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Digital Dealer 23 Session – Wonderland: An Interactive Exercise in Leadership and Management – A Journey Down the Rabbit Hole

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This interactive session will open your eyes and give you a fantastic new point of view into what leadership, management & company culture really means. There won’t be a Powerpoint and you probably won’t be sitting down much so come prepared to participate. You WILL go through an emotional roller coaster on this ride but by the end, you will KNOW the impact different leadership and management styles mean and which is right from wrong. Guaranteed. Participate and you will leave learning how to be a better leader through this live, in-person activity. This isn’t for the faint at heart. Be warned. You will be diving down the rabbit hole and only you will know who you will be at the end.

Join me at Digital Dealer 23 in Las Vegas, NV from September 18-20 and participate in a session unlike any ever done before. Learn more here and I look forward to seeing you at my session… if you dare.

2016 Disney Customer Experience Summit: Review

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I’ve always been a big Disney fan. My family and I had season passes to Disneyland in California for about 8 years before moving to North Carolina. Now I can’t get my Disney fix on as often as I’d like to but still manage to go once a year or so. Being in the automotive industry with my business being focused on three main areas: content writing, social media and conferences,  I’m very often dealing with topics revolving around customer loyalty, customer retention and customer experience. I was first introduced (legitimately) to the Disney Institute at a Driving Sales Executive Summit (automotive industry conference) about 4 years ago with Bruce Kimbrell as a keynote speaker. I was aware of the Disney Institute previously but that was my first taste of some actual Disney Institute education. I was hooked. After that conference, I studied up and wanted to continue learning from the Disney Institute. Keep in mind that I’m a “gotta have it all” kind of guy so, of course I wanted to take every Disney Institute course offered. Of course, through my research, I discovered that to do so would cost upwards of $30,000+ just in tuition (not including travel, lodging, etc.). So when I came across the ad for the Disney Institute Customer Experience Summit in my Facebook feed, I was intrigued. I called and promptly grilled a poor guy named Chris at the Disney Institute for about an hour asking countless questions. In typical Disney fashion, he was very patient with me and answered them all. Considering the registration was $4,000 for a 2-1/2 day event, I wanted to know exactly what I would be learning. Satisfied, I registered. Disney graciously opened up the room block to include the 3 days pre and post-conference so my family and I decided to make a little vacation out of it as well… then I waited.

When the time came for us to travel and begin our adventure, we checked in to Disney’s flagship resort, the Grand Floridian Resort & Spa. It was an excellent experience considering we really only planned to drop our bags and head to the park seeing as we showed up at 9am and check-in was 3pm but Disney was ready for us and had our room waiting. We then spent the Friday, Saturday and Sunday melting visiting the parks. We went to Epcot on day 1, Hollywood Studios on Day 2 and then the Magic Kingdom on day 3. It was a great, but very hot, time.

Now that the background story and personal story are out of the way, let’s get into the meat of the review.

Day 1 of the Disney Institute’s Customer Experience Summit

Check in began at 3:30pm so I promptly went and did so. After getting a pretty cool computer bag stuffed with goodies including a personalized Disney Institute pen, I was legit.

The curriculum began at 5:30pm with Vice President & General Manager of the Disney Institute, Jeff James, taking the stage to welcome us and introducing Bruce Jones, Senior Programming Director as our event MC.

 

Bruce proceeded to give us an overview of what to expect, some information about the mobile website and our personal agenda (on our smart-computers… cough… phones) as well as some ground rules regarding evidence social media content… mainly that they encouraged us to utilize social media but that no video  or audio recording was allowed and no social media whatsoever while we were in any backstage (non-public) area within the parks. [Side note: For the remainder of the conference, whenever Bruce talked about social media, he always mentioned my name in some way. For attendees: Yes, I was THAT Arnold.]

Bruce then brought onto stage all of the facilitators and staff that would be educating us over the next few days and introduced them to us. Now if you know me at all, I’m a social media monster. Having been involved in over 45 conferences now most of which involved (at a minimum) social media marketing, I was ready. [Note: If you’re really interested in all of the content I tweeted, you can check out my Twitter profile here or you can view everyone’s tweets by searching the conference hashtag #DisneyCXSummit. For the meat of the Summit content, check out tweets between August 23-25, 2016]. I think Bruce summed up the Disney Institute’s goal for Summit attendees when he said:

After that, we had our first general session learning an overview of Disney philosophies and a preview of what we’d be learning over the next few days by Kathy Van Tassell (KVT), one of the Disney Institute facilitators. She brought us some great content. I wish I could embed all of my tweets here but that would just be overkill (albeit interesting.) One of my favorite soundbites was this:

“Leadership is when your employees look forward to their drive to work just as much as their drive home from work.”

