• Google research shows – “the sales funnel isn’t six months at all, but more like one month.

• Thirty-percent of car buyers start the search for a new car less than
  a week before they make a purchase. Seventeen percent start just two
  weeks ahead. Nineteen percent start a month in advance. That’s almost
  70% of the car-buyers starting the process no sooner than a month in
  advance.” The article goes on to say..

  “car companies should be spending a bigger chunk of their marketing
  dollars online than they are today.” Go figure!

• Watch this short video and appreciate everything you have.

• Mint.com wins the techcrunch40. See where your money goes!!

She is pretty young, but a sponge for learning.  I think she said she was born in 1991.  As young as she is, she is already attending Carnegie Mellon!  She’s a genius in certain areas, but only a genius in the areas she has been taught.  One of her talents, I’m interested in, is her ability to stick to a BDC sales script 100% of the time.  She is also good at giving customers directions to the dealership and knows every piece of inventory we have.  She can flip to taking and making service calls, and scheduling service appointments.  She is an excellent typist as well; sending personalized emails for just about any task.  Did I mention she speaks more than 7 languages?  I told you she was a genius.  She can also do all of this hundreds of times a second!

I met Abby.  Abby is the first of her kind, and will become the future business solution for companies who market over the phone and through email.

She is an advanced artificial intelligence based off of speech recognition programs.  For dealers, she will interact with our DMS and CRM tools to deliver anything we need her to deliver to our customers.  The demonstration I heard had a customer calling Abby to ask if a particular vehicle the customer saw on the dealer’s website was still in stock.  Abby graced through the call to earn A+’s at a BD College.  When the customer got off track, Abby had a simple question to bring the customer right back into the script.  On top of that, Abby was accessing the DMS to not only tell the customer that particular vehicle was still in stock but also told the customer about 2 other vehicles just like it.  Abby scheduled an appointment, took all of the necessary customer contact info (including a marketing source), got the customer to write down the manager’s name, and then gave the customer directions based off of Google Maps.  Aside from just interacting with a DMS and CRM, Abby can also use any website (while on the call) to deliver necessary information.

Abby is an impressive spectacle.  I am convinced she will become the forefront of a BDC while experienced BDC staff works behind her to handle the tougher customers.  I don’t have an exact time as to when she will be fully ready for prime time, but just know she is coming.  One day we may all GetAbby.

Article written by Alex Snyder.  Director of eCommerce for the Checkered Flag Auto Group.

I came across this article written for Digital Dealer By Peter Perrotta back in August 2000.

It’s really interesting to read something form several years ago and reflecting upon it 8 years later.

Enjoy and share your comments!

By Peter Perrotta, August 2000

While the Autobytels of the world may not ever go away completely, new trends are emerging, suggesting that a shakeout is imminent. This is key. You don’t want to get caught on the wrong side of the aisle.

For the most part I try to bring you "news you can use." You may be too busy at your respective dealerships to even have a free finger you can use to test the pulse of some of the key indicators in the automotive world. That is why you read this magazine, right?

By now, you have heard about the Internet. You’ve heard all the startling statistics that tell you by 2003 you’ll be selling almost anything you can get your hands on over the Web, right?

For a while now, we’ve tried to steer away from continually boring you with statistics that emphasize how big the Internet will become. Instead, we’ve made a conscious effort to steer away from that to bring you a much more "how to" approach to selling cars on the Web.

However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t any intrinsic value in pointing up some of these trends from time to time. Now, is one of those times.

The trend is this. By now it is clearly obvious that the dot-coms haven’t figured out how to make money doing whatever it is they do. Namely, trying to squeeze a profit by selling your cars off of your lots.

Just take a look at some of the stocks of some of these companies, Autobytel is one example, and the proof will be in that pudding. The stock markets woes of late haven’t helped much, either.

Anyone who works anywhere near Wall Street can tell you at least two things for sure these days: the venture capital money many of these dot-coms used to launch their businesses is quickly drying up and the high flying days of the technology sector, which includes Internet stocks, are not coming back anytime soon.

The double whammy here is that interest rates are sure to rise, with the Fed attempting to put the brakes on the irrationally exuberant stock market, and any investor worth his salt is now out there looking for companies to invest in that actually have profits, can you imagine.

This may spell death to some of the dot-coms. With the IPO market drying up, interest rates rising, their stocks on the down slide and no hopes of turning a profit anytime soon…well, you do the math.

Sheldon Sandler has. Sandler, founder of Bel Air Partners, financial advisors for the automotive industry in Princeton, N.J., says the referral model or lead-generating car buying services is "virtually dead."

Sandler knows a little bit about money having spent a good portion of his career as a Wall Street analyst.

"Their fundamental business model is flawed," Sandler says. "They can’t make money. We knew it was a joke from the start."

Initially, the dot-coms were flush with venture capital money. They made some money selling regional contracts to car dealers.

However, Sandler says there was such a proliferation of these services their own revenues, let alone dare we say profit margins, began to get eroded.

