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All Salespeople Are Liars

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For almost 3 years, I have been posting a comic every day on my Facebook account. I do this because I like to think I bring a smile to at least one person a day. I look through comics every morning in my attempt to share a “good” one. Yes, believe it or not, I do put effort into choosing which comic I post. I’ve started noticing a disturbing trend. Many comedians use reality-based comedy and it seems this also translates into comics. Syndicated comics, by their very nature, are designed to be funny and appeal to the masses. I see comics like these below on a regular basis and, personally, I do not find them funny. In fact, quite the opposite.

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We all know that the history of sales (especially car sales) has earned us a bad and, some would argue permanent, reputation amongst consumers as being deceitful, manipulative and… well.. liars.

I think everyone can agree that, as an industry, there have been a lot of changes in how car dealers do business. Some of these perception-shifts have been due to the fact that consumers not only have more access to information but also because they have access to more dealers. In the past, consumers were limited to dealers in their local area. The number of dealers they could realistically get prices from and shop was limited by how many they could physically visit and how much time they had on their hands.

The increase in the amount of information available to consumers brought the ability to access more dealers in less time. It has also brought consumers a quick and easy way in which to analyze not only different prices via internet quotes but also to identify who they want to do business with. There have been many debates and opinions over time in various automotive industry forums on how dealers should interact with customers and how much information they should share as well as hostility towards consumers, vendors, OEMs and websites for sharing information which effects a dealer’s ability to profit from a sale. In my opinion, this only fuels the stereotype. Consumer’s have access to this information and it isn’t going away. Attempts to take it away and/or make it less available only serve to promote the negative image. Consumers already don’t trust dealers. Hiding (or reducing) the amount of information available to consumers will only make them trust dealers less.

No matter what you do, you will not be able to change this stereotype for our industry as a whole. You can, however, change how you do things at your store… which is a step in the right direction.

Here is my opinion on best practices:

  1. Be transparent. If a customer asks for information, give it to them. It doesn’t matter if they ask you in person, over the phone, via an e-mail or via a 3rd party lead submission. Chances are they already know the answer. Any attempt to dodge, evade or avoid answering the question will make the customer think you have something to hide.
  2. Establish and maintain a solid online reputation. Yes, consumers are increasingly looking at the various review sites and using that information to help decide whether to do business with you.
  3. Give consumers “real” numbers up-front. Many consumers already know most of them anyways. Don’t try to undervalue trade-ins or manipulate numbers on a pencil. The days of “scraping them off the ceiling” are over. This is an “old-school” mentality and its only outcome is detracting from your dealership’s integrity. They may still buy the car but they won’t leave with a great impression of your salespeople or dealership. Of course consumers are looking for a “good deal” but, I believe, they appreciate honesty.
  4. Get rid of bad apples. If you have salespeople or management staff who lie to customers, play games, or fudge numbers or information. Fire them. They will only hurt you in the long run. Customer don’t have loyalty because you didn’t earn it from them.
  5. Take care of your customers. Your customers are your life-blood. Dealerships have more income potential in fixed-ops than in sales. Treat them like royalty and they will come back.
  6. Pay attention to your customers. Many dealerships never contact customers post-sale until the dealer believes they may be in-market again. Follow-up processes should not simply be about selling them another car. It should be about appreciation. Call them on their birthdays and anniversaries. You have a better shot at selling them another car by not trying to sell them another car.
  7. Stop treating salespeople as expendable. Most customers don’t expect their salesperson to work at your dealership long. Be a company people want to work for. Reward and encourage employees to stay around. Get rid of managers that are quick to replace salespeople. Customers will notice.
  8. Engage your customers. Don’t just pop in and out of their lives to tell them about your upcoming sale. Once you’re in their lives, stay there. Use social media, blogs, newsletters, customer appreciation events, and any other tools you can to remain not only in their lives but in their minds.

While doing these things won’t change the perception of our industry as a whole, it CAN change the perception of the most important person in existence….

Your customer.

