Have you seen iTap Menu?

The best thing about the DealerRefresh forums are of course all the conversations happening day in and day out. Some of the best conversations start with a simple question about a new product or offering.

Within the thread “Dealer Desking Favorites“, one of our members JamieS linked to a new desking company – iTap Menu. I was curious so I made a few phone calls and introduced myself to the founder Shawn and sat through a demo of their cutting edge product.

I like it! A alot!

Not only did I sit through a product demo of iTap Menu but also spent some additional time asking Shawn a few questions.

Jeff – Shawn, Why does the industry need yet another F&I menu?

Shawn – Because the existing providers created a product that simply doesn’t work in the manner it was designed to.

An unchangeable piece of paper full of text, first and foremost, will not convince someone to increase their monthly payment by $60-80/month. Second, the actual “structure” of the menu is not conducive to selling products.

Why are we presenting four columns labeled after metals from the periodic table and, with no real meaning to the customer, lightly decreasing each column in products and payments from left to right? And finally, 99% of the time, the customer doesn’t want one of the options exactly as created, so now what?  You can’t change a piece of paper…unless you have a Sharpie and your DMS handy to re-calculate the requested changes.

Jeff – What about the F&I Managers that use a menu and produce good numbers?

Shawn – It’s not because of the menu, I know that. I’ve been asked this before.  Thirteen years of consulting and observing F&I departments in over 500 stores confirmed it.

Talented people with a dealership committed to F&I…a culture and history of success, with solid Sales Managers, trained Salespeople, motivating pay plans, and the right set of products. That’s what has made these F&I Managers successful. The paper, four-column menu is simply a by-product of that success. Ask the real F&I professionals. They stopped using the current menu as we know it years ago. And the ones that still do essentially use it to create dialog and negotiate payments with the customer. They aren’t feature/benefit/closing.

With a four-column menu and the way it’s structured, that process isn’t possible. This isn’t my opinion. It’s a fact. Look at it. It’s ugly! Would you personally buy anything from it?  Hell no.

Jeff – How is iTapMenu so different from your competitors?

Shawn – First of all, look at it.  It’s incredible. Look at the menu screen.  It was designed by artists, not developers. Apple inspired artists at that.  100 out of 100 people would agree there’s no comparison in the visual experience vs a paper menu.

The customization is also a HUGE difference.  You can move products in and out of options with an immediate change in the payment, you can change the term and rate, increase the down payment, and discount products right on the fly on the iPad.

I envision the F&I Manager using iTap on the showroom floor or sitting next to the customer in their office and actually letting the customer use iTap.  Giving the customer some power will change how they view the F&I Manager, the dealership, and the overall experience.  And, they’ll buy more products because they’re well informed about the products through iTap’s videos and statistics AND they’ll develop a sense of trust because they are involved in the decision.  No more shell games.

And finally, the structure of the menu is different.  I laugh at four column menus and how they’re structured to decrease the products and payments from left to right.  We’re basically stating we understand there’s no way you’re going to buy the first option, so “pretty please” have some interest in one of these less expensive options.  It would be like asking someone to buy a car for $20,000 but then immediately offering them to buy it for $19,000 or $18,000 or $17,000.  Gee, wonder which one they’re going to choose?

With iTap, it simply doesn’t work that way.

Jeff – Shawn, thanks for your time today. You mentioned that you would be attending NADA 2012 but you would not have a booth. How would one contact you for more information?

Shawn – you can of course visit our website at www.itapmenu.com or give me a call at 317-696-6396

Why Do We Need Another F&I Menu? is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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Share the wealth!

This found it’s way into my inbox over the weekend. It takes about 10-20 minutes to get through the through the 6 steps.

STEP 1 – What Do You Want To Accomplish with your Social Media Strategy?
STEP 2 – Determine Where You Are In the Social Media Lifecycle
STEP 3 – Understand & Rank Challenges
STEP 4 – Monitoring Target Audiences and Ranking by Social Media Behavior STEP 5 – Aligning Objectives and Measurement
STEP 6 – Finding the Right Tactics

Complete all 6 Steps and you’re rewarded with a PDF Strategy Workbook filled with a information, worksheets, and resources catered around your defined priorities for your social media strategy.

