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The Kindle Fire Deal That Wasn’t Supposed to Be

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[UPDATE 12/2 – This phenomenon is still going strong. People are STILL trying to get this deal.]

For many, Black Friday has become more about the “thrill of the hunt” than about a real need for savings. People lined up 9 days early at a Best Buy in Sarasota, FL. In my opinion, there really wasn’t anything worth waiting NINE DAYS IN LINE but, hey, that’s just me.

xlarge_kindle-fire

On to the sale that wasn’t supposed to be.

A Target store in Trumbull, CT didn’t have enough Kindle Keyboard 3G’s in stock for their Black Friday sale so, in an act to make their customers happy, they decided to sell their stock of Kindle Fire’s at the same discount (38%) that was being offered in the ad for the other item. This effectively reduced a very popular, just-released item from $199 to $123.38 plus tax. Kudos to them.

One of the people who managed to get this deal (and it is a good deal) decided to post the deal to a popular deal website, Slickdeals, to inform other bargain shoppers. Many people saw the deal and attempted to get their local Targets to sell it at that price to little success. Then one person attempted to get the item price-matched at a Wal-Mart using the display pictures and receipt images as proof of the price…and succeeded.

This prompted a mad rush on the country’s Wal-Marts. The crowd talking about and trying to get this deal kept each other up-to-date on where they had succeeded and failed posting pictures of receipts and store locations as they went, in real-time. Remember, this started with one store who made a special deal to its customers.

This thread has grown to over 59 pages (2300+ posts) as people scramble around all over the country, sometimes visiting 3-4 Wal-Marts and other retailers in an attempt to get this deal price-matched and save $75. Some people just want a deal. Some are looking to resell these which, by my calculations, would net them AT MOST $50 each.(Check for yourself) Many just bought them because…well.. for no reason other than it was a good deal.

I like a good deal as much as anybody but this is just insanity. The unsuspecting managers at these competing stores are getting hammered. In many cases, these deal seekers report having to “convince” (ie. complain vigorously) the managers to even give them the deal in the first place. I suspect many managers just gave them the deal to save themselves headaches. I’m fairly certain that these deal-seekers aren’t being straight forward when attempting to get this price-matched deal (ie. telling them the circumstances under which only this one Target sold the item at that price and why) which, in my opinion, is fraudulent, or, at the very least, dishonest. To top that off, many people are doing this simply to say they succeeded as, more often than not, they are failing. However, just enough people are succeeding to keep people trying.

What compels people to waste so much time in an effort to get a deal on an item they may not even want under circumstances that take advantage of retailers requiring them to be dishonest because one store made a special deal to their customers?

This started on Black Friday and is still going on today.

What are your thoughts?

Lessons from BlogWorld – A Social Media Experiment – How to Find a Job by DJ Waldow of Waldow Social

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DJ Waldow of Waldow Social delivered a timely and fascinating presentation at the 2011 BlogWorld LA conference held November 3-5, 2011 in Los Angeles, CA titled “A Social Media Experiment: How to find a job” sharing his thought and experiences while offering timely advice and tips on how job-seekers of today can leverage the power of social media to aid them in finding a job.

DJ Waldow was formerly the Director of Community for Blue Sky Factory and is now the owner of his own business, Waldow Social. In his session, he told his personal story of how he was laid off unexpectedly when his employer was acquired by another company. Because the company’s acquisition was not public, he was not allowed to say anything other than he no longer worked there. So he got creative.

He shared with the audience how he created “Project Awesome“, which included an interactive PDF resume in Slideshare (to date viewed 9,181 times), the aforementioned blog post (which received 5,000+ visits and over 200 comments), and enlisted his friends to give video recommendations(viewed over 1,500 times) for him to use in his job hunt. All of this creative marketing of himself using social media led to “300 e-mails, 44 phone conversations/interviews, 7 in-person interviews, 13 Skype chats, 2 Google+ Hangouts & one Facebook chat – all with people interested in hiring (him) for a full-time position” and all of this occurred within the first 2 weeks of him losing his position.

Of course, being in the business of social media, he had some very high profile friends (which helped), but his approach was not one of soliciting recommendations from everyone he knew, but rather identifying key people in his life that he knew well enough to ask for a personal favor from. He called this “Social Capital”. Your social capital is gained by trust from people that you have earned, friendships that you have built, and relationships that you have grown. Identify key people in your life, both personal and professional, to assist in marketing yourself. Be creative and use social media networks to share that you are in the market and enlist your network in sharing YOU with THEIR network.

