to the competition and then Spotlight, all from one screen.

Another gripe I have with AutoTrader is the deleting of inventory. If you make any change to a vehicle in the AutoTrader admin, it “locks” that vehicle into your inventory. You are then forced to manually delete the vehicle when it sells. I can see how this would be a huge pain for a larger dealer with more inventory. I don’t understand why they can’t build a rule that says if you make a change to vehicle and it “locks” into your inventory, it will delete if the vehicle is not in the feed from your DMS or inventory tool like Homenet or ebizautos after 2 or 3 updates.

Overall it looks as if AutoTrader actually put some thought into this new admin. BUT as I mentioned earlier; “if it would only work”. Unfortunately after only a few minutes playing around, I ran into several issues. I changed the price of several cars form the vehicle listing screen only to find when I did, it was deleting all the photos for that vehicle. I can’t seem to get our videos attached to the inventory to show up in the multimedia portion of the vehicle listing. When I choose what vehicles I want to show in the Dynamic Display, it doesn’t update and reverts back the original setting.

Hopefully by the time you read this, these issues will be taken care of. I know I’m always giving AutoTrader a rough time here on DealerRefresh but when you’re the Big Guy and you want to charge a premium price, I expect a premium product with premium service.

So another year on AutoTrader for me..we’ll see how this year totals up!!

I thought it would be a good idea to start a new random posting/s with links to relevant news and maybe even some not so relevant news that in someway might (or might not) have an impact on this side of the business and us Internet Sales Managers.

So here we go.. The Weekly Refresh.

• Where is Mark Dubis? - So what is the former editor of Digital Dealer and Interim Executive Director of AAISP up to now? Mark Dubis has formed The Dubis Group, a network of freelancers talented in marketing, public relations, business writing and event planning. www.dubisgroup.com

• Ebay is back to advertising with Google - How surprising!

• Gilbert Chavez has joined the iMagicLab team. Good for you Gilbert! Keep in touch.

• Incase you didn’t already know, Google bought Feedburner. And unless you have a dealer blog or one of your own, chances are your not too familiar with Feedburner.

• Google Apps launches shared address book - I like this!

Is there anything else that you would like to see included in these postings?

The Cobalt Group’s sponsored “Breakfast of Champions” Seminar

I just got back from attending Cobalt’s sponsored “Breakfast of Champions”. It was held at the Renaissance Hotel in downtown beautiful Baltimore, it’s a little over an hour from there I live and usually an easy drive.

Hugh Cabello was the guest speaker / trainer for the day. I thought be did a good job actually. You never know what to expect when you go to these free seminars. Will you take a few “things” back home or will it be nothing more then a plug for the vendor?

Rather then type out a long winded posting here, I thought I would copy some of my notes that I took during the seminar. Excuse the jumping around but I have a tendency to be all over the place when I take notes.

The NOTES:

• Yahoo statistics show that customers send out on average 6-8 vehicles requests during their shopping phase. – I thought this seemed to be a little on the high side but I guess if you consider the consumer shopping for a used car in the mix, 6-8 should be an accurate number.

• Over half of your customers do not know if they want New or Used. -  I totally agree with this. Matter of fact I do my best to roll a customer into a used car whenever possible, always offering used car options for all of my new car inquiries.

• The average customer has 2 email addresses. – I have like 8 but I know I’m not “average”. Most people do have a home and a work email. This was something that Hugh touched on and one of those “things” that I walked away with. He encourages asking for the customers work email. “And what is you work email can I contact you at Jeff?”. Good idea!

• “You don’t have to buy a vehicle today do you?” – I love word tracks. If you’re good enough with the right word tracks at the right time, it can help you sell just about anything to anyone. This is one of those word tracks I would use all the time and for some reason got out of it. That was another “thing” that Hugh reminded me to take back home. This word track works! It removes the pressure that most consumers feel when dealing with us dreadful sales people. You’ll be surprised at the answers you get back.

• No Templates – That’s all I have written down. If I can recall, like I; Hugh is not huge advocate of canned templates. Yea, I have a few that I use but most are nothing more then starter templates and are built for customization. Right after my cover on Digital Dealer I received several emails and phone calls requesting a copy of my “crafty template”. I’m telling you right now, there is NO silver bullet email template. Email templates will never sell you a car.

• It was humorous to hear Cobalt talking about dealer website design and their need to be user friendly.

• There was a lady that talked for awhile about SEO, Google and PPC. A big apology to her, I don’t remember her name (I found out her name was Lisa Dobbs, sorry Lisa for not taking better notes).  She pointed out a few tips; one was to be sure to buy your URL as a keyword. I guess this was note worthy, though about 99.9% of the time if someone types your URL into Google or Yahoo, your website better dam site be #1 in the natural listings.

