In this case, the dealerships were accused of “having advertisements online and in print publications that misrepresented the actual prices of automobiles”, “dealership employees asking consumers to sign incomplete documents with the understanding that they would be completed using the negotiated vehicle price, but later entering a higher price”, and “allegedly charging consumers fees for unwanted or undisclosed warranties and services”. According to the article, the auto group denied any wrongdoing but agreed to the settlement.

But I digress. The above story really isn’t the point of this post, nor is it my intention to try to warn you of the legal dangers of non-compliance with the laws of the land. I, and my peers, write enough about that. Sure, I’m now a compliance consultant, but my ramblings here are based on the things I learned during my 20 plus years in automotive retail – and the realization that I probably had it all wrong.

This post is about Transparency. It’s about the Big Picture. It’s about opening your mind and stopping to think about the absurdity of old school tactics. Not from a legal or ethical mindset, but from a common-sense business perspective.

I realize that “Transparency” is the latest, and perhaps most over-used, buzzword in the car business. But please bear with me for a few moments while I pose a few questions. Hopefully, it will stimulate some “outside the box” thinking.

First, what is the upside of hiding information from your customers?

Sure, you have to do whatever it takes to stay ahead of the competition. Sure, that’s what the legendary automotive sales trainers taught us. Sure, the chances of getting into a legal bind are pretty slim. Sure, everybody else is doing it. Sure, if you give customers too much information they’ll just use it to shop you. Sure, there are ways to “manage” your online reputation, even if you have some unhappy customers. I get all that.

But – Big Picture Time – is the “anything it takes to make a deal” mentality really a sensible way to do business in today’s world? Do you really think this will lead to customer satisfaction and retention? Do you really believe that customers will continue to put up with this type of behavior forever?

Here’s how I look at it: Every time you…

-Post a misleading ad, or

-Charge a customer more than the advertised price, or

-Lie to a customer about a vehicle being in stock, or

-Present a foursquare with inaccurate numbers in order to confuse a customer, or

-Present “packed” payments, or

-Fail to truthfully disclose a vehicle’s history, or

-You’re not completely honest and upfront with your customers

…there are some things you might want to consider:

1. You may be breaking the law – but it’s only illegal if you get caught, right?
2. What you’re doing may be an unethical business practice – but customers have no loyalty and you’re just trying to make a buck in a fiercely competitive marketplace, right?
3. You may be pissing off customers (or potential customers) – but “ya gotta have haters, right”?
4. You’re gambling with your future – this is an unsustainable way of doing business in the modern world and your continued success is greatly at risk.

Now you may be perfectly comfortable rolling the dice on number 1 and not care a lick about numbers 2 or 3, but what’s your answer for number 4?

I challenge you to think about it. Just think about it. Unfortunately, I didn’t when I worked in dealerships – I was a faithful practitioner of the old school ways.

Now, I realize that you may feel that this post is just more nonsense from an ex-car-guy-turned-consultant who doesn’t get it – and you may be right. Only time, and customer sentiment, will tell. But you may still want to ask yourself just how long are customers going to put up with business as usual?

Let’s face it; consumers have access to much more information, and choices, than they ever did. You can hate the internet and all its information. You can hate the idea of “transparency”. You can hate all the regulations that dealers have to contend with. You can hate the consumer advocates. You can hate the media and all of its anti-dealer sensationalism. But guess what? None of it is going away. The “But We’ve Always Done It This Way” mentality just doesn’t hold water anymore.

Now, I’m not a believer that the internet is going to somehow take over car buying. I totally agree that dealerships are, and will continue to be, the primary way that customers will purchase vehicles for a long time to come. But remember this; while customers may always choose to do business with dealerships, they don’t have to choose to do business with your dealership.

One final question: Are you a true professional who is ready, willing and able to succeed in the new world or are you hoping that things will never change?

In my book, transparency is not a dirty word, but complacency is.

Good luck and good selling.

Spirit is the ‘soul’ of your brand.  The foundation of your core belief system.  The force that defines your depth of commitment to service, satisfaction and trust.

