We’re a 50 car per month Chevrolet point in North Carolina between two bigger markets.  In early 2007, we began losing confidence in/and pulling our traditional media campaigns (tv, tadio, newpaper etc).  The last straw would have been our ad agency recommending we make a TV commercial branding our website (which they built), and trying to drive wesbite hits to it.  This makes me laugh now!  We’ve used the same CRM since 2001, and multiple enhancements made it possible to better track Internet leads, advertising sources, and sales performance.  Stats showed we were selling internet customers and our growth opportunities were outside our market (towns population 12,000).

We’ve now developed our advertising strategy to only include internet advertising.  If 90% of customer shop online, why advertise anywhere else?  I’d admit we spent some internet dollars foolishly, but would expect this as our learning curve increases.  Shifts in traditional mindset were necessary to achieve our results.  One big one would be profit margin for used vehicle.  Consider them commodities, and your small losses on used are better than big profits.  The used car market is efficient with aid of internet - meaning buyers have just as much information as sellers.  To survive we must operate more efficiently than our competitors.   Or store has not laid off or cut employees pay.  In fact, we had a profitable 2008 and Q1 2009.  My outlook is confident this year as I know I can track my ad dollars and better allocate Internet spending to profitable vendors.

Technorati Tags: automotive online marketing, digital dealer, increased web visability

The time the sales manager spent with me was gratuitous but very discouraging as well.  It was almost like he was trying to dissuade me from being in the car business, nonetheless I survived, was put on the floor after being reminded continually to:

1. Meet and greet build rapport
2. Qualify – Find out about what they wanted to buy
3. Select a car
4. Walk around and test drive.
5. Get agreement to buy the car if the numbers were right.
6. Fill out a buyers order get the customer to agree in writing.
7. Get a manager and keep my mouth shut.

That system worked well for me.  My first month on the floor I sold 15 cars.   I started following up with my sold customers like I ws told to do and was off to the races.

Fast forward almost 20 years and my 20 year old son has started as a car sales person.  I asked the group over at ADM for new sales person advice everybody that responded gave some great tips.  Here are a few that stuck out to me.

Comment by Jim Vogel

To be a salesperson in the car business you must know a couple of things… It is your passion before you realize it is. Bell to bell takes on a new meaning. Success is when it is just you and the F&I guy left… and finally, THICK SKIN, SENSE OF HUMOR and SHORT-TERM MEMORY. Gotta have it!

I have literally taught hundreds this advice. Stay passionate. If you are a true “car guy”, you know what I am talking about. Good luck, my little brother in profit!

Comment by Ryan Lucia

1) focus on what you can control
2) know the flow of the store
3) set goals and write them down
4) work smarter not harder
5) sell yourself….tell people stories (people love stories) get personal with your people
6) listen….listen….listen….listen….to many sales people talk and never listen
7) Never be afraid to ask for the close (people want to be asked if they will buy)
if your funny be funny if your not don’t
9) don’t be afraid to ask for advice
10) have your dad build a website to help you generate leads

Comment by Phil Whitehead

Give your business card to everyone you meet – the guy making your sandwich at the sub shop, the lady behind the counter, etc. They may not be in the market but maybe they know someone who is. They certainly won’t come to your dealership and ask for you if they don’t know you sell cars!

Ask everyone you meet “What kind of car do you drive?” “Why did you pick that car?” “What do you like about it?” “What one thing would you change about it if you could?” You’ll learn a lot about what people do and don’t like about cars and why they decide to buy what they buy. When you ask these same qualifying questions on the lot, it will seem like a natural conversation and not a bunch of nosy questions.

Comment by Joe Webb

As a green pea in this market, I believe you must first
1) Learn the layout of the dealership like the back of your hand
2) Learn the product extremely well
3) Role play with managers and test drive as many vehicles as possible – thereby learning the sales process
4) Get on every single educational site possible – Edmunds, KBB, etc.

