During a recent management retreat, a colleague introduced the group to the Internet’s fastest growing Social Networking site, Pinterest.com. Pinterest (pronounced pin-terest, not pin-interest) has burst onto the Internet with growth rates we haven’t seen since Facebook. Traffic has jumped to almost 11 million visitors in mid-December, nearly 40 times where it was only six months ago. Pinterest is now in the top 7 social networks on the web, with 59% of its users being women ages 25-44.

During the brief demonstration I watched, I initially didn’t understand the mission of the site, or rather, why it would drive consumer eyeballs. I learned that you needed to “apply for admission” which could take weeks, or you could find another Pinterest user and have them invite you. Just like learning about every other social network, you’ll never truly understand it until you immerse yourself (which is what I did). While I was figuring out the value proposition Pinterest offered, I also showed the site to my wife and her sister. Their instant addiction caused me to embark on a journey to find out more about this site, and potentially how it might help my customers (you, the car dealer).

If you visit the site, you will notice that the majority of content relates to food, home decorating, crafts, and child-related ideas. I took a stab at creating a man’s version of the site, including my interests in cool cars, vintage guitars, and outdoor barbecuing. I was pleasantly surprised that when I searched for related “Pins” and “Boards”, I found there were many others with similar interests.

Pinterest is all about pictures, not so much about words. When you find an interesting picture on the web, you “Pin” the picture and it is attached to your profile. You can also have “Boards”, which are subject-related collections of Pins. I have Boards for “Cool Cars”, “Vintage Guitars”, etc. Every time I find a picture of a cool car, I “Pin” the picture and put in on the “Cool Cars” Board. You can also “Re-Pin” someone else’s Pin, which propagates that content across the web. You can also simply “like” someone else’s Pin, which just shows you liked it, but didn’t feel compelled to Re-Pin it.

Since a major component of a dealer’s social marketing strategy should be to build a social network, and join in on the conversations, I would think a progressive dealer would start a profile for their store, and simply “Pin” new or used car photos for special or unique items. You might also “Pin” pictures of cool aftermarket or OEM accessories, perhaps alone or as part of a customer’s vehicle. You should be careful not to be too self-promoting, or you will be unlikely to attract many followers. Instead, only show the very new, or very special, models or products, and simply try to create interest. Creativity attracts interest on the site, by adding unique titles and high-quality photographs; you can increase the traffic to your profile. Be forewarned, Pinterest has rules where they discourage overt self-promotion, and you wouldn’t want to start your experience getting blacklisted.

You could also search the site for related “Pins” for makes/models that you carry, and “Re- Pin” those items and maybe add a comment with your thoughts. Again, don’t add a comment that could be in any way considered self-promoting but instead add an interesting fact about the benefits of the car’s make/model. You should also begin “following” other Pinners with similar interests, or anyone who starts following you. Like all social media sights, networking is key. Another idea would be to use your knowledge and statistics about the users on the site, and gear some of your boards to them. For example, since the majority of Pinterest users are women, create Boards that appeal to women and direct them back to your profile to increase views of your Boards.

You could create a Board for your local community with pinned pictures of your community involvement, Little League teams you’ve sponsored, and your passion for your surroundings. You could create a Board with pictures of cool home garages, pictures of interesting driving destinations, or even pictures of vehicle interior customizations. Once again, creativity is key on this site.

The goal is to create Boards that reflect the personality and culture of the dealership, and the interests of the owner. As in all social marketing programs, you are trying to personally connect, in many cases one-on-one with other people with similar interests. If they feel a personal connection with you, they may eventually decide to become your customer, since people like doing business with friends.

I’ll admit, it took me a while to get my hands wrapped around this new site, but the growth stats are incredible. Effective Digital Marketing Strategy says to promote your business where people are spending their time online, so Pinterest definitely fits the bill. This site will force you to be a little more creative, and a little more subdued in your approach, but the exposure and payoff in the long run should be worth it. Chances are most dealers will read this article and move on, so your opportunity to be an early entrant could give you a nice head start.

Good luck, and please let me know how I can help!

Should Dealers Have Interest in Pinterest? is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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Share the wealth!

I recall 15 years ago having conversations with dealers regarding the importance and necessity of deploying a dealer branded website. Today, dealers are now battling that same argument around the deployment of a dealer branded consumer mobile website / application.

Are dealer branded consumer apps a necessity or a nuisance?

Importance of mobile

With over 4.5 billion mobile subscribers in the US alone, dealers would have a hard time finding an argument against the importance of deploying a mobile strategy. As a key touch point that connects consumers to businesses, dealers need to consider that deploying a dealer branded consumer mobile app in their dealership is not only a necessity but also a cost effective way of increasing customer loyalty and ultimately driving repeat business.

Why are consumer apps important?