When I was a young boy I remember my Dad buying a used station wagon.  Just a few days after delivery the transmission went out.  I went with my Dad to the dealership.  I remember the manager telling my Dad there was nothing they could do.  Their responsibility ended at the curb.  At 10 years old I made a silent pact with myself that not only would I never do business with Leader Chevrolet on Memorial Avenue in West Springfield, but that I would use every opportunity presented to dissuade others from doing so.

I also remember acts of kindness of businesses that went far beyond warranties implied that benefited my parents and their four children.  It helped to form bonds of loyalty with those businesses for all of my adult life.

Yesterday, while watching Fox News, I heard the story of a Vietnam Vet who had purchased a ticket on Spirit Airlines in Tampa, and then, under doctors orders was unable to take the flight because of esophageal cancer.  The airline refused to consider any kind of refund despite the medical condition of this veteran.  This from an airline with the name ‘Spirit’?  I’ve never flown Spirit.  And now, I can say quite confidently that I never will.

You may offer a great choice of the most popular models, low prices, great deals, exceptional service, etc.,   But does your business have the most defining branding dimension?  A soul.  A Spirit?

One of the first significant digital marketing examples of this is its application to online car sales. Here, inventory data is driven to various online car-shopping sites after it has been matched to respective images, video walkarounds and other techniques that give online shoppers almost-real virtual shopping experiences.

These solutions can simplify your online listing involvement and improve listing effectiveness. You’ll certainly be better positioned to meet consumers where they are – when they’re ready – to shop or buy. This is especially true where various data sources – from your DMS, CRM, email engines and website inventory pages – are  aggregated in real time across all of points where you hope to engage shoppers.

What follows are some ideas for utilizing your data across multiple systems to drive business throughout your profit centers:

• Be proactive: Look for opportunities; search your data for specific target audiences and they’re needs. Sort target customers by common needs or opportunities. Think high-mileage customers and aim a “Welcome Back” mailer to them to entice their return to your service department. Think late-term customers, those whose vehicles are approaching factory warranty expiration. Target an extended warranty service mailer to them.

• Be there: Get inventory out of your data and onto the online car-shopping sites from which most vehicle sales originate today. Online inventory management tools integrating with your CRM, DMS, website and online sites like cars.com and craigslist.com get your inventory presented online in dynamic, visual and compelling fashion across hundreds of online sites.

• Be accurate: Real-time data integration across all platforms upon which your inventory resides online is critical to consistency across all places where shoppers shop your vehicles. This technology ensures that vehicle prices, descriptions and incentives are consistently presented – in content, image and pricing – wherever that inventory appears, from your website to all of your online car-shopping sites.

• Be dramatic: Avoid b-o-r-i-n-g listings. The idea is to make your listings stand out and draw eyeballs to yours first – and hold them there longer. Enhance basic listings to improve their dramatic appeal by adding video, live-voice video, 360-degree walkarounds, vehicle history report buttons, finance calculator tools, and custom and vehicle-specific descriptions that go above and beyond basic VIN content.

• Be on the ball: Online inventory data feeds, including leads, that flow through your CRM and mobile CRM help make sure you’re on top of every opportunity to sell cars and service. Use silent salesperson tools on your listings and website inventory pages. Let this virtual worker handle viewers questions, promote your dealership and chat up the vehicle while you’re closed or otherwise occupied so you never miss the customers’ ZMOT – zero moment of truth when they decide to shop or buy.

• Be responsive: Respond to leads promptly – use an autoresponder only to acknowledge the original lead and respond with a personalized email as soon as you can. Email to these leads videos of the vehicle they’re interested in – never miss an opportunity to reinforce the consumer’s emotional involvement in the vehicle. Leads from your dealership website are always more down-funnel than leads from third-party websites. Be sure to treat these hotter, more-ready-to-buy leads like the precious opportunities they are.

Thank you for being engaged!

This month, I’d like to revisit a concept I’ve shared several times over the past 20 years in this publication: Creating and marketing a dealership ‘brand’ infomercial.

A video infomercial is not only a powerful and effective tool in defining your brand, but because of technological advances, it’s actually less expensive to produce and deliver a quality product today than it was 20 years ago.

What is an “infomercial”? It’s a paid program of varying length designed to showcase your brand attributes with a professional presentation of relevant information to existing and potential customers. The most effective infomercials (in terms of “share of mind” return on investment) focus more on information and less on “schmaltzy” repetitive “do it now” deals.