Bill Playford

….. I certainly remember my first days on the lot (and getting stuck with everyone’s leftovers), and I identify with all of the advice that’s been given so far. I’ve seen a lot of turnover in my day (after three years, I quit counting at 27, which is more than 300% turnover at the store I worked at!), so I feel compelled to share some advice. If one of my children were starting in the car business, here’s what I’d share with them:

1.) Spend time getting to know the dealer’s staff (Service Writers, Service Techs, Office Admins, Detailers, Porters, etc). Not only are they (usually) great people to know, but they will also make your life easier. The referrals are nice too!
2.) Show initiative. It doesn’t hurt to turn the lights on in the morning, and lock the door with the Dealer Principal on a Saturday.
3.) Don’t be afraid to call your old customers “out of the blue, just to chat.” Fanatically keep notes about what you learned about your customers during the selling process (Rick’s hot rod Nash, Jenny’s ballet classes, Mike’s youth ministry…). Follow-up is fun when you have a personal relationship with your clients.
4.) Make yourself irreplaceable. Find a niche that is not being filled, and make yourself the best at filling that niche. Whether it’s being a product guru, a walk-around pro, or an Internet selling machine, find an area of improvement, and make it your own.
5.) Don’t be afraid to say no to a client. Evaluate what the sale is worth, beyond the gross. (Are they ever going to refer friends, family, and/or coworkers to you? Will they ever buy another vehicle from you? Are they going to have their vehicles serviced at your store?) Constantly being demoralized by customers puts you on the fast track to a new job.
6.) Don’t give up. Although it’s difficult, don’t measure yourself by your paycheck: measure yourself by your peers. In a business of attrition, the longer you stick with it, the more successful you will be.

There were some other great responses and you can see them all here.  If you have anything you would like to add please do so in the comment there or here.

Technorati Tags: car salesman, new job selling cars

CarFolks.com Main Purpose

What is completely lost in this diatribe is the fact that networking is a great source of business, online or otherwise.

It leads to referrals, direct sales and staying in touch.  While I agree that people can go over board with networking online but what about the great networkers that sell cars to members at their church, the masons lodge or the golf course?  While these activities can take away from business time too they can be a huge marketing tool.

Businesses do not network online or otherwise.  People who work in them do.  Online is no different.  Our friends, old classmates and family are utilizing online networking sites to reconnect, stay in touch and to share memories.  Anyone who has been in auto sales for more than a month knows that people buy from people they like and staying in touch is the best way to insure repeat business.  Online has made that easier.

Nobody wants to connect with “Old School Dealer Group” they want to connect with the individuals who work there.  Everyone has a sphere of influence and by connecting with you online they are opening letting you into their circle where as they may be more hesitant to do so in real life.

• Will they want to follow you on twitter if the only thing you share is the deal of the day or hour?
• Do people want to really want to read your blog if it is nothing but a pitch?
• Would your brother 350 miles away be interested in your facebook wall if your message is to call for a great deal on a car?
• What would your grand ma say if all you did was try to get her to fill out a credit app because “Everybody Rides” from your myspace account?

Not only would it be counter productive to think that is the way to use networking sites it would be just as asinine as the Carfolks.com model.  If you took the time to make connections and become a part of the community and be a participant not just a marketing machine then these sites can work for you.

It is great to reconnect on facebook with an old high school buddy and to catch up on what has been going on in each others lives.  If  you really reconnected with that lost friend they would travel hundreds of mile to buy a car from you and to enjoy a dinner and a drink.  Two good things come from that interaction by not leading with the pitch.  Just by letting people know what you do.  (Personal Story)

The web today is about being connected with others and the applications that help bring everything together.  I get excited about finding applications that can help promote your business.  I was recently sent a press release by Wei at www.easyautosales.com that talks about how they developed an application where cars can be posted via facebook connect.

I see the application being a great tool if used properly in a networking environment.  Consumers can post a car they find and ask their friends for their opinion of it and a salesperson with a large network could feature a recent trade in and tell the cars story to their connections or use it to recommend cars to those that ask.