Amazon Now Competing With Dealers

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Amazon.com announced the launch today of a new store AmazonSupply.com

The site, as reported by Mashable, is “aimed at buyers in the business, industrial, scientific and commercial spaces”, however, anyone can order from the site.

Being that I buy pretty much everything from Amazon (including my daughter’s loft bed and, most recently, a refrigerator), I was curious as to what this was all about.

To my surprise, they are offering a wide variety of auto parts, car care items and even wheels and tires. (See the Fleet & Vehicle Maintenance category).

As you can see, they have quite a large inventory of items. Unlike Amazon’s Marketplace, it’s unclear whether these items are being sold by Amazon directly or through third-party sellers.

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How, or will, this effect your parts business?

Amazon has typically made sure they are the lowest price in any market. With free 2-day shipping on orders over $50 and no sales tax (in most cases), I’d say they have a distinct advantage from the get-go.

How long before they try their hand at selling cars or listing dealer inventory (at a cost, I’m sure). Amazon is increasingly trying to be a consumer’s one stop shop for everything. I’ve bought everything and anything imaginable on Amazon and have yet to find something NOT on Amazon.

Consumers may always need someone to install and service the vehicles but it just became a little easier and more attractive for them to not spend money in your parts department.

Buying Reviews and Car Dealerships

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In the last few days, there has been national media coverage of a vendor on Amazon who decided to “stack the deck” and buy reviews. The two articles, one on Gizmodo and one in the New York Times, told the story of a company selling cases for the Kindle Fire on Amazon who included notes in the packages asking for positive reviews from buyers in exchange for a full refund of the purchase price they paid.

Within the automotive industry, there have been (and still are) companies that promise to increase your online reviews and, while they claim the reviews are all genuine, people paying attention can easily dissect the fact that they are not. I wrote an article in June of 2011 that investigated one company, Review Boost, that was suspected of doing just this in which I interviewed the owner.

Most dealers do not participate in or knowingly hire any companies that do this.

One statement in those articles, which was included in the letter to consumers who purchased the Kindle Fire case, caught my attention though.

“We strive to earn 100 percent perfect ‘FIVE-STAR’ scores from you!”

Does this sound familiar?

Most dealerships have a time, usually in their delivery process, in which the customer is “educated” that they will be receiving a survey from the manufacturer and how important it is for the dealership to receive top scores in all areas. Some dealerships even get as detailed as having a copy of the survey with the desired answers highlighted and reviewed with the consumers. I know dealers who ask the customers to fill it out and bring it into  the dealership in exchange for something – a free oil change, t-shirt, etc. Some ask for the survey to be returned blank (which they obviously plan to fill out themselves) and some just ask them to return a completed survey which they can then read and decide for themselves whether to return it or not. I know dealers who will even RDR the car with a different address if there is heat on the deal so that a customer never gets the survey at all.

While this is certainly not identical to the vendor in the articles, in which they offered a refund for the product in exchange for positive reviews, it’s pretty close.

Reviewing a CSI survey with customers when they buy a car is skating a fine-line especially when there’s coaching involved. When you throw in a free oil change or some other incentive, it’s the same thing. Every dealer knows that they aren’t supposed to do this. However, CSI scores can be tied to future incentives from manufacturers so dealers are always under pressure to keep their scores high.

The problem with any of this is that you never get an opportunity to truly improve. You don’t get real feedback on what (or who) is broken in your process. Even though these aren’t “public” reviews and are only viewed by the manufacturer and employees of the dealership, the opportunity for improvement still exists.

You should embrace the opportunity, take your lumps when they come, and do your best to solve the customer’s complaints or criticism with your CSI surveys just as you would with your online public reviews. Even though consumers might not see these when choosing your dealership, making sure that ALL your customers are happy by attempting to solve issues they may have had, whether you received the feedback publicly through an online review or privately through CSI survey feedback, will help you grow as a dealership.

Embrace all reviews, both negative and positive, public or private, and use them as a learning experience and an opportunity to fix broken processes, clean house of cancerous employees, and become a better dealership.

I guarantee that by doing this, you’ll see less negative reviews.