In many markets across America, some dealers still produce the half-hour stream of walking/talking pitches on as many vehicles as can be crammed in the time frame. This is 100% share-of-market with little or no brand building in the process. This is not the concept I’m referring to. I’m talking about a program that helps build customer confidence in the “dealer brand” and provides the kind of information most customers seek in the shopping process.

What are the key-elements of a successful infomercial?

For starters, it should include the five Ws: Who, Why, What, When, Where, and the big H: How.

Who: A little history on the dealership, founder and principals. Maybe a few seconds of interesting footage from the dealership’s early days and some of the earliest models sold.

Why: Why are we running this program? (We want to sell you a car, of course!) We want you to know a little about us, what we stand for, our unique and distinctive advantages and benefits of doing business with us.

What: Yes, a dealership of course, but we’re actually more than that. We’re a full- service transportation portal. We not only sell vehicles, we service them in this state of the art facility featuring the latest and greatest diagnostic technology. We stock genuine factory authorized parts. Our customizing shop has the latest and greatest wheels, audio equipment, safe, comfort and convenience accessories. (By the way, have you heard about our incredible guaranteed best-deal tire offer?) Infomercials can show paint-booths, service waiting areas with free Wi-fi, conference rooms available for community meetings and the list goes on as long as your offerings and imagination.

When: Never hurts to talk about your extremely convenient sales and service days and hours, or the fact that browsing can take place 24/7 at your digital showroom.

Where: You may be a lot more convenient to a segment of potential customer base than they ever imagined! It sure is a lot easier to find you when you show a nice 3-D map on screen, along with address, distance from key addresses and points of interest.

How: Glad you asked. Right here on the screen you’ll see our toll free numbers (in fact we’re going to leave these up on the screen for several minutes) for both sales and service. You can also text or e-mail for more information or just visit our 24/7 digital showroom to browse our inventory, get an instance price quote, fill out your credit application, value your trade, or get the research information you’re looking for on gas mileage, safety, warranty, etc.

You may want to produce a full half-hour infomercial (28.5 minutes) that can be easily edited down to a 15-minute and a five-minute version.

You can run this infomercial on network television channels, cable, on ‘YouTube’ or streamed from your own website. You might be shocked to find out how inexpensive full half hour blocks of time can be on major networks at attractive times on the weekend.

What does it cost?

You can produce a professional half-hour infomercial for as little as $5,000 or as much $20,000 (or more if you want…most videographers and production houses will not set a limit on the high side). With today’s digital editing, it’s much easier to structure and “build” video programming in a modular fashion which allows “freshening/updating” at a reasonable cost. For instance, you might produce several modules on the company “history”, facilities, location, etc., and integrate different opening, closing and insert modules such as a featured model or vehicle segment each week.

Some infomercials are produced with the same “breaks” as regular television shows to insert dealership or other advertising at the breaks. You might have to negotiate with the television station as some have strict rules about “brokering” time, especially to existing station clients. But times are changing and there is a greater creative flexibility in these types of arrangements than ever before.

Devin Robinson, director of production at Sound and Motion Automotive Productions says costs can be kept down by doing advanced outlines of the proposed program and assembling as much information as possible to speed the process. “Often a dealership can make arrangements with customers for testimonial shoots well in advance of the actual production,” says Robinson. “This saves a lot of time (and money) by a production crew.” Sound and Motion has done a number of program length automotive video projects over the years and Devin has agreed to share an “Infomercial Step by Step” outline that may be helpful in your consideration of such a project. If you’d like a free copy, just e-mail me here at Dealer magazine: jboldebook@dealer-communications.com.

If you’re looking for ways to balance your “share of market” messaging with “share of mind” retention that keeps customers focused on your brand, both short and long-term, consider putting the power of a brand building video infomercial to work for you.

In this digital marketing era, why do old-fashioned grease pens, die-cut decals and paper hangtags used to mark vehicles still clutter your inventory?

You might spend millions on facilities upgrades only to have outdated marking and marketing devices distracting the presentation of vehicles on your lot. This has to change and, fortunately, a new idea has blown into town.