After the opening general session, we were off to our first networking reception Disney-style led by Mickey and Minnie. The networking reception featured an open bar, TONS of food and character meet-and-greets. Now let me tell you this, I’ve been to a TON of conferences (mainly in the automotive industry) and have worked 45 of them. NEVER have I experienced what I did at this networking reception… it seemed as if you needed Fast Passes for the character meet-and-greet lines while there were absolutely NO lines at the bars! I guess in hindsight that’s not too surprising but still… [and yes, of course I stood in those lines.]

Day 2 of Disney Institute’s Customer Experience Summit

Day 2 of the Summit started with an early breakfast at 7am followed by a keynote speech by Walt Disney World Resort President, George Kalogridis. As he discussed some of the ways in which Disney immerses their guests into the Disney experience, the first thing he did was hand out Magic Disney ears to everyone in the audience so we could experience it. He then played a video which synced up to the RFID chips in the ears and the whole crowd started blinking and changing colors in unison. Remarks I overheard from Disney employees was that this brought tears to their eyes.

Image courtesy of Jake Massey
Image courtesy of Jake Massey

We were then split into groups – some groups would learn the customer experience curriculum for the day while the other groups would learn about employee engagement. Needless to say there was way too much content to publish everything here (and I don’t know that I would want to potentially spoil things for others) but the day was filled with a ton of great education, insight and immersive experiences. The one thing I do want to share was the simplicity of Disney’s common purpose which, may I add, they have thus far achieved with resounding success.

And, I would be remiss in my reporting if I didn’t include the answer to the question of what the most asked question in Disney parks is. (Image on right) Why? Guess you’ll have to take a Disney Institute class to find out why and what it really means.

Then we got to go on our first field experience. There were four to choose from which we pre-selected prior to the Summit. The one I chose saw us visiting the Magic Kingdom. We were grouped and had an activity to perform which we were to identify examples of the Four Keys (I’ll get to that later) and we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the “Be Our Guest” restaurant which, apparently is sold out 190 days in advance. If you’re planning a trip to Disney World in the next 6 months, you’re out of luck. Plan early if you want to eat at this uber-cool restaurant.

Then it was back to the Grand Floridian’s conference center for the rest of our day and the closing general session with Karl Holz, President of New Vacation Operations and the Disney Cruise Line. His keynote was focused primarily on employee engagement and the importance of your “cast” in creating an excellent customer experience. It was fantastic. He also stressed the importance of, and Disney’s view, of employee empowerment.

This was one of my favorite soundbites from his session:

Oh, but was the day over? Far from it. Bruce Jones closed out the evening with a question for the audience that really got me thinking and was really pretty profound:

“What matters most? The little “wows” or  the big “wows”?

We got serenaded by two cast members with music from the new Disney Cruise Line show “Tangled” where we not only saw the light but heard it, then we were whisked off to Hollywood Studios for a first class dinner at Club Villain featuring the Divas of Evil (and Dr. Facilier). [Note: the character meet-and-greet line… yeah, they actually had TIMES set for you (a’la Fast Passes… perhaps someone was listening to our tweets from the night before) while, again, the bar line was completely empty.]

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Was the “Disney Magic” over? Heck no! After the dinner, we were escorted to a reserved viewing area to watch the new “Star Wars: A Galactic Fireworks Spectacular” show. Here’s a teaser (Hey, it was a public place):

Day 3 of the Disney Institute Customer Experience Summit

Day 3 began with a keynote by Paul Richardson, Senior Vice President Human Resources for ESPN and the Chief Diversity Officer for the Walt Disney Companies. He gave us information about the quantity of programming that ESPN produces (amazing!) and brought along a surprise guest speaker, former Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach and current broadcaster, Jon Gruden!

