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STORYTAILER LLC
CHAPEL HILL

Don’t Get Kicked Out! (Building Relationships vs. Selling Cars on Facebook)

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The second dealership I worked at was a brand-new dealership. I mean it literally had no cars on the lot when I first started. There wasn’t a lot of foot traffic. There weren’t previous customers to follow-up with. We worked from an “up” list so there were many moments of down-time where you didn’t have much to do. We could go the whole day and only see 1 customer at that time. At this time, I wasn’t in the Internet Department. I was just a salesperson “on-the-line”.

I took that time to look at message boards that were geared towards enthusiasts of my manufacturer. I found one that was particularly active and started participating. They welcomed dealer/salesperson participation with one simple caveat – they did not want you to try and sell them anything. The salespeople that did anyways, got kicked off the boards. I participated vigorously answering any and all questions people asked with complete transparency. If I didn’t know the answer, I found it. If it involved a different department, I got them involved. After doing this for awhile, I truly became a “member” of that community. People appreciated the interaction and that I didn’t try to sell them anything. They knew I sold cars and that, ultimately, I wanted to sell them a car, but I didn’t try.

By behaving in this way, I was rewarded by many of the forum members buying vehicles from me. Customers were flying to me to buy cars. I was shipping cars all over the country. People were referring other people to me. If someone went onto this forum asking other members where they should buy a car, I didn’t have to say anything. The other members did it for me.

I wasn’t giving the cars away either, I was selling them at MSRP! People were flying in to buy FROM ME at STICKER PRICE (and no, I wasn’t paying for their transportation either). Here’s the forum and a sample thread:

Fresh Alloy forum: Arnold Tijerina at Riverside Infiniti is THE MAN !

(There are more posts like this. Feel free to search around the forum.)

The point of this story is that I took the time to build relationships with these consumers online without trying to sell them anything, was still being profitable for the dealership and making money for myself.

Dealers have many other avenues in which to continue their traditional advertising and capture business – print ads, 3rd party leads, websites, direct mail, email campaigns, and more.

Social media is presenting dealers with an opportunity that either didn’t exist or I didn’t know about back then. (This was in 2003). Dealers have the ability to interact with consumers in a forum THEY control. The message board I was dealing with wasn’t under my control, I was a passive participant until a question was asked.

I’ve seen many dealers start to create Fan Pages. Some I think are doing it right. These dealers seek engagement and to put a personality to the dealership. A great example, in my opinion, is the Walser Automotive Group. Here’s their Fan Page. They’re trying to build relationships on Facebook.

I’ve also seen dealers on the other end of the spectrum who are basically mimicking their traditional online and print ads on their Facebook Fan Pages as much as possible. They’re trying to sell cars on Facebook.

You can take this opportunity to create relationships with the knowledge that the business will come in the future from the evangelists you created…..

or you can try to sell some cars and get kicked off the message boards.

You decide.

You’ve Got Mail! (Two Easy Ways to Give Your E-Mail Auto-Responder An Edge)

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Almost all dealerships get e-mail leads in some fashion, whether it’s through a 3rd party lead aggregator, OEM or through their own website. Many of the same leads your dealership gets, your competitor gets also.

Every dealer I’ve ever known has an auto-responder attached to their CRM or ILM that goes out to the customers upon receipt of the leads. Many of them are generic and very similar.

Something to this effect:

“Hi Bill,

Thank you for your inquiry on a [insert year, make, model]. We appreciate the opportunity to earn your business and want you to know that we look forward to assisting you with the purchase of your new [insert year, make, model].

Someone from our internet staff will be in contact with you as soon as possible. In the meantime, feel free to give us a call at 888-555-1212 if you’d like to contact us faster.

Best New Cars has been in business for 25 years and you can have confidence that we’ll give you the personal attention you deserve.

Thanks, Internet Manager”

Usually this e-mail is in a nice-HTML rich template with the dealership’s banner, some pretty pictures, links, etc. Sometimes they include an initial quote, many times, they don’t.

The problem with this is:

  1. Every dealership is sending the customer the same thing so it is quite impersonal and the customers know its an auto-responder.
  2. These e-mails are hard to read on mobile devices like Blackberries, etc.

 Here are two easy tweaks that can give you an edge.