The first-ever app for creating highly customized, automated windshield markings and marketing presentations is here. This next-generation windshield-marketing tool helps car dealers add potent zip and sizzle to vehicle remarketing. This tool helps dealers quickly create:

• Window glass-adhesive, dealer-brand-specific stickers printed in-house
• QR-scannable and SMS Short code-accessible stickers that add dynamic presentation depth to stickers
• Stronger first impressions that attract more shoppers
• Influential stickers that feature not only vehicle specifications and warranty balance information, but also was/is pricing, payment/down payment figures, and specials coupons and other incentives, and calls to action to influence buyers

Not only do modern window-glass marking tools like this replace older marking methods, they also eliminate payroll costs for the time to prep even one car.

This app help you meet the customer’s ZMOT on the lot. The acronym ZMOT, meaning the Zero Moment of Truth, is aging fast, but the idea is still fresh and potent. Your marketing must be present when a customer chooses to shop for your product. These new tech window stickers help do that as customers walk your lot. They help put you at customers’ ZMOT for making buying decisions, especially when your associates are tied up with other customers or the shopper browses after hours.

Since then, the online car-buying revolution has blown past all early expectations. Eighty percent of buyers research online before their next car purchase. With such a profound statistic, it is mandatory that dealers have a comprehensive, well-thought-out online presence.

Online usage among car shoppers has proven how desperately they desired an easier, less stressful path to ownership.  Many dealers now realize the efficiencies of online versus traditional marketing, and have reallocated advertising dollars to reduce expenses and reach more potential sales.

So here is the question: How far have you progressed in cost saving and customer satisfaction?

Dealers have transitioned a lot of customer acquisition efforts online. They have a website and solid Internet marketing plan. Additionally, dealers maximize online visibility by continually\ refining their inventory-merchandising formula, social media plan of attack and reputation management procedure. To ensure that dealers continue to be seen, heard, remembered and easy-to-reach, a person or department handles incoming and outgoing responses to consumers.  All of these “nuts and bolts” are essential to operate more efficiently.

But what about the people aspect? When was the last time you as a dealer re-evaluated, redesigned and blueprinted your customer follow-up process, ensuring maximized consumer responses and conversation?

Dealers can have the greatest online presence, but how many sales are falling through the cracks due to response time, quality and long-term follow up that have lacked attention? Negative consumer feedback and low-closing rates dictate that there is room for improvement. Dealers must ask themselves regularly “are our sales numbers reflective of our online marking efforts?” If not and there is a looming concern over marketing investment, leads generated and sales, then dealers must take the time to identify where potential sales are imploding.

Points to consider: Is it our response time? Is it our response quality? Is it our phone and appointment-setting skills? Is our overall sales follow-up process undefined, undocumented or murky?

Dealers must have a standard, trackable process allowing them to see where the kinks in the sales process lie.

Take time to go through all of the above and know that the dealership process delivers the results the dealer and customer are looking for – sales and satisfaction.

Many recognize that their true passion might not be the back-and-forth, face-to-face, or peer-to-peer selling that goes along with the title “Internet Sales Manager,” but it is the new digital marketing initiatives that intrigue them. This is the common metamorphosis that many ISMs go through. They recognize their desire is the digital and not the Internet sale. And therein lies the problem.

Many dealerships and executive managers don’t yet understand the value of having a full-time digital liaison. They can’t always track the results, can’t measure the ROI, and therefore can’t quantify the payroll expense. These dealerships feel that the little things you do here and there to improve the online presence of the store are plenty and the main job of the ISM should be to focus on getting customers in the door and selling them vehicles. Their beliefs are both right and wrong.

Understand that they are correct on one main point… they hired someone for a specific job (as Internet manager…to respond to leads and sell cars). Sure, maybe the ISM had a couple of digital duties assigned to them such as keeping the website updated, CRM running smoothly, and inventory fresh. However, if an ISM has been in the game for at least three to four years, they must realize that they were hired initially for something the manager could quantify.

Where management may be wrong, though, is thinking there is not a need for a digital position in today’s dealership. Seasoned Internet professionals know that there is a big need… but it isn’t what they brought the individual on for initially. If an ISM has been managing leads, calls and customers for years, I understand the grind that it can take and the open air that a digital marketing role may bring them. It just may not be what is in store for that particular ISM. Some will work in a progressive store where ownership sees the writing on the wall and takes the leap to reward their proven ISM with a digital-focused position. Others won’t see the light and will keep their ISM in the position they originally hired them for. The position they understand and can evaluate easier.