Nielsen Ratings reports that 44 percent of mobile subscribers in the US use smart phone technology. Of those, 71 percent own either an Android or iPhone device. Moreover, for the first time ever, mobile app usage in the US has surpassed desktop and mobile web consumption. Consumers are spending more time within mobile apps than ever before – nearly 2,555 minutes more per year. This is a clear statement to all dealers to get in the game. Be active. Stay connected to your customers. Be mobile.

Why will consumers use dealer branded apps?

Consumer trends show us that businesses continue to compete for consumer mindshare and ultimately, space on their smart phone. In fact, iPhone users download an average of 40 new apps each year, Android users download 25 and Blackberry users download 14 annually, respectively.

The top downloaded apps across all operating systems include: Facebook, Pandora, the Weather Channel, and Google maps. This is not surprising since consumers are interested in not only downloading but spending time in applications that are user-friendly and help make their life easier.

What dealers should look for when deploying a consumer app?

If mobile is important and consumers are actively using mobile apps, then it is clearly a necessity for each dealer to consider the best way to deploy this technology within their dealership.

Recent industry examples have helped to define what dealers should look for in a consumer mobile app. Ultimately, dealers should select a provider that can offer both convenient and on-demand channels of communication for their customers. Dealers should select a mobile app that includes not only a smart phone vehicle information application, but a two-way communication channel between dealer and consumer.

Today, relevant consumer mobile apps involve making information that used to be stuffed into the glove box available at a consumer’s fingertips. This information includes: general vehicle information, vehicle operations, maintenance and even warranty details. Connecting to real-time smart phone critical functionality, such as Google Maps, camera or QR scanners, help make the application necessary for daily use.

More advanced mobile apps include the ability to calculate loan payments, schedule maintenance appointments and evaluate vehicle trade-in values. For dealers this is a win-win. Imagine the ability to not only maintain real estate on a consumer’s mobile device but also track that usage. This will provide the ability to know if a consumer is shopping for a new vehicle.

Call to action

The time is now to start investigating how consumer mobile app technology fits into your marketing strategy and customer lifecycle management process.

What do you think – are dealer branded consumer apps a necessity or a nuisance?

Dealer Branded Consumer Mobile Apps – Necessity or a Nuisance? is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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Share the wealth!

There is a divide in the SEO community between behaviors that are considered unethical and those that are merely pushing the rules to the limit. As a dealer, you have the opportunity to choose who performs your SEO and what tactics they use to enhance your rankings. It’s up to you to make sure that your SEO’s tactics fall in line with Google’s quality guidelines in order to maintain a long term ranking strategy.

As with any industry, unethical behavior is a grey area. Everyone has an opinion about what is acceptable and what is not – the key is to educate yourself enough to be able to make your own judgments. However, I’d like to make the argument that an SEO should know, understand and abide by the quality guidelines set forth by the search engines in performing optimization services. In my book, not doing so quite often constitutes unethical behavior.

Gaming the Search Engines

The quantity and quality of links pointing to your site have a direct impact on your rankings. As a result, many SEOs will attempt to inflate rankings by participating in link schemes. Popular methods include purchasing links from third parties or creating a portfolio of websites solely intended to boost client rankings. The latter method is fairly prevalent in the automotive industry, so I’ll explain in more detail.

In this example, your SEO will have a portfolio of websites that they create/host/manage themselves, which will likely have some sort of “Popular Links” section in the sidebar area of each website. They will build up their portfolio over time, adding more websites to the mix and adding additional highly optimized direct-match keyword links in the “Popular Links” section. They will sell SEO “services” to clients, but a large part of that will include adding links to these sites.

Is this SEO? Hardly. It’s lazily gaming the search engines in an effort to inflate rankings. In the short term, this method has the potential to work wonders – but do you really think that Google will allow this sort of “SEO” to flourish in the long term? Is your SEO doing you a disservice by only providing you with links that violate the quality guidelines? What happens when you stop paying for services from this company – will the links that you purchased remain intact?

No Shortcuts

As with any sort of advertising/marketing, there are no shortcuts. Good SEO/inbound-marketing takes time, patience, and creativity – none of which are exemplified by SEOs who solely participate in link schemes. They’re out for a quick buck, and you deserve a more ethical approach for the price that you pay. Do your research, explore the previous work performed by your SEO, and use backlink search engines like Open Site Explorer to verify where your SEO obtains their links. Knowledge is power in this field, and we shouldn’t encourage such behavior in our industry.

Will a few directory submissions and paid links kill your rankings? Probably not, but it all depends on the diversity of your link portfolio. In fact, with the current state of Google’s algorithm, it might even be necessary to possess a portion paid links with exact match anchor text to rank for certain location specific queries – so long as you understand the long term risks that those links carry. If your entire link portfolio consists of paid links or links from your SEO’s farm of websites, you’d better think about looking elsewhere before the algorithm changes to discount the value that those links provide.

Long Term SEO

The real key to a long term SEO strategy is to create something of value for the user. Create something that people want to link to. Unfortunately, dealers are at a bit of a disadvantage here largely due to customer demographics and lackluster website solutions like Cobalt (and don’t even get me started on Cobalt’s “SEO” products).

