-Jeff

Effective sales practice is to effectively manage consumer expectations. “Come on in, we have it” is a lie if you don’t. “We can get anything” is a lie if you can not.

But the world is not so black and white. How about these:

1) Configure what you want.
2) Tell us where you have flexibility
3) We can get just about anything, so we can order what you want from the factory, dealer trade what you want in and here are the closest ones from our inventory to what you specified
4) Oh and here is one with more equipment, one with less equipment and the closest used vehicle we have to it for you to compare your options

Isn’t that what you would do in the showroom?

Why would you do less for an Internet consumer? I’ll give you a hint: because your dealership’s use of the Internet is nothing more than an advertising medium.

Until you adopt a true eCommerce capability where consumers can actually do meaningful shopping on your sites, just stick to whatever your effective Internet advertising practices are.

I make no secret that my company has just such an eCommerce system for a dealer to provide to their consumers. It is also a hybrid approach – confirmed email to get in… so dealer gets more + better leads even if don’t buy within system… but that is not the point of this post.

If you are a dealership and the point of your Internet strategy is to get consumers to call or email so they’ll come in and buy, then set a true, effective expectation and support it with the “calls to action” on your website.

He (or she) who has the best experience wins with the Internet consumer (which is all of them these days).

Contact Allan Green agreen@neosynergy.net to inquire

Allan built the NeoSynergy DMS as well as the Auto-Mate (now Dimension Data) DMS that has > 90% market share in South Africa.

Cross-franchise consolidation, yes. True web-based architecture, yes. Rich GUI, yes. Lower cost than R&R and ADP and UCS, most definitely. Document scanning and image archiving, native. Vastly improved internal controls vs. legacy systems, most definitely.

An aggressive startup with few equals, yes.

I was one of the founders many, many moons ago. I do still have a minor stock holding (full disclosure) but no ongoing relationship.

Just a thought if you’d like to explore an option you may not have been aware that you had.

Oh… and it is built on world-class technology from Progress Software out of Boston (look them up on the NASDAQ).

But you can think of it this way: For every customer you lose because you don’t have THE car, you’ll gain another for the one you DO have.

And as we all know, better gross, Customer Satisfaction and Vehicle Delivery Quality on in stock units, right?

“There are a number of options that are developing in the DMS market and some of them offer the same capability as the “Old Dinosaur ADP”

Arkona is one that is converting 15 to 20 stores a month. Microsoft is in Beta testing in Europe on a DMS Program that I have been told is excellent and very cost effective, 40-60 % cheaper than REYREY and ADP.”

Sorry about the rudimentary HTML-like quotes, but I could not figure out a better way to do this without HTML capabilities. Anyway….

Lao,

You’re right, there are other solutions. You omitted the second part of what I originally said: “The immediate response is: don’t use those archaic DMS companies. The retort to that is: show me something better that can handle accounting, service, F&I, and all the other back-end things the larger DMS companies do.”

I don’t know much about Arkona, other than what a two of my friends have said about it, and that is not fully positive. They say it integrates worse with the newer technologies (CRM tools, Inventory management tools, etc) because Arkona views those companies as competition….A.K.A. the “hostile” environment.

Unfortunately, Microsoft is still years and years away from having anything worth even speaking of.

I think that’s a great idea. I guess the hard part would be working with the other dealers. If you had a great relationship with a few dealers, I think one could pull this off.

I would want to be sure all the dealers had a good process for taking photos and descriptions before I was hosting their inventory on my site though.

Also, you don’t copy units you already have, just the ones that would round out your presentation!
You are correct. I’m only displaying cars that are in transist from the factory as of now.

-Jeff

>>>Find MB dealer(s) -out of your area- that have the same inventory frustrations as you do. If you already reciprocate locate requests, why not agree to copy their inventory on your site and make your “variety” look larger and they’ll copy yours on theirs!* <<<

Its a new school idea that will need some old school connections and skills.

You’ll have to craft the “language” on the page to educate the shopper that its not in stock, but is avalible for sale! You already craft language for ARBS (All Ready Been Sold) cars, in this case It’s 100% avail. for sale!

Also, you don’t copy units you already have, just the ones that would round out your presentation!

What ‘cha think?
Joe