This email made it into my inbox. Not sure who wrote it but I thought I would share it with everyone. Thanks Todd

——————–

If I hear one more person give another reason why they can’t sell cars I am going to punch someone in the face.

“The banks aren’t buying” – Yes they are idiot, just not like they were, so change what you are doing.

“There are less customers looking” – So get out of your office and work the ones you have harder.

“The deals aren’t as good” – Says who? Cars have always been expensive and they have always cost more than the customer told you they wanted to pay…so now you are going to start believing the customer?

“We cant lease anymore” – yes you can idiots …there just aren’t giveaways that any no talent order-taker could give away, so maybe you should quit and we’ll get a salesperson who can do the job.

Guess what?..We sold cars when interest rates were 18%… We sold cars when they would blow up…we sold cars that flipped over…we sold cars in recessions…we sold cars that were uglier than a monkey’s armpit and broke down on delivery…we sold cars from empty showrooms…we sold Yugo’s, and Daewoos, and Pinto’s, and K-cars for god’s sake, and Suburbans when gas was $4 a gallon.

How? Because we SOLD them. We inquired about our customers needs and wants, their budget, their family, their jobs, their travel habits. We made friends and sold the snot out of the right vehicle that met all of their needs. We didn’t sell the deal, we made the deal sell. We didn’t believe them when they told them the car was too much…because we selected a vehicle that wasn’t too much; and, when they chose a more expensive model…we told them it was more expensive and they would pay more. We sold them on the idea of putting money down so they wouldn’t be buried with debt so that cash down wasn’t a burden but a benefit – and they always found more money for the car we made them want…because we made them want it…we made them need it…and they loved us for it.

We didn’t lie or cheat, we didn’t fudge the numbers, and trick them into paying more…we sold the sizzle…and we made money doing it and our customers loved us when we were done. And they told their friends how great we were to do business with.

When I was a salesperson I loved the rain. I loved it because the other salespeople would hide in their office convinced that they were not going to sell anything because nobody was going to come out in the rain. So I stood on the lot under my umbrella and waited, ’cause I knew that if somebody did show up…they were there to buy something.

Today the news media is pumping bad weather into everybody’s living room and it is raining bad news. Today I want to be a salesperson again standing in the showroom waiting for the customer who is going to walk in despite everything they have heard because they are looking for someone to say, “its OK to buy,” and I would be there in my tie with a warm handshake and a smile ready to make it OK to part with a few thousand dollars…and I would make it fun too.

Yes, it is true that dealers will close. Banks will go under. The car business is changing. This is the time when we will undergo an economic housecleaning. We will see the weak salespeople who survived in this business out of sheer dumb luck find their true place in McDonalds dunking fries. We will see the sales managers who forgot how to sell, and who never knew how to motivate and train professionals, move on to telemarketing gig’s or make that career change they have talked about for so long.

Good riddance. This business is not for the weak or feint of heart. Here only the strong survive. When all is said and done only the best will be left standing. We will be sipping our coffee, and cashing our big checks, and rolling steel.

I will be here with my umbrella, my tie, a warm handshake and a smile. I say bring it on.

MAKE IT HAPPEN!!!

-Rob

I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on a dealership hosting their own email server as opposed to having email hosted by a large ISP (like GoDaddy)?

The ability to maintain robust and reliable email communication is increasingly important in this time where few leads are walking in the front door of our dealerships. Each time our email “goes down” we experience a loss in productivity and therefore sales.

I am the CRM Administrator and also help design and maintain the web presence for a small dealer group in the Northeast. I am not network or exchange certified so we rely on the “expertise” of our IT consultants (an outside firm that we contract that specializes in Automobile Dealerships). We tend to do 3-4 email campaigns per month using our AutoBase CRM system. We host our own email through a MS Exchange 2003 Server and seem to run into problems that crash our mail system company-wide regularly. Our current Primary ISP (Paetec) is set up to relay the mail and they do not like to see more than 2,500 emails/hour send rate during an email “blast”. Paetec has “shut us down” temporarily because of exceeding that send rate. Our IT consultants tell us that we need to maintain a send level of under 2,000 emails/hour to stay active with our current Primary ISP and that, although AutoBase claims they “buffer” their email “blast” sends, from what our IT consultants can tell, these are not buffered enough to stay below our ISP’s max send rate. Our IT Consultants are constantly tweaking the firewalls and are planning to configure an automatic rerouting (to a back-up ISP – BandWave) when an email “blast” occurs.

