This topic reminds me of about 8 years ago talking to a GSM in charge of 15 stores arguing that the “net” is a fad with regard to e-commerce.

He predicted that Carmax, will be gone in a few years. Autonation’s corporate systemization will never work and that people will never want to see video of vehicles.

So within 5 years after making that statement that franchise sqeezed all the lemon out their stores and heavily relied on push pull and tow sales, guaranteed trade $$$ and midnight madness sales. The result they now have two stores and have heard that 90% of all their business is secondary finance and sell 100 new fords a month in a major suburb outside Chicago.

On a side note: are your coupon pop-ups really working?

Adapt or die. If your last generation management or dealer principle and don’t know to surf Youtube once in awhile or at least registered a MySpace or what Linked In is and see what its all about, it’s time to move on or be gone.

Read into these quotes by Bill Gates as you like;

“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.” From his book, “The Road Ahead,” published in 1996.

“And so it’s fair to say what’s going on today is like the arrival of the printing press, or the telephone or the radio. And these communications tools did have pervasive effects. They made the world a smaller place. They allowed science to be done more efficiently. They allowed politics to be done a new way. They had a modest impact on how people were educated, but people were optimistic that they would make a very big change. Now, the personal computer connected to the Internet is far more powerful in many ways than any of these other communications devices.” Harvard Conference on Internet Society, May 29, 1996, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

(THIS IS THE BETWEEN THE LINES FOR ME ON VIDEO BELOW)

“I’m a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they’re interested in. E-mail in Russia was very key in allowing people to get together and think about, did they want to revert back to the previous mode of government? In country after country, you can see that having these tools, there has really made a pretty incredible difference.

I own a company that is heavily postioned to provide a dynamic video service. Time, distance and trust is the problem and video can overcome this barrier and help you sell more vehicles. I don’t want to abuse and respect this site so I won’t self promote and only mention if that’s okay Jeff.

If you use video into your selling model it either has to be:
1.) Entertaining or
2.) Informative
3.) There is no three. So just put a video of your cat doing silly things then.

Leave the “Hi I am Joe Smoe” at so and so dealer at home.
Why I make that comment is that we all have seen video e-mail and my opinion, if it’s not a cute women talking to me I have zero attention span and vise versa for women. Or even better if its not Oprah or Rachel Ray in that personal video e-mail your sending to a female buyer…delete, mark as spam, etc.

All the best,

Pete