Let me preface this blog by saying that it has nothing to do with the Dodge brand. It could be called “Get Out of Chevy/Toyota/Ford/Subaru” for all I care. This has to do with the sign of the times and the inability of some people to read signs.

We are now a 2012 cooperative. All of your efforts are being spent to achieve profit and success in the year 2012 and beyond. That is your goal. Your focus. To achieve online sales dominance in the new year. Nothing can stand in your way… except decision makers.

Look at where we are technologically in 2012. Mobile is fully adopted by society. 800 million plus are on Facebook and engagement on social sites is growing. There are over a billion tweets a week.  Your television is connected to the Internet. So is your 7 year old.  So is your 70 year old grandmother.  Data from online resources drives the majority of advertising decisions. Except, for some reason, in dealerships.

I have a request of you.

If you are one of those nose-down, shovel-full winners that have been embracing Internet sales for years, selling cars from A-Z, delving into digital media, and begging for buy-in with little to no backing from management… Get Out of Dodge. Leave. Pack your bags and find another dealership home.

We are in the realm of a 2012 world. A digitally connected and socially linked online world. If your ownership/management/decision-makers don’t realize this today… now… you have no other choice than to jump ship and swim for shore. If they can’t recognize the world has 100% changed (not ‘changing’, but ‘changed’ – past tense), then there is no hope for them and no hope for your position there.

Yes, we know the sayings – “the grass isn’t always greener” or “the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t”. Hogwash.  Things in life ALWAYS get better eventually if you work hard enough to ensure they do. You may also think, “there aren’t any jobs available around me.” Once again… Phooey.  Ask any consultant like myself (or attend any 20 group) and you will hear dealers clamoring for someone who knows what they are doing both in front of a customer as well as behind a computer.

Internet sales skills are worth their weight in gold right now. If lead management, online selling, and eCommerce are what you do best, yet you don’t have the support where you currently sit because of a lack of understanding from the powers that be…Get Out of Dodge.

You’ll find a better fit.

You’ll be happier.

And someone will appreciate the dedication and passion for the craft that you bring to their store.

Is your dealership in 2012 and up with technology or are you considering (or have already) Gotten out of Dodge?

Get Out of Dodge! is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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Share the wealth!

Why was he feeling this way?

Because he was faced with the reality that his sales team was incapable of responding to internet leads.

I know what you are thinking. Incapable?

Equally as painstaking is watching people who simply do not use a computer for their personal lives let alone work. Just locating an area to type a document or retrieving an email or even making changes to an existing email template, was hard to wait for and watch.

Believe me, I was wondering the same thing you probably are…what world are these guys living in?

Salespeople that work internet leads today must be capable and willing to send over 25 emails and place over 25 calls per day in order to get the minimum amount of sales from the lead pool. But what would you do if you were in this situation? Fire em’ all?

You see it’s situations like these are reminders that every dealership will not and should not have the same business model at converting internet leads to showroom sales.

Allow me add the icing to the cake in this real story.

Between the two stores, this dealer will make over $3 million dollars selling Kia’s this year. That does not include any internet sales. Most salespeople had never even sent an email to a customer in years of their employment here. With average grosses of $3300 a copy, your eyebrow may have just raised. On average, they see 30-50 people on a Saturday. Ups.

Does this bus still really exist?  Holy S@!*%, right? SO what is a dealer to do in this situation?  The stores aren’t broken.  The lowest paid salesperson makes $60K/year. I saw 40 obvious deals waiting there.  What would 40 more deals a month do to this bottom line?

Does this dealer need them?  ..or does he want them?

I recommended a dealership BDC Department. A BDC with an objective to set appointments. Their role is to respond to internet leads, follow up by phone and email until they buy or die. BDC departments serve a real purpose for many dealerships. Yet I still see plenty of dealerships that have dedicated salespeople handling the internet prospects and converting at a much higher ratio than a BDC department.

It will always be a challenge to find an entire sales team that have the abilities, capabilities, desire and motivation to handle the most challenging prospect around, the internet prospect.

This poses a thereat to 21st century dealerships. Interviewing skills and approaches must change drastically..  The skill sets of today’s salesman must include rockin’ phone and email skills.

If you know this aspect is not your best skill set, I suggest you get out and make it your best skill set!  No one is born with this, remember, it is a learned quality.  You, just like me, can achieve anything with determination and desire.

Do your sales people have the ROCKIN’ skill sets to be effective with today’s consumer – from Internet Lead to Sale?

