DealerRefresh

September 13 by Candice Rose -

What it took for this Millennial… to land his DREAM JOB – Selling Cars!

Read on for a story of what it’s really like to get hired in the car business.

Meet Will. Will graduated from Western Carolina University in May 2018 with a double major in Business Management and Marketing. He was a member of Lambda Chi Alpha and held the leadership position of Finance Chair. During the summers and throughout the school year on occasional weekends, he worked for a party rental company where he set up and took down events. He was the only employee on a team of twelve that retained his position for two years as the manual work was long and grueling, especially in the North Carolina summer heat.

To earn more beer money and play golf on the cheap… [Read more…]

September 12 by Devorah Wolf -

Why Data Disconnects are Holding You Back – and What to Do About It

Connected data: Everyone wants it. Almost nobody has it.

Consider this: car shoppers typically switch between online and offline four times over the course of their buying journey, and want those switches to be seamless. What’s more, customers interact with dealerships across many different digital touchpoints, which means omnichannel marketing capabilities are essential. And yet, across industries, only 7% of customers are satisfied with the seamlessness of the process.

Connected data is crucial for dealerships too – it allows them to understand the impact of vendor technology and make the most of marketing spend. But there are a number of data breaks that interfere with both the customer experience and effective tracking. Let’s break down these points of disconnect to get a deeper look at some important areas for improvement: [Read more…]

September 6 by Steve Stauning -

Why Can’t Your Classifieds Site Perform Like CarGurus?

To be clear: CarGurus (NASDAQ: CARG) is not perfect. In fact, dealers have plenty of legitimate issues with the company (I’ll detail a couple here). But, when it matters, CarGurus more often than not delivers results for dealers. CarGurus, you see, easily passes the DISC Test (Does It Sell Cars?).

CarGurus, valued at roughly $5.5 billion as of this writing, is likely the most valuable automotive website today. We can argue their generously high P/E ratio at another time; but, given that the primary goal of any for-profit company is to make money for the owners, the owners (shareholders) of CarGurus are certainly pleased.

This begs a few questions: Why isn’t your classifieds website worth $5.5 billion? Why doesn’t your classifieds website easily pass the DISC Test? Why can’t your classifieds website perform like CarGurus?

Odd Name

CarGurus is saddled with (or, perhaps, blessed with) an odd name that – until somewhat recently – no one had ever heard before. Few dealers would spend money on the site and few consumers would visit it.

Then, they built a better mousetrap. They built a website so search friendly it almost immediately vaulted to the top spot on Google searches for the vehicles on your own lot – yes, ahead of your own website!

Funny, that a relatively new website with an odd name, originally founded as a community blog meant to provide advice to vehicle buyers, is now a vendor-partner with virtually every dealer I encounter. And, despite some misgivings about how they operate, dealers continue to send CarGurus a check every month. Why would dealers do that?

Leads and sales.

Shocking, I know, in this the-leads-are-dead-it’s-all-about-attribution-world we’re living in, dealers would value moving metal over branding.

CarGurus is not Perfect

[Read more…]

Latest Hot Topic in Forums

Facebook Called. One of our employees was on a hate speech group…

MollyCurry Noob

First Name:: Molly

I got a call from a colleague who is the marketing director of a large group and he said he got a call from both Facebook and Twitter stating that one of the dealer’s employees was spouting hate speech on their platforms and that the person has been removed.

My friend removed the employee from their social sites, but the threads were already out. He said the owner wanted to immediately make a statement online. My friend was resistant.

What say you, dealers?

I sent out several emails to some social media vendors and only one responded with “we have not been in this situation.” There are a lot of obvious serious legal and HR issues here (social media policies, training, HR, etc.), but what about the marketing side of things?

Not saying anything might look like the dealer condones (or is ignoring) the speech. Saying something might bring light to a subject that the buying public might not be paying attention to.

September 4 by John Colban -

The Anatomy of Videos That Yield Results

Which elements are you already using, and which do you need to incorporate?

BEGINNING = ENERGY + PERSONALIZATION

The first 10 seconds of your video sets the tone for how your message is received. Are you flat and mechanical? Or are you upbeat and and positive? Remember, YOUR attitude toward the vehicle determines your customer’s attitude toward the vehicle.

The second most essential component to the beginning of your videos is personalization. Things like mentioning your customer’s name, the vehicle they’re interested in, and any questions they may have.

Here is a PRO TIP: [Read more…]

August 30 by Matt DiBari -

How Automotive Can Get More Personal with Machine Learning

Automotive dealerships are no longer competing with other dealerships to win customers in the digital world. The real competition is coming from sites outside automotive such as Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, and Tinder, which have created new standards of personalization for shoppers. These destinations use machine learning to understand customers’ wants and needs and to provide smarter product recommendations. Customers expect automotive sites to match the experience they’re getting outside the industry.

And automotive has a lot of catching up to do… [Read more…]

August 29 by Alex Snyder -

Oh no. I’m a customer.