He advised that, if you plan to use social media, the first step is to know what’s out there in the world about you, right now. Do a search on the internet and see what others would find should they be looking for information about you. If you find negative items, either delete them or correct the ones that you can.

He challenged job-seekers to ask themselves these four questions:

  1. What are you known for?
  2. What do you want to be known for?
  3. What are you good at?
  4. What do you love?

In the connected world in which we live, traditional job hunting skills and habits will no longer separate you from the rest of the “pile”. You must be different and creative to stand out, but above all be helpful, be kind and always be positive.

Originally published on Yahoo!

Bacon + Klout = Winning!

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Wait, bacon? What does yummy bacon have to do with Klout?

For those who don’t know, Klout is a service which supposedly measure a person’s influence on social media. Some have equated it to a social media “credit score”, if you will. Klout has this super-secret, if-we-told-you-we’d-have-to-kill-you algorithm which they use to monitor a person’s connected social media accounts (or public one’s if they don’t have any connected, but we’ll get to that in a minute.) Klout seems to be an increasingly polarizing topic amongst both people I know and blog articles I read.

Take for example, this one which was re-published by CNNMoney and written by John Scalzi who asserts why “Klout scores are possibly evil”, in which he states that “Klout exists to turn the entire Internet into a high school cafeteria, in which everyone is defined by the table at which they sit. And there you are, standing in the middle of the room with your lunch tray, looking for a seat, hoping to ingratiate yourself with the cool kids, trying desperately not to get funneled to the table in the corner where the kids with scoliosis braces and D&D manuals sit.” (It really is a hilarious read.)

Or this one, by Sharon Hayes, titles “10 Reasons Why I Opted Out of Klout”, In which she lists out the many reasons she chose to opt-out of their database…

I have friends who obsess about their Klout scores and I have friends who think Klout is a crock and a complete waste of time.

Here’s my take. I look at, and use Klout in 3 ways. Two of the ways are simple amusement and one is a business tool.

1. The primary way in which I use Klout is as a game, of sorts. When you give someone a +K on a topic (which is saying they influence you on that topic), it gives you the opportunity to tweet out the gift. The fun part comes in where you can alter the tweet so that instead of saying, “I gave @arnoldtijerina a +K about the Auto Industry on @klout..”, you can modify it to say “I gave @arnoldtijerina a +K about being the super-awesome guy that he is on @klout..” (which I am, thank you). I use this “modifying tweets” in 2 ways. The first is acknowledging people in a positive, reinforcing way (as shown above) and then there is a group of us that like to modify them in a…well, more fun way.. like “I gave @arnoldtijerina a +K for knowing when to hold them and when to fold them on @klout..” Either way, it’s fun and funny.

2. Klout Perks. This is a program in which Klout teams up with companies to offer freebies to influencers. I’ve received some cool freebies through this program so, if for no other reason, free stuff is a good reason in my book to keep your Klout score high.

3. Now, here is where people get polarized. Do I think Klout accurately measures a person’s influence? Sort of. While I know that there are topics in which I am not influential (uh.. like “bacon”.. yes, this is a REAL topic on Klout that I, apparently have some influence in, according to them. The real scoop is that it’s fun to give your friends +K in oddball topics.), I do believe that you can utilize Klout to assist in identifying influencers. Basically, if I were a business and I was looking to leverage my influencers to help spread the word about my service/product and if I were to take all of my Twitter followers and try to figure out which ones are active and influential in social media, it would take 1) time I don’t have and 2) the odds of actually pegging a true influencer would be low. Now, same scenario but I take all my Twitter followers with Klout scores above 50 and target them. While not everyone I target will be an influencer, I have a much higher probability of actually identifying influencers and it took me way less time.

The thing that seems to irk the most people is that Klout is an opt-out service. What that means is that if you have public social media accounts (like Twitter), Klout will have a profile on you whether you’ve signed up for their service or not. If you don’t want one, until recently, you were SOL but now they have created an option in which you can delete your profile. Do I agree with this? Meh. I don’t care. I kind of look at it like if you put it out there publicly, you can’t really get mad when someone monetizes that information. C’mon folks, Klout is a business. They make money by finding and selling lists of influencers to other companies.

