Industry Events Archives - Page 2 of 2

NADA 2012: Day One Recap

February 4, 2012 By Arnold Tijerina

Here I am at the National Automobile Dealers Association, yesterday was the first day of the conference. Registration opened at 10am and sessions didn’t start until around noon. I got to connect with a lot of people I hadn’t seen in awhile. It seemed like yesterday was just kind of a “catching up” day for vendors without booths while others were getting booths ready for today.

Today is the “real” kick-off in that the exhibit hall opens and the mass scramble for dealers’ attention begins. There will be more iPads given away in the next few days than I think the Apple store stocks. I’m looking forward to visiting and plan to take a lot of pictures.

It’s a big weekend here. On top of the convention, there is a UFC fight tonight (UFC 143: Diaz vs. Condit) and the SuperBowl. I think there are 37 Super Bowl parties tomorrow.

As a prologue, pre-NADA events have been great. I got to catch up with the VinSolutions ~~team~~ rockstars, hang out with Jeff Collins of Peters Chevrolet CJD, Dan Moore of SmartWebConcepts, Rob Fontano of 3BirdsMarketing. Ended up in a suite which, unbeknownst to me, eventually turned into a reception suite for Car-mercial (part of the DMSC) then transitioned to a fabulous dinner at Il Mulino courtesy of Scott Falcone (super smart and VERY passionate guy) and PrestoReviews, then on to the VinSolutions party afterwards.

Monday morning saw many in-real-life meetings with Twitter friends, industry friends and even some vendors I work with who I had never met, like Mike Fitzpatrick of DealerTrend. Ran into Grant Cardone. Caught Todd Smith (CEO of ActivEngage) session. He’s crazy brilliant. People were asking him questions well into the next session.

Eventually it was off to the Mandalay Bay for some non-conference, non-drinking, non… well, you get the point.. a break. Went to the weigh-ins for UFC 143 and then saw Joe Rogan doing stand-up. Met a TON of fighters (way cool) then called it an early night at 1am (yes, people, that’s an early night at ANY automotive convention but especially NADA).

Getting ready to begin Day 2 of NADA with coverage of the exhibit hall. It may, or may not, be live in the morning but it will be live eventually. Thanks for reading!

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

November 18, 2011 By Arnold Tijerina

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:

What are you known for?
What do you want to be known for?
What are you good at?
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!

Industry Summit: A Peek into the World of F&I

October 17, 2011 By Arnold Tijerina

This week, I had the privilege of attending the Industry Summit – which includes 3 conferences — the F&I Conference, the Special Finance conference and the VSCAC conference. These conferences focus mainly on F&I and special finance topics. In this age of internet shopping, however, credit-challenged shoppers are also researching on the internet – whether it’s typical online car research or they’re searching for financing assistance online – so I wanted to see what advice and tips I could learn to share with our audience.

I was quite surprised to find that finance companies are interested in penetrating the franchise dealer market with hybrid “Buy Here, Pay Here” programs. Dealers lose many car deals each month due to the inability to secure financing for their customers. The idea is that the dealer would carry the note for 90 days, then these companies would purchase the notes for $.60 on the dollar. If structured correctly, and with the right program guarantees and commitments to buy these loans from these companies, a dealer could potentially pick up a decent amount of deals they otherwise wouldn’t be able to keep on the road (or put there in the first place).

An example given to me was of a franchise dealer who amassed a $22 million portfolio which he could cash out at any time while making a $5 million net profit. I could see this as an alternative method of financing – a last case scenario – for franchise dealers who are selective in whom they carry notes for or a new way for dealers with a high demographic of these customers to gain more deals and market share. Whether they choose to carry the note past the 90 day period is entirely up to them and, if structured properly, could mean extra profit and deals each month. Many stereotypical “Buy Here, Pay Here” lots went under during the hard times we’re just emerging from and this is a great way to capture market share quickly. I could see many customers who would feel more comfortable and willing to participate in a program like this offered by a franchise dealer versus the small used car lot that these programs typically exist at.

