Most of us are visual, you know the old saying… “A picture can tell a thousand words“. I am here to tell you that when it comes to business decisions, decision makers will move mountains if they can see their progress on charts and maps. Today, I’m exposing a really cool and free online map builder: http://www.batchgeo.com.

I have been using BatchGeo to produce monthly sales and marketing reports for almost 2 years, I thought a few of you could use this site and get real creative to help demonstrate why you should get that raise!

BatchGeo takes any address and plots it on a google or yahoo map for you. “Yawn” you say? But, what if you can plot all your internet sales from the last 90 days, assign different colored push pins for each lead source… in say 60 seconds!!? Now we’re talkin’!

Let’s start ‘er up and take her for a spin!

First project for our demo will be plotting a list of a few of our DR members on a google map. 1st, we collected the names on our DR message boards, then, I moved it to a Spread Sheet, then I copied and pasted that info into BatchGeo and viola! Look what we have here!

The Dealer Refresh Community Foot Print!

Nice indeed! What BatchGeo.com will do is allow you to copy-n-paste  any address information from a spread sheet and automatically plot it on a Google or yahoo map.

The information that comes from this can really move decision making. How big is your sales foot print?  What about last year? How big is your service foot print? What if you want to advertize in a market that’s just outside your reach?

Say your 90 mins out from a large market and you want to run a Google AdWords campaign to draw people in. After you plot your existing sales on BatchGeocode.com, Execute your new Google AdWords campaign, the following month, re-run your updated info into BatchGeo.com and your new map will see if your footprint has changed.

You can produce Sales Maps by Store

http://www.batchgeo.com/map/2084fdc5a16f753b2a98175330a0a939

You can produce  Sales Map by Sales rep

http://www.batchgeo.com/map/d9912c0f5e44f98fd6e344200a54feb8

See where I am going with this?

You can plot “Internet Sales” vs Non-Internet Sales.  You can plot sales by lead source, you can copy n paste in your incoming phone call records (by lead source if you’d like .  We opened a new store after an Sales Map analysis quickly showed everyone that this new store’s location would have no material impact on the other stores footprint. Nice… very nice. Did I mention it was free?  If you like it, They take donations via PayPal!

Just amazing.

Macs don’t belong in car dealerships! PC’s are where it’s at y0!

I beg to differ. I’m making it work.

Using a Mac in the dealership is not for everyone, but for those who do use one there is something about that innovative Apple interface that makes daily computing much more enjoyable. Of course, your mileage may vary.

If your patience is low and you don’t like figuring stuff out, then don’t get a Mac.  Moving from a PC to a Mac can be frustrating for a week or two – it was for me.  There is one key thing to remember when making the switch:

When you get stuck on a Mac, think about how your grandmother would do it and the solution comes right up.

In many ways you’ll have to unlearn PC.  But the learning will actually open your mind a lot more and you may discover that it helps you to better communicate with your vendors when working through process and feature development.

What are you going to need in your dealership Mac?

Streamlining your Email, Instant Message and Social Network Communications

I picked up the recent edition of MaximumPC Magazine while I was in the airport the other day and they were showcasing some “Must have free apps”. A few things in that magazine intrigued me, but the only one I’ve followed-up on so far is Digsby: Digsby = IM + Email + Social Networks

It combines all of your email applications, social media stuff, and instant messaging accounts into one place. I doubt I’ll ever launch Tweet deck again now.

I use it for:

Instant Message

• AIM
• MSN Messenger
• G-Talk
• Yahoo Messenger

Email

• Hotmail
• GMail
• POP3 & IMAP accounts not yet setup

Social Networking

• twitter
• facebook
• MySpace

Here are some screen shots:

The application itself – looks like your regular IM app – and it shows you what that particular person recently did on another media if they’re on your other social media accounts:

Here is a Twitter timeline and see how it docks into your open application list in a Microsoft OS:

I’m definitely digging Digsby.

Warning: when installing, make sure you accept just Digsby and Decline everything else. It is pre-packaged with a bunch of junk.

What is your “must have free app” for Email, IM and keeping up with your Social Networks?

This was posted on the DealerRefresh Dealer Fourms as well. Feel free to comment over there!

First off, sorry for disappearing from Dealer Refresh again – I was on another vacation….rough life, I know.  I just got back Monday morning and thought I’d do a quick review on the Storm since it has now gone through its first firmware upgrade, and I’ve got some significant mileage on it.

There is a Verizon store about a mile from my house and I have to pass it to get to work, so I stopped by late on the release date to check it out.  When I got there I found out I could grab a spot to get the phone on the second shipment of the day, so I bit.  Later that day I got a call to drop everything and get to the store.  After 3 unsuccessful attempts to get it programmed (Verizon’s systems crashed numerous times) we finally got it right.