However, the one thing that I do know, as Sharon Hayes pointed out in the blog article I referenced earlier in this post, is that as employers give a person’s Klout score more weight and use it in hiring decisions, you better start paying attention. Whether that’s by making sure you have a good score or deleting your profile altogether, you need to act.

As stupid as you may believe it to be I’m fairly confident that you don’t want it to affect your ability to get hired. You may not care what your credit score is either, but that doesn’t mean other people don’t.

The Face-Off with Grant Cardone

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Well, the title is a little misleading. Here’s how this went down. 

Grant Cardone and I ran into each other at the ecarlist party at NADA. I really wasn’t sure how he felt about my blog posts so I was in a bit of a defensive mode. To his credit, Grant was a great sport. He wanted to take a video of me at the party but neither of us knew what the video should be “about”. Since I was there filming interviews for DrivingSalesTV , I suggested we film a “debate” on proper social media the next morning. I really wasn’t sure if he’d show up. When I got to the press room at NADA, however, he was actually there waiting for me.
It didn’t turn into a debate really. It ended up more of a discussion. See the results for yourself.
Interview with Grant – Part 1

Interview with Grant – Part 2

The Ethics of Online Reviews

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This article started as an investigation into a company providing services to the automotive industry,Review Boost. I didn’t know much about the company, only that it had received some negative press and accusations of gaming online reviews. In fact, it even had a local San Antonio television station, KSAT, run a news segment regarding a dealership who used their services. There have been blog articles written questioning the authenticity of the reviews as well as articles written in both Automotive News and F&I Magazine.

The importance of reputation management has been increasingly on dealers’ minds, being, from the dealers I spoke with and interviewed for DrivingSalesTV, the hot topic of this year’s NADA convention. The FTC is cracking down on companies engaging in posting misleading reviews, legislators are pushing for stricter laws regarding this practice, legal advisors are reporting that a company exposes themselves tolegal risks by engaging in this act, and a California law went into effect Jan 1, 2011 making it a criminal activity. Add to these variables the fact that search engines are starting to increase the importance of online reviews in their algorithms and incorporating them into search results, naturally, when they popped up on my radar again after partnering up with an industry vendor, I was curious as to why the partnership happened and I started asking questions and doing some homework.

[Edit: After sharing my article with representatives from Review Boost, they informed me that they decided not to move forward with the partnership I referred to above.]

I spoke with William, the owner of Review Boost, at length. We spoke for upwards of an hour and he walked me through what his company does. First, to be clear, they deny all accusations of gaming reviews and/or writing the reviews themselves. William was very pleasant, if understandably nervous during our conversation but, in my opinion, sincerely wanted to clear the air regarding what his company does. Without revealing too many of his proprietary practices, which he shared with me, I didn’t get the impression that he is doing anything wrong at all. Now, given that there were already a ton of articles investigating and breaking down why other people feel that they are, I didn’t feel the need to rehash what others have already done and I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt.

See, William isn’t in the car business. Review Boost began assisting local businesses like dentists, doctors, and such. It ended up that dealers account for about 30% of their current client base but this wasn’t by design. The crux of their strategy, which is what surprised me the most, is that they administer a website called myreviewboost.com in which they post reviews collected from clients of their dealers. These reviews are then syndicated across about 40 online review directories through partnerships with them. I was surprised that such a syndication was allowed but I did some investigating and, not only is it allowed, but it is encouraged. Judysbook.com, in example, promotes review sharing partnerships openly.

I reached out to Google themselves. The fact that they syndicate reviews is telling about their policies but they did point out within their Review Posting Guidelines that conflicts of interest, including misrepresentation and/or posting reviews on behalf of others is not allowed.

In essence, William’s company is soliciting reviews only from the customers which the dealer provides contact information to them. They do not edit the reviews – whether positive or negative. They will moderate a negative review, if received, allowing the dealer a chance to resolve the problem and then, when the dealer reports that the problem has been resolved, resurveying the customer to get an updated review. In my mind, this absolutely explains why almost every review is positive.

If I were a dealer who needed to increase my online reputation, I certainly wouldn’t hand over an unhappy customer’s e-mail address to be reviewed. In fact, I know many dealers that will occassionally RDR cars to the factory with incorrect information to avoid a potential negative CSI survey and/or “buy” surveys from their customers through offers of free oil changes or something to encourage their consumers to return the surveys to THEM and not mail them in to their OEM unscreened.