As good as this “Strategy Tool” is, it is exactly what it is – a tool to help you build a strategy and not so much a best practice guide. However, it goes provide links to many resources to help with this.

If you complete the 6 steps - let me know what you think in the comments.

BTW – what’s your dealerships social media strategy?

Take Six Fast Steps to Social Media Success

The best person to build your social media strategy is you. And we just made it easy.

We took the best social media research out there: Marketing Sherpa’s Social Media Roadmap and 2010/2011 Benchmark Reports. We turned it into an interactive tool that lets you create a custom strategy tailored exactly to your needs.

In just six steps, you drag–and–drop your goals, answer questions and select the route and resources that are right for you. The tool does the rest, building you a 35–page workbook with a detailed plan based on your choices. You’ll find insight, next steps, worksheets, links to resources, and data that shows you where you stand compared to your industry peers.

Explore it at your own pace, decide where you want to go, and even take away a blank workbook if you want to do it alone. You’re in control—and it’s totally free!

A Neat Social Media Strategy Tool – Check it out 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!

CarFax iPhone App

CarFax launched their new iPhone app today. Who doesnt like a new app for their iphone? Here’s one that could help at the dealership…CarFax iPhone App – so get off of Angry Birds and run a CarFax from your iPhone!

So where’s the Driod and BlackBerry App??

I’ve includes the full Press Release after the jump..

CENTREVILLE, Va.  (January 26, 2011) – Carfax today launched the first mobile app dedicated to providing on-the-go dealers with access to Carfax Vehicle History Reports. The ‘Carfax for Dealers’ app is available for free download to all dealers on the App Store. With an iPhone or other Apple mobile device, dealers can run Carfax Reports using their existing Carfax account to better evaluate used cars anytime, anywhere.

“The free ‘Carfax for Dealers’ iPhone app is just what our business needed,” said Justin Villa, pre-owned sales manager with David McDavid Automotive in Irving, Tex. “We downloaded it the day it came out and already we’re saving a ton of time evaluating cars. It’s helping us win at auction and evaluate a customer’s trade faster. After all, time is money.”

Running Carfax Reports is a key component to a dealer’s acquisition process. Users start by entering the 17-digit vehicle identification number (VIN) or scanning the vehicle barcode to run the Carfax Report. Any vehicle run through the ‘Carfax for Dealers’ app is automatically added to the dealer’s inventory manager at carfaxonline.com. Carfax Reports are saved for up to 30 days and dealers can mark vehicles they’re most interested in as favorites within the app.

“We’ve always been quick to embrace new technology to help maintain our competitive edge,” said Michael Townsend, used sales manager at Townsend Honda in Tuscaloosa, Ala. “When we heard about the new ‘Carfax for Dealers’ app, we went and got it immediately. The app is fast and makes appraising cars easy. It’s my new favorite tool on my phone.”

Free access to Carfax Reports is also available through apps from several wireless technology providers.
Dealers looking for additional pricing and product integration functionality can visit:

• AutoRevo
• eCarList TrueTarget
• VIN Viper
• vAuto

“Our customers tell us how important immediate access to Carfax Reports is to their success, especially at acquisition,” said Larry Gamache, communications director at Carfax. “The ‘Carfax for Dealers’ app now puts the power of this information in the palm of your hand. And, you can run as many reports as you need through the app if you’re on the Unlimited Carfax Reports Program for dealers.”

An Android version of the ‘Carfax for Dealers’ app is coming soon. To download the app for iPhone, visit http://itunes.com/apps/CARFAXInc/CARFAXforDealers. Carfax experts will be demonstrating the new app during 2011 NADA Convention and Exposition at Booth #208 South. Interested dealers not attending the convention are encouraged to contact their Carfax Account Manager or call 800-274-2277.

About Carfax (www.carfax.com)
Millions of used car buyers and sellers each year rely on Carfax, the most trusted provider of vehicle history information. Using the unique 17-character vehicle identification number (VIN) found on vehicle dashboards and title documents, Carfax instantly generates a detailed Vehicle History Report on any used car or light truck. Carfax Vehicle History Reports™ provide valuable information that helps used car buyers and sellers make better decisions. For more information or to become a Carfax-subscribing dealer, visit www.carfaxonline.com.