Will someone with the skills necessary to make a website think your Cobalt site is great enough to link to it? I highly doubt it. You’ll need something new, innovative, fresh, and useful. Be the first in your niche to offer a custom “build-your-vehicle” feature or a simple & clean shopping cart solution to save vehicles of interest for return visits. Write a highly informative blog post about the newest offering from you manufacturer with more information, photos, and media than the manufacturer has on their own website and submit the page to Reddit or post it on Facebook. Do your best to provide resources that other websites don’t have, but don’t expect to grab a strong portfolio of links when your website looks, feels, and functions in the exact same way as your competitor down the street – and no, adding your logo to the top of the page doesn’t constitute “innovation.”

The days of set-it-and-forget-it website solutions are over. For a long term SEO strategy, you need to be constantly providing value to your users in an attempt to grab links, attract social followers, and sell vehicles. It’s the future of marketing and customer retention, and if you’re not already on-board, then you’re already losing the race.

How do you feel about SEO in the automotive industry?

Do you believe that paid links are unethical?

Is Your Dealers SEO Strategy Ethical & Long Term? is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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Share the wealth!

I read this article on Searchengineland.com the other morning. The basic point is this: brick-and-mortar stores that have ecommerce websites (so that they can conduct actual click-to-sale transactions online from their paid search advertising) receive $6 worth of OFFLINE, IN-STORE sales from their paid search spending for every $1 they receive in click-to-sale revenue online.

I find that to be a truly startling statistic. If a brick-and-mortar business that sells online is only looking at click-to-sale ROI, are they under-counting the return on their paid search by a factor of 600%?

The ramifications for car dealers are tremendous. If you are only evaluating your PPC from the website leads and subsequent sales that your ad budget is generating, you may be dramatically mis-evaluating your program and mis-allocating your marketing budget.

According to NADA Data 2011, only 24% of the average franchise dealer’s 2010 marketing budget is Internet-related spending. The average dealer spent $6,600 per month in online advertising in 2010.

Here’s a quick breakdown of Dealer Spending by Marketing Channel in 2010.

As you can see, while online spending is higher than any other single channel, it is still not even a quarter of a typical dealer’s total spend. I wonder if dealers aren’t spending more online because they are under-valuing the return on their paid search budgets by only tracking form submissions. I always recommend to our dealers that if you are doing paid search advertising, you should ABSOLUTELY use call tracking so that you can account for the phone calls you’re driving with your ad spend.

It is incredible that it has taken until 2010 for Internet ad spending to FINALLY pass newspaper spending in the average car dealer’s marketing mix. Here are the changes that have taken place over this decade in Internet vs. Newspaper:

While the Internet has passed newspaper in car dealer’s ad budgets, dealers are still spending over 20% of their advertising dollars on print. I know many dealers who have turned their marketing mix “upside down” and are now 70%-90% online vs. traditional and EVERY one of them who has done this has dramatically increased their sales during the process.

Generally, dealers need to be doing paid search. If you’ve had a bad experience with paid search in the past, there may be a myriad of reasons:

1. Wrong Vendor
2. Poor Tracking/Reporting
3. Too Expensive
4. Too Much Time

None of these should be a barrier for a dealership at this point. There are a number of agencies and website companies that can effectively manage paid search on a dealer’s behalf. You should be able to get call tracking as well as website lead tracking for your paid search spend so that you can see exactly how many and which leads came from your PPC campaigns.

If you have Google Analytics on your website, you should be able to get any vendor to provide URL tracking so that you can see visits, bounce rate, time on site, and leads at the keyword level. Remember that for every website lead that you ARE able to track via your form submission reporting (whether it is from your website company or your CRM), you may not even be accounting for several more.

Would you agree that your paid search is driving floor traffic and sales for your dealership?

Paid Search Drives Local Floor Traffic Sales? is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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Share the wealth!

In February 2010 Google made a presentation to a select group of industry leaders about their foray into automotive lead generation. I was not in attendance but I was briefed on the program at the show. I never heard any more about the details until today’s post in Automotive News.

I am sure that Google has briefed the major automotive vendors that run Adwords campaign for thousands of car dealers about this change. However the larger community needs to know about this major shift in new car lead generation strategies.

In my opinion, this is a major SHIFT for the Google Automotive team which has not gone into direct vehicle lead generation until now. I look forward to interviewing and discussing this new program with the Google Automotive Team at the 2012 Digital Marketing Strategies Conference.