• Keep a close eye out for previous customers sending leads from your website. – I can’t recall if that was part of the discussion or if it was something that popped into my head and I wrote it down. Anyways, if you have a previous customer send in a lead from yuor website, It’s imperative that you recognize them as a previous client and ask them if they are still driving the vehicle they bought from your dealer. Ask if they would like to work their previous sales person again. Thank the customer for shopping with your dealer “again”. Believe me, it’s impressing when you recognize your previous clients. They love it!

• It takes on average 5 phone calls for a customer to remember your name!

• They spent about 15 minutes reinforcing the importance of using 3rd party leads. Preferably dealix leads, thought they did mention AutoUSA and Autobytel in the mix.

• Hugh said to call your customers 1 day before their Birthday. Not the day of or the day after.

• They went into a 10-15 minutes undertone sales pitch for Onstation. If I had to guess this was main reason for offering the free seminar. I don’t care who you are or what vendor you are, your main intentions for free trainings are to drum up some business. And rightfully so, I’m sure it’s not cheap to offer these free trainings / seminars.

• Cobalt NEVER EVER mentions their Prospector CRM tool. It’s actually a shame. Prospector had its challenges but it could have been way more then what it currently is. Cobalt bought Prospector CRM from Cowboy several years ago, re-skinned it and basically moved it to the side. I was doing some research and actually found that Hugh Cabell was a National Relationship Manager Cowboy Corporation before Cobalt acquiring them.

• Providing Price – Hugh seemed to be an advocate for sending / quoting a price. And we all know this is always a huge subject for discussion. I take my leads one by one and then decide if I’m going to quote a price via email or phone. However, I agree with Hugh, since the customer very rarely buys exactly what they inquire about, why not send the consumer some pricing. It’s what they are looking for.

I had a few more notes written but I think this covers the important stuff. Thanks to Cobalt for putting on a better then average free seminar. Thank you Hugh for your energy and for giving me a few “things” to take back home.

I try to attend each and every seminar or training whenever I can. I don’t care how long you have been in this business; you can almost always walk away with at least 1 thing. And of you don’t, take the opportunity to network and shake some hands. You never know who you might run into.

Subject: Dean Evans VP Marketing resigned from the Cobalt Group.

I opened my inbox this morning to read an email from Dean Evans.

Catchy subject Dean!!

So Dean Evans has apparently officially moved on from Cobalt and Dealix as VP of marketing.

Dean, what will we do? I personally will miss seeing your sexy mugshot and chipper smile in all the Cobalt and Dealix articles?

On a serious note; I’ve had a few lengthy conversations with Dean in the past and personally think he’s a great guy. He sure has done a great job at building his name and reputation. Who in our business does not know who Dean Evans is?

So what will Dean do next?

Will he completely get out of this crazy automotive business or lay low for awhile then resurface?

Dean, I would love to hear your feedback if you’re reading this. What are your plans?

SuperPages.com - YellowPages.com - Yellowbook.com - what is their worth?

I have sitting here in front of me a 1 year contract for YellowPages.com.

I’ve tried to use Superpages, Yellowpages.com and a few of the other “phonebook to web” services in the past only to find they produce too many irrelevant results. Is this due to a bad algorithm or businesses not advertising in these sites? I usually get frustrated with these sites and find myself returning to Google or Google maps to find the address or phone number I’m looking for.

What’s interesting to me is the angle they use to sell the service. Rather then focusing on your business name, they tout their high percentage of consumers typing in “new car dealer” or “used car dealer” for a specific county or region. I question whom is going to Yellowpages.com and searching for “new car dealers”. I would think the majority of consumers going to Yellowpages.com to search for a dealer will type in the actual name of the dealer rather then “new car dealers” (but maybe I’m wrong).

Another question comes to mind; when using a phone book, I’m are usually looking for one thing, the PHONE NUMBER. Could there be a huge benefit to having top listings and links to your website if the consumer is merely looking for your phone number? Wouldn’t the basic free listing serve this purpose just as well as a paid listing?

More Questions:

1. How much incremental traffic could Yellowpages.com push my way?
2. How many people are actually visiting these sites like Yellowpages.com and searching like they were on Yahoo or Google?
3. Does it make sense to spend the $350.00 a month for top listings in Yellowpages.com?
4. Could I benefit from being listed in the top placement of Yellowpages.com since no one in my region is currently taking advantage
   of the service?

