DealerRefresh

Obstacles, Observations and Opinions of an Automotive Internet Sales & Marketing Manager

Latest Hot Topic in Forums

We created this PRICING monster…

AdamMurray Getting Refreshed

First Name:
Adam
Location:
San Antonio, TX

Earlier this morning, a friend of mine in the real estate business shared a post on FB promoting a petition to eliminate the scraping of MLS listings by sites such as Zillow.  Their contention is that Zillow’s “zestimates” mislead homeowners and buyers regarding home values making discussions between realtor and customer very difficult when it comes time to actually arrive at a value when buying or selling a home.

Sound familiar?

Here’s a common conversation I have heard between sales managers and sales consultants on a fairly regular basis for quite a few years now:

Manager:  Your customer’s trade is worth $16k
Salesperson:  But, but, but…the customer said KBB valued their trade for $18k
Manager:  Tell ’em to sell it to KBB then

Here’s another one I’m sure you have all heard before:

Manager:  We’ll sell them that truck for $32,600 plus T’s…
Salesperson:  But, but, but…the customer said TrueCar said we should sell that truck for $28k!
Manager:  Awesome, tell ’em to roll on over to TrueCar’s lot and buy one…

I got in the car business in 1989 selling a very simple CRM program for dealerships.  While the program was great for keeping salespeople organized, the real purpose at that time was to get access to dealer’s databases so we could sell them direct mail programs…the meat and potatoes of that company.  This whole program became necessary when we could no longer get full registration data from the DMV.

I’m afraid it has all gone downhill from there.  In our never-ending lust for more leads, it would seem that we have basically dropped our proverbial pants and allowed the world to see every aspect of our business.  As a relatively new Internet Director at a dealership in Houston, I will never forget the first time a customer showed me an invoice for a vehicle we were trying to sell him.  I was furious and ready to set up a firing line for the traitor in our midst…that salesperson was in deep kimchi and I was the Ginsu knife!  Turns out, the customer had found the invoice online and I was quite certain our industry was doomed.  Was I right?

My cars dot com rep told me the other day that the most pressed button on their search console was the Sort:  Low To High button.  That’s what this has come to…an absolute race to the bottom and who can drop their pants the lowest and fastest.

Is all this worth it?  Can we put the genie back in the bottle and stop letting third party companies scrape our data and publish every invoice, level of holdback and incentive that we ever have?  Are online trade valuing tools just #fakenews?

Can we fix this and provide a more reliable source for determining realistic trade values?

Sorry for the long post and all the questions. This has really bothered me for a long time and learning of these tactics in another industry and watching them fight back seems to have given me a little glimmer of hope for our future…and our bottom line.

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How to “Pump Up” Market Share Using Social Incentives

SponsoredIn a down market, one Ford dealer needed a way to increase their overall market share and reduce the amount of pump-in sales lost to competitors. By leveraging the technique of matching sales data with consumer databases, the dealer was able to determine that they were losing more than 50% of sales to competitors in their market. This is what is referred to as “pump-in” sales.

Using the data that was available to them through strategic partnerships such as that with AutoHook, the alliance was able to identify specific areas of opportunity to grow their market share by targeting people with specific vehicles. They targeted the top three models they were losing to competitors – the Focus, Fusion, and Edge.

Using zip-code level targeting, in-market customers were incentivized to visit the dealerships for a $50 test drive incentive, as opposed to the normal $25 incentive. The incentive triggered at precise moments on the dealership’s website where targeted shoppers were viewing the three targeted models.

The Results?

Despite a declining market, the dealership was able to significantly reduce pump-in sales lost to their top two competitors and successfully gain market share using AutoHook’s private incentive offers and sales match attribution reporting. By how much? Download the free PDF here to see the complete numbers.

Using targeted offers on these identified vehicles of opportunity, the total number of lost sales across the three models was reduced by 50% or more, and was maintained month-over-month for the following three months.

For more information about this case study, the dealership and the strategic partnerships, follow this link to immediately obtain a copy of the AutoHook Case Study.