William’s strategy made perfect sense to me and the syndication accounted for the reason for the same review appearing on multiple sites. So while this practice may be viewed by some to be unethical, it’s not illegal or in violation of these directories terms of service. They’re simply taking advantage of existing online directories willingness to crawl their review site to maximize the SEO value of each review they collected from their client’s customers.

So, is this article about Review Boost? No. The real story is what is ethical in the online reputation management arena.

I’m sure that we would all agree that posting fake reviews is unethical and, in some cases, illegal.

What about these practices?

  • Posting REAL reviews, verbatim, by your customers on their behalf with their permission.
  • Screening WHO gets reviewed to avoid negative reviews.
  • Choosing which reviews get displayed (ie. avoiding sites in which negative reviews exist)

The fact is that online reputation management, and the process in which dealers are utilizing, are becoming more and more important for the many reasons I described above.

How do you feel about this? What’s ethical or unethical regarding online reputation management?

Originally published on DrivingSales.com

David vs. Goliath – The Grant Cardone Saga Continues

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Throughout the day yesterday, via Twitter, e-mail and YouTube, Grant and I have been discussing why I believe his contest is bad and why he shouldn’t be teaching dealers inappropriate social media tactics. I think I explained myself clearly in my previous blog post and, in the interest of not writing a book here, I’m going to share the conversations, some select tweets, and his YouTube video which is without a doubt in response to our discussions.

[Note: These e-mails are unedited.]
From Grant to me:
Arnold, 

The
biggest thing I have spent my career on is inspiring sales people to do MORE not
do less. If a sales person is going to fail let them fail by doing too
much and then making adjustments to do too much a
better way.   

Your
suggestions about the program being wrong suggest to take action is incorrect
and causes people to be ‘careful’ rather than
to take action.  

The
world is filled with noise…..the only way people can break out is to take
action and lots of it.  You are going to love the 10X rule because it is about taking
action in massive amounts.  

George
Patton said, “a marginal plan executed ferociously is better than a well
thought out plan never executed.”

Encourage
people to make mistakes by taking more action not by labeling actions wrong,
incorrect, against the rules – There is enough of this
encouragement already.

Neither
you nor me or experts on social media….no one yet knows what actually works.
 Lets agree to disagree and both discover what does
work by experimenting…

 All
my love….

My reply to Grant:

So, in your opinion, violating Facebook’s Terms of Service as
well as the laws of the State of California (which have both civil and criminal
penalties) is ok?

 Even if we disregard the whole “spamming everyone” part of my
argument, you can’t seriously be saying its ok for dealers to break rules and
laws because taking “more action” is better than less?

The people that are participating in your contest are ALREADY
YOUR FANS, Grant. By making them spam their friends, you do not accomplish
increasing your exposure to new people. It’s great to have promotions and
contest. Get people involved and engaging with you, just don’t make them do it
at their friends’ expense and makes sure you’re doing it legally and in
compliance with the rules and laws that govern them.

His reply to me:

Dude,

 I am not ‘making’ anyone do anything and I am not
encouraging spamming.

I put together a contest to encourage people to learn while
they play.

Most of the people out there don’t even know how to start a
FB page… 

We have had over 20 people create video for the first time.
People are having fun with this thing and today now learning new ways to fine-target their message to clients so it is
not perceived negatively

Be a lover man, not a hater

Be an inspirer not a stopper.

Be an encouragement and supporter for action and
activity- 

Still love you…

My reply to Grant:

You have to take responsibility as a public figure and role
model for dealers, Grant. People look up to you and will follow your lead. I
hold you to a higher level of accountability to what you put out into the world
than I do the average dealer.

I’m not alone in my thoughts. Many people share my opinion on
your contest. I think the video part of your contest is great. You ARE making
them post on FB and Twitter about your contest. If they don’t they can’t win so
if they want to participate, they have to do it.

The fact that they don’t know, or have, proper social media
skills only makes it worse. You’re teaching them the wrong way to do things,
not the right way.

I still love you too. You’re still them man. You don’t know how
many people have messaged me kudos for standing up to you and saying most
people would be afraid to. I just tell them that you can handle it and,
hopefully, respect my opinion.

My job involves teaching dealers how to do it right. Your reach
and exposure certainly outweighs mine but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t advise
people not to follow your example. That would be neglecting my job, and
responsibility, in bringing proper digital marketing techniques into their
dealerships.

His reply to me:

Right on bro=  but there is a difference between
standing up and making someone else wrong…

at this point it seems like you are more interested in making me wrong
….