Tweak #1: Change your auto-responder to a short message, ideally 1-2 sentences in a non-HTML email with an important twist in your signature.

Example:

“Bill,

Thanks for the inquiry. I apologize that I can’t call you immediately but I promise to get in touch with you as soon as possible.

Thanks, Internet Manager
Sent from my Blackberry”

This accomplishes a few things. It makes your auto-responder different than your competitors, is easy to read no matter how they’re accessing their e-mail and they believe it was sent by you personally from your cell phone rather than recognizing that the e-mail they got was computer-generated. The customer will get the impression that you stopped what you were doing and acknowledged their inquiry while they are getting obvious e-mail templates from your competitors.

Tweak #2: Change the timing on your auto-responder. Most e-mail readers default from “newest” to “oldest” in the order in which the emails are displayed. Most dealership’s have their auto-responders set-up to email the customer immediately upon receipt of the lead. If you delay the sending of your auto-responder by 5 minutes, now where is your e-mail in their in-box? At the top and likely to be the first one that the customer reads. 

In automotive internet sales, we’re always looking for an edge over our competition. Anything you can do to set yourself apart from your competition and make you more memorable will increase your chances of success.

You only get one chance to make a first impression.

(Note: I learned this technique from Joe Webb at one of his sessions at a Digital Dealer Conference awhile back. Joe is a good friend of mine and is a very knowledgeable, progressive thinker and strategist. At the time, he was on the retail side of the business but now he is the President of DealerKnows where he consults with dealerships on internet marketing tactics and best practices. If you need some help, I definitely recommend him and his services. Also, if you’ve never been to a Digital Dealer Conference, you’re missing out on a wealth of information.)

Don’t Get Mad, Get Even. (Internet Security and Terminated Employees)

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In another incident of employee “road rage”, a Texas dealership’s former employee disabled 100 sold car ignitions and/or set off their car horns. He also went into their accounting system and changed the names of buyers (ie. Tupac Shakur), and he ordered $130,000 worth of parts from a vendor. Apparently, the dealership installs GPS systems with ignition kills on sold cars to ease repossession if the customer defaults on payment. (Link)

What is your dealership’s policies and procedures for managing a terminated employee’s access to your company’s online services?

With dealership vendors increasingly moving online, and dealerships increasingly adding web-based services, how do you insure that a terminated employee would not be able to access your valuable data and/or sabotage your dealership in any way?

It’s not just enough anymore to just cancel their accounts and remove their access. Many of your employees know the user names and passwords of co-workers and, in some cases, managers despite any policy you may have in place that restricts that.

So what do you do?

  1. Keep track of which employees have access to which systems.
  2. Only give employees access to systems they need to do their job.
  3. Have one person who manages all your DMS, CRM, ILM, IMS and any online service’s access (and “all managers” does not count as one person).
  4. If you can avoid it, do not allow remote access to your systems.
  5. Do a regular audit of your system and user access.
  6. Don’t allow people to keep their passwords taped to their computer monitors, written in a notebook, or in a file on their computer. This is a recipe for disaster and happens way too often.

In the event of a termination:

  1. Cancel all of the employee’s user names and passwords before informing them they’ve been terminated.
  2. Require that all employees change their passwords upon a termination of any employee to all the systems/services which they have access to.
  3. Monitor access frequently immediately after an employee termination. Typically, if there is revenge or sabotage brewing, it will occur fairly quickly after the termination.

While some of this may seem like overkill and is inconvenient, you could be held liable for any misuse of customer data or consequences of a disgruntled employee’s actions.

Do you think the 100 people who had their ignitions killed on their cars are going to blame the disgruntled employee?

As dealerships become more virtual in their operations, security of your data and services becomes more and more important. Implement policies and procedures to minimize any backlash that could occur from a disgruntled employee.

It is not only your duty to protect your information, but also your customers.

                                  

I Do Not Like Them, Spam I Am

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I just finished reading “Linchpin” by Seth Godin and I must admit that some of the things he says in the book were very thought-provoking.

One concept stood out immediately.

From Page 192:

“Just because his boss demands that he act like human spam doesn’t mean he has an obligation to listen. In fact, he has an obligation to do just the opposite. To stand out, not fit in. To make connections, not to be an invisible cog. To do otherwise is a loss.”