ROCKIN’ Employees – Where the Hell are They? is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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Share the wealth!

Credit cards are a necessary evil.

Yes, that’s right. I’m calling credit cards evil.

It’s trendy in this day and age to be angry at banks, Wall Street, and people that make money, but in this case, the anger is well-placed. Credit card companies are doing everything possible to take as much money as possible out of your business as they can, and they do a great job of it. With so many people paying with credit cards, not accepting them is not an option. So how can you help your dealership maximize profit and minimize card processing fees?

Simple. You need a guy on the inside who can point you in the right direction. As a former Five-Star Dodge Dealership service advisor, mechanic, and business-to-business dealership CRM sales rep turned credit-card processing salesman, I’m here to help. What follows are some insider tips on dealing with your credit card processing account.

Understanding the Vocabulary is Key

Credit card companies want you to stay confused, pay your bill, and not ask questions. As a result, statements are vastly different between processers and terminology is varied. Here are a few basic terms that you will need to understand before you can really understand the hustle.

1. Per-item fees: Charges that the processing company assigns to every transaction swiped. Usually a dollar amount, ex. $0.10 per item. Basis Points: The percentage amount the processing company charges as a fee. There are one hundred basis points in one percent. 10 basis points = 0.010 percent.
2. Downgrade: A card transaction that is higher risk, qualifying for a surcharge.
3. Surcharge: The extra amount credit card processers charge for higher-risk transactions, such as card not present, key entered, address verification not matching, etc.
4. Assessments: A flat fee paid to Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and American Express as a percent of each transaction.
5. Interchange: A percentage of each transaction paid to the card issuing bank (MBNA, PNC, Bank of America, Citibank, etc.)
6. Discount Rate: It’s not a discount at all – this is the amount of money per transaction that you are paying to the credit card processing company

Nobody Gets the Qualified Rate

The qualified rate is the rate that you pay on the lowest-risk card transactions — card present, card swiped. Many companies will offer you a low “qualified” rate, because most merchants think that the qualified rate is the rate they will pay on all transactions.

“Well, if I swipe all my transactions, I qualify, right?” WRONG. 90% of credit card transactions downgrade automatically. So, no matter how low, you’re almost never getting that “qualified” rate.

Why? Here are just a few reasons:

1. Rewards cards automatically downgrade (95% of cards are rewards cards)
2. Transactions aren’t settled daily (cashier forgets to batch out)
3. Corporate cards downgrade to the highest possible surcharge rate.

Don’t fall prey to the sales pitch of “flat” rate, either. There’s no such thing. The credit card companies control downgrades, the processing companies do not. Visa and Mastercard have lists, updated regularly, that show the various types of downgrades and the surcharges that they require. The only thing the credit card processing company can control is their own surcharges on downgraded transactions – which brings us to the only way to eliminate surcharges altogether.

Interchange and Assessments Pricing – The Holdback of the Credit Card World

The best possible rate you can get from a credit card processing company is the one they are least likely to offer you – Interchange and Assessments pricing. I&A pricing (also known as Pass-Through pricing) means that you are charged the actual percentage rate paid to the issuing banks and the credit card companies, plus a small percentage and per item fee to the processer. In I&A pricing, your rate is usually expressed as a number of Basis points plus a number of cents (the per item fee). With I&A Pricing, the processing company is giving up the opportunity to make money on you with surcharges for downgraded transactions. It’s the best possible price you can get. Here’s how it works.

Conventional pricing: Your friend asks you to buy them a candy bar on your way back from lunch. You know that the candy bar costs $1.00, plus 6% tax. You ask your co-worker for two dollars. This covers the candy bar, the sales tax, and 94 cents, which is your “spread,” or the profit you make. This is great if you are doing this once or twice a month, and your friend doesn’t notice or care.

Interchange and Assessments: Your friend asks you to pick him up a candy bar on your way back from lunch – every day. If you charge him $2 every time, he’ll realize how much extra he’s paying and do it himself. You know that the candy bar costs $1.00, plus 6% tax, so you ask him for $1.11 – covering the cost of the candy bar, the tax, and a small spread of five cents. You’ll only make $1.00 doing that every business day for a month. But it’s better than making nothing at all.

Interchange and Assessments pricing is usually reserved for VIP customers or very high-volume accounts. Most car dealerships fall under the “high-volume account” range. Despite that fact, most credit card processers will only give I&A pricing as a last resort. You’re going to have to ask for it.