Based on what you are suggesting the  social media campaign
I used to help NADA get the Brownback Amendment passed which protected auto dealerships from losing their finance depts. would have
violated the law.  I slammed that thing every way possible from FB, TWeets, Youtube to direct emails into unwanted and completely
disconnected fields…

Where did you get that great signature…

My reply to Grant:

No, your Brownback Amendment activity was a “rally” so to speak.
It was a call to action and information for dealers. YOU were doing the
“spamming” if people considered it that, which I didn’t.

This is a contest. The state of California has laws regarding
contests, it does not have laws about social media. FACEBOOK, on the other hand,
has rules about having contests on their website, which your contest does not
comply with.

I’m not interested in making you wrong. I KNOW you are. This is
not an opinion. I provided links to the laws and Facebook policies in my blog.
Feel free to read them for yourself.

Yes, you inspired my putting my signature image in my e-mails.
It was always my signature though. I didn’t make mine look like yours. You’ve
inspired me to do a lot of things. You’ve inspired me to be better at what I do
and helped me do that because I made a commitment to listen and learn.

I’m trying to HELP you understand that it’s important that you
teach the RIGHT way to do social media. Between you and I, we both know that
you’re great at teaching closing techniques to salespeople and motivating them.
We also both know that you’ve never sold a car via the internet and, in fact,
I’ve helped you with social media in the past.

I AM recognized as a thought-leader and expert in the field of
social media. That’s why I’m enlisted to do all of the social media for most of
the major auto conferences. They certainly don’t ask me to do it because I
don’t know how.

I know you’re a busy guy and probably don’t have time to go back
and forth with me. Ive always had your back and you know that. Ive contacted
you when your account was hacked. Ive shown you a lot of things. Just know that
I believe you needed to hear this and, hopefully, you’ll realize your mistake
and take action to change it.

Don’t make this a right vs. wrong thing. Don’t worry about
saving face. Just fix the problem.

As we tweeted back and forth today, a friend of mine, stated via Twitter that he was backing off because it was pissing his friends off. Here’s the conversation:


To even suggest to Stan that he shouldn’t be friends with someone (which he implies) who is advising him that he is going to alienate his friends by continuing his actions is not only irresponsible but it’s absolutely self-centered. I know for a fact that I am not the only one giving Stan this advice.
Why does Grant want to encourage Stan not to take my advice? The answer is simple:
He wants people promoting him no matter what the cost is to them!
Now we get to the YouTube part. [Note: This is my favorite.]

While he doesn’t mention me by name, it’s real tough for me to believe that this video wasn’t created in response to my calling him out and trying to make him realize that he is NOT helping his dealers. He is hurting them. Obviously, he doesn’t care. He’s more interested in self-promotion than on the social media success of his dealer audience.
Let’s examine some of his comments:
“..you’re learning what the difference between spam is and a good coordinated program.”
Yeah we’re learning that what YOU’RE doing is spamming. What you’re NOT showing us is a “good, coordinated program”. Running a contest via a software program called Contest Burner that is designed to spam people (for only $147). If you read their website, it describes Grant’s contest EXACTLY. It’s all about the following:
  • Flooding your site with massive traffic
  • Creating an army of back-links from all over the net
  • building a monstrous, responsive list
  • explode your revenue
Funny how there’s not ONE MENTION on that incredibly long home page telling you about RESPONSIBLE social media or that the program is designed to engage your fans and retain them. Of course not, it’s not designed to be responsible. This is what it accomplishes.
“With Contest Burner, your visitors will “happily” spread the word about your site all over the web. They’ll get engaged with your message… and become raving fans!

In fact, they’ll tell everyone about how great you (or your product) is and they’ll recruit people (influence them) to visit your site!”
Bravo, Grant. You’ve enlisted all of your fans to tell everyone they know how great you are while, at the same time, annoying the hell out of them.
Now let’s examine his logic and reasoning to his fans on his YouTube video:
  • You shouldn’t listen to their friends and colleagues but “push through the criticism”.
  • Social media is no different than him “knocking on a door”
  • “if you stop because people are asking you to stop, you’re done.”
  • If you’re creative, it’s not spam
  • Social media is no different than knocking on a door, making a phone call, or sending out a piece of mail, it’s just electronic.
  1. I don’t need to listen to my friends and colleagues. You’re the only thing that matters. Got it.
  2. It’s not like “knocking on doors”, it’s like knocking on your FRIEND’S DOORS. I’m sure your friends would appreciate you harassing them.
  3. Uh… when did “No” stop meaning “No”?
  4. Even if it’s creative, it’s still spam.
  5. You can be spam whether you’re knocking on a door, making a phone call, sending mail, sending e-mail or being on social media. In fact, there are laws regarding the use of 4 of the 5 of these and, I suspect, there will eventually be laws regarding the use of social media.
I’m sorry but anyone that tells me to annoy my friends and family, despite their requests to stop, and to “push through” anyways, is not doing me any favors.
The ONLY person winning from this contest is Grant Cardone. 
If you’re friends, family, and business connections are only worth $500 to you… well.. that says a lot.
[As I finished this post, I got another e-mail from Grant]