One of the most popular and well attended sessions was a Marketing and Advertising Dealer Panel regarding special finance with Scott Falcone, dealer, World Hyundai Matteson and Tom White Jr., general manager, Suzuki of Wichita. Many of the dealers in the audience wanted advice on how best to operate a special finance department including how to handle & identify those customers early in the process. Scott Falcone said that instead of treating special finance customers differently, they handle all customers as if they were special finance from an investigative standpoint. Tom White agreed saying that the most important question they ask on the meet & greet is regarding source and that usually helps identify those customers who may need special financing assistance.

Scott addressed another question regarding what to do to keep that special finance customer distracted while you are waiting for a call back or bank approval. He strongly suggested that dealers test drive those customers who can’t buy cars. By doing that, they get excited and are more likely to work with you with a co-signer, etc. and they get excited.

Both dealers do spot-deliveries and an audience member asked: “What’s an acceptable take back percentage?” Tom White said that his goal is an 8% take back on spot deliveries. If it’s more than 8%, then they are being too aggressive. If it’s less than 8%, they are not being aggressive enough. Tom White went on to share that their BDC only makes outbound calls on credit leads. Once they started that program, special finance sales went from 12 per month to 39. The retail sales department works all other leads. He went on to say that “the days of being able to take a credit app or look at a credit report are over. Computers are doing the underwriting. Send the deals in. Don’t think or guess.”

The exhibit hall was mostly filled with F&I product companies although I did see a few familiar faces.

Now a couple of fun things…

The coolest “interaction activity” in the hall was, by far, the large game of Jenga constantly being played in the ETE REMANbooth. I “almost” won that darn game. We ended up standing on chairs just to place the next piece on top but, in the end, the employees won. I still smile when I think how brilliant that game was for them. Everytime a game was lost, a ton of 2×4 planks came crashing down causing a lot of noise which could be heard in the whole hall and attracted a lot of attention.

And the coolest swag:

… a sweet car from our friends at DealerTrack! Thanks again for the car! My 5-year old has been playing with it NON-STOP since I got home.

Thank you to all of the people involved in inviting me to the conference – Ed Bobit, Dave Gesualdo and Greg Goebel – it was a privilege to attend and get an insight into the world of F&I and special finance.

(Originally published September 30, 2011 by Dealer magazine)

Automotive Customer Centricity Summit

June 16, 2011 By Arnold Tijerina

The Automotive Customer Centricity Summit, hosted by Thought Leadership Summits (ACCS) was on June 14th, 2011. I had the privilege of reporting on this event on behalf of DealerElite. This event is a one-day event that runs from 7am-7pm. The event was held at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Marina Del Rey, CA. While I don’t have exact attendance numbers, it seemed to see about 125 attendees. There were a lot of OEM representatives from both the automotive and motorcycle world, vendors and some dealers.

Speakers included:

Thilo Koslowski, Vice President & Lead Automotive Analyst for Gartner
George Liang, President of the DCH Auto Group
Allan Jenik, Director of Dealer Services for Harley-Davidson
Jon Budd, National Manager – CRM & Integreated Marketing for Hyundai
Kal Gyimesi, Automotive Industry Lead for IBM Institute for Business Value
Brian Benstock, Vice President & General manager for Paragon Honda
Lonnie Miller, Vice President – Marketing & Industry Analysis for Polk
Sara Hasson, Vice President – Automotive Brand Solutions for Univision
Michael Sachs, General Manager – CRM & Loyalty for Volkswagen

Some of the interesting things I took away from the sessions included:

Thilo Koslowski spoke about “Understanding Automotive Trends & Creating Successful Strategies”. He stated that consumers are paying more attention to automotive & transportation related spending. It’s his theory that the next 10-20 years will be the most disruptive to our industry and that in the future, individual transportation may not mean vehicle ownership with younger consumers increasingly relying on alternate modes of transportation. He predicts that by 2012, the majority of OEMs will have integrated wireless connectivity into vehicles. Younger consumers are less likely (22%) to be concerned about the distracted drivers that in-vehicle data integration would undoubtedly create. He stated that as companies feel that a social media presence is more important, the social networks themselves become more important (kind of a vicious cycle) and that dealers need help from their OEMs with social media marketing because many of them are doing it, but the majority are doing it wrong. One interesting takeaway was that as data integration increases, and younger consumers continually consider alternate modes of transportation, 78% of consumers would still prefer a gasoline engine for their next vehicle than any other type including electric and hybrid.