The line will have to be walked for dealership peronel using it as a marketing tool so not to appear spammy, there is already to much of that at every level in our industry.  Moderation is the key,but if your profile is strong enough you become the car expert in your circle and your friends will appreciate it.

People are going to Facebook not Carfolks.  With monthly visits topping 60 million and growing versus less than 1000 and falling where would you rather your people be? (I know a few blogs that get a lot more traffic than that)

Remember my motto: “Without Traffic Everything Fails”

Technorati Tags: automotive seo, automotive social networking, carfolks.com, facebook.com, myspace.com, online marketing

The automotive digital marketing space is now the wild west of the auto industry and represents the best opportunity for dealers, who have the ability to make informed decisions, to promote their dealerships and inventory online. Unfortunately for most dealers they rely on recommendations from individuals or companies that have a back end motive in recommending products and services to them. Like the scouting reports that General Custer had before “the Battle of Little Big Horn” and are being lead to the slaughter.

Carnival like atmospheres and gee whiz presentations with recommendations from people who have not changed their game plan in relation to digital marketing in several years is a recipe for disaster. In this space with enhanced consumer awareness and online trends changing at an alarming rate cookie cutter products with declarations of how well they did in 2005 should tell the dealer to be weary.

This problem is not only presented by consultants and agencies who are trying to carve out a space in a niche that they do not understand it is compounded by the fact vendors that operate in the digital space make recommendations that only serve them and not the dealer.

Today there are so many different flavors of cool aid that is being served up to decision makers it is easy for the dealer to become paralyzed and choose to do nothing. Another big mistake.

The list of terms, tools and disciplines in itself can be confusing to a lay person. Automotive digital marketing, online best practices, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, micro sites, landing pages, CRM, ILM, SEO, PPC, websites, process, conversion ratios, email templates, social media, social networking, dealer ratings, click to call, online chat, online classifieds, twitter, linkedin, plaxo, leads, online merchandising, pop ups, pop unders, text advertising, banner advertising, online directories, blogging, squidoo, consumer generated content, have you got lost yet?

Now you have vendors pitching these individual products or combinations of them in packages as the answer to the dealers online marketing effort. Not to mention the training that must be performed for the use and implementation and process development.

Here is the typical situation. A dealer attends a conference and hears buzz words such as social networking, web 2.0, blogging, seo and sem. Currently they have a website and are sending their inventory to classified sites such as cars.com and autotrader.com and realize that they are not getting the best return on their time and investment.

So they contact a SEO vendor and a SEM vendor to help deliver more traffic to their website and realize that their process is broke after examining their lead handling. In comes the process consultant that gets them signed up with a state of the art ILM and CRM system and buying every lead in a 200 mile radius of their store. However the dealer has set a budget for expanding her Internet presence and soon realizes that all the based are not covered so she starts exploring more options. The SEM vendor tells them how they are going to deliver traffic to the stores website through an intelligent PPC campaign and the traffic will be almost instant and the leads will pour in through the site and they don’t need to buy leads and give them more money to drive traffic that closes at a higher ratio.

Now the SEO vendor explains to her that SEM is not permanent traffic and gets is more expensive over the long haul and tells her that she can buy leads for half the price that most lead vendors charge by buying direct from the lead aggregators while they establish a permanent search engine presence.

Now the autotrader rep and cars.com rep are waiting in the showroom to discuss the cancellation letter that was sent in because the process consultant told her not to waste money there to free up more budget so she can access discount credit leads that have been sold to six dealers already in the last 90 days.

Finally after three weeks of this circle jerk she has decided that she has tried the Internet and it is not worth it because it is not working in her store. She can’t find the ball no matter how hard she searches for it.

All the time her inventory data feed has been down because the modem for her DMS is infected with cockroaches where the parts manager dropped a burrito behind it in the parts warehouse where he hides to take breaks during the day and every email from the store is going into a spam filter because they have a local mail server and the F&I manager and title clerk are sending porn and the email around that says microsoft is going to give them $286 for every time it is forwarded to their 800 person contact list putting all the email address in the to field and the person who did online sales two years ago has an autoresponder set up to send every person who has ever submitted a lead through the website a daily email to call him on his disconnected cell phone to get the best damned service and because they need a car today and it is time for them to step up.