This is Just the Beginning

What I’ve given you here is just a sharpened stick to help you through the wilderness of credit card processing. Just like the automotive industry, the credit card industry is huge and multi-layered, with its own intricacies, tricks, and traps. If you have more questions, feel free to email me, and I’ll try to help you through them. As automotive professionals (or in my case, former automotive professionals) we have to look out for each other, right?

Paper or Plastic? Understanding Credit Card Processing for Car Dealerships is a post from: Internet sales manager training

Share the wealth!

Share the wealth!

I am a customer of the IT department.  I am not an IT expert.  I am just a customer.

Ed Shaffer asked a simple question in the comment string of the article titled “Does your Dealer block Social Media:”

[Why haven't we addressed] The bandwidth drain that YouTube and Fb would have on our already thinly stretched pipe…

This question got me thinking about where the perspectives of IT administrators come from.  As a customer of the IT department, who happens to be interested in history, I want to start to answer that question with:

The Evolution of the Dealership IT Department
It all began with the DMS.  The original DMS systems were based on tapes, but that’s not the important part.  The important part is that there was really only one user of the original DMS:  the accounting department.  In the case of my dealership, that was our CFO.  Back then she had to be the person who maintained and managed the DMS system.  Her responsibilities revolved around not only keeping the dealership financially sound, but also in safeguarding the data in our early DMS system.

In time, our DMS company added more functionality for other parts of the dealership and the CFO no longer could handle all the maintenance and needs this brought.  This signified the birth of the IT department at my dealership.

On the sales, service, parts, rental, and bodyshop side there really wasn’t much need to do a ton in the DMS at first.  We were still handwriting RO’s, deals, parts orders, and even had a fantastic microfiche system that was actually really good (I kind of miss it).  So, IT was tasked with one big priority:  safeguarding the data.

Over the last 15 years things like dealership websites have developed, online inventory display, CRM’s, ILM’s, inventory management, etc etc etc.  As a lot of things moved to the web, the IT department did all they could to continue striving toward their number one priority:  safeguarding the data.  So they built elaborate security systems, they built monitoring systems, and they even gave us email!  But these things came at an expense on the user:  things got slow.

The slowness stemmed from these elaborate and secure networks.

A trade-off for good security is reduced speed.

What’s the problem today?
Today our IT departments still have to safeguard the data.  But they also have to balance all the demands all these different technological tools create.  When was the last time you looked at how many systems a sales manager is working in at one time?  How do you speed things up?  Is it getting a sales manager a faster computer?  Is it buying more bandwidth from your ISP?  If it were only that simple…

The fact is it isn’t simple.  The fact is that we have an evolved need that has changed from our original needs.  We have so many more users today, and only so much money to spend that doesn’t directly turn into profit.

I am a customer of IT
As a customer I believe it is time to redefine what is important.  I think it may be time to figure out what our true needs are today.  I think it is time to figure out whether security is the most important thing our IT departments can be providing.  Because security is slow and technology is a hog.

If, at a really high-level, we can define two IT priorities:  Security and Usability, can we figure out which one is most needed?  If usability becomes the priority, then is our IT department capable of making that transition?  Can they give us a fast network that meets our needs and still provide an adequate level of data security?

Sincerely,
A frustrated customer

P.S.  I’m not really a frustrated IT customer anymore because I now live in a world where usability is the first priority of an IT department.  Usability first, patch the holes that need patching second.  It is my newfound experience that has made me understand why many of my past vendors (from my dealership days) didn’t appreciate the IT dilemma that plagues many dealerships.

IT, oh how I love thee is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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Share the wealth!

Our manufacturers and vendors can answer this question easily about their own businesses, but can the dealers?  A product is a “thing produced by labor or effort.”  A “thing” isn’t always something physically tangible.

What is the product of a dealership?

This isn’t a question anyone ever answered for me directly.  It wasn’t something anyone directly trained me on, as I think it was just assumed I knew it.

The product of a dealership is the dealership.

I must admit, it is quite the duh statement.  There really isn’t anything special about it, but once it is stated so plainly it makes all the sense in the world.  Was this ever defined for you?

Now that we know our product is our dealership let’s talk about what a quality product is.  We also know what that is.  It is simply something you want to buy.  The level of the quality determines the price.  It is a brand; it is a reputation.  A quality product easily creates referrals, it doesn’t have to ask for reviews, and it generates fans.

Look at Apple.  They build operating systems, but there are plenty of choices in operating systems.  So why do Apple’s customers hang on its every new “thing” and talk about it like they’re part of a cult?  Why do they pay more for it over and over and over again?