Integrated Partnership

Great solutions are a result of knowing what you’re best at and sticking to it. AutoHook’s core competency is in securing their private offer and redemption rail system within dealerships and directly proving the source that led to a sale or a new-to-brand buyer. AutoHook knows their specialty is in delivering the industry’s best sales attribution reporting. Social Dealer specializes in running successful Facebook campaigns, which is why AutoHook chose to partner with them to carry out this initiative.

For more information about the AutoHook partner integration with SOCIALDEALER, read, Is Vendor Integration the New Innovation?

Interview with AutoHook and SOCIALDEALER

Latest Hot Topic in Forums

Facebook Live – Who’s using? Tips and Tricks

Ryan Thompson Sr. Refresher

First Name:
Ryan
Company:
The Dealer Geek & Ernie Dean GMC Buick Chevy
Location:
Canada

Hey DealerRefresher’s,

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything on the forums but I’ve definitely been lurking around!

I’m having some success (and fun) with Facebook video ads.  We haven’t really dabbled too much with FB Live, but it’s on my to-do list.

I was thinking of doing a monthly FB Live where I sit at my desk and walkthrough the months latest and greatest incentives (no more than a few minutes). 

Something that happens every month and our followers think of us as the authority for our manufacturer.

What have you tried or have been thinking about?

Follow this Conversation over in the Dealer forums. 

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From Hire to Profit: Analyzing How Long It Takes a New Salesperson to Become Profitable

When you hire a new salesperson at your dealership, you are investing in the future.

Just like with any investment, you can predict when this investment will break even and, eventually, when it will become profitable. In fact, the cost of a new salesperson starts to negatively impact your bottom line the minute you hire them. Employees often take quite a bit of time to get themselves out of the red. The truth is that while your sales department is a major source of revenue for your dealership, the individuals in that department are a drain on your resources before they ever start becoming profitable.

To better understand where your money is going and if a new hire is on track to break even… [Read more…]

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Free Dealer Guide: Leveraging Online Reviews for a Competitive Edge

SponsoredOnline reviews are the new word of mouth. A positive online review of your dealership causes a ripple effect that creates sales faster than a one-on-one conversation ever could.

The good news is that you can put reviews to work for you as
a competitive asset to grow sales, improve customer retention and empower your sales staff.

The key is to take ownership of reviews by creating a process for systematically managing them.

Read the full report below, to understand the importance of reviews in today’s car buying journey, as well as critical next steps you need to take to win with online reviews. After reading this report, you will learn:

  • How to take ownership of your reviews by actively managing them
  • How to highlight your reviews to drive customer retention and sales
  • How to use reviews to engage and retain your sales staff

The voice of the customer has a powerful impact on business today. You have a good opportunity to use reviews, both positive and negative –to acquire customers and create lifetime value.

Read on to start turning online reviews into one of your strongest competitive assets.

 

The power of reviews

A huge 73% of consumers, looking to purchase a car, place a high value on consumer reviews and expert reviews. Today, online consumer reviews are also more readily available – something the Millennial generation has grown up expecting.  Online reviews also play a pivotal role in making your dealership more visible through search engine optimization (SEO), especially at the local level given the prominence of reviews online.

If you don’t currently have a reviews strategy, and you have less than three reviews – and they’re negative – you are likely deterring customers from your dealership. Your minimum goal is to have at least five for car shoppers to read and consider.

Go here now to get this free dealer guide and start implementing an online review strategy for your dealership to make reviews the most valuable asset of your marketing. This will give you the competitive edge to boost your sales to a higher level.

 

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Meeting People Where Their Needs Are: Interview with George Grubbs, CEO, Grubbs Automotive Group

Sponsored

George Grubbs’ approach to car sales is simple and personal. He sums it up as “Meeting people where their needs are.” Since he and his family have been selling cars since the 1940s, they know a few things about developing relationships that turn into sales now and for years to come.

Over the past 70 years, Grubbs Infiniti has learned to adapt to new generations when it comes to car sales and building relationships. In the mid-90s they developed and launched the first Nissan website in the country and since then they have worked to stay at the cutting edge of technology while watching the ROI on everything they do.

When it comes to research on where to invest their time, energy and money George sticks to the basics. He says he reads everything he can and keeps a close eye on how soon results can be seen as well as how those results are measured.

Business decisions based on reliable results

“When I try something new, I need to see results,” he reported in a recent CBT Automotive Network interview.

