DealerRefresh

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

Alex was born into the car business. His family owns a group of stores in Virginia where he held a multitude of positions since he first cut the grass there in 1989. In 2010 he joined Dealer.com to help put a dealer's spin on products; where he got a front row seat to converse with over 13,000 dealers and watch 2 acquisitions totaling over $5 Billion. Today, Alex lives in Vermont and works to make DealerRefresh amazing!

About the Author

Alex Snyder

Alex was born into the car business. His family owns a group of stores in Virginia where he held a multitude of positions since he first cut the grass there in 1989. DealerRefresh caught his attention in 2006 and he has been a part of the community ever since. In 2010 Alex joined Dealer.com to help put a dealer's spin on products; where he got a front row seat to converse with over 13,000 dealers and watch 2 acquisitions totaling over $5 Billion. Today, Alex lives in Vermont and works to make DealerRefresh amazing!

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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…]

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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…]

Categories: CRM

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Nostradamus (Cliff Banks) joins Jeff & Alex on Refresh Friday

March 30th at 1:00 PM EST Cliff Banks, automotive’s Nostradamus, will be sharing his insights on Refresh Friday.  Tune-in on the DealerRefresh Facebook page for the live broadcast.

We plan to talk about

  • CDK’s Fortellis project
  • CDK lawsuits with Authenticom & Cox Automotive
  • NADA
  • 2018 Acquisitions
  • Hot companies to watch
  • Digital Retailing
  • Dealers are not going away anytime soon

Join the fun.

If you can’t make it the video will be available on Facebook and later on the DealerRefresh YouTube channel.

 

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Dealing with a Blacklisted CRM and Measuring your Response Rate.

Skip to the point if you don’t care to read the backstory.

I sit back, this morning, amazed at how unreliable email delivery is. It might be getting worse and worse every year. Due to abusive advertisers we all want to safeguard our inboxes from disgusting amounts of delete button presses. And so, car dealers suffer. Car dealers become email losers.

Sure, dealers’ practicing carpet bombing marketing tactics with “free” email campaigns can absolutely be given all the “I told you so’s” and “you get what you deserve’s” that we care to expound. Anyway, my point is not to get lost in a you reap what you sow scenario.

[Read more…]

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You F’ing crazy car dealers

I haven’t worked in a dealership for more than 6 years now. Today I’m a vendor; one who works closely with OEMs and dealers… for those of you who don’t know me. During that time, I have been explaining to coworkers and manufacturer representatives how to make life easier for dealers. Unfortunately, neither will ever understand.

People who buy and have their car worked on at car dealerships are the root of all our communication issues.

That’s basically because they’re fukingz crazy!

[Read more…]

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Smilies are back and better

Our special emoticons/smilies didn't make it over on the initial vBulletin to Xenforo migration, but they're back now! And they're A LOT easier to get to. On the old platform the customized smilies were hidden behind a series of clicks that popped a new tab or a pop up – that was no bueno :thumbdn:

With Xenforo all the smilies are within your quick post area:

Screen Shot 2014-11-06 at 9.33.23 AM.png

They're also categorized. I took a 3 minute stab on the categorizations, so feel free to say they seriously suck:flame:

And last but not least we have a new smilie to honor @JoePistell@JoePistell

Screen Shot 2014-11-06 at 9.32.07 AM.png

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Does your Dealership Emanate THE Vision?

 

Few people know what they want.

Few people are driven. Few people have vision. If you want to find the ultimate in success, find your vision.

I have just finished Fast Company’s article on Jeff Bezos for the second time: AmazonFresh Is Jeff Bezos’ Last Mile Quest For Total Retail Domination and am inspired to say something about vision after my second reading.

If you haven’t read this article, that’s okay because I assume you know what Amazon is.

Amazon, on the surface, looks like a retail establishment that provides lower pricing, no taxes, delivery to your door, and the convenience of 24/7 shopping without leaving the house. That isn’t what Jeff Bezos set out to do. I don’t know exactly what Jeff’s vision is, but I know it isn’t to be the king of retail. I am pretty sure his vision is to be retail…all of it. Whether he gets there or not has nothing to do with why I’m writing this. I’m not even saying Amazon will be the future car dealer.

Jeff’s vision is to be retail. What that has created for him is the ultimate understanding of the consumer:

“In the old world, you could make a living by hoping that your customer didn’t know whether your price was actually competitive. That’s a very tenuous strategy in the new world. [Now] you can’t convince people you have the low price; you actually have to have the low price. You can’t persuade people that your delivery speeds are fast; you actually have to have fast delivery speeds!” – Originally Posted by Jeff Bezos in Fast Company’s Sep 2013 edition

In order to achieve his vision he knows he has to deliver and that’s his drive. That’s the focus of Amazon’s daily grind.

What do we do in dealerships?

Do we obsess over making sure our marketing and mission statements are true?
Do we have a vision for what we want to achieve?

If you know what you’re after the mission becomes quite clear and the vision become infectious to the people around you.

I don’t see many dealerships who know what they want other than more sales….

Would you agree?

I would love for you to share your comments here or below.

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SEO is dead…again

If you’re going to talk about some death, you might as well do it on Halloween.

Jeff just called me to point out an article I wrote about the death of SEO (call it SEO 1.0) over two years ago. I forgot I wrote it, but it is coming true right now.

SEO is migrating to lean more toward site architecture and social presence than tags and on-page content. Rereading the article, and drawing on development challenges I see daily I think even the new SEO model will be short-lived.

In order to understand this we need to first understand the way the Internet works. It was originally created as a way to share static data (digital text…hypertext actually). The addition of pictures and video and forms and ecommerce and all the other things that have been incorporated into websites were not a part of the original design. In order to avoid all the technicalities, let’s just say the foundation of the Internet was designed to be really “flat” and static.

[Read more…]