DealerRefresh

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

2019 marks Alex's 30th year in the car business. In that time he has had a front-row seat for the rise of the Internet and has been working to bring the online and offline dealership experience closer. Whether you knew him from his life at Checkered Flag or his years with Dealer.com/DealerTrack/Cox Alex has remained an opinionated DealerRefresh contributor who enjoys nothing more than to poke at the unsaid truths in our industry. He also helped found FRIKINtech.

About the Author

Alex Snyder

2019 marks Alex's 30th year in the car business. In that time he has had a front-row seat for the rise of the Internet and has been working to bring the online and offline dealership experience closer. Whether you knew him from his life at Checkered Flag or his years with Dealer.com/DealerTrack/Cox Alex has remained an opinionated DealerRefresh contributor who enjoys nothing more than to poke at the unsaid truths in our industry. He also helped found FRIKINtech.

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Internet vs. Floor volume 57

This is a rant.

It pisses me off to still see the sales floor referring to Internet customers and forms from the website as “Internet Department” things.  When you still hear sales agents say “oh, that’s the Internet department” you know we have a problem.

C’mon, people aren’t searching for your store in Alta Vista using a Netscape browser – things have evolved over the last two decades!  Why do we still have this wall between the Internet department and the showroom floor?  You do realize you’re much more on the same team than those jerks across the other wall in the service department.  Those jackasses are literally raising labor rates on you and making sure every car has a fresh set of wipers.  You’d think they’d check the batteries on the front line from time to time.

Inner-departmental things haven’t evolved much over the past 20 years.  It isn’t your fault.  It is your vendors’ fault.

[Read more…]

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Are you a horse trader or a retailer?

Are you a horse trader or a retailer?

That’s a weird question isn’t it? During our first days on the lot our manager didn’t give us a history lesson on the car business. He taught us how to follow the road to a sale and maximize profit. And maybe he, himself, didn’t know where the road to the sale originated either.

My grandfather, Ed Snyder, is my hero. He was born in 1928 to a family of merchants where he grew to run the family’s Norfolk, VA department store: L. Snyder’s. The store, named for his grandfather who brought us to the United States in the prior century, closed it’s doors in 1969 against national competition. Sears, JC Penny, etc were too big to compete with, so Ed found a home within the dealership he started in 1964: Checkered Flag. Today, Ed is semi-retired and is available to family & friends who like to listen. He is an invaluable wealth of advice, but he is my hero due to his wisdom.

In a recent conversation Ed told me the problem with the car business is that it was created by horse traders. As a student of history I immediately appreciated what that meant. The horse trade was not the most scrupulous endeavor. Just think of characters like Billy the Kid funding their ventures by stealing horses and you can begin to get the sense of what one might call the “wholesale department” of the horse trader. [Read more…]

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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:

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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.