I don’t know..but if I decide to sign the contract, I will be sure to report back with my results.

Has anyone else advertised with any of these phonebook to web services and been successful?

This is a little off subject for DealerRefresh (maybe not) but if you have been following the tech news, eBay and Google are currently at odds with each other.

“EBay Inc. has pulled all of its advertising from Google Inc.’s U.S. network in what is widely seen as punishment for trying to crash eBay’s user conference in Boston this week.

The move exposes the widening rift between eBay and Google, as they increasingly compete on new products, making a public showdown inevitable, according to analysts”. – SFGate.com

Hasn’t this pot been stirring for some time now? 

The fuss is over eBay banning Google’s Checkout, saying that the “Google service had yet to prove itself in terms of fraud protection.” I’m sure they are also afraid of competition for their PayPal service.

eBay advertises on Google using Adwords and is Google’s biggest U.S. advertiser with spending upward of 25 million in a fiscal year. Anytime you Google mp3 player, Nintendo Wii or a specific electronics device, an eBay text ad would almost always appear in the sponsored links. However, this was not evident if you searched for a vehicle on Google. And I always wondered when eBay would start using Ad Words to advertise their eBay motors listings. I guess maybe never!

I would think that eBay would have way more to loose here then Google.

Dominion Enterprises Acquires Autobase, Inc.

"Dominion Enterprises, a leading media and information services company, announced today that it has acquired Autobase, the leading supplier of auto dealership marketing and sales solutions. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed."

Dominion also purchased InterActive Financial Marketing Group (a special finance lead generation and marketing company) based out of Virginia just last week. I guess since Dominion moved their headquaters to Norfolk VA, they figured they may as well buy someone around the corner from the new office.

In case you’re not aware, Dominion Enterprises (in the automotive sector) already owns:

Dealerskins - Dealer web design provider and the queen of Flash (BZ wears the kings hat).

Dealer Specialties - photo and video collection services, I’m sure we all know they are.

Just Automotive - direct marketing company for dealers

XiGroup - Another web design firm for dealers

Mailmark - Another direct marketer

SelectQu - A data integration software company for automotive related businesses

And now they have a full fledged CRM software to add to their repertoire. I personally have never been a huge fan of AutoBase CRM but I heard they have made some improvements since I saw it last. They did finally add some ILM features that I saw at NADA earlier this year (though again, not too impressed). However, one of the managers that I work with swears by it and thought it was the best thing since sliced bread.

So where exactly is Dominion heading with all of these acquisitions?

Update: Read "Dominion Enterprises: The Unwieldy Conglomerate" for a little deeper history.

Few week back I wrote an article “AutoUSA - Something isn’t kosher!”. I pointed out that somehow AutoUSA had resold me my own test lead 2 times over and I had screen shot to prove
it.

If you read the comments, you will see where Phil Dupree - VP of eCommerce for AutoUSA joined in on the conversation and actually took an initiative to research how this could have possibly
happened.

Phil Dupree said – “All three of these leads were individually entered on the Yahoo! Autos website. Yahoo! Autos has confirmed that they never resend leads—each is uniquely entered by users. Since Yahoo! sends leads from their website only, they confirmed that these leads were typed in on their “get a free price quote” lead form which has dealers listed for selection. Whoever typed in these leads had to specifically select your dealership in order for us to send you the lead. Since the leads are several months apart, we did not filter them out as
duplicates."

To this day I still do not have a clear explanation to why I was resold my own test lead 2 times over. I was never pointing my finger at AutoUSA but yet new something wasn’t kosher.

But..then my boy Chad Long over at AutoOneMedia sent me this link. “Yahoo! Gets Caught With Their Hand in the Cloaking Jar”. As I read this article, I started to wonder if maybe, just maybe it was Yahoo’s ignorant oversights that caused this mishap. If pages within Yahoo autos are/were “accidentally” being cloaked, is it possible Yahoo or a department within Yahoo could be accidentally reselling leads to AutoUSA? I can’t imagine reselling a few leads here and there would ultimately benefit a company as large Yahoo. And if they were doing this on a grand scale, I would think they would have already been caught (but then maybe they have).

I’m still very curious to how this happened and where exactly the blame falls, but we guess I will never know.

On the cover of Digital Dealer Magazine

I was actually hesitant on posting about this for some reason. I’m not the conceited type believe or not.

It was actually nice to be on the cover of the thinnest Digital Dealer Magazine ever. And the article I thought read well, thanks to Laurie Halter over at Charisma Communications. Thanks Laurie, you did a great job.

