OK, this is my first initial attempt with my own videos on DealerRefresh. I got really excited about Grant Cardon’s new "GPod" and thought it would be fun to do a small video on it. It’s all of Grant’s training CD’s and DVD’s stuffed into an Apple iPod.

I know this might come off a little on the sales pitchy side but believe me, it’s truly not intended to be that way. I have been following Grant Cardone’s training for many years and if you want to sell more cars, there is nothing better then consistent training. I think Grant’s new "GPod" is on the cutting edge for delivering training to the automotive dealer industry. It’s no doubt a powerful tool!

Props to you Grant!

Note: Nic Olsen over at GrantCardone.com put together a nice little promo for all DealerRefresh readers if would would be interested. Be sure to watch the video in it’s entirety and then give Nic a call at 310-777-0293.

Cars.com will be holding a live DealerADvantage webinar on Friday, March 14, 2008 with yours truly on the panel. I believe Mr. Matt Lamoureux from Acton Toyota and John H. Isaac from My Dealer Report will be joining me as well.

We’ll be discussing the rise of social media, consumer generated content and those wonderful dealer rating websites like DealerRater.com, My Dealer Report.com, Dealership Ratings.com and let’s not forget about
JudysBook,
yelp and
insiderpages. Have I missed any??

Car shoppers now have a broad platform from which they can share opinions and influence others’ buying decisions. What’s being said about your dealership can either drive sales or divert buyers to your competition, making it more important than ever to monitor, manage and influence your online reputation.

In this DealerADvantage session, we’ll discuss how to:

• Monitor what’s being said online about your store
• Respond to comments and influence the conversation
• Share online feedback with your staff to recognize success and correct mistakes as needed
• Influence the online conversation by encouraging customers to leave online feedback about their experience with your store
• Turn your online reputation into a selling tool

I encourage all DealerRefresh readers to join in and participate! How many readers we can get to register??

Are you ready to manage the online conversation about your store?

Time: Noon to 1 p.m. (Eastern)
Location: Your Computer
Cost: FREE

Enroll Now! – CLOSED

P.S. After the webinar, click back here to
DealerRefresh to share your thoughts and opinions about the conversation.

I didn’t get much time on the floor this year as I have in the past. The crew over at MileOne kept me busy at NADA 2008. There were several people that I was supposed to stop by and shake hands with but I just never got around to it, so I do apologize to everyone that I was not able to connect with.

Being my first time there, I thought San Fransisco was wonderful. The weather was fantastic and the city provides an atmosphere like no other. However, in my opinion, this was not the best location for NADA. Having to travel outside between the West, North and South halls of the Moscone Center was a pain in the a$$. Thankfully the weather was nice and the AutoMotion girls were always out side to greet you with their sexy smiles and great attitude between buildings.

Compared to last years NADA Review this one will be a quickie. I only had the chance to visit a hand full of vendor booths this year;

I’ll start of with onecommand (formally know as callcommand). The demo was impressive and they seem to really know their product. Having one program that can take care of your sales/service email, voicemail and text campaigns is strong. I also like the fact that they have aligned themselves with some great companies like ExactTarget to help guarantee email delivery.

I sat through a demo with Autobase CRM to review the new features (features that should have been apart of the CRM years ago). That’s all I’ll say about that.

Once I actually FOUND the Dealer.com booth (hidden in the corner of the West room) I was able to get a taste of their new TotalControl Dominator, allowing dealers to control their own SEM campaigns. If this works as well as it demo’s, it’s a homerun.

I made a quick stop at the Polk booth where they were touting their Polk Lead Scoring.

TimeHighway has added a few improvements and a new look to their online service scheduler.

I stopped by the ClickMotive booth to check out their new Flashy Websites. The sites look good, but I’m still a leary about all the flash and stuffed HTML in the background.

vAuto continues to build upon their product and continues to impress. Their tool is so clean, it has one of the best looking interfaces for any software program in the dealer industry. I have never used it but if it applies everything that Dale Pollack teaches, then I would think this is one program worth taking a look at.

Last year the eBay booth was PACKED as they touted their eBay Local program. This year..dead. At least every time I walked by. I have to wonder how many dealers signed up for eBay Local last year but are singing a different tune this year.