The concept that stood out to me within that paragraph was “human spam”.

We all deal with spam. In fact, some of us in the automotive industry create a lot of it.

We have pop-up ads on our websites, GoogleAds, email marketing campaigns, direct mail marketing campaigns, print ads, billboards, fliers and social media marketing campaigns. We send out our message in every way possible in the hopes that some of those broadcasts will bring us some business.

The definition of spam is “the abuse of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately.” (Link)

So what would the definition of “human spam” be?

I put forth that human spam could be defined as follows: the abuse of social interactions (including via phone, or in person) to send messages indiscriminately.”

Examples:

The salesperson who has so irritated a customer with the quantity of his follow-up calls that they have called in to complain.

The BDC employee reading a script to your customers whether on an incoming call or an outgoing call to anybody.

The salesperson burning ups on your lot because he’s pre-qualifying customers, judging them, or determining that they aren’t “now” buyers then lot-dropping them.

I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t seek out our customers. I’m not arguing that a BDC is a bad idea. I’m not necessarily arguing that scripts aren’t a bad teaching tool. I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t follow-up with customers.

What I’m saying is that all of your employees should have proper training and be empowered to handle customers as it seems appropriate and per the customers wishes. We are in a service business, you need employees that have good people skills.

If that means that they need to deviate from the script with this particular customer, let them. If that means that the salesperson can make a judgment call as to how often (if at all) this particular customer should be called or followed up with, let them.

If you don’t have the confidence in the people you hired to make these basic decisions… why did you hire them in the first place?

If you answered, “because they were cheap” or “because they were a warm body”, then you’re wrong. That person acting as “human spam” on your behalf and at your direction is costing you more money in lost business than they are in captured business.

“Good people skills” is a hard trait to quantify but I guarantee you that you know it when you see it. That coffeehouse clerk who always has a smile for you. The customer service rep that you’re talking to on the phone ready to scream at about some issue they didn’t even create who magically calms you down. They have good people skills.

When you first meet someone, how do they make you feel? Chances are that’s also how they’ll make your customers feel.

If the human interactions your employees are having with your customers are only transactional and not genuine, emotional and tailored specifically to that particular customer, then they are human spam.

It’s not about the quantity of the message, but the quality. The better quality your message, the more successful it will be.

Interact with people how they want to be interacted with. Be respectful of their feelings and wishes. Treat them all with respect (not just the ones with good credit).

I had a unique experience when I first started with my current company. I’m a remote employee so there isn’t much interaction with the the other remote employees or the employees at our corporate offices. After about a month (or so) of working, I got an e-mail from a fellow employee that said this:

“Arnold,

 I think I know you.  I think I bought my Infiniti G35 from you. “

I sold 378 cars the year this person bought a car from me. Who knows how many actual interactions it took me to accomplish that. That year was a windstorm of 18 hour days and 28 day months. That was also seven years ago. To have this person remember me after that much time, only by name, was a great compliment in my eyes. It means that the interaction I had with him was genuine and emotional, not merely transactional.

Make every interaction count.

Be human. Not spam.


You Rock and It Sucks! (or Computer Generated Interpretation of your Tweets)

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We all know (and have been warned) that what you put out on the internet can come back to bite you. We hear stories of people all the time having their personal and/or work life interrupted by things they’ve said or posted on Facebook.

My personal favorite (and a great example) is the following “status update” on Facebook followed by the boss’s comment:

           

So, now we have privacy controls and the ability to specify on a piece-by-piece basis what, and who, can see things.If you use them, they’re better than nothing. At least your boss (or potential employer) can’t see that drunken photo of you dancing on the bar top as easily, if you do, in fact, friend him/her.

Let’s talk about Twitter, now. Twitter is completely public and indexed by search engines. I have Google Alerts (and other services) setup to monitor certain things and I am always fascinated by what pops out in the results.

An item popped up in my Google Alert last Thursday and, while I found it amusing at first, as I started thinking about it more, it made me concerned.

What exactly I’m talking about is a website called “Amplicate”

According to  the website, it’s purpose is to do this:

“Amplicate
collects similar opinions in one place; making them more likely to be
found by people and companies.”