Lead Generation Is Not New For Google

Google has been running lead generation campaigns for other vertical markets, like mortgages. If you look at the screen capture below, Google is running their own PPC ads to capture leads:

These ads are labeled “Comparison Ads” and these ads are competing with other PPC lead collectors. When a consumer clicks on the PPC Comparison Ad for mortgages, a landing page for lead collection is displayed:

Lead Generation For Dealers

According to the Automotive News article written by David Barkholz:

“Google will establish a Web page for vehicle shoppers. Dealers will bid, through a Google auction, to be one of about three dealers listed on the page when shoppers fill out a discounted price request for, say, a 2012 Toyota Camry with some specifications. The shoppers choose which of the listed dealers will receive the lead and provide the price…”

This will be a game changer for businesses that use PPC for lead generation. Companies like Edmunds, Autotrader, and new comers like TrueCar that all use PPC as part of their lead generation strategy for new car buyers will be impacted.

Competition for new car leads just got more interesting, and for some, maybe more expensive.

This offering will need to be examined in greater detail when this official launches this in the Bay Area. We will have more details on this new offering after we get a briefing from the automotive team at Google.

How do you see this impacting your dealership?

Google Enters Into The Automotive Lead Business is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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Share the wealth!

That title might be slightly inaccurate, as it really should say DEATH to cable.

I cut cable TV out of my life about a year and a half ago.  It is all Internet for me.  Admittedly, it has driven my chicken wing and alcoholic beverage consumption up because I have to go to the local sports bar to catch a game, but I’m not complaining.

I’m not writing this article to talk about my experiences in relying solely on the Internet to deliver anything and everything to my TV – you can catch that here.  I’m writing about how the TV was my last connection to the 3 big boys of traditional local marketing (Newspaper, Radio, Television).

Yes, I agree with you, I am a bit ahead of the norm.

As more and more people shy away from our marketing comfort zones how are we to get our messages out going forward?  Sure, there is PPC, SEO, billboards, display ads and all that jank.  But what we should really be talking about is a revolution in marketing.  This is a revolution that is going to rip advertising to its core.  It isn’t about shifting mediums; it is about a complete and utter shift in delivery.  And guess who isn’t in control anymore:  you the marketer.

Today’s marketing is about Push.  Tomorrow’s marketing is about Pull.

Today we push our message to a broad group of people as far as we can reach.  It doesn’t matter what media it is, we are simply trying to get as many eyeballs on our message as possible.  That has been the basic way marketing has been practiced ever since we were able to purchase ads.

Consumers are shying away from this method.  Supply is plentiful, deals are only a few clicks away, and your loud voice is just an annoying interruption.

Tomorrow’s advertising will be more about public relations than what we call marketing.  It will be based on your deeds.  It will be based on your image; your brand, and it will be shaped by your customers.  We’re starting to see the power of consumer reviews.  For car dealers, the power of reviews is still in its infancy.  For restaurants, it is full bore.

But there is another piece we can’t see.  It is a piece that lives behind privacy and topples governments.  It is social media and it is mostly Facebook.  For the first time individuals can quickly and easily rely on a lot of their friends to help them make purchase decisions.  These aren’t just decisions about cars.  Your friends are asking for advice on virtually everything.  Think of some of the questions as practice for when they really start looking for suggestions that have massive impact on the way local businesses are viewed.  If you’re on Facebook, you’ve seen your friends ask for advice.  I see it every time I view my news feed.  People flock to the most influential; the one with the most “klout” on that particular topic.  This is the person you’re going to see marketers flock to as well.

It is just the beginning.  Be cognizant of it.  As marketers, understand this is going to reshape the messages we send.  Don’t be the next Middle Eastern dictator.

P.S.  Have you ever noticed how DealerRefresh has had some major impact on various automotive vendors?

I cut the cord. DEATH to TV! is a post from: Internet sales manager training

Share the wealth!

Share the wealth!

Mobile Visits to your Dealership are on the Rise

This isn’t news. We know that more and more mobile devices are accessing the web on a daily basis. What might news to you, however, is the coming mobile tidal wave reports are predicting. Cisco’s spring 2011 study cites 2010 mobile data traffic nearly tripled (2.6x) for the third year in a row. A Tech Crunch article states mobile traffic is expected to rise 40x in the next 5 years. Fortune’s August 2010 article sums it up: “The numbers don’t lie: Mobile devices overtaking PCs.”

The coming tidal wave of mobile devices is turning into a tsunami. As such we need to evaluate how mobile users are engaging with our virtual storefront.

Your Mobile Visitors

Have you looked at your site’s mobile traffic? Here’s how to with a Google Analytics account:

1. Log in to your Analytics account.
2. Once logged in, you need to look on the left hand column for “Visitors.”
3. Under “Visitors,” click on “Mobile.”

You will then see statistics of people who viewed your site with mobile phones.

Chances are you’ll be surprised at the number. Even more interesting – look at how that number has increased over the last few months. DealerRefresh focused on this topic in May of 2010 – read the comments section from participating dealers.

Hosting a weekly video series “Mobile and the Dealer” allows me to chat with dealers around the nation. Dealers are consistently reporting 15-20%+ of total web traffic coming from mobile devices. This has increased ten fold for some over the last 12 months!

Bouncing or sticking?