Some of your more aggressive CRM’s are learning how to tie in personalized video responses in their systems and are building action plans according to whether or not the customer actually watches the video email. NICE!

After attending NADA for the last 4 years, there really isn’t a lot of new stuff to see. Yeah, some vendors will add new features to their products and every now and then you might find something that peeks your interest but overall it’s the same stuff year after year.

I overheard several discussions where dealers are searching for quality SEO vendors. Does this mean dealers are catching on to the snake oil SEO vendors in the past and are now fed up with it?

WHERE ARE THE HISPANIC MARKETEERS? by 2050, Latinos will be 29% of the entire American population but yet I only ran across one Hispanic marketing vendor. Props to Larry John Wright Morales, Inc.

Of course the best part of any NADA is the networking and the PARTIES!

The Chase Bank tequila tasting party pulled a nice crowd. Getting to taste 1,2 or 8 different tequilas was intoxicating to say the least. I stopped by the DealerTrack party for a few minutes then ended up at a small restaurant and bar called Annabelle’s while catching up Jesse and the Homenet crew.

Blue Flame6, DealerSocket and Century Interactive threw a way cool party calling it the “The 3 at the 4“. Each invitee had to arrive in a group of three and they were serving these tasty drinks called a “Threesome”. Very Nice!

The last party I attended was the ADP Reynolds & Reynolds party at City Hall. It was OK, the lack of Bombay Sapphire left me a little disappointed. The party had me feeling quite young, if you know what I mean.

A quick thanks to Joe Vraneza and the KBB crew for dinner Sunday night and Lance over at CarFax for a wonderful dinner at Mccormicks and Kuleto’s Monday night.

So what did I take away from NADA this year?

Dealers are STILL LOST! Seriously. Sitting through some of the presentations and over hearing conversations from other dealers, it’s crazy how much they still don’t get it. They still don’t get technology, they still don’t understand today’s consumer, they still don’t train their sales people how to be effective on the phone and how to answer internet leads in a timely manor. The list goes on and it amazes me. How has this industry survived?

As I’m sure most of you are aware, the 3rd annual AAISP Digital Dealer Conference and Exhitition was held this week (October 1-2 2007) in Las Vegas.

I was unable to attend but would love to hear all about it!!

Some of the speakers included:
Rafi Hamid
Sandi Jerome
Roy Reutter
Stephen Stauning
Shaun Raines
Jim Ziegler
Cory Mosley
Mike Stewart
Ralph Paglia
Craig Criswell

So for those who attended..

1. Who gave the best presentation?
2. Did you learn how to get a customer into the showroom in the least amount of time?
3. Was it well orgainized?
4. Are you going to start a dealer Blog or podcast?
5. Can you now run an effective Internet Operation?
6. What was that “1″ thing that you took back to the dealer?
7. Was it worth it and would you attend again?

Leave your feedback!!

The Cobalt Group’s sponsored “Breakfast of Champions” Seminar

I just got back from attending Cobalt’s sponsored “Breakfast of Champions”. It was held at the Renaissance Hotel in downtown beautiful Baltimore, it’s a little over an hour from there I live and usually an easy drive.

Hugh Cabello was the guest speaker / trainer for the day. I thought be did a good job actually. You never know what to expect when you go to these free seminars. Will you take a few “things” back home or will it be nothing more then a plug for the vendor?

Rather then type out a long winded posting here, I thought I would copy some of my notes that I took during the seminar. Excuse the jumping around but I have a tendency to be all over the place when I take notes.

The NOTES:

• Yahoo statistics show that customers send out on average 6-8 vehicles requests during their shopping phase. – I thought this seemed to be a little on the high side but I guess if you consider the consumer shopping for a used car in the mix, 6-8 should be an accurate number.

• Over half of your customers do not know if they want New or Used. -  I totally agree with this. Matter of fact I do my best to roll a customer into a used car whenever possible, always offering used car options for all of my new car inquiries.

• The average customer has 2 email addresses. – I have like 8 but I know I’m not “average”. Most people do have a home and a work email. This was something that Hugh touched on and one of those “things” that I walked away with. He encourages asking for the customers work email. “And what is you work email can I contact you at Jeff?”. Good idea!