If you have not noticed, Mark Dubis is no longer with Digital Dealer as the editor and Sandi Jerome is back on the hot seat. It was evident that my cover story was a little different then what maybe you have been used to reading over the last year or so.

I will express that I’m a little pissed. In the original copy, there was a small blurb about DealerRefresh but for some reason that never made its way into the final article. Hummm…why is that?

Anyways, I’m the type that is rarely happy with the final result and is always looking for better, so as I read the article I feel as if I need to better clarify myself on a few of the subjects. Therefore I think I will take the next few weeks to dig deeper into a few of the subjects in the cover story.

If one thing came out of being on the cover, it was that I needed to head on over to weightwatchers.com! HA!

If you would like to read the entire article I have posted it below.

Jeff Kershner - Digital Dealer Magazine Interview- Internet Sales Manager- Mercedes Benz of Hagerstown - by : Digital Dealer

With an average of over 30 percent of monthly dealership sales generated from the Mercedes-Benz of Hagerstown dealer online marketing efforts, Jeff Kershner, Internet sales manager, is doing a lot of things right to attract buyers and turn Internet leads into sales. A passion for new Internet trends, like blogs, online social networks, viral marketing and search engine optimization, coupled with a solid belief in essential business practices like prompt follow-up on leads, has led Kershner to build a growing Internet business for the dealership. In the following interview, Kershner explores Internet tools that have worked to pull in leads, explains how dealerships can effectively use the new Internet trends, and tells us why one “old-fashioned” sales technique will never go out of style.

What is your current position in the automotive business?

I am the Internet sales and marketing manager for Mercedes-Benz of Hagerstown in Hagerstown, Maryland. I have been in this position for a little over two years. I manage all of the Internet leads and the follow-up activities performed by the sales team. I also desk deals, appraise vehicles, manage our online inventory, our dealership blog, online service coupons, incentives and everything else having to do with our online marketing efforts.

Can you tell me more about your dealership blog?

I started our dealer blog back in September of 2005 but have just started to get serious about it lately. We’re actually in the process of completely re-designing it (which should be live by the time you read this – www.mercedesdealernews.com). A dealer blog can be very powerful because it’s a great way to communicate with your customers and drive new traffic to your dealer web site, but dealers need to be realistic about how much work a blog is. To be effective, a blog needs to be updated at least weekly (at minimum), and most dealers don’t have the appropriate resources to accomplish that. Also, for a blog to be a true quintessential element of your dealership online marketing efforts you need to understand how the search engines work.

How do you define search engine optimization (SEO)?

“Snake oil” – I’m kidding, of course, but dealers do need to be careful with services selling SEO and automotive search engine marketing (SEM). SEO is used to describe the technique of optimizing your dealership web site to enhance its chances of being ranked in the top results of a search engine once a relevant search is undertaken. A number of factors are important when optimizing a web site, including the content and
structure of the web site’s copy and page layout, the HTML meta-tags on the page, off-page optimization and the submission process. If SEO is going to be a part of your online marketing arsenal then you need to have a good understanding of it and dealers need to be careful with what vendors they choose and what web site providers they work with to host their web site. Too much flash and frames are a big no-no!

Do you think hiring a vendor for SEO will increase a dealership’s Internet sales?

Not necessarily. You can optimize your site to attract more traffic, but that does not mean that you’re going to turn all the extra traffic into additional leads and sales. What a dealer needs is a web site that can convert traffic into leads. A lot of dealer web sites aren’t primed for lead conversion. To convert traffic into leads there are many factors to consider: the right call to actions, persuasive copy with compelling content, navigation and layout, just to name a few.

It’s time to move dealer web sites to the next level. Rather then using your web site to just show inventory and specials, dealers need to use their web sites to build value in the services they provide. One small example of including compelling content to build value would be to hyperlink the words “certified pre-owned” when using them to describe your online inventory. This way, the buyer can click on the link and learn what “certified pre-owned” means. They are learning something about your services in the process of shopping your inventory. Along with having good content, also make sure that every page of the web site has your phone number on it in big lettering. A phone number can be your strongest call to action. I end every vehicle description with our phone number; these same descriptions carry over to my other online marketing ads. I get more phone calls by using the phone number that I include in my vehicle descriptions than the free tracked phone number third-party lead sources provide. Again, it’s all about placement and persuasive copy. A great book that I recommend on this subject is “Call to Action: Secret Formulas to Improve Online Results” by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg.

What Internet sales tools on your dealership website have worked to pull in leads?

For us, having an online trade appraisal tool works well to bring in leads. I currently use Black Book Activator, and because it gives a broad range of accurate possible values, I haven’t had any customers coming in and receiving an unexpectedly low amount for a vehicle. Plus when the customer does visit the showroom, I know they have used our online trade appraisal and we can structure the deal accordingly.