We can talk about Apple and everything they do all day long, but I’d rather you think about how your dealership is a product.

How is your dealership a quality product?  Is it time you define that for your coworkers and staff?

For further reading on this subject, check out Bob Lutz’s new book:  Car Guys vs. Bean Counters:  The Battle for the Soul of American Business [Amazon].  Yes, this article was inspired by this book.  It is definitely worth the read.

What is your product? is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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Share the wealth!

And since no one else seems to be saying it I’ll go ahead and break the ice: Facebook isn’t as important as you think. In fact, most social media really doesn’t help drive sales at all.

As the Ecommerce Director for a large, Ohio-based automotive group, I’ve found putting more time, money and effort into the SEO side of things has helped our business expand more rather than spending all day checking and updating our Facebook page. While Facebook can benefit your business’ reputation, traffic comes from SEO.

If you’re trying to increase sales, then tackle the SEO side of things first. Providing useful, meaningful content on your website, strong backlinks and an easy-to-navigate web design can go a long way.

It’s why I can’t for the life of me, figure out why so many of our competitors are paying thousands of dollars to third-party groups to manage their social media, especially since Social Media is free to use.

On a monthly basis, I receive phone calls from Social Media groups giving me the same spiel:

We see you’re on Facebook and we can help send more traffic to your website. All you have to do is purchase [insert shiney doodad here] and give one away each month in a contest. If you do this the traffic will start flowing in!

My rebuttal:

So what happens to our fans once we quit giving away [shiney doodad]?

Silence

Rather than try to bribe people to like us on Facebook, I’ve found simply offering worthwhile content can go a long way. After all, we want to build a reputation of delivering great customer service; not prizes.  Create a promotional video that drives the right kind of Facebook traffic.  Don’t forget Facebook is free for everyone to use so have some fun with it.

I’m just curious, but why would you pay someone to run your own personal Facebook page?

Facebook: what has it done for you lately? is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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Share the wealth!

Do you know what “Perpetual” means?

per·pet·u·al

1. continuing or enduring forever; everlasting.
2. lasting an indefinitely long time: perpetual snow.
3. continuing or continued without intermission or interruption; ceaseless.

Edmunds legaleeze:

#7.  Dealership hereby grants to Edmunds a royalty-free, nonexclusive, non-transferable, PERPETUAL license….

Are you fully understanding your contracts?  Have you fully understood what Edmunds and TrueCar are asking of you?

Edmunds Perpetual Contract is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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Share the wealth!

Dear Mark O’Neil,

You are the Chairman and CEO of DealerTrack with a fascinating bio that includes being President of an Auto Dealer Group, you’ve worked at Intel, you co-founded CarMax and you’re Director at DealerTire.com. It’s quite clear you have a nose for opportunity and with your Harvard MBA, you know how to leverage it.  I hope this information finds its way to your desk.

I would like to present to you comprehensive report of a gigantic opportunity that resides inside one of your existing companies.  It is an undiscovered jewel that’s waiting for you to roll it out.  Once you do, your data marketing partner will become Google…Yes Google.

I have better news. Google’s management team needs you and is looking for CHROME.

What is this Google Opportunity and what does this have to do with DealerTrack’s CHROME?  Google has a new  product search feature called Google Products, and it requires extremely detailed product data that CHROME specializes in.  Let’s see how it all fits…

Let’s look at a Google Products example for a Garmin GPS:

Google is slowly building out it’s Google Products platform. Here is another Google Products example, this time taken from the automobile accessories industry.  See the link for  “Jeep Floor Mats” (Scroll to the bottom and you’ll see the “product attributes” that Google requires to make this work). If you swap out the Jeep Floor mats and insert ANY vehicle for sale (like a NEW 2011 Ford Flex or a USED 2008 Buick Enclave) Wow!

This digital marketing opportunity is not limited to Google.  Here is Yahoo’s example of the same concept:

Bing has it also, but it’s not as fully developed.

WHY CHROME?

I saw this opportunity in 2010 and attempted to fill this void myself.  I’ve had discussions with Google Products data vendors from other verticals (EdgeNet.com) and have come to the conclusion that it will require an automotive data specialist inside our space to make this happen.  IMO, there are few companies in the automotive space that has what Google needs and I have been working with CHROME data so long, I felt you’d be best suited to it.  This is confirmed by Google’s PR: “Going to the Source to Improve Product Data”

When CHROME takes on this new partnership with Google, what kind of nationwide impact am I talking about here?