Tip: Selling Cars using eBay Motors Local Market

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In my experience, I’ve heard many dealers complain about eBay Motor’s Local Market service for dealers. For those who don’t know what it is, it’s NOT a typical auction-style listing service. It will post your entire inventory on eBay and offer shoppers two choices on your vehicle page on eBay – “Make an Offer” or “Contact Seller”.

One of the coolest things is that, different from a normal eBay message from an interested buyer, you actually get full contact info for the consumer as they have to be logged into eBay to complete the action and eBay passes along this information to you straight into your CRM. So if someone contacts you and asks you a question, you have the ability to follow up with them just like any other lead.

One of the biggest complaints I hear from dealers are that they continuously get ridiculous offers for vehicles – like an offer of $1,000 for a $10,000 vehicle – and they don’t want to waste their time. They believe there is little value in having their inventory on eBay because their perception is that all they get are stupid offers and little else.

What I ask dealers when they make this complaint is “If you had someone in your showroom making you an offer of $1,000 on a $10,000 car, what would you do? Would you tell them to hit the pavement?” The typical answer is “I’d sit down with them and work the deal starting off with explaining why that offer is not realistic.”

Keep in mind that, despite their unrealistic offer, these are people, first and foremost, shopping for cars. On top of that, out of the millions of cars listed on eBay, they happened to land on yours. Not only did they land on your vehicle, they took the time to contact you and/or make an offer on that vehicle – realistic or not.

Anyone offering you any amount of money for a vehicle is, in reality, starting negotiations. I’m sure you get unrealistic offers all the time from showroom customers in the box with your salesperson. You ask your salespeople to get a commitment when filling out the initial foursquare and, sometimes, those offers are unrealistic. These leads aren’t any different except for the fact that they aren’t in your showroom.

If you get an unrealistic offer on eBay, instead of looking at it like a waste of your time, realize that, chances are, this person is farther down the funnel than most of your internet leads. They may be higher maintenance and require more work than your typical internet lead but by making the effort instead of just declining their offer and dismissing them as a “jack”, you’ll find that you’ll be able to convert some of those ridiculous offers into sales.

Pre-Conference Twitter Advice for Vendors

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I’ve had the privilege of handling social media for nine major automotive industry conferences in the last few years. (the 1st and 2nd DrivingSales Executive Summits, the 8th-11th Digital Dealer Conference & Expositions, and the 1st and 2nd Innovative Dealer Summits). In that time, I’ve also tried to include exhibitors and sponsors in the conference’s social media campaigns both for their benefit and for the conference’s.

I routinely asked them for Twitter accounts and created lists of those accounts for people following the conference Twitter account (like this one) whether they provided it for me or not (lots of searching Twitter, sadly). We left spots on speaking applications asking for their information and we had the sales team ask. If I had to guess, only about 15% actually provided this information and even less actually used social media to reach out and engage with attendees.

As you can imagine, there is a lot of “pre-conference” promotion (by the conference) and an essential piece of that was done via social media. Attendees would start getting excited and I would see Twitter conversations start ramping up via the conference hashtag. What I wouldn’t see is vendors participating in those conversations. No matter how hard and how many times I would advise a vendor that they should, they just wouldn’t do it. So for the few months leading up to the conference, there would be plenty of conference-related chatter (“Are you going?” “I’m excited” “Let’s get together”, etc) but virtually no vendor engagement. Amusingly enough, I have even had dealership attendees on Twitter publicly noticing and inquiring about the lack of vendors.

About a week before the conference…. it hits. Like someone hit a “Go” button somewhere. Vendors galore. All over Twitter. It was great that they would finally start participating but the problem was that there was no engagement and they were late to the party. A typical vendor’s tweet would read something like “We have your magic solution! Come visit us at booth #1234” or “We’re giving away an iPad2! Come to booth #1234 to enter”. By this point, they are entering (and creating) noise. The dealers and managers attending see this. They know that there is virtually no value in those tweets. They’ve received the countless pre-conference e-mails from vendors promoting something or other all with the same basic call-to-action of “come to our booth”.