• “You don’t have to buy a vehicle today do you?” – I love word tracks. If you’re good enough with the right word tracks at the right time, it can help you sell just about anything to anyone. This is one of those word tracks I would use all the time and for some reason got out of it. That was another “thing” that Hugh reminded me to take back home. This word track works! It removes the pressure that most consumers feel when dealing with us dreadful sales people. You’ll be surprised at the answers you get back.

• No Templates – That’s all I have written down. If I can recall, like I; Hugh is not huge advocate of canned templates. Yea, I have a few that I use but most are nothing more then starter templates and are built for customization. Right after my cover on Digital Dealer I received several emails and phone calls requesting a copy of my “crafty template”. I’m telling you right now, there is NO silver bullet email template. Email templates will never sell you a car.

• It was humorous to hear Cobalt talking about dealer website design and their need to be user friendly.

• There was a lady that talked for awhile about SEO, Google and PPC. A big apology to her, I don’t remember her name (I found out her name was Lisa Dobbs, sorry Lisa for not taking better notes).  She pointed out a few tips; one was to be sure to buy your URL as a keyword. I guess this was note worthy, though about 99.9% of the time if someone types your URL into Google or Yahoo, your website better dam site be #1 in the natural listings.

• Keep a close eye out for previous customers sending leads from your website. – I can’t recall if that was part of the discussion or if it was something that popped into my head and I wrote it down. Anyways, if you have a previous customer send in a lead from yuor website, It’s imperative that you recognize them as a previous client and ask them if they are still driving the vehicle they bought from your dealer. Ask if they would like to work their previous sales person again. Thank the customer for shopping with your dealer “again”. Believe me, it’s impressing when you recognize your previous clients. They love it!

• It takes on average 5 phone calls for a customer to remember your name!

• They spent about 15 minutes reinforcing the importance of using 3rd party leads. Preferably dealix leads, thought they did mention AutoUSA and Autobytel in the mix.

• Hugh said to call your customers 1 day before their Birthday. Not the day of or the day after.

• They went into a 10-15 minutes undertone sales pitch for Onstation. If I had to guess this was main reason for offering the free seminar. I don’t care who you are or what vendor you are, your main intentions for free trainings are to drum up some business. And rightfully so, I’m sure it’s not cheap to offer these free trainings / seminars.

• Cobalt NEVER EVER mentions their Prospector CRM tool. It’s actually a shame. Prospector had its challenges but it could have been way more then what it currently is. Cobalt bought Prospector CRM from Cowboy several years ago, re-skinned it and basically moved it to the side. I was doing some research and actually found that Hugh Cabell was a National Relationship Manager Cowboy Corporation before Cobalt acquiring them.

• Providing Price – Hugh seemed to be an advocate for sending / quoting a price. And we all know this is always a huge subject for discussion. I take my leads one by one and then decide if I’m going to quote a price via email or phone. However, I agree with Hugh, since the customer very rarely buys exactly what they inquire about, why not send the consumer some pricing. It’s what they are looking for.

I had a few more notes written but I think this covers the important stuff. Thanks to Cobalt for putting on a better then average free seminar. Thank you Hugh for your energy and for giving me a few “things” to take back home.

I try to attend each and every seminar or training whenever I can. I don’t care how long you have been in this business; you can almost always walk away with at least 1 thing. And of you don’t, take the opportunity to network and shake some hands. You never know who you might run into.

I do apologize, I need to make a more conscience to inform everyone of up and coming training seminars, whether it’s online webinars or actual seminars. So, to start off this new effort I want to let everyone know the Dealer Synergy “Internet Sales Bootcamp”. Here are the details:

Dealer Synergy is very excited to announce its alliance with NCM 20 groups, the most prestigious 20 groups in the country. Sean V. Bradley is the official Instructor and designer of the new NCM Bootcamp, "Internet Sales Bootcamp".

May 15 – 17th in Atlanta Georgia, its going to be an intense two and half days.

“We guarantee that if you attend this seminar and implement our solutions, you will sell more cars, more profitably and more often.”

 

Until Monday, NCM is offering an early bird special at $1995.00. After Monday the price goes up to $2495.00.

I have no doubt it will be worth every penny. Sean is an excellent speaker and really knows his stuff. 

For more information
here is the PDF that you can view and print or

sign up for the “Internet Sales Bootcamp” at the NCM website.

Cars.com is hosting a Free Webinar tomorrow at 11AM centeral time, April 13, 2007. That’s 12pm (noon) for us East Coast ISM’s.