Carfax Release iPhone Mobile Application is a post from: Internet sales manager training

Share the wealth!

Share the wealth!

I often get the question “How can does one get their individual DealerRater reviews posted on their Dealerships Facebook Page ?” We’re referring to your dealerships fb page “Wall” and not a tab.

I decided to cut a quick video. It’s easier to show than write about it….

I know this might be a little 101 for some, but unless you know where to look for – it’s not too obvious and you need to know where to grab the URL from.

Are you posting individual DealerRater reviews to your dealerships Facebook Wall?

UPDATE: Our good friends over at DealerRater did watch this video and quickly took action on the suggestion we pointed out in the video. Now when you post an individual customer testimonial on your dealers Facebook fan page the DealerRater logo posts as well. Thanks Chip!!

DealerRater Reviews to Facebook FanPage Wall – How to Video is a post from: Internet sales manager training

Share the wealth!

Share the wealth!

Obtain more “Follower” using a viral social media campaign with “Contest Burner”

Step 1: Get Prepared!

You caved in and decided you are going to jump in head first on the Social Media bandwagon.  You’ve read all the blogs, forums, and assassinated the latest copy of “Facebook for Dummies”.

Amidst the chaos of a new marketing campaign, don’t forget to write down your new username and password for your dealer’s:

• Facebook Fan Page
• Twitter Account
• WordPress Admin (Blog)
• Youtube Channel
• TubeMogul

Step 2: Decide to Move forward

Along with your dealership employees,  a few random friends from your local baseball team, college alumni, and family members, you “like” the Facebook fan page.  You are tweeting like a dog in heat, but you still only have 39 followers and they’re all of your vendors! The Youtube videos that took hours to upload and create only have 12 views and you’re pretty sure they were all from your mother.  It’s at this is the point that your interest and momentum start to fade and you either:

a) Give up
b) Spend thousands of dollars to work with the latest and greatest social media guru.
c) Contest Marketing

The correct answer? c) “Contest Marketing”.  It just makes sense.

Step 3: Contest Marketing—what is it?

Social Media surf bum Brendan Wenzel puts it this way:

“Contest marketing is crowd sourcing at its best. It gives your readers, customers or fans incentives to share you with their friends, write content for your site and possible anything else you’d like them to do.”

Contest Burner was developed by marketing guru, Bill Macintosh.  The concept is to allow individuals and businesses an easy way to develop and manage their own online contests to increase site traffic and brand awareness.  By awarding your contestants points for promoting your dealerships channels, you can potentially increase:

• Links to your site/blog
• Facebook Fan “Likes”
• Twitter Followers
• Youtube views and channel subscriptions
• Newsletter sign ups

Step 4: Run a contest with the WordPress plugin “Contest Burner”

The best part of the Contest Burner plugin is that it not only creates your online contest, it manages it too.  Everything from the amount of points awarded to participants to the creation of a motivational “leader board”, the Contest Burner application requires little input from you.  And, for a small fee, you can become a premium user and take advantage of features like running multiple contests at the same time.

How do contestants gain points?

The plugin is designed to track and award points to users for performing certain actions.  It goes something like this:

• Become a fan of ANY DEALER Facebook Fan Page: 50 points
• Follow ANY DEALER on Twitter: 50 points
• Comment on an ANY DEALER Youtube video: 100 points
• Subscribe to ANY DEALER YoutTube Channel: 100 points
• Anyone that clicks on your personal url (drawing new traffic to the contest): 150 points
• Writing a blog post about the contest and using “Toronto Toyota Dealer” as the anchor text : 500 points
• Create a YouTube Video and use http://www.anydealer.com as the first part of the description: 750 points

You can make the contest as simple or complex as you want.  I suggest getting your feet wet by running a small campaign that focuses only on gaining Twitter Followers.  This will allow you to get a feel for the program and plan for the big barn burner after you have gained a solid amount of followers  who are actively engaged in your social media offerings.