Kal Gyimesi spoke about “Advancing Mobility – the Next Growth Engine for Attracting Consumers”. He stated that within the next 5 years, 30% of revenue will come from new sources and that to achieve success, we need to transform into a service-oriented business model. He believes that the ability to interact with consumers will be centered around connected vehicles. He said that 59% of auto executives agree that auto electronics and software will be open & customized by smartphone apps and that a game-changing byproduct of the connected car may be the interchange-ability of vehicles. However, to appeal to consumers, mobility solutions must be simple, yet comprehensive.

George Liang had a controversial session about a test store within the DCH group that went to a hassle-free pricing model. He stated that within the next 2 years, Gen Y will represent 40% of dealers’ business. His view is that the traditional sales process is management centric, a long process, inequitable to the guest and complex. Gen Y consumers won’t put up with that. The “limited negotiation” process is faster for the guest, simple, friendly, fair and transparent. In this model, Client Advisors will be trained to desk their own deals eliminating the need for desk managers. In addition, as Client Advisors gain experience, you create a career path for them by advancing them to a “Elite Client Advisor” position and that for every 5 “Elite Client Advisors”, you can replace one F&I manager. By eliminating these positions (desk manager and F&I manager), you save money on personnel costs. In their test store, he said that they immediately lost about 95% of their salesforce due to salespeople and managers being unwilling to adapt. He advises that you should expect a temporary drop in both front-end gross and market share. In fact, DCH lost 50% of their front end gross when this model was implemented in their test store. He said to stay the course, however, as everything went back up with time. He said that DCH focuses on market share because if you increase market share, everything else will come with it. Of course every sales manager and retail car guy in the room was immediately on the defensive especially after Mr. Liang shared that this test store’s closest brand competitor was 45 miles away.

Allan Jenik spoke about Harley’s “one-to-one” marketing approach. During his Q&A, he said that he believed that your social networks don’t want to see coupons and offers. I don’t agree with him there. In fact, I would argue that the exact opposite is true in that most of the people who follow you only do so for the coupons and special offers. Harley-Davidson is a different beast, in my opinion. The lifestyle and community they’ve been able to create is completely different from any other brand so for them, this might be a valid statement.

Jon Budd shared the importance of listening to your customers and keeping your brand on track. He highlighted Hyundai’s ever adapting “Assurance” program and showed how its changes over time reflected on consumer concerns – from the initial 2009 campaign in which they offered to buy-back the vehicle (of the 435k vehicles bought under this program, only 100 were returned) to today’s campaign offering Hyundai customers piece of mind by offering security in the tangible value of the Hyundai by guaranteeing future trade-in values at the time of purchase.

Brian Benstock repeated his popular session showing how Paragon Honda went from #17 to #1 in 6 months. (When I say repeated, I mean that I’ve seen it before.) His session was very popular. I even heard comments from dealer-attendees that wished that the summit organizers had allowed him to continue rather than hurrying him up and cutting his presentation short. I thought his comment that vehicle brochures were dead was spot-on. He says that OEMs should just stop making them. In fact, Paragon made their own to give to customers. He says most consumers who want information about a vehicle don’t look at brochures anymore, they go online to find the information. He advocates OEMs to create more short-term lease options available to dealers as that would decrease the buying cycle and increase loyalty. He said that Paragon Honda has a 68% retention rate because of their efforts to get customers into short-term leases.

Michael Sachs spoke about customer loyalty. The gist being that its very important and hard work. I especially liked the story he shared about the “$100,000 salt & pepper shaker” as an illustration (anyone who knows me would understand why). This story told of young children who visited Disney World and bought, as a gift, a salt & pepper shaker for their father. They broke it before they could give it to him and went back to the in-park store to get it replaced. Due to kindness and generosity, the Disney employees replaced it for them although their policies didn’t require it. Due to this, those children became “raving fans” and over the course of their lives spent over $100,000 with Disney. He stated that even the smallest of actions which make customers happy can have a huge effect on future earnings and loyalty.

Sara Hasson spoke about the importance of marketing to the Hispanic market. One interesting statistic she shared was that from 2010-2020, Hispanics are projected to account for all (100%) the growth among adults 18-49. She said that Hispanics spend at similar levels and return to the new vehicle market sooner. She said that not only is it important to market to Hispanics but its important to market to them in their language.

Originally published on DealerElite.net