Coach Gruden spoke about winning and teamwork while Paul Richardson spoke about the importance of taking risks. A key illustration from him was of ESPN’s “Body” issue which has artistic nude images of athletes. As a “lawyer in recovery” and Human Resources VP, you could see where there was concern but this issue has become their most popular ESPN magazine issue every year!

Of course, the exclamation point to his speech was this:

I then began my second day of classes and was extremely thrilled to be reunited with the former DrivingSales Executive Summit keynote speaker as a facilitator for the day, Bruce Kimbrell! (Take that, DSES peeps. You got him for 50 minutes. I got him the. whole. day. BOOM!)

Day 2 for me and my group was all focused on employee engagement and how that affects both retention and customer experience. Again, there was so much content that this blog article/review would be super long if I tried to repeat it all so I’m gonna stick with a couple of my favorite highlights. Oh, but first, I failed to mention that the Disney Institute has swag for those who participate in the classes! If you ever attend a class, PARTICIPATE!

We learned the “Four Keys” philosophy in more depth and how employees, management and leadership use that to guide their decisions. (Patience… I’ll get to the Four Keys.) Loved the following soundbites:

 

“People don’t generally leave companies. They leave leaders.”

“You can never take your company culture for granted. You can lose a good one a lot faster than you can create one.” 

“When you give your employee less reason to leave you, you give your customers less reason to leave as well.”

but this was my favorite (by Bruce Kimbrell)

“There is not one bit of magic in anything Disney. Everything is method. There is nothing done unintentionally. Everything is by design.” 

One of my FAVORITE parts of day two was the Disney Institutes’s “Wonderland” activity. First, let me tell you that while it was MY favorite part, there were other people ready to cut [as in with a knife] someone. It was a very educational and illustrative immersive type activity. If I told you more. I’d be spoiling it for you should you ever encounter it, so I won’t. Just know that it seemed as if attendees really enjoyed it or really hated it. In the end, however, they all understood and learned from it. It was only during the moment that emotions ran high. I must admit that I got WAY into my role as a negative dispenser though. (You have to do the activity to understand.)

Another very cool educational method was through the use of illustrative immersive live-action examples. Video? Forget that. They brought in actors to illustrate points. Just let me say that the “Ice cream shop” story/illustration left me teary eyed (in a good way).

Then we were off to our second field experience! This time, I got to visit the Magic Kingdom again. I thought we were going to experience ride operations backstage but what did we do? We got to ride! Yeee haw! [Note: If you ever sign up for an in-park experience for the Disney Institute and they ask whether you prefer kiddie classic rides or thrill rides, understand that you are choosing which types of rides you want to go on.] I met up with a fellow attendee at the end of day 1 who was kicking himself for not picking thrill rides. You’ve been warned. We had a VIP Tour Guide who walked us onto the rides (which was way cool and available to the public at a reasonable rate of $400 per hour with a 7 hour minimum). When we got to the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train ride, there was a 130 minute stand-by line wait. That was partially because they were filming an episode of the ABC show “Blackish.” Their train actually stopped… right… in.. front.. of me… but, sadly, I wasn’t fast enough with my phone to snap a picture of the actors. Then we rode the Haunted Mansion [I totally brought back the hitchhiking ghosts], Space Mountain and Buzz Lightyear.

We then returned and, following a little more education, we were off to our final closing session which was a very cool experience with a Disney Imagineer, Emily O’Brien and Food & Beverage Experience & Pairing Integration VP, Beth Scott. They shared the story of the creation and teamwork involved in creating the new restaurant and bar at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Tiffin’s Restaurant and Nomad’s Lounge. One of the really cool things that happened was that they introduced us to the Flavor Lab where a Disney bartender(?) mixed a new drink live on video then.. ouila’… Disney cast members came out and delivered samples to everyone! Then a chef came on live video and showed us how they made a rib and black-eyed pea fritter which was then also brought out for everyone to sample!

At the close of the closing general session… well, I have to tell you the story. Apparently, people REALLY love Dole Whip. There was this whole group obsessed with Dole Whip. Chances are that Disney could have just served Dole Whip the whole conference and people would have been happy. Don’t know for sure but they Screen Shot 2016-08-29 at 7.13.44 PMnot only had a dedicated hashtag but a freaking mascot idol thingy. Bruce Jones came on stage and told us, after the closing keynote, that our badges would get us a free Dole Whip at the Polynesian Resort (just a short monorail ride away) but, in addition, the Disney magic makers had created a special Dole Whip inspired drink for us – and only for us – that would be given to us as we left. [And, skipping ahead just a tad, the funny side of me couldn’t help but ask this group whether… now that they had “whipped” if they were going to “nae nae”… well, guess what… I talked them into it.]