On the flip side of this, I see vendors who DO engage with attendees. I see the vendors that engage attendees successfully setting up demo appointments and building interest and rapport with attendees. On the conference side, I always tried to increase their exposure (and the conference’s) by re-tweeting those vendors and encouraging people to interact with them. I rewarded exhibitors and sponsors for contributing to, and participating in, the conversation. What I didn’t retweet was blatant sales-only type tweets.

Fact: The 11th Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition hashtag saw 9,100 tweets from over 1,400 unique people with a combined reach of almost 100,000 people that generated over 9 million impressions…. and this was only from people that tweeted with the hashtag!

Why a vendor would want to skip out of being included in this is beyond me. I think they don’t understand social media 101 – the whole point of social media is not only to engage with your primary audience, it’s also to reach THEIR social network. The only other reason I can think of that they’re not doing this is that they can’t be bothered or see no value in it.

Vendors need to realize that conference attendees paying attention to the conference hashtag don’t want to see your 140 character sales pitch a week before the conference while, at the same time, they are receiving all the direct mail pieces and e-mail marketing campaigns that are hitting their real (and virtual) in-boxes. You become noise. Spam.

They are willing and want to engage with you but you must start this engagement MONTHS before the conference and it must be REAL engagement.You want to get a dealer’s attention pre-conference? Start talking to them pre-conference, not selling to them.

Sell to them at your booth, not on Twitter.

Target Gets Robbed via Facebook Promotion

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In yet another example of “promotions gone wrong”, Target just got robbed by it’s Facebook fans and a bunch of thieves opportunists.

Target-Fail

Target had a promotion via its Facebook page for a coupon which gave a customer a $10 gift card for spending $50. The coupon could be printed only via coupon printing software and you could only print it a certain number of times, yet the coupons did not have unique barcodes. (Kinkos anyone?) It was a great deal for Christmas shoppers or even grocery shoppers (via a Super Target) but a bunch of people figured out how to game the system and abuse the promotion.

I became aware of it through SlickDeals, a forum for bargain hunters. As people used and experimented with this coupon, they found that they were able to purchase gift cards and get the corresponding free $10 gift card from the promotion even though the coupon stated that gift card purchases were ineligible. Also, seeing as the coupons were not unique, any photocopier skirted the whole printing limitations from the coupon printing software.

As you can see via this 37 page thread with almost 1500 posts, people found that they could effectively rob Target legally (At least I think its legal. I’m not an attorney.) What they found they could do was this:

They would buy a $50 Target gift card, use the coupon and get a $10 Target gift card free. They would then purchase another $50 Target gift card using the FIRST $50 Target gift card to pay for the SECOND Target gift card, use another coupon and get another $10 Target gift card. (Initial purchase: $50. Profit: $20. etc.) Rinse and repeat. (Since you’re not actually purchasing anything, you’ll always have your initial $50 in the form of a gift card and, since you’re using the gift card to buy more gift cards, each transaction just nets you $10.)

There are a number of people who claim to have netted as much as $5,000 in free Target gift cards off their initial $50 investment. This promotion started November 30, 2011 and ended December 3, 2011.

What was surely as a result of the “resounding success” of the first coupon (probably solely judged by redemption quantity), Target decided to bring back this promotion 4 days later (December 7, 2011 through December 10, 2011). I’m sure someone at the corporate office was so impressed by the results, they wanted to start giving people raises and handing out trophies to stores for having the most “loyal” fans in their area.

By re-starting the promotion, you can see via this second thread which is 51 pages long with over 2000 posts, they effectively green lighted all of the original people who abused the promotion to do it again and also allowed those who missed out on the first opportunity to rob Target to join in the looting. This was a concerted effort by people who conspired to abuse this program on a national level. (Gotta love the internet!)

The thread is addicting to read. It’s like watching a train wreck reality show. It’s hard to believe that someone somewhere connected to Target isn’t watching this. In fact, based on statements made by the Slickdeals moderators, Target was aware (however minimally) of the thread since they asked SlickDeals not to post a PDF or image of the coupon. I’m sure they wanted the web traffic to their website versus to SlickDeals.