In my opinion, hosting our own server seems to be not worth the trouble. I do not know if we would be losing any capabilities in going with hosted mail services though. Reliability and the ability to continue our email campaigning is very important to us. I am looking for expert opinions from people who have been in similar situations or who currently run frequent email campaigns through their ISP hosted email solution. With maintenance fees, equipment depreciation, email firewall tweaks and the servicing cost associated with fixing email server problems, the costs of hosting mail ourselves really adds up.

What are your thoughts and experiences?

Gene Smith
CRM Administrator

Kelley Blue Book Now Releasing Values Weekly, Introduces New Methodologies

Kelley Blue Book, www.kbb.com, the leading provider of new- and used-vehicle information, is now publishing its used-vehicle values weekly via its Web-based product KarPower Online(R). Prior to this week, only the Kelley Blue Book(R) Trade-In Values were updated weekly, while other values were published in the Kelley Blue Book Official Guide every other month. The Blue Book Official Guide also has an updated publishing schedule with its frequency moving from every other month to monthly. Blue Book Official Guide customers received their first monthly edition in November of 2008. IRVINE, Calif., Dec. 8/PRNewswire

In addition to striving for greater accuracy through more frequent updates, Kelley Blue Book has added an ‘Auction Value,’ which is what a used vehicle is expected to sell for at a wholesale auction. An additional change includes a name change for the company’s Wholesale Value, a long-standing benchmark for automotive lending, which is now the ‘Wholesale Lending Value.’ The Wholesale Lending Value will be updated weekly reflecting the value of a vehicle that has been fully reconditioned, inspected and is frontline ready. Finance companies can now use Kelley Blue Book’s Wholesale Lending Value without any additional calculation to mitigate risk and better manage lending portfolios.

“Kelley Blue Book had been planning to move to weekly values for some time, but with the changing economy and the volatility in the automotive marketplace, we sped up the process to offer greater accuracy now,” said Paul Johnson, president and CEO of Kelley Blue Book. “Having access to the most timely and relevant values in the industry will allow automotive businesses to have insight into the market each week to make the most informed buying, selling and finance decisions.”

New Values Definitions

Auction Value: The expected auction transaction value.

Auction Value is what a vehicle is expected to sell for at a wholesale auction. The Auction Value assumes the seller has properly disclosed the condition of the vehicle (including any flood or frame damage). It does not include buyer’s fees or the buyer’s transportation costs and assumes the vehicle has not yet been fully reconditioned, inspected or prepared for retail sale.

Wholesale Lending Value: The expected finance value of a fully reconditioned vehicle.

Wholesale Lending Value is a trusted benchmark value for wholesale and retail lenders. Based on Kelley Blue Book’s Auction Value, the Wholesale Lending Value assumes that the vehicle is in good or excellent condition, fully reconditioned, inspected and prepared for retail sale.

Kelley Blue Book Employs Advanced Analytics

One of the greatest challenges facing dealers and lenders in the automotive industry today is pricing vehicle inventories as close to market as possible. When timely and market-reflective values are in place, these businesses can allay risk, minimize losses and increase profits. Values updated weekly using hundreds of thousands of actual transactions with regional factors applied, help businesses better manage their inventories in a volatile economy.

In combination with supplying weekly values to the industry and introducing the Kelley Blue Book Auction Value, the company has also revolutionized its valuation methodology. The company’s move to a more robust quantitative approach using improved statistical models and advanced analytic techniques has been in development for more than a year. Kelley Blue Book has now significantly upgraded its statistical models analyzing more national transaction data than ever and taking into account additional macroeconomic factors and industry trends to produce the most refined values in the company’s history. Such factors and trends include the cost of gasoline, production levels, supply and demand, catalytic events (e.g. hurricanes, floods, spike in gas prices) as well as competition in each vehicle segment.

“Kelley Blue Book’s commitment to delivering the most market-relevant values in the industry is reflected in recent enhancements to its advanced valuation methodology,” said Vince Nelson, executive vice president of Information Services for Kelley Blue Book. “The significant improvement to our values and the underlying data collection, warehousing, analytics and more frequent distribution results in values in which the industry can have great confidence.”