“What I look for when I talk to a new vendor is what do their reports look like? […] How often are they gathering the data and how often are they giving it to me?”

But Grubbs doesn’t settle for just being given data and reports on a regular basis. He says he prefers a vendor who can offer a back end tool so he can log in and check trends and results on the fly. Reliable results give a dealer that competitive edge.

 

Technology and Customer Relationships

His hands on approach to technological advancement and developing relationships with customers, based on how they want to interact, has certainly paid off. Customer reviews from across various platforms including Yelp, Facebook, and Cars.com have customers praising everything; from their well-appointed waiting room to their pricing and service.

Clearly, being willing to adapt to the latest trends in technology and digital marketing for dealers, and to meet customers on their level, translates into a healthy bottom line and a bright future.

Follow the link below to watch the full interview with Geroge Grubbs on CBT News:

George Grubbs Automotive CBT Interview

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The Hidden Value of “Duplicate Leads”

If your duplicate leads are driving you crazy, consider a paradigm shift: these leads are actually a valuable source of customers for your dealership.

Why? Because by submitting information multiple times, duplicate leads have demonstrated repeated interest in your dealership.

What’s more, each time a single customer converts, they actually get a step closer to buying. Someone may initially convert on a dealership-wide holiday sale, and then a week later submit information on a trade-in tool.

Or maybe they’ll convert on an offer for one vehicle, and then, after shopping around, submit information for a sale on another. In these cases, we can see customers moving down the funnel, and should not miss opportunities to reach out to them. The numbers bear this out: duplicate leads have been found to convert at a rate almost 170% higher than non-duplicates.

So, when it comes to duplicate leads, the first step is to recognize their value.

[Read more…]

Latest Hot Topic in Forums

What would you like to see at a user conference?

Ilana Noob

First Name:
Ilana
Company:
AutoLeadStar

Hi DR Community,

I realize how many user conferences there are in the automotive space, so I’m wondering:

Do you find them repetitive or helpful?

What would you like to see at conferences that you haven’t yet seen?

What conference is your ultimate favorite?

What topics are most interesting for breakout sessions?

I’m really curious about this and appreciate all responses!

Thank you,

Ilana

Click here to comment in the dealer forums

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How Weather Impacts Your Dealer’s Sales Traffic

As an auto dealer, you are always looking for any information that may have a direct impact on the success of your store. In the first Driven Data Science blog, we looked at the impact of weather and day of the week has on the service department. Now we are going to take those same inputs and apply them to how it affects new dealership leads. The weather data is provided by Wunder Ground and the lead records are extracted from the CRM of two Driven Data clients. We limited the time range of this research to the years of 2015 and 2016. We used more than 400,000 leads records from the Chicago, IL and Charlotte, NC areas to build our analysis. Since dealer stores of different scales have different amounts of new leads per day, we have normalized the lead data by following two steps:

  1. Remove the outliers of raw data and exclude data of Sunday when dealerships are usually closed. List out the number of total leads, the number of Internet leads and the number of showroom leads of each day in 2015 and 2016.
  2. Calculate z-scores for those stores that have normally distributed lead data (almost all of them)

After normalization, the value of lead data actually becomes a statistic which describes the level of new leads on a given day. 0 = an average level, >0 = a high level and <0 = a low level.

Now the normalization process is complete, we have some interesting findings that we elicited from this research: [Read more…]

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Cars.com Testing VDP Lead Form Featuring Sales Employees

Today Cars.com announced a possible HUGE CHANGE to their VDP.

IF you’re signed up with DealerRater’s “Connections” feature, your Cars.com VDP is in for a possible HUGE change!!

Take a look…

DealerRater Connections on Cars.com

DealerRater Connections on Cars.com

DealerRater Connections on Cars.com

This is what I call… a “Ballsy” move.

And DAMN I LIKE IT!! Being a proponent of online reviews, reputation and word of mouth, this really takes it to another level. This is either a real game changer or a complete mess.

Knowing Alex Vetter, and speaking with him after the Cars.com acquisition of DealerRater – I have a really good understanding of his vision and I completely understand the visionary behind this. Therefore this possible huge change in the Cars.com VDP doesn’t surprise me.

Are you/we ready for this? 

Comment over in the forums.