If one were to ask me what was the biggest life-changing event I’ve experienced I’m not sure I could say it was meeting my better half. Although she is certainly life changing, she wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for me becoming a customer.

I was born a car dealer. My Grandfather founded the family’s dealer group 15 years before I was born. His Grandfather founded the family’s department store 70 years before that, and he ran a retail establishment after earning his citizenship. Retailing has been the centerpiece of my family’s income for somewhere around 150 years. We would like to go further back, but there isn’t a lot of known history from our European days. From what we do know, we’ve been pretty good at it. I wasn’t just born into a dealership, I was born into a profitable business with all the wonderful perks. That’s right… “perks” = silver spoon in my mouth.

In 2010 I became a technologist. It turned me into a customer. I had to negotiate car deals and actually use a service department. For shame! Scheduling appointments, and all that consumer-grade garbage, was suddenly a practice I had to succumb to. Peasants ride in shuttle vans! I miss the D-tag that could be magnetized to the back of whatever fast car I liked that day. Dealership coffee? That’s for freeloaders!

I was a customer, a bottom-feeder. And wow, my eyes were opened.

The customer has no tools. I feel like a tool. [Read more…]

August 23 by Jamie Oldershaw -

Here’s Why Car Shoppers Love or Despise Dealerships

Dealerships build customer relationships one review at a time. About 80 percent of shoppers use online car reviews and car dealership reviews to inform their purchase[i]. But what motivates a customer to write a five-star review – the kind that attracts more customers? And why do customers write blistering reviews that send shoppers to your competition?

At DealerRater, we decided to find answers. So, we examined reviews of dealerships and salespeople that customers wrote on DealerRater and Cars.com in 2017 (1.4 million reviews in all).[ii]Using natural language processing, a subset of artificial intelligence, we examined the most common words and phrases that crop up in positive and negative reviews.

Our analysis shows that customer expectations are high: they want a white-glove, VIP experience from purchase to service. And they want the personal touch from your people.

Here are two major takeaways:

1 A VIP experience creates customer relationships

The ability to provide both a great buying and service experience is the single-most important factor influencing positive dealership reviews. More than 47,000 phrases, or 41 percent of positive content, single out a great experience from purchase to service. [Read more…]

August 22 by Steve Stauning -

Will Someone Please Copy the Domino’s Pizza Tracker?

I’ll be brief:

Will someone please copy the Domino’s Pizza Tracker for dealers to use with their service customers?

If you’ve never ordered Domino’s Pizza online, then you’re probably not familiar with the best thing to happen to delivery pizza since the invention of the automobile. The Domino’s Pizza Tracker is not a gimmick. In a nutshell, it accurately keeps you informed of the status of your delivery order.

Let me dissect that last sentence in terms of the customer experience with the average dealer’s service department: [Read more…]

August 16 by Alex Snyder -

Future of CRM

You know the biggest players: eLead, VinSolutions, DealerSocket, and Reynolds Contact Manager, but do you know when they were originally coded? I believe the newest one of that pack came to market in 2003. Do you remember 2003? I think we, as an industry, were finally beginning to accept that the Internet was not going to be a fad and maybe we should start taking these Internet leads more seriously. And the biggest CRM innovation was to have a web-based system. It was an easier time.

Regardless of how much lipstick gets applied to the pig, or how many other technologies they acquire, there is no getting around age. Unlike people aging to become wiser, technology withers. It may get more feature-packed, but the original data model and technology backbones just get more and more stressed. Also, while aging, the original designers and engineers usually aren’t still working on the core product… if they’re even at the same company anymore. So, with age, the original design intent gets lost.

We all watched Microsoft struggle with legacy tech like Windows 98 and then Windows XP. We will probably watch Apple lag without the Steve Jobs passion. It is absolute fact that thousands of dealers are stuck in a time warp with outdated CRM technology right now. The crappy part for us in the car business is that few modern options are in the marketplace yet.

So, I want to take this opportunity to write about what I think a CRM in 2020 could be.

[Read more…]

What it took for this Millennial… to land his DREAM JOB – Selling Cars!

Why Data Disconnects are Holding You Back – and What to Do About It

Why Can’t Your Classifieds Site Perform Like CarGurus?

Why Can’t Your Classifieds Site Perform Like CarGurus?

Odd Name

CarGurus is not Perfect

Facebook Called. One of our employees was on a hate speech group…

MollyCurry Noob

The Anatomy of Videos That Yield Results

BEGINNING = ENERGY + PERSONALIZATION

How Automotive Can Get More Personal with Machine Learning

Oh no. I’m a customer.

Here’s Why Car Shoppers Love or Despise Dealerships

Will Someone Please Copy the Domino’s Pizza Tracker?

Will Someone Please Copy the Domino’s Pizza Tracker?

Future of CRM

Jeff Kershner

Alex Snyder

Steve Stauning

Joe Webb

Kevin Frye

Ilana Zur

Adam Robinson

Todd Smith