Dude  

All you have done is make
wrong – there is no direction, no guidance, and no teaching.

there have been no efforts to
do so either….

its been a constant
commercial of what I am doing wrong….then i expect you got some cowards
patting you on the back and got all inspired..
 but you didn’t help guide or inform anyone of what to do only encourage
them not to do!

My friends don’t do that with
me.  Teachers and mentors that I learn from encourage me to use my
strengths and

and never suggest that I do
less but offer advice how I can be more effective…

Go back and look at your
tweets and see how policeman like they are.  I am taking my time to tell
you this because I like you and would like you to be
supportive of me and what I am doing….

A better way to do this is by
example —– why don’t you get involved in the program and show them how to do
it or do you just monday morning quarterback?

My response to Grant:

Do you honestly believe that you are helping dealers learn anything
about social media?

His answer:

I
got a 100 from my brother with a message on it for you…

I responded with one word: nice
To be fair, he did respond with the following (despite the fact that I absolutely took the last e-mail seriously):

Just
loving you baby…  I have given you too much attention today…

but
it has been fun! Have a monster year and best to you..

I have nothing to gain by criticizing Grant’s contest except putting an end to the continuous stream of Grant-spam that I’ve been getting. He, on the other hand, has everything to gain by encouraging the continued participation of his contestants.
I absolutely feel like David and he is Goliath. Am I trying to “topple” him? No. Am I trying to get his attention and make him realize what he’s doing is wrong? Yes. 
The scariest part is.. maybe he already realizes it.

Oh, and Grant, if you want me to show you how to “do it right”, I’d be happy to.
Onto my commercial: Very soon, I may have a ton of Grant Cardone material available for bid on eBay including some signed photos, books and tons of audio material. 
Just kidding.. maybe.





GM creates more jobs.. in Mexico

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I don’t know about everyone else but it seems to me that GM’s decision to create more jobs in Mexico is absolutely bad business. Without the U.S. taxpayer, GM may not have a business at this point.

This seems like a complete snub to Americans, who, last I heard, needed jobs. As of December 2010, thenational unemployment rate was 9.1%.

It may be cheaper to have factories in Mexico and employ Mexicans. Being of Hispanic origin, I have nothing against Mexicans.

The United States still owns about a third of General Motors and is the largest shareholder.

What are your thoughts on this matter? Does GM have any obligation to the taxpayers? Should the United States government intervene – which is its right as a shareholder?

[This post is in response to this article from 1/20/2011]

Originally published on DrivingSales.com

Carpe Diem

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“Progress always involves risk; you can’t steal second base and keep your foot on first” – Frederick Wilcox

People like comfort and fear change. In today’s economy, people are afraid to take risks whether in business or in their personal lives. In our industry, change is continuous yet nobody wants to do it.
A new sales manager comes in and forgets the fact that his predecessor was probably terminated because he/she did not perform yet they are afraid to do something new to change that cycle. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Since dealership turnover of sales personnel is considered a normal part of the retail sales department in a dealership, new managers feel that the solution is changing personnel. Why? Because that is a change that conforms to expectations.
Whether the change involves processes or vendors, I guarantee that success doesn’t come without risk. If you, whether in your personal or professional life, are unwilling to take risks to achieve different results, you will fail just as the person before you did.
Our country was built on change. Most successful people in business made a change, whether that was by doing things differently or thinking outside the box.
If you’re not achieving the results you need and/or are being demanded of you, the worst thing you could do is maintain the status quo.
Be open to change. Embrace it. Think outside the box.
If you don’t know what to do, learn. If something isn’t working for you, change.
If you live in fear, you will never achieve success. Whether that is increasing sales, employee morale, or getting better results from vendors.
Do what you want to be doing, not what you are being forced to do because you are living in fear.
Carpe Diem.