And people wonder why dealers have such a hard time getting it.  It is not their process that is broke it all the processes going on around them inflicted by the vendors who ply their trade in the niche or people who are trying to figure out a way to stay in the car business in a consultave role when they do not even know how to set up an email client.

The good thing is for people who are serving the dealers with integrity and for the dealers that operate with integrity and own a franchise other that one of the big three there is hope.  Current market conditions are going to rid the industry of posers and carnies at all levels.  OEMs, Dealers, vendors, consultants and dealership employees who have been faking it for years.

Now is the time for the dealers to act to own their competitive markets and make rational choices.  This can be done through education or finding consultants that can guide them who do not have an interest in pushing a certain vendors products.

Transparency is a buzz word that vendors and consultants use in their pitches to dealers telling them they need to be transparent with their ionteractions with consumers now dealers need to hold them transparent as well.  If a consultant or vendor that is recomending other widgets for the dealer to use in their online marketing efforts will not provide full disclosure as to ther relationship with these other parties the best thing the dealer can do is tell them to play their shell game at down the road motors and seek education and non biased recomendations.

Now that you are ready to leave and go back about your day take a minute and leave a comment and let me know what you think.

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Technorati Tags: automotive internet sales, automotive vendors, online marketing

Every time your cell phone rings from friends in the industry you are trying to guess who is closing next or what other bad news they are delivering.  You may even have some pools running on it.  Your marketing expenses are cut to the bone because people are not buying cars and you are wondering how much longer you will even hang on.

You have two dozen deals sitting in finance that you would of spotted six moths ago.  Paralysis is starting to kick in and all you can think about is what can we do to attract more customers TODAY!!  You have the team in place and the inventory just no tire kickers or leads.

The facts are you have two types of buyer in a market like this.  Need buyers, the projects in F&I, and people who really don’t care how bad things are economically, decent income retirees, civil servants and rich people.  The big fat middle is not buying anything….

If you are reading this it should not matter to you!!!

You can easily capture today’s in market car buyers and the buyers who will be in the market when things start recovering, like they always do, by building your Internet presence today.  Chances are you found this page because you are looking for way to improve your business today and in market car buyers will find you if you put it out there for them to notice you.  If you have read this far you have noticed me,  did I do a decent marketing job?

While your competition is sitting back worrying and your staff is pissing and moaning about how bad things are what are you doing to generate traffic to your inventory and your unique selling proposition, if you don’t have one why not?

Cars are widgets, customers know that, they don’t believe the adds 40% off MSRP and below invoice.  Employee pricing means nothing to them if they are 8 K buried in a SUV that gets 14 MPG.  You are not solving their problems and creating yourself one.

You can win in this down market!!

Make the web your marketing friend not a nemesis you do not understand.  Process and used car descriptions is not Internet marketing.  That is sales.  The Internet is a marketing tool that creates sales.  To win in the Internet game with any widget you need:

Traffic > Leads > Follow Up> in car lingo Tire Kickers > Interested in Buying > Chase ‘em ’til they buy or die.

Massive traffic gets massive leads which give you warm bodies to follow up with.  The ends of the equation are the only two you have control over.  You can create traffic and manage the follow up, if you get enough traffic the leads will be there.

Create traffic where none existed before

Become a problem solver, today’s buyers have problems solve them and make it easy for them to find your solution.  While your competition is worrying about all of the crap this post started with, you will worry about how to attract more traffic.

You can generate traffic on your competitions makes and brands, competing market areas, perfect conversion tools and brand yourself online with people not in the market today or you sit back and create processes with without leads to run through them.

Internet marketing is not setting up a BDC and having a website, they are just a part of the equation.  It is not about launching dozens of dealer micro sites, with no real purpose,  shady video search engine optimization, creating blogs with keyword stuffed content, buying leads, spamming social networks and email databases.