Take a look at how mobile visitors are behaving on your site. Specifically look at bounce rates of mobile visitors and compare them to traditional visitors. If you’re like many, you’ll see sky-high bounce rates on your mobile visitors. In this podcast: Eric Hanson talks about mobile visitor bounce rates of vegas.com and how optimization strategies effectively lowered those stats.

Understanding Mobile Visitor Behavior

More and more reports are showing different behavior patterns for mobile visitors vs. desktop. This only makes sense, but we are now seeing data to back it up. What’s clear: giving a mobile user a desktop experience results in bounces and decreased conversion, if any.

Time on site metrics for traditional desktop users continues to be higher than metrics for mobile devices. Mobile visitors are on the go. They consume information many times in sections rather than a single sitting. The essence of being on the go doesn’t allow for prolonged spans of attention. An interesting study by ClickTale, puts some numbers to the speculation that mobile users don’t like to scroll. Long loading times, scrolling, zooming,: – all of these functions are turns off and contribute to bounces for a desktop formatted website.

Capturing Mobile Visitors

Top dealers are providing a mobile-optimized experience for their customer. These dealers are using mobile sites and mobile apps designed to capture the customer, providing first the information they are seeking, then spurring them to action. If you buy a mobile site or mobile app from a quality vendor serving the dealer market, you’ll see a lot of attention has been placed on channeling the customer through a specific set of processes.

Now that dealer apps can be downloaded right from the dealership website, dealers are using apps to create long-term relationship channels with the customer from pre-sale to post-sale service and incentives.

As mobile device traffic increases, make sure your marketing strategy doesn’t forget your mobile customer.

What is your dealerships mobile marketing strategy for the near future?

Mobile Visitors on the Rise is a post from: Internet sales manager training

Share the wealth!

Share the wealth!

Recently I was in a plumbing supply store.  I needed a small, custom part for my kitchen faucet.  This is what greeted me:

That’s right.  A bunch of white guys in dress shirts and ties, answering phones at desks with paper catalogues, and wood panels on the walls.

Seriously.  I had to check my phone to make sure it wasn’t 1980.

Wait.  It gets better.  After being gruffly greeted at the counter, my helper spent 20 minutes asking 3 different guys before finding the reference to the part I needed.  Then he went in the back of the building to their warehouse only to return and declare that the part wasn’t in stock, had been discontinued, and couldn’t be acquired any longer.

Now that’s extreme, but it got me thinking:  Surely we’ve done a better job in the car business keeping up? In my days back in the late 90′s I remembered the end of the parts microfiche days.  Don’t know what that is?  Go on a quest to find out.  I always find the exploration of the technological or cultural references backwards to be insightful.

Think your dealership is up to date?  Would your customers say so?  Consider:

How far online:  Have you recently bought anything else other than real estate or a vehicle online? Pause and picture the process you encountered in your mind.  Did your shopping process involve the vendor showing you a colorized photo of the vehicle, generic data (i.e. VIN decode), list price, and asking you to submit your information so they could get back to you with a real price, leaving credit, financing, incentives and after-market sales for when you visited their physical facility?  Carmax just announced the pilot roll out of direct online shopping.  Are you using microfiche and web lead forms when the competition has ecommerce that allows consumers to shop and buy online – cars and parts?

Would you be your “friend” online? I’m on Facebook, Twitter, Plaxo, LinkedIn, MySpace, Flickr, De.lic.i.ous, and countless blogs and forums.  I know how to use these technologies, but I’ve been around long enough that I’m skeptical of next-ware that is going to change everything.  Twitter and Facebook brought about regime change in Egypt and hopefully Libya.  Does that somehow make them effective advertising tools for car dealers?  My question is (and I don’t know the answer): who has sold what with this stuff and for what effort put in?  It’s a blog.  Post your experiences.

Other uses of social media?  We live in a lottery society, so I’m sure there must be some benefit in the contest invitations I receive from car dealers or I’m sure the deluge of them would stop (please).

Sales Presentation Materials. I helped my Canadian brother in law buy a new Subaru (an Impreza WRX Limited) a few months ago from Richmond Hill Subaru.  The customer quoting sheets were awesome.  The best I’ve ever seen.  Selling price, rebates, payment and lease options all clearly laid out.  Very professional and able to be updated as we moved through the process (i.e. added his trade in).  I know enough about the selling process and how to calculate a car deal to be dangerous, so other than surprising the finance manager by reverse-calculating the back end of the deal, everything went very smoothly.

I contrasted that with the paperwork from buying my 2003 Audi A4 Cab.  I loved that car, but now it’s a write off.  It flooded with water this spring during rain due to the improper installation of the convertible top, so I had the paperwork out.  The paperwork was dated November 2002 and the car had just come out.  I used part of my Reynolds severance check to buy it.  It was a hand-written bill of sale, with the options hand-written.  I’m quite sure as an industry we still span that spectrum of sales presentation materials from awesome, clear, and honest to hand-written.  What do your dealership’s sales presentation materials look like?