In the last year, Kelley Blue Book forged several new data supply relationships with auctions, manufacturers and dealers, dramatically enhancing the company’s data points available for analysis into the tens of millions. In the last year, The Trusted Resource(R) has also deployed more than a dozen automotive analysts into regional markets nationwide, with sophisticated hand-held devices to capture localized information and a depth of data not available through standard auction reporting. The placement of these analysts across the United States ensures that data collection is of the highest quality and conditions in regional markets from California to New York are well understood and documented.

Kelley Blue Book collects data from many sources in varying forms. Once the data is collected it goes through a normalization process and is then scrutinized by an in-house data analytics team for missing information and anomalies in the marketplace, as well as to identify regional trends. Any abnormalities or vehicles with missing data are then scrubbed from the information set prior to reaching the company’s new state-of-the-art data warehouse. Each week these highly inspected data sets go through a sophisticated regression model and are then validated, producing used vehicle values that accurately reflect the market.

The updated models and methodologies now employed by Kelley Blue Book enable the company’s forecasting timeframe to be among the shortest in the industry. Currently, Kelley Blue Book forecasts its weekly values one week or less prior to publication, whereas other guidebooks forecast their used-vehicle values three or even four weeks before they reach the hands of dealers and finance companies.

“All of these new analytic processes enable Kelley Blue Book to provide the industry with unrivaled insights into the automotive marketplace, continuing the company’s preeminence in vehicle pricing and values,” said Johnson. “With these game-changing enhancements in data collection, quantitative modeling and personnel, the industry can expect the most timely and accurate values today, from a name they know and trust.”

About Kelley Blue Book (www.kbb.com)
Since 1926, Kelley Blue Book, The Trusted Resource(R), has provided vehicle buyers and sellers with the new and used vehicle information they need to accomplish their goals with confidence. The company’s top-rated Web site, www.kbb.com, provides the most up-to-date pricing and values, including the New Car Blue Book(R) Value, which reveals what people actually are paying for new cars. The company also reports vehicle pricing and values via products and services, including software products and the famous Blue Book(R) Official Guide. According to the C.A. Walker Research Solutions, Inc. – 2008 Spring Automotive Web Site Usefulness Study, kbb.com is the most useful automotive information Web site among new and used vehicle shoppers, and half of online vehicle shoppers visit kbb.com. Kbb.com is a leading provider of new car prices, car reviews and news, used car blue book values, auto classifieds and car dealer locations. No other medium reaches more in-market vehicle shoppers than kbb.com.

The industry’s leading provider of the highest quality Internet-generated consumer leads to auto dealers nationwide, today announced that in October, the company enrolled its 600th dealer in the Edmunds.com Premier Dealer Program, setting a new benchmark in program sign-ups by an Edmunds.com PDP partner. Fort Lauderdale, FL (PRWEB) November 19, 2008 — AutoUSA

“We’re a big supporter of the Edmunds.com Premier Dealer Program, and have actively promoted it to our dealer clients because of the results we’ve seen,” said Phil DuPree, president of AutoUSA. “It increases a dealer’s online presence and puts them in the spotlight on one of the most popular automotive sites in the industry.”

The Edmunds.com Premier Dealer Program was developed to help drive more in-market auto buyers to a dealer’s Web site with increased visibility and positioning on the Edmunds.com Web site. Dealers receive exclusive lead territories, top placement in Edmunds’ Dealer Locator, dealer-branded advertisements throughout Edmunds.com, custom-designed dealer PDP program Web pages and Edmunds.com dealer endorsement messages.

AutoUSA was the first Edmunds.com partner to offer the Premier Dealer Program, which was launched in 2006. Since then, AutoUSA’s program participants have consistently reported increases in lead quality and closing ratios as a result of the additional Edmunds.com Web site exposure, and the portal’s popularity as a trusted source for vehicle reports, research, articles and comparisons.

“AutoUSA has been a fantastic Edmunds.com Premier Dealer Program partner,” said Sean Peoples, executive director of business development for Edmunds.com, Inc. “Because they really understand how to help dealers realize the full benefits of the program, their success in promoting it is no surprise.”

About AutoUSA (www.AutoUSA.com):

AutoUSA, Inc., is headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and a subsidiary of AutoNation, Inc. (NYSE: AN), the largest retail automotive company in the United States. AutoUSA is an independent third-party provider of leads to more than 4,000 dealerships. The company has built its success on a combination of advanced web-based technology and a network that includes the country’s most well respected online automotive resources, including Edmunds.com, Kelley Blue Book, MSN Autos, Yahoo! Autos, America Online, NADA Analytical Services Group, AutoVantage.com, AutoNation.com and AutoUSA.com. The vast majority of Ward’s Top 100 eDealers use AutoUSA. More information is available online at http://www.AutoUSA.com.