The Storm is a very well constructed phone.  It has a weight to it that gives it the same kind of feel you get from a German car – just solid.  When you turn the screen on, it is beautiful.  There is so much screen real estate you almost get lost.  It is filled with all the Blackberry goodness of intuitive navigation and simple buttons to move through apps easily.

Before the new firmware update, it was a little slow to respond to things and I found myself hitting buttons twice because I didn’t think it was responding.  Today it is much better.

The keyboard takes a lot of getting used to.  Everyday I get better, but it will never be the same as the keyboard on the Curve or Bold.  I like it much more than the keyboard on the iPhone though.  There are 3 keyboard options:  regular QWERTY, double-lettered SureType like the Pearl, and a numeric keyboard much like any regular phone.  I find myself using the SureType keyboard more than anything else.  I only use the QWERTY one if I need to type a word the SureType (fills in the words for you) doesn’t like – usually cuss words (for emphasis of course).  SureType has a tendency to replace a certain word with “ducking” every time and that is *ducking* annoying!

Keyboard Tip: grab a business card and cut in 3 equal pieces.  Put one piece between the battery and the battery cover to decrease the travel space on the push-down part of the touch screen.  This will allow you to type much faster.  Continue to add pieces of the business card until you’re satisfied or the back cover won’t close.

The phone is plenty loud – louder than the Curve and much better than the older Blackberry 8703e.  BlueTooth is fantastic over an earpiece or through the car.  Using BlueTooth sucks the battery out over a day of use, but when the BlueTooth is not on the battery lasts for days with heavy use.  My biggest gripe with the phone is that there are 4 big buttons present:  Speaker, Mute, Add Participant, and Flash.  Because this is a touch screen you either have to pull up the numeric pad or be very careful not to rest your face on the screen or you’re going to hit one of those buttons.  My second biggest gripe with the phone is that you have to hit the call button twice in order to get to the phone – it is just annoying.  When you hit the phone button it takes you straight to your contacts which is good for me about 40% of the time, but I also call people back about 40% of the time too and have to shift over, or the other 20% of the time I’m actually dialing a number.  I can’t tell you where I’d prefer the phone default to.

Where the Storm rocks is online.  I have yet to find a website I can’t visit in its full splendor.  There are 3 browser settings that tell websites what type of device you are:  Blackberry, Internet Explorer, or Firefox.  If you find a website isn’t loading quickly or is coming up in the mobile format, it is simple enough to flip between one of those three and hit refresh – works like a charm!  The Verizon 3G network is fast.  Yes, I would like Wi-Fi, but I’m not that impatient.  I find my texts, emails, voicemails and any other messages coming to and from the Storm are happening much, much faster than on any other Blackberry I’ve ever owned.

When on a call, you cannot send and receive emails, but you can send and receive texts.  I find this to be a blessing and a curse all in one.  I’m too much of a multitasker to pay attention to anything.  I’m always doing 3 or 4 things at the same time and think that not being able to respond to emails in a call helps me pay better attention (my girlfriend appreciates that), but there sure are a lot of boring business calls during the day where I’d love to be saying “uh huh” …. “yeah” ….”gotcha” ….”uh huh” while getting some emails done.

It works fantastically while roaming – even in Mexico….except in Mexican Customs where I really needed it to work (don’t ask).  I have yet to find a bad spot with this phone.

All in all, the Storm is a great phone.  I’m not convinced it is “the” phone and my search will continue one day.  I’m looking forward to the new Curve, but I certainly will not be getting one on launch day.  If you’re a heavy Blackberry user with little patience you will hate the communications side of the Storm, but if you need to visit heavy websites on the go, you’ll love it.  So I’m split because I need to do both.

Some of the things I didn’t cover, but am happy to answer in comments below:

• Visual Voicemail
  Voice Dialing
  Instant Messaging
  Highlighting Text
  3 MP Camera
  Video Camera
  Music/Video…media
  Other Applications
  Memory
  Acclimater

Props to David at autolahome.com for bringing this to our attention in the “Car Dealers Embrace Video” Article!

On August 20th of 2008 Microsoft Labs launched Photosynth to the world.  It is an online image-stitching tool that renders a series of images into an interactive “panoramic” walk-around.

Imagine taking 20 photos of the interior of a car:  the steering wheel, the shifter, the radio, the driver’s door armrest, the gauges, the sunroof, etc and having them all linked together by technology.  No, not like a 2 dimensional slideshow as we have today.  A virtual 3D rendering that someone can click through to view various areas of the interior that interest them.  Think of something like the eVox interior displays most of us already have, but a little more crude, and not done in a studio with special camera gear.  This would be something anyone could do.  Maybe some images will help…

Example of a series of photos of the same subject

How 232 images of the Sphinx can be walked-through.

Visit http://photosynth.net to see it in action.  You will have to install some software and it currently works best in Internet Explorer (of course).

Then think about how you could use a technology like this to do full product displays without having to get fancy with the equipment.

Could this be a future tool for retailers?