What other examples can you think of in your dealership?

And then as a footnote I was thinking the other day of services and technologies (like the microfiche) that have gone away that I don’t miss. Here’s my list.  Add yours in your comments.

Video rental stores. Thank you video on demand over the Internet!  The idiocy of driving to a store, finding the titles alphabetically or by genre, renting a disk, worrying about availability and the ever looming return date.  Click.  Gone.

Cell phones as phones. I have a wife and two boys.  We all have iPhones.  The phone part of the bill is less than 1/3 of the total and collectively we have 1,000 minutes per month and only use 2-300 of them.  But 15-20,000 texts and several GB of data per month, no problem.  A phone with call display and numbers 0-9 would seem like an antique.  I saw one of the old house phones with a cord and the rotary dial the other day.  My 13 year old asked me what it was.

Desktops and Laptops are going quickly too. iPads, netbooks, and smart phones.  Don’t believe me?  Look at what people under 30 use.

Typewriters. I am old enough that I had to take typing in high school.  I thought it was a completely useless course at the time. Couldn’t have been more wrong.  Sorry for the things I said Mom.  Probably the most useful thing I could have taken.  Use it all day every day.  No wonder they call it keyboarding now.

I could go on.  I have many more.  That’s not the point.  This is a blog.  Please add your input.  I’ll leave you this final thought:

The world around us is changing.  Technology is enabling everything we do and radically reshaping how we do a lot of things. In this context, how do consumers view your business?  Do you look and operate like the car dealers they’ve stereotyped or are your image, brand, technology, and processes setting a different and more up to date image?

As Darwin said (I’ll paraphrase), “It is not the tallest, strongest, fastest, smartest, or any other -est that survives evolution:  It is just the species which is most adaptable to change.”

What have you seen?  What do you think?  What’s going on out there?

How well does your dealership adapt and embrace technological and process change?

Insight Begins By Seeing is a post from: Internet sales manager training

Share the wealth!

Share the wealth!

Last week’s announcement by Autotrader.com, combined with previous announcements by Cars.com and other

automotive website providers, shines the spotlight on live dealer live chat.

Many of us are asking questions about what this means for our dealerships, so I conducted an exclusive interview with Marc Hayes, the founder and head of products for Contact At Once! whose software powers the live chat features on both Autotrader.com and Cars.com.

Jeff: What are the implications of last week’s Autotrader.com announcement?

Marc: The broad implication is that, if live chat wasn’t already a mainstream technology in automotive retail, it is now. The momentum behind dealer chat has been building for several years with adoption by Cars.com, CarsDirect, and others. Now Autotrader.com has implemented chat. Dealers that don’t already have a chat strategy will need to develop one.

Jeff: Chat is a 15+ year old technology so, unlike other trends born of “new” technologies, such as social networking, why is chat just now trending in automotive retail?

Marc: The short answer is that consumers like it. This is evidenced by conversion data like that in the Autotrader.com announcement “Early value tests conducted by AutoTrader.com showed that dealers who added dealer live chat to their listings experienced an average lift in shopper interaction of about 20%”. Our other customers report similar increases in the amount of consumer engagement realized from including chat on their sites. As a result, it helps dealers sell more cars and improve the return on their digital advertising spend.

Jeff: And why do consumers like chat so much?

Marc: There are many reasons, so in the interest of time I’ll just highlight a few. First, people often shop for cars while they are at work. The web logs of any automotive website will confirm this fact. People at work can’t discreetly call or be called, but they can discreetly initiate a chat, ask a few questions at the moment of interest, and schedule an appointment. Second, consumers increasingly prefer text-based communications of all types – SMS text messages on mobile phones, Twitter, Facebook messaging, Skype chat, etc. As consumers use text-based communication more and more in their daily lives, it follows that they will use it when car shopping too. Third, consumers desire instant gratification. Fewer and fewer are willing to fill out a lead form and wait for someone to contact them.

Jeff: Autotrader.com is the latest in a long list of sites such as Cars.com, CarsDirect.com, CarSoup.com, and many regional and local players who’ve selected Contact At Once! to power their chat features. How is it that your company has become so pervasive on automotive sites?

Marc: When we founded the company in 2005 we had a vision unlike any other chat vendor then or since. We didn’t view chat as just an add-on for dealer websites. Rather, we looked a data showing that 90%+ of car shoppers start their search on a website other than a dealership website and said to ourselves “so why does chat software only work on dealer websites?”. We felt dealers could sell more cars if we could connect them to shoppers on all of the sites their inventory appeared on. Thus, we built ContactAtOnce! to include both the traditional dealer website chat software and, uniquely, an advanced patent-pending layer of chat features that enable it to work on 3rd party sites as well. Because of that, our company stood out when Cars.com, Autotrader.com, and other automotive site providers conducted their in-depth vendor evaluations and selections.