The dedication, time and effort invested by some of these people is impressive. I’m also astounded by the apparent lack of training or caring shown by the Target employees who allowed this coupon abuse as well as the failure of store management to recognize that it was happening in the first place. This failure and lack of training is obvious due to the inconsistency of success these people report experiencing. When you have to start disguising yourself, visiting multiple cashiers and you get rejected but still keep trying, an intelligent person would know that they are, at the very least, doing something wrong, even if their conscience hadn’t already told them that earlier.

Oh, and to put further emphasis on the failure of this promotion, many of the looters people, once they had collected as many free gift cards as they desired (or the promotion ended), then took all those free $10 gift cards and proceeded to buy Visa and Amex gift cards with them, thus negating them from even having to spend the free money they stole got from Target at Target. I’m sure other retailers appreciate Target’s monetary infusion into the economy and into their store’s Christmas bottom line. (Hey, I got a bunch of free Target gift cards, let’s go spend them at Wal-Mart!)

In my opinion, this tops the absurdity of the “Kindle Fire Deal That Wasn’t Supposed To Be” post I wrote a few weeks ago, and is another reason why social media promotions must be monitored and measured carefully. Just looking in your computer and seeing how many coupons were redeemed, at least in this case, isn’t an indicator of how effective the campaign was. It was an indicator of how screwed over Target got.

Merry Christmas, Target!

Why locking your DMS is not practical

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There is a lot of discussion surrounding TrueCar and how dealers should not use their services and why they are bad for our industry and dealers in specific. I wrote a blog recently titled “In Defense of TrueCar” that many interpreted as my support for their services.

In reality, the main point of my blog post was that everyone is pointing fingers at TrueCar right now saying how evil they are and how they are using a dealer’s data against them, however, nobody is mentioning the fact that, at some point in time, through some avenue, a dealer allowed their customer and financial data to be extracted and used. Dealers need to accept responsibility for this data being available in the first place. No matter how indirect that permission for data use was gained, ultimately, you allowed it.

My opinion of TrueCar is that they are a marketing and lead source for your inventory. I personally liked the pay-per-sale leads vs. the pay-per-lead pricing model. I don’t blame TrueCar for using your data to drive leads to you. There are many companies that use your data, crawl your website or obtain your financial and customer data and use or resell that data and then use it for their own monetary gain. They spend tons of money on SEO to drive consumers to their website where they convert the lead and resell it to you. There was a conversation about this for awhile too. The fact remains is that they spend the money to do it, are better at it than you and dedicate resources to accomplish this. Even OEMs do this and sell the leads to their dealers. If you want to dedicate the budget, time and resources to do this, you can do it also but don’t blame them for doing something you ultimately both aren’t going to and don’t want to do.

One of the suggestions that has been made is to lock everyone out of your DMS. This is really not a practical option. Many website companies do not have the ability to extract inventory data from your DMS so, ultimately, they outsource the data polling to another company whether you know it or not. In most cases, it’s transparent. There were many times when I was with HomeNet Automotive that a dealer had no idea that we were already polling their DMS on behalf of some vendor or another that they were using. In fact, most vendors do not have the ability to directly poll your DMS so unless you use no 3rd party vendors whatsoever, you really can’t lock your DMS. This includes desking software, pricing software, inventory management, etc.

If you lock everyone out of your DMS, you will have no inventory marketing whatsoever, and that includes having your inventory on your website.

Am I saying you shouldn’t be aware of who is getting your data? Not at all. You should know who is getting it, what they’re getting, and, most importantly, what your agreement with them allows them to do with your data.

It is your responsibility to protect your data through aggressive policing and review of your vendor partner contracts. You need your DMS polled to market your inventory and market to your customers (if you use any service to do this), get deals financed, and have any sort of integration with other software you use and your DMS.