Could we be looking at the new Google AdWords expandable product listings?

Google has been testing this new expandable product listing for sponsored ads across the board  with other vertical markets. Have you seen it?

Some worry that these new expandable ads will push the natural ads too far down the page but I think this could be a great win for dealers. Imagine a long tail keyword search resulting in the exact (or close to) vehicle you’re looking for right on the first page of your Google search. Imagine being able to serve up your inventory in this fashion!

This is taking Google base to the next level. Who said Google base was dead?

YouTube has finally added the option of viewing video in HD. It was less than a few weeks ago they added the size change to the player, so it was only obvious that YouTube was gearing up for HD.

The new HD Format looking really good. I’m not sure if it surpasses some of the other video services that are providing HD like Vimeo and Motionbox . I will have to take some to do some testing.

Now you can buy the Flip Video MinoHD Camcorder and record your dealership videos in HD, upload them to YouTube and voila! Inventory walkarounds in HD.

Side Note: Has anyone messed around the YouTube Quick Capture feature? Could be a simple way of recordning customer greeting email on the fly.

AutoUSA, the industry’s leading provider of the highest quality, Internet-generated consumer leads to auto dealers nationwide, today announced the launch of a used car inventory pay-per-lead program for dealerships. The new dealer-friendly program, which was successfully piloted by AutoNation, the largest retail automotive company in the U.S., lets dealers post their used vehicle inventory at top automotive sites such as AOL Autos, CarPerks.com, Overstock.com, AutoMedia.com, CarDomain.com and AutoUSA’s used car Web site, AutoUSAused.com. AutoUSA is offering the inventory marketing and lead generation service with a pay-for-performance pricing plan, in which dealers only pay for the leads they receive each month. Fort Lauderdale, FL (PRWEB) December 2, 2008

AutoUSA, the industry’s leading provider of the highest quality, Internet-generated consumer leads to auto dealers nationwide, today announced the launch of a used car inventory pay-per-lead program for dealerships. The new dealer-friendly program, which was successfully piloted by AutoNation, the largest retail automotive company in the U.S., lets dealers post their used vehicle inventory at top automotive sites such as AOL Autos, CarPerks.com, Overstock.com, AutoMedia.com, CarDomain.com and AutoUSA’s used car Web site, AutoUSAused.com. AutoUSA is offering the inventory marketing and lead generation service with a pay-for-performance pricing plan, in which dealers only pay for the leads they receive each month.

“Our focus has always been providing dealers with the highest quality Internet leads. With the current economy, the simple fact is that more consumers are considering used vehicle purchases,” said Phil DuPree, president of AutoUSA. “We are committed to supporting our clients in every area that we can. Providing a pay-for-performance used car inventory marketing program greatly enhances their chance to sell more used cars, and at a low cost per sale.”

Dealers who sign up for the program will have will have their used vehicle inventory appearing online within a week. Used car inventory data will be pulled through the dealership’s existing inventory polling partners, such as Dealer Specialties, DMI, HomeNet, etc., and can include new vehicle inventory if the data is also available.

With the program’s pay-for-lead pricing structure, dealers only pay for the leads they receive each month, compared to other inventory marketing services that charge expensive monthly fees whether the dealer receives any leads or not. And, there are no long-term contract commitments. Dealers can opt out of the program at any time with a 30-day notice.

AutoUSA’s used car inventory lead program also employs the same stringent filtering and scrubbing process used to generate its award-winning, new car leads. The system eliminates duplicates, and filters out leads with missing or incorrect contact information such as phone and email addresses.

“Fifty percent of online used car sales come from new car leads. Our research also shows that VIN specific leads close at a high rate,” said DuPree, who adds “our goal with the used car inventory lead program is to provide dealers with the great quality of leads, speed of delivery and excellent service we’ve achieved with our new vehicle lead program, and we expect to see the same results – increased profits.”

For more information on AutoUSA’s used car inventory pay-per-lead program, call 800-243-9935.