This would be fine because you actually DO have the ability to input your opinion on things if you, in fact, choose to participate in and interact with this website. Your opinion is, however, limited to whether something “Sucks” or “Rocks”.

My concern is that apparently it indexes Twitter in some way and automatically generates your “opinions” for you. I don’t know how it chooses which tweets to use to form your opinions, nor do I even know how it selects the specific people which it chooses to form (and announce) opinions for. I do know that, at least in my case, I didn’t choose to participate in or interact with this website.

It seems to take keywords from your tweets and then determines whether you think the subject of your tweet “sucks” or “rocks”. It then posts that to the world under the guise that these are YOUR opinions. It’s obviously a computer generating these because some of the “opinions” actually make no sense and it’s apparent that the “opinion” is out of context.

The peril in this is that, to someone who doesn’t actually analyze the opinions that were generated by a computer based on your tweets, they may just assume that these are, in fact, your opinions. If there’s a potential (or current) employer doing a little research on you for whatever reason, this could potentially harm you.

As an example, the Google Alert that returned this discovery to me shows the following (it even hijacked my photo):

So, apparently, I think the word “enough” rocks and that the Oscars and Toyota sucks.

Now we not only have to be careful about what we say, but also about how a computer would interpret it.

It Takes All Of the Pieces To Finish the Puzzle

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Recently, I got the opportunity to spend an entire day at a dealership analyzing their processes and marketing efforts.

There are many pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that any dealership has to put together to end up with a “finished”puzzle that is an online marketing strategy. The particular vendor I work for offers a lot of services (puzzle pieces). It’s difficult to effectively outline all the pieces of the puzzle we have to offer in brief, to a dealer, on the phone. So, it was a nice treat to really let my creative juices flow and assist a dealer with their desire for success, in person and with their full attention, after being able to analyze what they’re currently doing.

Some of the services we offer require a little work on the dealers’ end. More often then not, when I present a “plan” and parts of it require work, people tend to start losing interest. You have concerns from the owner who doesn’t have confidence in his people to actually DO the work. You have management who passes the buck and says “We’ll get Bob to do it!” and then you have Bob who, typically, doesn’t really want to do it. He wants to stand outside, smoke cigarettes and wait for the next customer.

It was very refreshing to be able to analyze a dealership’s online marketing, to look at the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle I can provide and,from that, develop an aggressive online marketing strategy. Then have the opportunity to explain the entire strategy and how all of the “pieces” fit together and why this particular puzzle will work for them… in person and with everyone’s full attention.

Watching a room filled with the owner, all the managers and key salespeople follow along with each “piece” and really “get it” is priceless. They saw the puzzle I had created, saw the value and need for each piece of that puzzle and understood that putting the puzzle together takes work but, in the end, you have art.

I swear I saw light bulbs coming on over everyone’s heads. People were excited, engaged and motivated. There was complete buy-in from everyone.

Too often, the owner (or the decision-maker at the dealership) likes the ideas and strategies but decides to only implement some of them, rather than all of them. On this day, he, and his team, decided to start putting the puzzle together… with all of the pieces.

The confidence and trust given to me by everyone and the knowledge that I truly helped this dealership to grow as a company was priceless.

On this day, art was created and I rocked. (link)

The Death of the Internet Sales Department

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Internet Sales Departments will become extinct.

        Yes, I said it. That’s my
prediction.

        The reasoning
behind that prediction is an extrapolation of industry trends and
consumer shopping habits. We’ve all seen the trends.

        A) As time passes, more and
more consumers will start (and maybe even complete) their vehicle
purchases online. The natural result of that increase in behavior is
that a higher and higher percentage of any dealership’s sales will be
generated through their internet departments.

        B) Right now, “good”
internet departments account for anywhere from 30-40% of a dealerships
business. “Great” internet departments can easily generate half (or
more) of the sales within a retail sales department.

        If the current level of
consumer internet shopping generates 30-50% of dealerships sales, the
logical conclusion is that as (A) increases, so will (B).

So,
how do these factors support my prediction?