And by left, I mean they said “Get out!” Why? Because they had something special waiting for us and, while they pretended they were giving us some extra time to change and relax, they really needed time to prepare. You see, they had TAUGHT us about Disney magic for 3 days, now they wanted us to EXPERIENCE it. So we left.

When we returned, we were the Disney Institute’s guest. Dinner was all “Beauty and the Beast” themed and first class. When I say first-class, I’m talking caviar, etc. We had visits by Lumiere, Cogsworth, Beauty and the Beast along with a beautiful centerpiece (in the middle of the dance floor) of a rose in glass. All of the tables and napkins were stuffed with fresh red roses as well. We were serenaded, fed and entertained. When we left, we left to another gift of the book “Be Our Guest” by the Disney Institute. [Note: If you like great books and Disney education, pick up a copy of “Disney U” by Doug Lipp.]

And, that’s the end of my story… or is it?

I forgot a couple of things… first, the Four Keys. The Four Keys are the foundation of Disney’s philosophy. They represent, in this order, Safety, Courtesy, Show and Efficiency. In simple terms, think of it this way. Safety is the highest priority and it moves down the chain from there. Courtesy is… well… courtesy. Show? This represents the fact that Disney is putting on a show. That’s why employees are “cast members”, visitors are “guests”, public areas are “on stage” for employees and private areas are “back stage.” It’s way more involved than that, however, and I recommend either attending a Disney Institute course, the next Customer Experience Summit or reading Doug Lipp’s book to learn more but let me leave you with this…

Not only did I LOVE the event, experience, education, activities, and experiences and felt like the event was worth every penny, but when I got home, I made sure that I would never forget the experience nor the philosophies that I learned. Ciao for now and shout out to my tweeting friends Luigi Casanova from Peru, Rich Vallaster and the Disney Institute’s social media person, Amie Gorell as well as all of the facilitators (especially the two Bruces – Kimbrell and Jones).

And finally, this is how I made sure I would never forget what I learned and the impact this event had on me. (Yes, it’s a real tattoo.)

All Roads Lead To Vegas: AutoCon 2013 Edition

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WelcometoFabulousLas_Vegas_Sign_1_editIn my career in the automotive industry, I got involved in conferences fairly early. I’ve attended many conferences in my life as an Internet Director, as a vendor employee working a booth to helping with marketing and organization for the conference itself. I’ve done everything from being wined and dined as a dealership employee to doing the wining and dining for dealership employees to helping to organize the wining and dining for a vendor.

I’ve also learned that car guys/gals must have an affinity for Las Vegas. I keep waiting for someone to create a conference in Jamaica or Hawaii but, sadly, that day hasn’t come yet. For now, we have Vegas. It probably doesn’t hold the same allure for me as it does for others for several reasons: I lived within driving distance of it most of my life and I have been there as a “tourist” many times. I don’t really gamble, either. I once spent 21 days straight in hotels in Las Vegas for conferences.. I think I’m still recovering from that trip.

However, over my professional career, I have come to realize one thing: getting the education is what matters. I come across way too many dealers today that don’t have a clue. Even worse is that they don’t know they don’t have it. I know that, with a little exposure to the right teachers, they will have a “bright light bulb” moment and start to realize that some of the things they don’t think are very important actually are.

I attended AutoCon in 2012 for its premiere. I wasn’t sure what to expect but I can tell you that I wasn’t let down. The organization, facilities, networking opportunities and educational sessions were great. Many of our industry’s brightest minds were there to share a piece of their knowledge with dealers.. and share they did. All I’ve heard was positive feedback since and, for those that know me, I’m pretty forthcoming in my opinions.

I finally solidified my plans to attend this year and I’m very excited. Conferences for the last few years of my life have been more about working and less about learning and networking on a personal level since I was there working for vendors. Now that I can actually take some time for myself to grow on a professional level, learn new things from some very smart people and re-establish connections that I haven’t been able to nurture, I’m super excited. It’s quite liberating to not be limited in possibilities for political reasons.