When Reynolds and Reynolds took steps to police and protect dealer DMS data, dealers complained that they should have full control over their data and who gets it. Even in the cases of Reynolds implementing stricter and more difficult ways for a non-Reynolds Certified company to poll the DMS, dealers would allow third parties to create and install workarounds to this or they would manually create and upload the reports to their vendors. Now dealers are complaining that the data is being misused and/or used against them. You can’t have it both ways.

Accept responsibility and choose who gets your data, what they get, and what they are allowed to do with it.

Stop pointing fingers at TrueCar.

When Dealer Promotions Go Wrong

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In browsing a popular deal website, Slickdeals, I noticed a thread titled “20% off all new Chevrolets (Arizona)”. Out of curiosity, I thought I’d check it out. I was more curious to see if the dealer (or an employee) posted this or if it was something that a forum member posted.

Wow. Talk about negative publicity. Here are some choice comments from the thread from people who TRIED to take advantage of this deal posted on the dealership’s website (which does actually say “20% off All New Chevrolets”) and one local customer who decided to chime in about his buying experience at this dealership.

“Interesting. Called the dealer and he stated that the deals are good for Arizona residents, although this isn’t stated anywhere on the website. Doubt very much that the OP was successful in securing a car from these guys. I was trying to buy a Chevrolet Volt from them. The salesman was very accommodating, suggesting that I falsify my residency to obtain the price. Imagine that, a dealership suggesting that we do something illegal so that we can take advantage of their poor advertising and sales tactic. Unfortunately this is another example of one poorly run dealership proving the stereotype that all dealers are thieves. Sad really.”

“Get ready. My deal went all the way to the owner. Just another car dealer living down to their reputation.”

“I’ll be interested to see if any of you get the deal. I live close to this dealership and recently tried to buy a new truck that was listed in an ad. Went to the dealership that morning and was told that the truck listed in the ad “wasn’t available.” The salesman offered me a truck with the same exact options, color and sticker price as the one listed in the ad, for $2,000 more than the price listed in the newspaper.”

They even included a response e-mail from the Internet Manager at this dealership that they got when inquiring:

“Hi Chris … Thanks for your email 11-27-11 on the New Chevrolet Volt #120126 and choosing Sands Chevrolet in Surprise for your next Chevrolet purchase.

This Volt is available from Inventory here in Arizona. Is that a CRAZY PRICE or what? $7,500 of this Huge Discount will be in the form of a Tax Credit at Year End Tax Time, and you will also need to be a Resident of Arizona to purchase at this Special Price.

There are no Rebates or Special Interest Rates at this time. Please call or email me.

Thanks
XXX XXXXX
Internet Manager”

 

To date, over 5,000 people have viewed this thread.

That’s 5,000 people who were interested enough in buying a new Chevrolet that they clicked on the thread to get the details and found the above types of comments.

Done right, that could’ve been 5,000 leads. This probably led to 5,000 people who aren’t going to buy a car at this dealership.

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.

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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?

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

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Most consumers hate shopping for cars. They love to BUY cars. They WANT new cars. It’s just like shopping at the mall, just way more expensive, which is why they should enjoy it much more. If you were to go into any retail store and tell them you wanted to spend $20,000+, they would treat you like royalty, yet, when people go into car dealerships, all they get are headaches and wasted time. Many dealers are recognizing this and consciously making changes to their processes that streamline the buying experience and make it easier, and more enjoyable, for people to buy cars but, sadly, many dealers are still playing games.

Has something like this happened to you at a dealership or have you seen this happen at your dealership?

Until dealers can break through the stereotype they earned, consumers will distrust them. That’s why it’s such a refreshing experience to consumers when they find a dealership that doesn’t play games. Until they experience it personally, however, they won’t believe you no matter how hard you try and convince them that your dealership is different. Treat every customer like royalty and you’ll be well on your way to referrals and word-of-mouth marketing that you could never buy.

(P.S. This video was from a series of videos shot by DealerKnows Consulting. It was an honor (and a lot of fun) to be included in these. There are more to come and, in case you missed the first one released, I’ve included it below.)

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