The biggest problem with the appraisal form is that it can produce just as many bogus leads as good leads (especially when your web site is strong in the search engines), therefore I personally qualify these leads
before assigning them over to a salesperson. For some dealers it can be difficult to get the buy-in from their used car manager because they often don’t want to give out trade numbers before seeing and appraising the vehicle.

Having updated specials on our web site can also produce many phone calls and leads. It’s imperative that you keep your specials page updated; it’s one of the most visited pages on a dealer’s web site, however, most dealers never update their specials pages. Service coupons can also be an overlooked but a very important factor that keeps customers coming back to your dealership web site. In the past when we haven’t had service coupons on our site, I’ve actually had calls from customers looking for them. How about an RSS feed for your sales and service specials?

Do you use e-mail campaigns to pull in leads or service appointments?

I use a separate database that is set up by customer name and vehicle of interest that I use for e-mail campaigns. I don’t advise that dealers use their CRM for “blasting” out e-mail sales campaigns because when
you do, with time you can run the chance of getting your Internet Service Provider (ISP) or e-mail blacklisted. Your CRM program is for managing customer relationships, not for managing your advertising. I’ve found that we can dramatically decrease our opt-out rate by sending e-mails that are more targeted, so a customer gets e-mails about a vehicle that they are interested in, not an e-mail containing irrelevant information.

You mentioned that you created a MySpace page for your dealership. How do you see dealerships jumping on the trend of online social networks?

Social networking for dealers can be a tricky avenue for dealers so you have to be careful. I did create a MySpace page for our dealer: http://myspace.com/mercedesofhagerstown. I did it for brand awareness within the local community, and I think that it is the best thing a dealership can use it for. It’s all about getting your name out there. I made our page personal, with a photo of myself, photos of the dealer and details about our business. I also upload our commercials and post information about our current models and provide a few links to our dealer web site and blog.

The thing to remember when using social networks for marketing is whom you are dealing with. These are “today’s” consumers. Today’s consumers pull the information and marketing that they see fit to persuade their buying decisions. Today’s consumers shy away from the old conventional “shove down your throat” advertising. Also remember that there’s no way of measuring the value in dollars of having a MySpace page or other social marketing avenues. This type of marketing space is best used for dealer brand awareness, which might not get you a sale today, but could increase your visibility and reputation for future sales. I also make use of YouTube for public awareness and viral marketing. It’s the idea that if one person sees your stuff and likes it, they’ll send it to all their friends, who will send it to all their friends, and so on. I post all of our dealership commercials and vehicle walk around videos on YouTube.

You are definitely at the forefront of new online trends. Do you subscribe to any “old-fashioned” techniques to bring in leads and convert them to sales?

Fast follow-up by phone is essential to making sales. Get the customer on the phone, build rapport like no other, and gather the right information by asking the right questions. Know your inventory and explain the benefits (this is why I personally take photos and write detailed descriptions of each one of our used cars).  My floor sales team is my “Internet sales team” (and a great team I have!). I’ve trained them to use our CRM, best practices for Internet sales, follow-up process and how to use the phone. When I assign them an e-mail lead, they immediately pick up the phone and schedule an appointment. If they can’t get the customer on the phone, they use a crafty e-mail template I’ve created that tells the customer that their request for information has been received, and we have tried to call. The salesperson then follows up with another phone call to the customer within 45 minutes. We don’t give up until we get the customer on the phone and since we are not a volume dealer, we don’t waste any time with people looking for no money making deals!

Most of the Internet phone calls come through me first; I then assign the customer to the salesperson that best matches the customer’s personality. I know my salespeople very well, so I match up my leads/customers according to what I perceive the personality to be of each member of my sales team.

What final piece of advice would you give to Internet sales managers out there trying to turn their Internet traffic into leads?

Know your geographic market area and the shopping habits of the average consumer that resides in those areas. Take full advantage of what your web site offers. If you’re using cars.com, Autotrader or any other inventory marketing web site, use all the advantages they have to offer. Don’t second guess yourself and make of the most of every day. Being an effective ISM means having a rare type A/B personality, and losing touch with one or the other can mean the difference of a good or great month. Get out there, meet and greet and get involved with the deals. Do not lose that personal touch that it takes to make a deal. It’s too easy to hide behind the computer every day and take credit for sales without shaking the hands of the customers that just bought a vehicle from your dealership.

NOTE: This Digital Dealer Magazine interview was featured in the May 2007 Edition