Step 5: Deciding on the right contest prize:

Your contest does not have to award a brand new car (but imagine the buzz!), but the prize should add value to your target audience.  General prizes like ipads, ipods, and cash are sure to get things moving in the right direction, but by offering multiple prizes,  you increase the chances of your participants putting in some serious devotion.  And, adding prizes that are specific to your local dealership market will garner attention and participation from future clients in your area.

Step 6: Maintain client interest

Just because the contest is over doesn’t mean the work is! Announce the winner—include pictures if you can—and keep followers guessing by hosting regular contests with meaningful rewards. This will gain customer loyalty while attracting new followers with their eyes on the prize.

Brendan Wenzal’s Social Media Marketing Machine Contest:

This post was inspired by reading a Tweet from one of Brendan’s followers which drove me to the You Tube Video he had done for this contest.  By posting this video, this participant is going to gain some serious points but also anyone who clicks his specialized url in the video description is counted as…you guessed it more points!  Check out the contest here for full details.  Here you can see what the contest leader board will look like.

Disclaimer: I have not personally used Contest Burner and have no affiliation with the product.  I would advise to check your state laws on contests.  The concept appears to have all of the right stuff to get the viral love that the gurus are preaching in their seminars.

Have you used viral campaigning to get more social “followers” for your dealership?

How to Run a Viral Social Media Campaign with “Contest Burner” is a post from: Internet sales manager training

Share the wealth!

Share the wealth!

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.

Use BatchGeo to Produce Monthly Sales and Marketing Reports is a post from: Internet sales manager training

Share the wealth!

Share the wealth!

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?

Hardware

This is very dependent upon your job duties.  If you’re a sales agent, you’re not going to need much.  If you’re a sales manager, I’d concentrate on a decent dual or quad core processor with at least 4GB of RAM.  If you’re an eCommerce Director who will use graphics & video software, multiple browsers, a virtual machine for windows programs, and anything else….then you’re like me.  I’m on a 15″ MacBook Pro with an Intel Dual Core 2.66 GHz processor and 8GB’s of RAM.  When on the move, the laptop is fantastic, and when at my desk I use the Apple 24″ display with a Magic Mouse and full Apple keyboard.  I have yet to find something I couldn’t throw at this setup.

Picking your Apple hardware is a lot simpler than picking your next Windows machine simply because your Apple choices are limited.  I think the MacBook Pro series and iMac series are the best bang for the buck in the Apple line-up.  Everything else just fills a niche in the market in my opinion.  But as I stated earlier, your mileage may vary.

Is Apple hardware more expensive?  Yes.  Is it more expensive over 2-4 years?  No.  Apple’s are fairly “future-proof” right out of the box.  In my experience, I am typically looking to add more RAM, then a graphics card, then an extra battery for my laptop, then a ____ to my PC within the first year of ownership.  It might be $800 cheaper to buy that PC vs. a similarly equipped Apple, but when I add that new RAM, that new video card, and those other things I am right near or over that $800 difference.  ….by the way, I just pulled $800 out of the air – that is not a factual dollar amount for the difference between an Apple and a Windows machine.

Software

This is what it is really about.  Yes, that Apple hardware is beautiful and those glass screens really make everything on your monitor pop, but the real beauty is in the sofware.

After living off of PC’s for years I was not prepared for the surprise I got the first time I installed all my programs on a Mac.  Holy crap – you’re telling me all these things not only keep a uniform look and feel, but they can also work together using the Mac operating operating system?  Wow, why didn’t that happen on my PC?  So, Apple has these things called Cocoa and Grand Central Dispatch that work inside the operating system to get programs speaking together and then using my hardware to deliver things to me based on what needs the most resources at the time?  So this is where a lot of that seamless integration comes from along with not necessarily needing to change up my hardware as often!  ….this was one of my first ah-ha Apple moments.