Cliff Banks will be hosting this Cars.com webinare and the topic will be "Tips from the Ward’s e-Dealer 100 and The Secrets of Their Success".

It’s supposed to be about an hour long and the descriptions reads:

"In April, Ward’s Dealer Business publishes its seventh annual e-Dealer 100—a nationwide ranking of dealers with the highest internet sales. Join Cars.com for a special DealerADvantage LIVE in which Cliff Banks, Ward’s editorial director, will moderate a panel of the top dealers from this year’s e-Dealer 100. Tune in to hear these leaders discuss how they use the Web to drive traffic to their stores and sell more cars. Among the issues we’ll discuss:

• What online tactics do the top e-Dealers employ for sales success?
• How do the most successful dealers improve close rates?
• How do these dealers track and measure internet-generated sales?

I like Cliff’s editorial pieces in Wards Dealer Magazine so I thought this might be a decent webinare to share with everyone.

Here is the link to register.

Once you register, you’ll get an email with the rest of the detials.

UPDATE: If you attended the Cars.com Webinar, please share your thought here.

Most of convention was basically regurgitation of 2006. Only a few new items worth mentioning as far as I’m concerned, of course I’m only looking out for CRM/BDC and internet marketing related vendors.

Last year the Search Engine Marketing (SEM) booths (ADTraffic and ClickMotive) were rock’n. This year they seemed to be a little on the dry side every time I walked by. I think most dealers have played in the SEM game and have gotten burned or they were not seeing an ROI that made sense. This could be caused by some SEM vendors sending the customer to the dealers home page on their website and then not having anyway of tracking the conversion. PLUS, many of your website vendors have jumped on the SEM bandwagon and are offering their own SEM services.

eLead was showing off a few new additions to their CRM including a new service department module for their evolution CRM product. I sat through a demo and was initially impressed. Now if they could only get some real reports for their evolution CRM (which I hear they are working on)!

AutoBase finally introduced an ILM feature (I guess that’s what you would call it) for their CRM. Nothing over impressive but if you’re an Internet Sales Manager using Autobase CRM, I’m sure this will be a nice addition. It might sway those dealers using a separate ILM tool to just use AutoBase; saving the dealer a few dollars in the monthly budget.

I received the WORSE old school sales pitch from a gentlemen at @utorevenue.com. I’m not going to knock the product since it was never demonstrated to me; rather I had to sit through this brutal sales pitch. At one point I asked “what measures do you take to stay on the email white lists?” The answer that was given would have been great for someone that didn’t know any better but it was too obvious to me that he wasn’t sure how to answer the question though did a great job covering up his answer with smoke. That was a turn off.

DealerSocket introduced what looked to be like and impressive desking tool. I’ve always been impressed with what this CRM looks like it can do. I’d be interested in hearing from some dealers using it everyday.

AutoMart’s has a nice new clean layout from the consumers end. They have a chat service for you to speak with your potential customers. We need someone to give AutoTrader some more competition. Will AutoMart be the one to do this?

I stopped by the cars.com booth for a sales pitch and demo. I’ve never used cars.com so I can’t comment on their services or how well of an ad source it is. They were really touting their new car leads as being the best in the business. The sales guy was pitching their exclusive “scrubbing” software; AuthentiCom Validation. It’s supposed to accurately validate the consumers name, address and phone numbers. Hummm..I’ve head that one before!!

The Microsoft booth was a busy booth. It took 20 minutes of waiting around just to speak with someone in order to get a demo from one of the several companies offering products based on the MS DMS platform. I was impressed, more then what I thought I would be. After seeing some of the products and what they have to offer, I think there might be a shakedown in the DMS business sooner then what some thought.

eBay was keeping busy, pushing their new eBay local listings. I can’t confirm this, but I over heard someone saying they were signing up dealers left and right. I have mixed emotions about eBay local. I’ve been on the local program for a few months now as a beta dealer and haven’t been doing too hot with it. I’ve sold a few cars but have yet to really make any money off the sales. eBay can be a tough avenue for dealers to market themselves so I can’t wait to see how eBay furthers this local program. I’ll be writing more about my experience with the eBay Local program after I get some more solid statistics for myself.