About AutoUSA (www.AutoUSA.com)
AutoUSA, Inc., is headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and a subsidiary of AutoNation, Inc. (NYSE: AN), the largest retail automotive company in the United States. AutoUSA is an independent third-party provider of leads to more than 4,000 dealerships. The company has built its success on a combination of advanced web-based technology and a network that includes the country’s most well respected online automotive resources, including Edmunds.com, Kelley Blue Book, AOL Autos, MSN Autos, Yahoo! Autos, NADA Analytical Services Group, AutoVantage.com, AutoNation.com and AutoUSA.com. The vast majority of Ward’s Top 100 eDealers use AutoUSA. More information is available online at http://www.AutoUSA.com.

The time has come to promote the Internet Director into a much larger role

It was announced yesterday that America went into a recession in December of 2007. We have now reached a full year in a down market. By now, all of us in the automotive industry are feeling it on some level. I’ve heard some people saying they just want to break even and hope things will get back to at least 50% of what it was before 2010. A lot of businesses are trying to save their way into a profit. I’ve taken Econ 101 and even some 200 level classes, but I’m not an economics expert. I do think the notion of saving your way into a profit is silly. If you down-size, you down-size everything. So the real question is, where should investments be made in this recession? Where can a dealership get the most bang for the buck?

To everyone on Dealer Refresh, there’s a very simple answer when it comes to marketing: the Internet.

However, let’s take “the Internet” in a different direction. We all know online advertising has further reach than traditional media and costs much less than traditional media as well. However, traditional media is still a very viable marketing tool. Television, radio, and even the newspaper still have a place in the marketing mix. The mix has just shifted.

There are a few hang-ups in dealerships right now when it comes to truly utilizing the new marketing mix:

1. People who do not know how to use a computer are still pulling the major strings – the “HIPPO”
2. Internet marketing is too cheap to be taken seriously
3. People spend so much time online that it is taken for granted as an advertising source – customers don’t mention it like they would a newspaper ad or radio spot
4. Online measurements are different than traditional media and so precise that some people cannot comprehend them
5. Online marketing changes too often
6. Online dealer marketing is also internal – it is a CRM system and it can be IT driven

Some of these points are obvious. Let’s look at number 6 for a minute, “Online marketing is also internal – it is a CRM system and it can be IT driven.”

Yes, your internal software usage is part of your marketing mix. Before I expand on that, I should say that if you’re not using your CRM to direct your sales staff’s work days, you’re wasting your money on that fancy CRM. Did you ever think you could use your CRM to direct the message your sales staff is delivering? You can, and you should. If you’re doing that, sending email blasts, automatic emails, scheduling follow-up calls, printing letters, or doing some sophisticated data mining through your CRM, then it is a marketing tool. What about products like vAuto, Auto Exchange, Manheim, ePencil, HomeNet, or any of the other tools you’ve probably invested in? Guess what, they’re part of your marketing mix too. If one of those systems is a chore to use because your IT department has strangled bandwidth for security or blocked useful websites with Websense then your people are probably not using those products. Guess what, that makes IT part of the marketing mix too.

If you’re a large dealership or dealer group, then you probably have a hard time getting all of these elements working together:

Traditional media message + Online advertising displays + Internal software usage to drive the message

Are all of these areas spouting the same message? Are they pushing your clearance sale this month? Are they helping to let the public know you’re giving away a free Garmin with every car purchase this Christmas?

If not, here’s why…

I’m making a major assumption here, but I assume your dealership has someone (or someones) who decides what the marketing message is going to be this quarter/month/week/day. Then that message is passed to the creative people (ad agency perhaps) who will turn it into a PDF for the newspaper, a recording for the radio, and video for the TV…and maybe even a banner for a website. After the creative is done and scheduled for this weekend it is shown to the sales staff in the Saturday morning meeting…where it is forgotten 5 minutes later in lieu of a Starbucks run and the toughest question of the day: “what’s for lunch?”

Maybe you’ve got someone proactive in the Internet department who decides to turn this message into an email blast. Maybe you’ve got someone proactive with the CRM who sets up calls for the sales agents to make informing recent customers of the new specials. Maybe…maybe…maybe…

Why wait till Saturday morning to do all of this?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to have a central person who understands how all of this stuff works? Someone who can put an internal software campaign together with a television ad? Someone empowered to get through all the red tape with the vendors, General Managers, and IT departments to get that marketing message out. I believe the time has come to promote the Internet Director into a much larger role. And it will need to be the Internet Director because the most crucial part of the whole mix is the technology/online side. This Chief of Marketing needs to know how all these systems work. We need some glue.