It is finding customers who want what you have, want to do business with you and you solving their problems.  You can do that faster, with less expense and more effectively with a well planned Internet marketing plan that you can any day by using spaghetti marketing through traditional media.  (Traditional Media is a bad term to use.  The web is today’s traditional media)

Execute this now and reap the benefits today and create a base that your competition will never catch when cycles do as they always do, turn for the better….

Paul Rushing
912-266-1629
www.drivingsales.com
projects@parushing.com
www.ismintraining.com

Contact Me: LinkedinTwitter

Technorati Tags: automotive internet marekting, automotive marketing, automotive online marketing, car dealer online marketing

Times have changed tremendously since I entered the automotive industry in 1990. The business has a life of it’s own. Things come and things go. When I first got in the business trucks did not have maroney labels with prices, cars still had carburetors and credit was pulled on thermal paper.

Today you can price anything built from home, today computers diagnose cars and what the heck is thermal paper? Lot of changes in twenty years.

• The Internet is Not a Fad. (Where are reading this?)
• Advertising has become a relational medium. (Mobile and online chat to name a few))
• Manufactures are taking away traditional advertising mediums from dealers. (Ever hear of XM or Sirrus?)
• We don’t watch commercials on TV. (TIVO!)
• The last newspaper will be printed in the first quarter of 2043. (not me claiming that)

However daily we see dealers, real estate pros and other B&M (Brick and Mortar) business investing heavily in out dated mediums. What is going on? Hopefully the old school figures it out the “Nu Rulz” before they become like the business model in the short video above.

Technorati Tags: Add new tag, change, Marketing, traditional business models

I have looked at adding micro sites to our online marketing portfolio and have investigated several different vendors in this arena and have found that none of them have a clue at providing a real service to dealers. With the current offerings on the market today they would fail in other niches except the automotive industry. For starters no one in any other niche would pay the fees these guys are asking for “hosting” and design for crappy html templated sites. The designs are only original to the extent that each provider has their own “footprint” that they use to structure the micro sites. Other than that they offer nothing original for the astronomical fees that they charge.

For the monthly fee that these vendors are charging I could have a site designed and host it for a year and if I wanted to be real crafty about it I could have one designed and just knock it off for the other keywords I wish to go after. It is not rocket science.

In a recent email exchange with a microsite provider I asked the direct question of “Do you do design work and allow me to host it myself?”

The reply was comical to say the least. I was informed that i could prepay the design but would have to pay them $65 for hosting and we would not own created property. It would remain in their control and they wanted a contract..
Another vendor wanted $200 per month per site and $2 per generated lead and we still did not own the property..

It then dawned on me why these people get away with this. It is the niche that they operate in. Car dealers accept this crap and pay for it and do not take ownership of their online marketing destiny. They rather pay vendors to take the fall if something does not work and also takes them away from the responsibility of managing it. Two very big screw ups if you wish to be successful marketing anything online.

This does not even touch on the fact that vendors do not structure their products to meet the clients needs. they structure the products to meet their needs and force the customer to accept it. If you are old enough to remember DOS based operating systems the leading edge word processing vendor. Word Perfect, would not adapt their product to work with windows until it was to late. Their customers left them as Microsoft developed windows and Microsoft Office. Even though the users of Word Perfect knew how to use the software and it was the preferred word processor of the day. Automobile vendors really could learn a lesson from this….

Oh well time to have my microsites designed by a free lance designer and sell the templates.

Technorati Tags: Automobile, car, design, DOS, Internet Marketing Arena, Marketing, Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Oh, Sites, vendors, word, Word Perfect

I just thought I had a task before. Now I have a real rebuilding process to go through, the difference now is I have a defined budget and complete latitude to make all of the decisions on where the money is spent. My job is to produce ROI. All “paid” services were shut off when I arrived other than the crappy Reynold’s sites, which are not charged to my budget.