Operating System
Snow Leopard brings with it a bundle of standard features that make life so much simpler.  If you need to make a VPN connection to your secure dealership network, that’s built in.  If you are mobile and need to use your cell phone as an Internet connection, that’s built in.  Ever put a sticky note on your monitor?  Yep, that’s built in.  Need to take a screen shot to show what is happening on your computer?  That’s not only built in, but you have the option to take a full screen shot, a shot of your active window, or just a piece of your screen with the extra option to save as a GIF, JPEG, or PNG (with drop shadow for better looks).  Instead of hitting the “Print Screen” button and then pasting, you can now easily insert your screen shot into any program without having to edit it first (Windows 7 now offers this).  Do you have multiple network drives or a drive you backup to?  That’s not only built in, but you can use Time Machine to create a backup schedule that works in the background without significantly slowing down your work progress.  Do you connect to multiple monitors or a projector?  Snow Leopard can be set to remember up to your last 10 displays you connected to, so the next time you connect to that display everything pops up instantly without having to go through display settings and configurations.  If you’re on a laptop, and doing a multitude of things, try Spaces to emulate the kind of workspace you’d have when working on up to 16 monitors!  Yeah, I can go and on about the Apple operating system.  Yes, you can buy or download a program to do each of these things on a PC, but nothing works so well as stock, and stock has never worked so well!

Browsers
Firefox is definitely the clear winner on a Mac because of plug-ins and how many programs are written to work together with FireFox.  Safari is nicer than Internet Explorer, but Chrome and Camtasia are nice too.  If you have a software that absolutely won’t work without Internet Explorer, then there is a solution for that as well (keep reading).

Mail, Calendar, Address Book and syncing
Apple Mail (email) in Snow Leopard works well with Microsoft Exchange 2007.  The real beauty of Apple Mail comes in Smart Mailboxes.  Instead of doing searches or keeping a bunch of folders, you can setup Smart Mailboxes with tons of options that will always find or sort your mail as you wish.  There is also a bounce feature for those pesky spam emails (COMMAND + SHIFT + B) that bounces an email back telling that spammer your email address does not exist.  Through this alone I have cut my spam email down by at least half. There are some drawbacks to Mail.  Apple believes the recipient of your email has set the default font for viewing your email and you shouldn’t set your fonts in respect of your recipient’s preferred fonts.  If your recipient hasn’t changed their font views, then all your emails are in 12 point Times New Roman font – I don’t like that.  And if your recipient hasn’t set how they want to view images in their email, Apple Mail inserts graphics and PDF’s as fully displayed inside the email, so they don’t show as downloadable attachments to the recipient unless you right-click the image or PDF and tell Mail to show them as icons.  You can purchase a plug-in from Lokiware that will insert all your attachments as icons.  Of course, Apple Mail isn’t your only option – there are two email clients from Mozilla (the makers of FireFox) called Thunderbird and SeaMonkey.  There are quite a few others, but the next most popular is Microsoft’s Entourage which is their Mac version of Outlook.  The funny part about Microsoft’s Entourage is that is it doesn’t play nice with all Microsoft Exchange Servers – huh?

Calendar and Address Book are separate programs from Mail.  If you use Entourage, you can combine everything, but almost every Mac program can use Calendar and Address Book, so that is why they’re separated.  If you take advantage of Bento or FileMaker for database building, then you’ll appreciate this separation.

Syncing is great with Microsoft Exchange 2007.  In some ways I’ve found the Apple world to work better with Exchange than the PC world.  You can put things together with Google, MobileMe, and just about any other calendar or address book with the exception of HotMail (another Microsoft product).  It does take some tweaking to get HotMail to work, but it takes some tweaking to get it to work properly with other Microsoft products as well.  Of course, if you have an iPhone, the Apple world gets so much better in the syncing department!

Graphic & Video Softwares
Remember the days when people said that Macs were only used by graphic designers?  There’s probably a good reason for that!  First off, everything looks better on a Mac display.  Sorry, that isn’t just my opinion, it is fact.  Their gamma and color settings are just more true, and when you pair that with the glass monitor it all just comes together.  Photoshop has a lot more flexibility and customization settings, and the same goes for just about any other program in the Adobe Creative Suite.  On top of that, these programs “float” on your desktop allowing you to view one image in Photoshop while you’re simultaneously working with a vector graphic in Illustrator.  It just makes sense.