So if you are an Internet sales manager, here are a few different steps you can take:
1) Do your job. Do everything asked of you on your job description and do it extremely well. Don’t dedicate work hours to more interesting tasks. Bust your butt at what you were paid to do and in your off-hours, do what you love. Digitize your dealership up and down in your off-hours, document your measures and track the store’s growth. Maybe then you can prove yourself in one position, but quantify the second position based on the extra-hours of work.

2) Lay out a detailed job description for the position you want and give them expected growth estimates on what they could achieve (financially) from your position. Then present the importance of the store’s digital development to ownership.
(There are caveats to this one. If you aren’t succeeding at what they hired your for, you don’t have a leg to stand on when asking for a new role. Also, if you think a dealer sees the value of a social media manager as much as someone responsible for personally moving 14-16 cars a month out of their store, you are mistaken. Understand that, as important as you believe the position may be in the future, you likely won’t be able to deliver same sale results in your new position. Lastly, have a replacement for your current position in mind and a training program prepared for them if they do indeed give you the new position. Otherwise, if there is no one to take your place when you take on the new role, and that department slips, they’ll blame you and then just move you back into the previous role. And that will have been your only shot.)

3) Move on. As the Internet evolves, more and more dealers are recognizing the glaring need for a digital-minded executive to help cross these rivers. If it isn’t your dealership, maybe it is another close by that sees the value in this role. Just understand that it might not be you. You have the majority of your experience as a lead-handler and sales manager. This is a major need for dealers everywhere and you may be typecast in that role for a while. Many dealers hiring for digital are looking for someone from outside the industry to give a fresh perspective. Don’t take offense to this. It is just one mindset. Keep looking and you’ll find a place that values the position you seek.

The metamorphosis from Internet sales manager to digital media specialist for a dealership is one commonly desired. Countless Internet managers feel this way. As a matter of fact, I tend to believe that any ISM who has been performing their job well for over five years would relish the opportunity to take on a full-blown digital position. If you are a general manager or owner reading this, and you value your current ISM, ask them their long-term goals. If they talk about controlling more digital initiatives for your store, consider a new position for them, or someone else may take them away and give them the role they want.

A change of pace is nice, but realize that it isn’t always necessary. At least that is what many dealer operators believe. It is up to the ISM to prove the purpose of the new position first, but they shouldn’t lose sight of their core responsibilities and what they were originally hired to do. Over time, through evolution, all ISM positions will incorporate digital. It is just up to the Internet sales manager and dealership operator as to when that dramatic shift takes place.

Defining “in your face” is the key to success in this strategy.

According to www.thefreedictionary.com, in your face is a slang expression suggesting aggressive, confrontational, provocative posturing. In the Collins English Dictionary, the definition is “blatantly aggressive, having or showing determination and energetic pursuit of your ends.”

The digital world has tried to capture the essence of in your face with shocking hooks in massive typeface, interactive banners exploding across the screen dominating all other information, often delegating the searched matter to deep grayscales until the tiny “x” in the corner or the “skip this message” is clicked.

Broadcast ad wizards try to get “in the face” of viewers/listeners with insults, innuendos and gutter language having absolutely no connection to the target message other than a hope that the shock value will excite and sustain potential customer attention to commercial message attached.

Rather than focusing on what’s right, wrong or inconclusive about the “in-your-face” concept, let me share a few examples of what actually is working in this category.

Lead with negatives. While that sounds counter-intuitive to everything we”ve learned in marketing 101, leading with a negative can be an effective hook in appealing to customers dissatisfied with prior or existing product/service relationships. Typical negative lead-ins in the automobile business might be:

“Sick and tired of the doubletalk and games most dealers play?”

“Did you get gouged the last time you bought a car?”

“Do car dealers lie just to get you in the door?”

(Starts with a few seconds of sped-up disclaimer) “What is that garbled, mumbo jumbo all about anyway?”

Leading with a negative in a sarcastic, cynical tone can gain empathetic emotion suggesting you understand the frustration of previous disappointments. The lead should be short, serious and to the point. Where a lot of ad folks mess up with this concept is taking it too far. Don’t fill your ad space/time with constant back and forth negative/positive comparisons. Illustrate the idea then move to the counter experience of what you have to offer.