Moreover, the Autobytels and Autowebs have a hard time gaining any brand loyalty. "The consumer can’t differentiate between them and the dealers just used them," Sandler says. "How will they make enough money to stay in business? The answer is they won’t. Until you control the inventory, all you can do is direct people."

Sandler and others in the know currently subscribe to the notion that a rotation is already underway. That rotation has more of the dot-coms pushing into the direct selling approach used by Carsdirect and Greenlight.

Underlining that point, Autobytel has launched its Autobytel direct in an attempt to capture revenues from both sales models.

Sandler says consolidation in the dot-com arena is already underway. This will lead to short term changes with the stronger continuing to survive.

However, Sandler believes that even the direct selling model employed by the third partner sellers won’t bring in enough revenues to sustain them.

In two to three years, Sandler says, the dot-coms will mostly be gone.

Filling the void, Sandler predicts, will be a strong network of Web sites that are controlled by both the manufacturersand dealers.

"As long as the inventory is still coming from the dealers, the dealers are still in control and the manufacturers are in control of the dealers," Sandler says. "Don’t forget the manufacturers want brand identity. The factory will find a way to do their own (Web) sites. They have the bucks. They have the cars.

"They (the factory) want the relationship with the consumer. The dealer will be hurt by these guys (the factory) coming together with the consumer," he predicts.

However, to make up the difference, Sandler thinks the factory will provide added incentives to the dealers to make up differences, especially on the loss of profits on the front-end of Internet sales.

"The factory may end up cutting a check back to the dealer to make up for the loss of gross profits on these sales," Sandler says. "It will be more of a ‘Detroit’ system with a direct factory to consumer relationship. The dealer will deliver the car after the factory builds it for the client."

Is Sandler on the mark here. I think so. Maybe not 100 percent, but I think he’s pretty close. There will be a shake out on the dot-com horizon. There will be a move towards direct selling models.

That is the short term outlook. The long term will be a combination of Web selling through the use of factory and dealer Web sites, with much less dependence on the intermediaries. It makes sense.

To date, dealers have been somewhat lazy. They have put up Web sites but haven’t been able to figure out how to drive traffic to them. So, hence, they rely on the Autobytels of the world.

But, once the dealers and the factory get on the same page with this (and they will) they won’t need the Autobytels of the world. Think about this: Why should they continue to give these guys a piece of their pie?

The answer is there will come a day when they won’t have to.

Here we are 8 years later. What had changed VS what has not changed?

"Our dealer is considering Higher Gear group and Autobase for our sales and service CRM program. Can you provide some insight to the pros and cons of each of these two CRM providers?".

These 2 CRM’s are frequently compared to each other. Both are server based and many dealers like the idea of having their CRM and customer information "in house" rather to the web based CRM programs.

It’s been awhile since I’ve used Autobase and it’s been over a year since I booted Higher Gear out of my current dealer. Therefore it’s not really fair for me to compare the 2 since I’m sure both have made changes and hopefully improvements since I have last used them.

I know there are a lot of readers using either Higher Gear or Autobase CRM and if you are one of those readers. Why not share some of your personal pros and cons for each CRM provider?

Share your pros and cons…

We all know about search engine marketing and most of you have already given it a try for your dealerships. Some of you have seen great success with Pay-Per-Click advertising and some of you have really just wasted a lot of money. Everyone knows where they fall. There are tons and tons of vendors out there targeting the automotive industry and selling search engine marketing like a snake oil salesman sells oil.

I lead a team that conducts search engine marketing campaigns for our in house agency clients. I would like to share with you an experience I had this week.

Before starting any search engine marketing campaign either I or one of our team members researches the current climate surrounding the keywords our client will be using. As we all know, certain areas and franchises have much more competition then others. In my keyword and competitive research I typed in the keyword "newburgh cadillac" and in the top sponsored links I saw the result for a dealership named Tunstin Cadillac. Here is a screenshot:

I thought this was interesting since I am quite well versed in the local dealerships and had never heard of this one. I continued my search by searching on the general term "Cadillac." Tunstin Cadillac once again appeared:

My initial reaction was that whoever is doing their search marketing is at least covering all the bases.  I was interested in finding out more about the dealership so I typed in www.tustincadillac.com (I didn’t click the sponsored link because I didn’t want the dealer to get charged). Upon further research I found out that this dealership is located in Tustin, CA a whopping 2,799 miles away.

I have no knowledge of what vendor is running their search campaign. Maybe its even the internet manager at the dealership. Either way my point boils down to this. Make sure that your SEM vendor is acting in your best interest. Audit their results and check your site logs to make sure that you aren’t receiving traffic from regions outside of your general market area.  Google Analytics is also a great and free tool to help you audit your search marketing results. Many SEM vendors work on percentage of spend. If they get you to spend more by running your campaign almost 3,000 miles away from your dealership It won’t matter how much you spend, your search engine marketing campaign will always be a failure.

Guest posting by Brandon Hoffman
Director Of Internet Marketing at KEA Advertising, Inc
www.keaadvertising.com