So, since my profession is one that involves social media and writing, and, since I’ve been quite busy with both, I wanted to share some of the enthusiasm I’m feeling.

AutoCon has assembled quite a large selection of speakers and topics so it’s hard to know where to begin and, since the sessions aren’t scheduled out yet, all I can do is create my “wish list” of speakers/sessions I think (and would recommend) people attend based on my personal knowledge of them and their expertise and/or ability to convey their message to an audience in an efficient (and entertaining) way.

First, and foremost, I hope that Ralph Paglia returns to AutoCon triumphantly and reinvigorated. I know that the dealer communities all respect Ralph and value his knowledge and contributions not only for creating vibrant communities for dealers to interact in over many years but also his commitment to educating them in any way he can.

I’m also looking forward to seeing DealerElite and AutoCon co-founder, Chris Saraceno, share his secrets of the top automotive sales consultants. In addition to his endeavors mentioned previously, being the Vice President of the Kelly Automotive Group certainly makes Chris uniquely qualified to have consolidated these insights from sources at all levels: blogs, forum discussions, conferences, industry experts and, most importantly, the retail world.

Brian Pasch is a mainstay in the dealer educational arena and his contributions to that arena have been admirable. He’s in demand and seems to be at almost every conference in existence! Whether its one that his company, First Class Educators, has organized or one of the many others, I have to say that Brian is consistent in his efforts and prolific in his dedication. Hey, it takes a lot of work to write quality blogs, hold webinars, create white papers and Brian certainly does them all!

I’m looking forward to hearing the VinSolutions guys speak as well. The Energizer Bunny looks at Sean Stapleton and says “Hey man, Slow down! You’re making me look bad!” Yes, Sean is a bundle of energy and a pleasure to be around and hear speak. He always has great topics and information. Make sure to bring a video camera so you can watch it in slow motion afterwards for those of us that operate at normal speed! In addition, the double whammy is on at AutoCon with Dan Moore also being awarded a speaking slot. This man actually once did a complete session in the voice of Eric Cartman from South Park. No joke. I have video. He can also see the future. Serious. He was evangelizing Pandora when people didn’t know what they were and now they’re a keynote speaker at this conference!

JD Rucker is Yoda. ‘Nuff said.

Larry Bruce? Are you kidding me? That’s like watching a fireworks show! There’s a challenge and debate involved here so this will be exciting! The Dynamite Monkey.. Wooooooo

Jason Barrie from Dealertrack is always a great speaker. They don’t let him out of his cage enough. You should take advantage of this opportunity.

I’m intrigued to hear Aaron Schinke from DealerFire’s session on content writing since, hey, that’s what I do! Kind of hard to argue the importance of content writing when you’re a content writer (amongst other things)!

I’ve met Jennifer Boland of Simply The Best BDC and she’s not only a super person but has her finger on the pulse of BDCs. My involvement with DealerKnows Consulting introduced me to her and I’m looking forward to hearing her speak!

I’m very interested in hearing Myril Shaw of CarWoo! speak about the trust relationship between an Internet Department and a consumer. I think it’ll be fascinating to hear what a consumer-facing website thinks is proper etiquette in transactions. I personally know dealers who are very successful on their program and, while I didn’t get a chance to use them while I was an Internet Director, I certainly would have. They seem to be in tune with both consumers and dealers and this session could provide valuable insight that would help an Internet Department sell more cars online.

Grant Cardone?  Grant’s a great guy and an incredibly entertaining motivational speaker. While we haven’t always seen eye to eye in the past, he’s always a pleasure to listen to and he’s definitely someone who will pump you up! His sales training material really helped my automotive sales career explode when I was a young pup in this business. I can attest that his material works from personal experience. Don’t miss his session. You’ll thank me later.

In the attempt at brevity, I certainly can’t mention everyone but I do feel as if I would be doing an injustice by not mentioning Craig Lockerd of AutoMax Training, Ali Amirrezvani and Amir Amirerezvani of DealerOn, Eric Mitlsch of DrivingSales, and AJ LeBlanc of CAR-MERICAL all of which are excellent speakers and very knowledgeable on their respective topics.