Office software
You’ve got 2 ways you can go here:  Microsoft Office for Mac or iWork by Apple (you can use OpenOffice too).  Either way you go, you’re going to have a little bit of a learning curve coming from a PC because neither work the same as a PC.  Microsoft has stated that with Office 2011 for Mac they will make it more like the PC version.  This is one area where the PC currently trumps Apple.  However, it is the one area where I’m seeing more updates and additions than any other.  I foresee the office software environment being a very even playing field in the near future.  Yes, you can absolutely still accomplish everything you can on a PC today inside Powerpoint, Excel, and Word with the exception of some very high function Excel algorithms that maybe NASA developers use.  The one thing that annoys me the most about working in Office for Mac is the toolbox.  Instead of having all your normal font editing functions in the the actual working window itself, they’re all separated into an entirely different window.  Only Microsoft would do this crap.

iWork on the other hand, does include all your normal functions in the areas you’d expect to see them.  I have not spent a great deal of time in iWork yet, so I can’t comment as deeply.  I do love Keynote over Powerpoint and would like to learn Numbers a bit more.  I’d like to switch from Excel to Numbers one day.

Windows and Microsoft-only softwares
As the car business has been dominated by Windows and the PC, there are still some products that will only work in a Windows environment.  The biggest ones who absolutely refuse to code for a Mac are DMS companies.  As our ADP contract is coming up, we have been talking to all the various DMS companies and I’ve asked all of them if they have something for a Mac – the response is laughter….my thought is “yeah, keep chuckling smart guy.”  DMS companies are another matter of frustration, but there is a workaround to make their solutions work on a Mac:  VMware Fusion or Parallels are products that create a virtual machine inside your Mac.  You can be running things as normal and have Windows running too – pretty cool!  If you want to install another operating system, or have a version of Windows XP and Windows 7 running along with Snow Leopard go right ahead.  Either of these two programs will take care of all your Windows programs.

When Apple released OSX (Leopard) they also built in a feature called Boot Camp which can launch a totally different operating system when you first start your computer up.  So if you always wanted the Apple hardware, but not the Apple operating system, you can run Windows completely on an Intel Mac.  This is good for gamers.

Other Mac softwares
There is a whole new world of stuff out there that is coded by Mac people for Mac people.  Ladies and Gentlemen, this stuff is FANTASTIC!  For instant chat I use Adium.  For FTP uploading CyberDuck is great.  And my absolute favorite Mac-only tool is 1Password which stores all your passwords, credit cards, personal information and plug directly into FireFox and Safari for quick log-ins and online purchases.  It can also generate passwords for you.  I have it syncing with DropBox and my iPhone so I can access my passwords anywhere.  And for you IT geeks, 1Password is encrypted.  Keep in mind that Macs have been most popular with the graphics, video, and music crowds so the applications and plug-ins for your favorite softwares, in those genres, are unbelievable.  There is just no comparison in this area between the Microsoft and Apple worlds.

Cons of moving to a Mac
I’ve already discussed how poor the Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac suite is in comparison to Office 2007 for a PC…..I guess I should say that it isn’t disgusting – it just isn’t as good.  And, you have to factor in that some CRM systems (AutoBase, HigherGear, the server-based ones), definitely your bigger DMS companies, and all of the dealership chat tools currently on the market are all written for Windows, so you will have to purchase VM Ware or Parallels with a good copy of Windows (I suggest XP because it isn’t a resource hog).  If you’ve always been on Windows you’re also going to struggle with your initial migration.

Things are simpler and cleaner on a Mac and you’re going to have to un-learn a lot of the workarounds and hoop-jumping you didn’t even realize you’ve been doing in your daily Windows computing.

The un-learning can be frustrating.

Expense
Yes, a Mac is more expensive than a PC right off the bat.  Over the long-term they’re about the same (already covered this).  However, Apple operating systems are hundreds of dollars less than Windows operating systems.  Apple software is typically sold with a bundle of activation codes so you can install your software on multiple machines even when only paying for one copy.  In this regard I suggest making friends with someone who is sufficient with Macs and has a decent amount of software.  That person can really help you in the expense territory!

Any questions?  Feel free to ask in the comments below, and I will answer.

Making a Mac work in a dealership is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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Share the wealth!

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!

Using Digsby for IM, Twitter, facebook, email, etc. is a post from: Internet sales manager training

Share the wealth!

Share the wealth!

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

Review on the Verizon Blackberry Storm 9530 is a post from: Internet sales manager training

Share the wealth!

Share the wealth!