We all know that
people in retail automotive positions work hard. Crazy hard. They work
long hours and, generally, make good money. Of course, there are
exceptions to this rule but chances are that at some point in their
career – they worked a lot. Why do they work a lot? In general,
customers are not loyal to a salesperson. You can give them every
different way possible to contact you and do your best to reinforce that
you will be there whenever they are ready to buy and build great
rapport with them and they will still come in and buy a car from someone
else.

How many of you have experienced this? You come back from
your day(s) off just to find that your customer bought a vehicle. Isn’t
that frustrating? What does that make you do? Work harder.

Now,
every dealership has “normal” salespeople. What I mean by that is that
they work the “floor” and do not handle any internet leads. Typically,
the “retail” sales departments have antagonistic relationships with the
“internet” sales departments. They are run separately and, in most
dealerships, there is a clear divide between the two departments. Not in
all cases, mind you, just in general. They’re fighting over customers.
They’re fighting over deals. The sales managers tend to protect the
“floor”. The internet department is viewed as giving cars away and on,
and on. Animosity exists between the two groups.

So, now we have
two groups of people. Both groups are in sales. Both groups work hard.
Both groups make decent money.

As this increase in consumer
buying habits continues to shift towards the internet and the percentage
of sales within a dealership shift to the internet departments, this,
by necessity, decreases the sales within the “retail” sales department.
Dealerships are continually expanding their internet departments to
accommodate this shift. They have been shifting their advertising
dollars to capture these shoppers. Traditional advertising is declining.
We all preach this. We all tell dealers this is the future. Some
listen. Some don’t.

So, now we still have two groups of people.
Both groups are in sales. Both groups work hard. Both groups make decent
money. The dealership is shifting its advertising money to internet
sources. This, in turn, drives more traffic to their internet
departments creating the need for expansion, which, in turn, prompts the
dealership to spend more money to generate more traffic to its internet
departments.

Where does this leave the “retail” group?

As
this shift continues, and a higher and higher percentage of the total
sales volume is funneling through internet departments, the logical
conclusion is that less sales are being generated by the “retail” sales
departments. So now, the members of this second group, who are still in
sales and work hard, don’t make as “decent” of money. The reward for
that hard work diminishes.  This will contribute to a
higher turnover of “retail” or floor salespeople.

However, there
is an absolute need for retail salespeople. Customers still like to
shop in person. They still like to touch and feel the cars. They still
need to test drive vehicles. They still need to actually go into the
dealerships to do this regardless of how they originally started their
car shopping.

So, now we have a dilemma. How do we accommodate
the consumer when our second group whose sole purpose is to accommodate
these consumers, is diminishing because they are working hard and being
rewarded less.

The end result, out of necessity, will be a
merging of the two groups. You need people who can handle the internet
customer and you need people who are physically at your dealership ready
to meet and greet, find needs and wants, land them on a vehicle and
take them for a test drive. The dealership of the future will not have
“internet” sales departments, they will just have sales departments.
Every sales person will be responsible for not only handling floor
traffic, but also handling internet customers. This means, of course,
that every salesperson will have to be trained and have the skill set to
do this.

This merging creates one group of people. All of them
are in sales. All of them work hard. All of them make decent money.
Consumers continue to shift towards the internet but 100% of the sales
are In your “retail” sales departments. Just as in the past, everyone
has an equal opportunity to make a sale. Your eagles will still soar and
your dead weight will still sink but your dealership will be whole. No
longer will there be two groups of people. No longer will your sales
managers resent your internet departments. No longer will your
salespeople fight over customers (or deals).

Most retail sales
departments spend more time with each other than they do their families.
Their co-workers become their extended families. Is yours
dysfunctional?

With a single change of mentality and some
training, your dealership can become whole.

It’s going to happen.
It’s already happening.

Is your dealership ready?

Socialnomics and Guerrilla Marketing (inspired by Sean Bradley of Dealer Synergy)

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There’s a book that’s been out for awhile called Socialnomics:How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business by Eric Qualman that is fantastic.

If you’re still on the fence about what social media is doing to our society and how you can capitalize on it, you need to read this book. Since this book came out, I’ve seen the videos I’m going to embed here pop up in presentations at conferences and conventions. Yes, they’re that good and they’re eye-opening.

Amazing, isn’t it? 1.5 million people have watched this video (the longer version).

Here’s the follow-up to the first video you just watched. Not as many people have seen it but it goes into the ROI of Social Media Marketing.