Here is what I have for Free:

• Two Reynolds Sites that will eventually be merged into a “Group” website by the end of this quarter. Already in place before I arrived. Will kick and scream to get a location only site back on it’s own domain after this takes place. Those cost will be charged to my budget then.
• Cobalt’s LMCC – For being a 5 Star Dealer. I personally don’t like it other than the price.
• Inventory inside of the 5 Star Site, new and used. It does generate some leads and the price is great.
• Hyundai is rolling out some new features which will be similar to the 5 Star deal it appears. I do not have full details yet, I was made aware of this late this afternoon and did not have time to look at it.

My budget for the next 30 days is only $3000.00 and here is how I am spending it:

• Secondary Finance Leads – $1050. I am not real fond of this but I need to breed some fast activity and this seems to be the best way right now. We have a strong F&I manager and we have some new secondary finance sources available, which I did not have before.
• Automotive classifieds with Cars.com – $900. If it were not for a co-op that we have in place I would not of done it.
• Regional Classifieds – $175 on a rollout package the price is right!!
• Vehix.com – $250 again a rollout. Comcast has a high penetration of the TV market here and they are advertising it like crazy. Being sandwiched between two major metros with Comcast as the main cable provider as well as my local market’s only provider it is another no brainer.

So in all I have spent $2375 in just three days in reworking this. While that does leave some room to take on another project or lead source chances are I will not utilize it unless it is the right opportunity, I may start a PPC campaign with a microsite or two.

Of course I have some blogs going that are delivering leads to affiliate programs and may change their direction in the near future. However since the returns on this are known it may benefit me better to leave those alone as they are not subsidized by my employer. This is a fine line I am walking I know but in the for what it is worth category those are mine and were not developed on their time or dime. Any benefit I receive from them is mine alone. This does not mean I will not create or outsource some user generated content in social networking/publishing platforms to benefit the store, but even then I will maintain control.

Technorati Tags: automotive, benefit, budget, Carl Gregory Chrysler, Cars, Cobalt's LMCC, Comcast, Free, Hyundai, Internet, Inventory, ISM My, leads, Now I, Ok I, PPC, Regional Classifieds, Reynold's, ROI All, Secondary Finance Leads, Sites, Star, Star Dealer, Star Site, TV, Two Reynolds Sites, Vehix, While I

What Can fix Myspace (www.socialnewswatch.com) has an interesting article about how the 800 lb gorillas may need to rethink their marketing strategies to attract businesses to market their products through their platforms. I do believe that may be the near term saving grace and help businesses become more aware of these valuable resources as social networks start to shut their door.

Auto Dealers have been penny wise and pound foolish when taking a practical approach to using these resources as marketing tools and now that doors will soon start closing on social networks it may be time for dealers to actually get in front of a trend instead of trailing it by several years.

The other informative article Social Networking with the Elite (www.business week.com) describes the coming phenomenon in using the internet to really network. This could be a very practical application for auto dealers to embrace to retain customers. Imagine a closed door social network for your dealership where entry is only accessed by your customers and staff. This would allow dealers to to build a huge internal marketing platform and retain customers at a fraction of the cost of attracting new ones.

Not only could you create an online VIP membership that would provide current customers with special service and sales promotions but also a viral cost effective way to stay in constant contact with their best source of business, current customers, and help drive more referrals to the showroom.

Technorati Tags: Auto Dealers, customers, deal, Elite, Imagine, Marketing, Myspace, networking, social, social networking, VIP, What Can

Google is now offering video plays in its Adwords/Adsense platforms. This will be an inexpensive way to facilitate market area saturation with a branding message. While this is not the only platform that a message like this can be delivered it seems to be the most cost effective right now.

Here is an example that Ford Motor Company is various auto manufactures are doing tied in with a very funny comedy piece.

Mean Automakers Dash Nation’s Hope For Flying Cars

Technorati Tags: Adwords Adsense, Dealers, Ford Motor Company, Google, inexpensive, market, Mean Automakers Dash Nation's Hope For Flying Cars, message, online, platforms, Television Advertising