Sales Training And The $20,000 Over MSRP Internet Price

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In our crazy world that is the automotive industry, at one point or another, you have to begin.

In retail sales, the typical training for a new salesperson used to be “This is how you do a foursquare. Now go get a customer.” 

In today’s world of technology, we’ve added only one thing. “Here’s how to use our CRM.”

In the case of OEM and product training, most OEM’s have some sort of certification test and/or required product knowledge tests. These OEM certification tests are great – in theory. In reality, however, many salespeople don’t ‘really’ learn anything. They do them because they have to, not because they want to.

Many OEM’s today require a certain level of completion by a dealerships’ sales staff to qualify for CSI-based factory incentives. Some OEMs that have ‘spiff’ programs for salespeople will also require a salesperson to have completed product training before they are eligible for individual sales spiffs.

I cannot count how many times I’ve seen salespeople rush through these certifications just to make sure they (or their dealership) qualify for whatever. They share test answers. The sales managers give them the answers or even take the test for them.

The sad part is that you don’t really need any product knowledge to sell a car. Most industry veterans can do a walk-around on any car even if they know nothing about it. Most ‘green-peas’ follow the leads of the industry veterans (and we wonder why dealership turnover is so high).

If you can sell emotion, you can sell a car. Everyone knows that even the worst salesperson at a car dealership can sell a car if they are just at the dealership enough. Our basic sales process is designed to do just that – sell emotion. Get them in the car. Touch it. Smell it. Drive it. Chances are they wouldn’t be on your lot if they weren’t interested at all in what you were selling.

We concentrate so much on losing a sale that we don’t create a customer.  I would bet that the phrase “Don’t let them leave.” has come out of every sales manager’s mouth at least once.

Why are we so afraid of the customer leaving?

If the salesperson did all the things he/she was supposed to do: fact-find, build rapport, properly present the product, effectively demonstrate it and truly attempt to create a financing strategy that worked with the customer (versus for the dealership), the customer will do business with you.

Make training your sales staff a priority in your dealership. If your dealership will not provide any training, get it yourself. It’s important and you WILL make more money. Guaranteed.

Now onto other news:

Plastered all over yesterday’s news and blogs was the story of a dealership in California that responded to an internet lead for a Chevrolet Volt with the following e-mail:

Hello *****

Thank you for your online request, as you know the Volt is going to be a very limited production vehicle for the first 2-3 years. Demand is going to far exceed supply for this vehicle, initially our asking price for the Volt is going to be MSRP plus $20,000, we are expecting only receive 9 Volts all of next year.

I will keep you in my customer base for when the Volt comes out and I will contact you with any information as I receive it. We are taking orders right now for the Volt, if you would like more information, please let me know and I will be more than happy to help you. Thank you.

***** *****, Internet Specialist
******* Chevrolet
********, CA

I don’t know what dealership that was nor whether that employee was responding per the direction of his/her managers. I can tell you one thing, however. There is no chance that that particular customer is EVER going to entertain the thought of going to that particular dealership to do business whether it is to purchase that, or any other, vehicle.

I understand that dealerships have the right to sell their vehicles for whatever price they want to. I’m not at all saying that a dealership shouldn’t make money selling a vehicle. All I’m saying is that the strategy of this particular person, even if the dealership really will only sell these vehicles at $20,000 over MSRP, should have been very different.

If you’re confronted with a situation in which your dealership has made the decision to mark up any particular vehicle over MSRP, you’re better off not giving the customer any price whatsoever for the vehicle, in my opinion, especially online.

Why do some dealerships and/or sales managers still insist on handing out in-the-box-scraping-them-off-the-ceiling prices to their internet departments??

You have a better chance of selling a car with a customer in front of you than with no customer at all. Most customers don’t even buy the vehicle they came in to initially look at anyways. Why scare them off?

This resulted from either a lack of training, apathy from the internet ‘specialist’ or pure stupidity.

Only one can be fixed.

The sad part is that the $20,000 over MSRP price is probably in the dealerships’ DMS that way because the sales managers don’t want to have to manually add the addendum. Because of this, not only has the dealership potentially scared off THIS customer, but that $61,000 price tag may very likely be populating their website and all the third-party websites they subscribe to.

Now they’ve scared off everyone.

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?

Contact Me