Jeff: Dealer conversations around chat inevitably turn to the topic of whether or not dealership personnel are capable of answering chats effectively. What has been your experience on this matter?

Marc: We know many dealers are not only capable of but do answer live chats quite effectively. As a company we are agnostic. The vast majority of our dealers prefer to answer their own chats but many use a BDC as a “backup” during busy times and after hours. Other customers feel our BDC can do a better job than their people and just outsource it 100%. Still others don’t want anyone other than their personnel interacting with customers. So, it varies from dealer to dealer, and our goal is to provide a valuable service no matter which model a given dealership prefers.

Jeff: What would be the best thing to compare chat to for reporting purposes? Most of the time it is graded against Internet leads, but it is really more like a phone call right?”

Marc : Our customers report closing ratios in the 20-25% range which is more like phone leads than form leads. One of our customers, Marc Ray of Grogan’s Towne Chrysler Jeep Dodge, recently told us “Chat is today’s phone up. If you don’t have chat it is like not having your phones plugged in.” I love that quote!

Jeff: Since it is more like a phone-up than an Internet lead, is there a specific way a dealer should be training (or looking for training on) instant chat?

Marc : Absolutely. I think most chat vendors offer some type of live chat training. We offer free online self-paced training courses, as well as free live webinar-based training. Users can register for the webinars and/or access the online training courses from http://contactatonce.com/support-training. We also partner with a number of training and consulting firms who have incorporated chat training into their overall internet department and BDC training programs.

Jeff: Is Autotrader.com your customer, or are they reselling your software to dealers?

Marc: Autotrader.com is our customer. They licensed our software because they found during trials that chat increased the number of online shoppers interacting with dealerships by about 20%. They spend significant sums on advertising to attract shoppers to their website, so a 20% improvement is a big deal.

Jeff: So a dealer can use your software to handle chats coming from Autotrader.com, Cars.com, or other 3rd party sites because those sites have, in effect, licensed your software and “bundled” it with their advertising packages?

Marc: Correct.

Jeff: And if a dealer wants to add your chat software to their own website, they can buy a license for that directly from you?

Marc : Correct. In that way, a dealer can use one set of tools and processes to handle all chats no matter where they originate. Pricing and product details for our Dealer Edition license can be found on our auto dealer chat website.

Live Dealer Chat – Exclusive Interview with Contact At Once! is a post from: Internet sales manager training

Share the wealth!

Share the wealth!

The year is 2035. The scene, a ramshackle car dealership with cracked asphalt, a few dim fluorescent lighting fixtures swinging on thin chains and empty jars of Folgers crystals where the keurig machine once brewed single servings of cinnamon vanilla dark roast.

The cars are still perfectly aligned in rows, but no one is hovering over them, buffing out the handprints. If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of nervous breathing beneath the shuffle of paper. It must be the sales staff, but why are they all hidden, crouching behind desks and lingering in the lavatory?

Who has instilled such fear in a once fearless sales force?

The Customers. That’s right – the very people that car dealerships went to great lengths to court. They rose up to become a well-armed citizen militia bent on forcing the automotive industry to run leaner and meaner.

Their micro-technology weapon of choice? Smart phones.

That hellish scenario is only a mere 20 years away, but signs of its impending realization are everywhere. It turns out that a stunning 92% of adults in the U.S. own smart phones – a mini computer right in their pocket. Technology has continued to do the same things it has always done – get smaller and cheaper. This accounts for the fact that 1 in 4 people on the continent of Africa have a mobile device- just digest that for a moment.

Done? Ok, now let’s examine the recent state of affairs in the northern, more sophisticated portion of the continent. Revolution, turmoil, people casting aside years of oppression…Listen, I’m not making any direct comparisons here, but would it be a stretch to imagine the General Manager of your corner dealership delivering a pre-taped address, fist in the air and a tear sneaking out from behind his oversized sunglasses while declaring that the world hasn’t heard the end of Jones Motors?

Alright, perhaps I exaggerate, but the facts are simple; for purchases exceeding $300 in value, 84% of consumers will do some manner of research online and half of those people will revisit the issue on their mobile device. Do you think the average consumer is going to do a little digging when it comes to the second largest investment most of them will ever make? By the way, is buying a car still second to home ownership? Anyone else ever have student loans? But I digress.

Lunch time, standing in line for coffee, sitting in a really boring meeting, all of these are now opportunities for people to inform themselves on the things that matter to them. It has been well documented that the car and the self-image have a strong bond. People care. Car purchases are one of things that people research to the point of exhaustion. In fact, it is estimated that individuals will spend a total of 19 hours researching a car purchase and 11 ½ of those will be done online. And now, customers carry with them a little device containing everything that they could ever want to know about anything, including automotive products and pricing. Not an easy time for the automotive sales associate.