Homenet introduced their new handheld inventory module “pocketIOL”; giving you portable instant access to your inventory. I was playing around with it and was quite impressed. I’ve seen and used a few of these hand held inventory devices in the past only to find most are buggy and just don’t work. This could be a great solution for larger dealers especially. Special thanks to Jesse and Ryan over there at Homenet for the awesome hospitality.

Higher Gear introduced a new Desking solution for their CRM. From what I saw..it seemed somewhat robust and full of features. However, I wasn’t too impressed with the payments and pricing worksheet presentation.

The craziest vendor I ran across was Amyauto.com. Who comes up with of this stuff? “Welcome to the Future”? It’s another one of those creepy looking avatars that’s supposed to “enhance the customer experience, increase loyalty and improve revenues for higher profit”. WHAT?? Maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh, but I’ve never been a fan of using avatars to replace the sales professional. Who knows, maybe I’m totally wrong and Amy will be the next BIG thing.

AutoTrader was introducing their 2007 product. Now you get to add multiple photos of your dealership and upload your video commercials…Wheeewhoo. I bet they want another $1,000 for that. I’m sure my rep will be calling me soon trying to pitch it.

The Dealer.com booth was busy during their demonstration speeches, they introduced their Sales360 product. I see they launched a new website as well and are offering complete Internet Marketing solutions for dealers. This company continues to improve and impress.

eBizAuto introduced a new Streaming Video product while going live with a fresh new website.

The most innovative product I ran across was Pick-n-Clickads.com. Pick-n-Clickads says you can FIRE YOUR AD AGENCY and bring it in-house using their software. I sat through a demo and was really  impressed. It was my favorite product at NADA this year. Within minutes you can build your own TV, Radio, Newspaper (Print), Direct Mail and Online ads. Of course some of the TV and Radio ads are “caned” material but you get the freedom to customize it for your dealer. I think it’s a slick product and could be a threat to some dealer advertising agencies.

BZ Results was there of course. I didn’t stop by.

JMSolutions was showing off their newly acquired DealerUp CRM.

DealerSkins was there showing off their new Autobahn inventory product.

I’d like to give an honorable mention to a small company Attilanet Corporation for some impressive products like a DMS built on the Microsoft .net framework and some nice dealership websites with dedicated customer service to back them up.

I took notice to a lot of vendors missing on the convention floor. Cobalt, iMagicLabs, DealerOn, DealerImpact to mention a few. Many vendors have been opting out of spending the money for a booth on the convention floor while getting suites at local hotels and scheduling reservations for product demonstrations. I’m sure the ROI makes more sense this way.

Overall NADA 2007 was a decent display. Not a lot of new products but a lot of vendors working hard to improve and add to their existing. Many CRM’s vendors adding Desking solutions to their offerings; I think this will continue to be a trend. We’ll see where SEO and SEM takes us next year while keeping an eye on who can give some threat to the 300 lb gorilla AutoTrader.

Visible Customer, Dealer Synergy and Towbin Dodge are inviting (and sponsoring) you and a guest to a Towbin Dodge Event during NADA Friday Feb. 2nd.

Guests
will have an opportunity to see some “Chopper Edition” vehicles, tour
the dealership and be a special guest of the “King of Cars VIP tent.”
Naturally all the Towbin Dodge “Characters” will be there too.

Group #1 6:00 PM – 8:300 PM
Group #2 9:00 PM – 11:30 PM

I’ll be attending the 9:00 PM Group. Apparently there are Limited Spots so be sure to RSVP ASAP.

Find the RSVP information on the invite below or call 1-800-952-0168 and ask for Angela.

Thanks Sean Stapleton and Sean Bradley for my personal invite AND for inviting my readers!!

The 2007 AAISP Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition is coming up. I was not able to attend last year, though I was a member. I’m not sure if I’m even a member anymore. I think my membership ran out and I don’t see my GM paying to renew it. I guess I could pay for it out of my out of my own pocket. I don’t know..I want to support anything and anyone that encourages dealer technology to the next level but I still feel like nothing is really happening over there. There have been some changes and it looks as if Digital Dealer is taking a more active role, so I guess we’ll see.

Anyways, the
event will be held March 12 – 15, 2007 at the Marriott Airport Hotel in Nashville, TN. If you plan to join AAISP and Digital Dealer at this event –
You can get more information here.