In no way am I suggesting that any of the other speakers are not good or not worth seeing. This is only my personal “wish-list” and recommendations for those who are interested. All of the speakers included in AutoCon 2013 are highly qualified experts in their respective fields and whom you go see really depends on what your dealership’s needs are.  Only you can decide which areas you need help with in your store and that, by itself, should guide you to the right sessions.

…to be continued

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.

Automotive Customer Centricity Summit

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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

Digital Dealer’s Hidden Learning Opportunity

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As we get ready to attend the 9th Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition in Las Vegas, I wanted to talk about a hidden learning opportunity.

Over the past weeks, I’ve seen plenty of blog posts and articles from people with advice on how to get ready for and efficiently attend the conference. All of these articles offered great advice such mapping out your sessions and bringing proper supplies. I agree with all of them. 
One thing I haven’t heard, however, is one of the most beneficial things I used to take advantage of at the conferences and that is the ability to check out all the new technology and services available within our industry that could help me sell more cars.
I was an internet director working for large automotive groups for a long time. I was constantly bombarded – as I’m sure you are – by calls from vendors. Some days it seemed like I appeared on every vendors “to-do” list and, at times, I just stopped taking their calls. We’re all busy and we’re all focused on selling cars. Nobody wants to be “sold” something when you’d rather be doing the selling.
One of the most attractive things for me, at the conference, was the opportunity to visit with all the vendors in the exhibit hall if only to check out what solutions and technology are available. Whether you are in the market for a new solution or not, the knowledge of what’s out there is invaluable because the one thing in our business that is constant is change. 
When your dealer principal, GM, GSM or whomever comes to you with a problem and asks you to fix it, would you rather know what solutions exist and be able to make some suggestions RIGHT THEN, or have to start hunting from scratch. I guarantee you it will waste more of your time hunting for a new vendor for whatever your needs are if you don’t already know what’s out there.
This also gives you the opportunity to ask other DEALERS about their vendors. Every vendor is going to tell you that their product rocks, that they are the best at it, and that they will help you sell a ton more cars than you already are (if you use it properly, of course). So how do you weed out the good companies from the GREAT companies? How do you find the “diamonds in the rough”, so to speak?
Look, we all know that post-conference sales pitches, phone calls, and e-mails only INCREASE – as they should. You can’t blame the vendors. Say you sold Fords and you went to an auto show. At that auto show everyone was educated on the benefits of driving a Ford Explorer. Everyone left with some level of knowledge that maybe I should be driving a Ford Explorer. Now, say the conference decided to give you a list of all of those people who were interested in a Ford Explorer. Would you call them? If you are any type of salesperson you would. 
Just like you get irritated when you call someone that you got an internet lead on because they’re irritated that you called them, so do the vendors. If you took the time to educate yourself about the technology products and services that are available WHILE YOU”RE AT THE CONFERENCE, you would be able to tell the vendors when they call you post-conference that you took the opportunity to check out their service already.
I’m not saying you have to spend your time watching everybody’s demo. Just set aside a block of time to make a quick trip around the exhibit hall to check out what new services and technology products are being offered by companies – both new and old. 
I guarantee you’ll discover something that you didn’t know existed.
You have all the notable vendors within our industry in the same place at the same time. Use that to your advantage. Learning what is available to help you sell more cars is just as important as learning new techniques and processes to do that via the seminars. The vendors are an intrinsic part of what makes the Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition POSSIBLE. They’re at the conference because they want the opportunity to meet you and talk to you. 
Be the go-to-guy (or gal) at your dealership with the solutions and you’ll make yourself that much more invaluable. 
…and pick up some free swag and enter their contests for prizes while you’re at it. We all like free stuff and they like to give it out.
Here is the list of vendors that helped make the 9th Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition possible.
I hope to meet everyone at the show. 

Example of a Live Twitter Feed

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I was asked to demonstrate a live Twitter feed incorporating hashtags vs. a personal Twitter account. This is just an example for them. I chose #DD9 as the hashtag to follow in this example because the 9th Digital Dealer Conference rocks (and this is the hashtag people have incorporated to talk about this event).

This is a very useful tool to incorporate into your website and/or blog. Not only does it allow you an easy way to monitor conversations about your brand or product but it’s a great way to showcase events (as in this example).


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