Let’s rewind a few decades. During the latter part of the twentieth century, the dealership in the aforementioned horror movie scenario was gleaming in its brilliance. Well-dressed, confident sales professionals adorned a state of the art facility that was hustling and bustling; industry lexicon slashing it’s way through countless objections, resulting in people reaching for credit cards, or check books and driving off in cars that they weren’t sure they even wanted or couldn’t necessarily afford.

It didn’t matter that everyone brought his or her dad, uncle, or any other domestic support associate to this deal. The dealership held all the cards. They knew exactly what the customer knew and more importantly what they didn’t know. The balance of power was in the sales person’s favor. Uncle Joe who wasn’t going to let his nephew Skippy, get roughed up on rust proofing left happy even when the dealership sold Skippy his car at full sticker- because he just didn’t know. Perception was 9/10ths of the battle and more often than not, the dealership was victorious.

So how did we arrive at this post apocalyptic auto hell-scape a mere twenty years later?

As with anything, there are many factors. Economy, domestic manufacturing costs, trade deficit… In fact up until 2007, the real demon hadn’t even emerged in a significant way. Micro-technology in the guise of Smart phones. They seem relatively innocuous, even helpful in most situations and always a lot of fun. I have this one app where you can say anything and it turns your voice…well we’ll do that at another time.

But yes, smart phones are the latest enemy in a string of micro-technological advancements that have chipped away at the advantage of the average sales staff. Once, there was a time when people would have to plan their visit to the dealership. The day before, they would print the critical stats from websites and head to battle with a few folded, coffee stained pages tucked in purses or pockets.

Today, people drive by your dealership, stop if they have the time, pull up alongside a vehicle they find appealing, slip a free hand inside their pocket and draw their weapon. In a comparative instant, they are given access to reams of pertinent information that may include but are not limited to: customer reviews of the vehicle and your store, cost of ownership per mile, insurance info, the amount your dealership paid for the car and in some cases, even a virtual test drive.

Today 1 in 8 people visit your dealership through a mobile device compared to 6 months ago, when it was 1 in 50.

Progress? More like Armageddon. The percentage of overall site visits attributed to mobile devices has doubled in the last 7 months; the usual visit being an average of almost 5 pages and 5 minutes per visit. Think about it, while you’re watching some rookie sales person mutter motivational slogans to themselves in order to build up the courage to confront this well armed customer in the parking lot, the customer has digested 5 pages of valuable information. Scary.

And just as young Willie Loman is nearing his prospect, panting from his 70-yard jog with tie flapping in the breeze, the customer belts out a demonic laugh, sheaths her weapon and speeds off toward home where she intends to get an internet quote before ever speaking to anyone in person.

How can we combat this? I have some ideas, although they may not be conventional. I assume most of you have been to an Apple store. The store associates are pushing the envelope in the area of man and machine becoming one. A little team of uniformed, laid back twenty-somethings with headsets and these magical wrist devices that allow them to move freely through the store. The fact that they’re usually grinning suggests that there is a higher level of communication going on in that headset than their customers are aware of, but it’s nice to see them having fun either way.

So I got to thinking, why can’t we do that with sales associates in auto dealerships? Of course, the wrist devices would need to be a bit more aesthetically refined, come in a variety of finishes and have enough room to be monogrammed, (at least where I work), but it could work, couldn’t it?

I especially love the headset idea. It’s like a coach quarterback thing. You could say things like “don’t just hand the ball to the customer, make them take it!” Or, “if they mention holdback, run for your life!” But mostly, you maybe able to prevent mistakes before they happen.

I would personally take this one step further. How about cutting a circle 6 inches in diameter and color it in like a rainbow pinwheel. Tape it to a tongue depressor and every time your sales associate runs into a problem, they could just hold it up and pause like your iphone does when you press that little button fourteen times in a second. It just may buy them the precious seconds they need to rebound from the bombardment of facts – spewing from the mouths of the customer team in stereo; because remember – you’ll probably be up against two people, each with their own device.

This brings me full circle to my last and best idea regarding our new sales associate versus the well-armed customer. Bring your dad to work! I’m not suggesting everyday, because the way things are going, all of our parents will be retiring to Wal-Mart, where your assisted living comes with a certain level of responsibility and a nice wad of mart bucks to spend on enormous tubs of precooked bacon, but they should be able to shake free twice a week right? Doesn’t that level the playing field? A customer team each armed with smart phones versus a sales team, of sorts, with one headset, a wrist thingy and an elderly gentleman that may hopefully say things like “can’t you put your phone away for ten minutes while we conduct business!”

If we arm ourselves against our common enemy, we may be able to prevent the post apocalyptic future that has haunted my dreams. After all, we know who’s coming and we know what they’re bringing with them. It isn’t too late to prevent the horror. Isn’t Steve Jobs working on a computerized contact lens that allows the user to surf with a series of blinks and head tilting?

Perhaps we’re already screwed?

Smart Phones Will Be Their Weapon of Choice! is a post from: Internet sales manager training

Share the wealth!

Share the wealth!