I just had to share those two videos. They’re very powerful statements and really illustrate the value of social media and how it will transform our lives.

Now that Google has incorporated real-time search results of Facebook Fan Pages (link), the question you have to ask yourself is do you want your business to show up when consumers search for your product, or do you want someone else’s to?

An interesting article popped up in the Automotive News this week detailing a campaign that is being run by Scott Robinson Honda in Torrance, CA. Sean Bradley, CEO of Dealer Synergy, Inc., helped design this campaign. In a nutshell, Scott Robinson was targeting people shopping for Toyota Corollas (right in Toyota headquarter’s backyard). When people searched for the term “Toyota Corolla” at the top of the first page of search results there was a little video of a guy telling these searchers that maybe they should consider a Honda Civic (from Scott Robinson Honda, of course).

Imagine the possibilities of a dealer using a similar technique on their Facebook fan pages. Heck, they don’t even have to do it on their REAL fan page. They can have a fake Facebook fan page solely designed to be used for this purpose. Stick rich, relevant keywords in the status updates that can be indexed by Google or Twitter.

What would happen if you filled a Twitter feed and/or Facebook page with tweets or status updates like this….?

(Imagine YOU are a Honda dealer)

“Looking for a Toyota Corolla? Why not consider a Honda Civic? (insert TinyURL here)”

“Thinking about buying a car from (insert competitor name here)? We won’t be beat! Come to XXX Honda! (insert TinyURL here)

You get the idea.

Guerrilla marketing at its best.

Opportunities Aren’t On The Be-Back Bus

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Opportunity is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “a favorable juncture of circumstances”. The second definition of the word is “a good chance for advancement or progress.”

A study I heard of awhile back said that 80% of people who went to a dealership left their house with the intention of buying a vehicle that day.

The customer walking onto your lot, sending you an e-mail or calling you on the phone is a combination of many things: the advertising your dealership does, a vehicle you have in your inventory, or the desire (or need) of the customer for a new vehicle. In other words, the stars and planets have aligned and all the right things happened that led to that particular customer calling your dealership at that exact time. For the customer, that moment in time was the perfect time. That’s why they called (or emailed or came to your dealership) when they did.

At that moment of interaction, you have a favorable set of circumstances leading to a good chance for advancement or progress.

Make sure you have the skills necessary to take advantage of that opportunity. You are in control of your own knowledge. If the dealership doesn’t have a training program in place or material for you to use, get them yourself. Stop making excuses.

Once, while working as a closer, my team and I were standing on the point awaiting the elusive “up”. The next thing we knew, a big yellow school bus pulled up on the street and parked. The driver came out and proceeded to look at some cars. Of course we all got a laugh out of that saying that the be-back bus had finally came back. She told my salesperson that she (and her husband) were looking for a vehicle and she saw a vehicle we had that caught her eye. Needless to say, the woman said she needed to bring her husband back.

The be-back bus became a be-back.

Make the most of each opportunity. You might not get it again. Carpe Diem.

Thoughts on Google’s Securing of Patent for Location-Based Advertising

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Today, an interesting development came to light. Mashable is reporting that Google has secured a broad patent for location-based advertising. (See Article Here)

One thing I noticed within the abstract for the patent kind of peaked my interest and I started thinking of how this could be leveraged in the car business.

Here’s the specific line that caught my eye.

“The content of an ad creative, and/or of a landing page may be selected and/or modified using location information.”

We all know that there are vendors in the automotive industry selling mobile marketing. As mobile phones get more sophisticated and more consumers start using them to browse the web, mobile websites and SMS marketing will become more important.

Imagine the possibilities of being able to designate which ad, or landing page a person sees based on where they actually are!

Would you give a bigger discount to the person shopping you from 60 miles away than to the person shopping you from 2 miles away? Do you think the 60-mile-away-person needs a bigger inventive to drive to you and buy from you? I certainly do.

Say you sell Hondas. Would you serve up a different ad to the person at a Toyota dealership then you would to the person standing on your competitor’s lot?

Now, imagine automating this effort.

The possibilities are mind-boggling.

(…and it sure could throw a few kinks into some iPhone apps seeing as Google now holds the patent.)

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