Let look at the automobile accessories industry for clues to what could happen in our space, let’s look at Audi Q7 accessories and visualize a 2011 Audi Q7 in its place:

What happens is CHROME creates the attribute map for all automobiles and this information creates a path FROM Google Products to the Google Shopping system, and to the organic search results AND to the Google Adwords (Paid search) results. I’ve uploaded my inventory to Google Shopping and nothing happens because there is no Google Products for automobiles (yet).  My Audi Q7 is highlighted below and it sits there all dressed up and no place to go!

The Google Products is a relatively new feature for Google, and Google’s roll-out is limited to the time consuming connections it makes with vendor attribute specialists.  Google is looking for a solution partner in the automotive manufacturer/dealer space and they don’t know you have the key to the attribute vault!

CHROME’s Revenue model? That’s up for exploration.  I believe you’ll need to build a new business model for the product as it’s a data/advertising product with no peer (in our space).   My research taken from www.Edgenet.com tells me that any retailer that wanted to be visible in the Google Products system needs to “participate” with the data vendors program.  This makes the Google Products vendor the “gatekeeper” for all retailers!  That being said, the Automotive model is completely unlike ecommerce retail so creative exploration will be required.

I do know, once it’s launched, it’s impact WILL dramatically impact our entire automotive retail internet marketing industry… forever.

Mr. O’Neil, your team’s contact at Google is Mr. Brian Lam, Strategic Partner Manager, Google Product Search.  Mr/ Lam is a new hire (6/2010) and you two need to talk!   The  “Google Products” platform is built around ecommerce, so some joint creative thinking will be needed.  Once you two conquer the details, the impact to consumer, manufacturer and retailer is going to be… epic.

I hope you and Mr. Lam found this report to be the beginning of a new product launch in the automotive retail space.  If I can be of any service to you or your team, please feel free to contact me.

-Joe Pistell

An Open Letter to Mark O’Neil – Chairman and CEO of DealerTrack is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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Share the wealth!

Don’t know about you but when I saw this headline quote “I don’t like to look at a screen. I like to look at a face”, of the latest Automotive News issue and its article NET LOSS : Few dealerships master the art of handling online leads – I almost lost it.

The article written by Donna Harris reflected on several dealerships around the nation and how they handle 3rd party leads and incoming flood of Internet generated leads through other venues. It was a well written piece and gave a very good glimpse on the current Status Quo in our automotive Internet Sales World. Everything was fine until I “stepped” on the quote of a sales person, a sales veteran for more than 20 years of domestic brand.

“I don’t like to look at a screen. I like to look at a face.” is telling me as a leader of several Internet teams, that this Gentleman should definitely not receive any leads. Why – because of his preconditioning and seeing the Internet as the reason (and I quote) “online price competition has slashed his pay in the last few years in half…the Internet has created a cold sales environment”. Wow, and I thought that “off-line marketing oriented sales pro’s” from the past have learned something in the last 7 years.

I actually feel personally offended by the comment made, and by sales people who are seeking reason for their staling performance and smaller pay stubs on the technology site and not by themselves. What they do not understand is that the technology factor is a daily beast, and you need to adapt – whatever it takes and time it will take to get it right.

When I would have had the attitude in 2001 – “I don’t like to look at a screen. I like to look at a face”…guess what, I would have never met my beautiful wife, would never have three tremendous kids, and possible would still sit in Germany and paying 49% income tax. I met my wife 10 years ago on “the screen”, via AOL pen pals, and without having a face attached to the written communication, we hit it pretty much off.

Because I saw the opportunity what the Internet actually was able to give to an open minded person, I met my wife months and months later in the U.S. – when you want it is almost like a mid-funnel automotive buyer, who still is figuring out what model she wants.

Sticking to this engaging “new” medium at this point (a.k.a. email) – hitting the send and the reply button, this initial pen pal conversation went far further then ever anybody had thought it would be possible. We kept it interesting and information was flowing back and forth. Nothing different then an Internet lead inquiry, where you as a sales pro have the duty to keep the communication flow interesting and in timely manner.

So please; You Sales People in the world out there – promise me to start checking on your attitude and tweak it accordingly and show me a virtual smile when you receive an Internet lead. Just don’t judge Internet Leads as “evil”, but see the entire technological metamorphosis as an opportunity to make your email response stand-out and its content count – when you want just see it as your first “firm handshake!”

“I Don’t Like to Look at a Screen” 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!