Example:

“Are you sick and tired of the numbers game some dealers like to play? You see a vehicle advertised for $179.00 a month, then when you get to the dealership, you find out you need a college degree, military experience, and four children to quality for the offer! Maybe that’s why Tom Smith is selling so many Chevys! What you see is what you get! For instance, this week we have five new Chevy Luminas with a payment of only $179 a month with only $1,999 cash or trade equity with 60 month financing at 5.9 annual percentage rate on credit approval by GMAC with a score of 600 or higher. That payment includes everything! Even tax. $179 a month. And by the way, if you’re waiting for all that high-speed garble you hear at the end of most ads, we don’t have to play that game. By the way…we have five Luminas at this payment! Just pick out your color! $179 a month! Tom Smith Chevy makes it easy.”

Street talk. In the age of text messaging and abbreviated conversations, “in-your-face” can simply be an appeal with less structured grammar. This doesn’t mean you should talk like a street hoodlum with a wise-guy accent, it just means communicating on a level your intended audience relates to. Hint: recording actual customer experience, verbatim works extremely well. A number of dealerships now keep pro-video cams and microphones handy to capture real-time responses at time of sale and delivery.

Example: “That’s it, man. That’s all I can afford! Matt Jones of Beantown gave our saleslady Sarah the bottom line. Twenty minutes later, while Matt was having a Starbucks down the street he got a text from Sarah. ‘Got it done. Get your keys.’ That’s how simple buying a car at Bellows Ford can be. You tell us the deal. Tell us what you want to put down. Tell us what you want the payment to be. Then watch how fast we go to work for you. A car dealer that actually listens to the customer? Shut up! Get started with a text to dealme@54467 or fill out your credit app right now at bellows.com. Stop with the games. Start with the dealer who listens…and then gets it done your way. Check our Facebook page to see what real customers are saying. Bellows Ford. Words out: No baloney. Less bread. And we deliver!”

Friendly advice. How would you recommend a car dealer to a friend? You wouldn’t say, “For a deal that can’t be beat you need to visit Midtown Motors, home of service satisfaction.” You’d probably say something like… “No car dealer is perfect, but these people are about as close to that as I’ve ever found.” Here is a paraphrased example of one dealer’s very successful campaign with a first-person format that has been running for almost 20 years:

Example: “Hi, Ed Parker here for Parker Motors. Recently I asked several of our repeat customers what brings them back again and again. Frankly, I was a little surprised. I didn’t hear: ‘the best deal’ or ‘the lowest price’ or ‘no money down’ even though I’d like to think we offer all of those things. What I did hear was friends telling me things like ‘you treat me like family Ed!’ and ‘you fixed my transmission even though the warranty had run out.’ and ‘I don’t know if there’s a lower price out there, but as long as you’re here, I’m doing business with you.’ When my dad started this business almost 60 years ago he gave me some good advice. Take care of your customers. Don’t try to retire on every deal. Always think of ways to exceed our customer’s expectations. Those aren’t slogans, those are the words we live by. If you see a car with our name on the license plate, ask the owner why they bought here. They’ll probably say it better than me. Thank you for making us what we are today at Parker Motors in Hillside. And if you’ve never been here, we’ve love the opportunity to earn your business!”

In your face advertising doesn’t have to be obtrusive, aggressive or vulgar. It can be provocative. Maybe even confrontational. Most importantly, it should reflect reality. It helps if there are consistent unique hooks for brand definition in your marketplace.

Some of you may remember the classic oldies hit: “Tell it like it is.” In a nutshell, that’s the primary objective of in your face advertising.

The good news is, location doesn’t have to be a problem. If you know where your customers are but you’re not getting the amount of leads you’d like from those locations, there are a few things that you can do:

1) Work with your independent lead provider to come up with a custom, geo-targeted territory that will produce leads from the areas in which your customers live. Drawing a radius around your dealership is not always the best marketing strategy; especially if there’s a geographical obstacle like a river or mountain near you. This is also a major advantage that an independent provider can give you over your OEM; with independent lead providers, you are not restricted in the areas that you can target!

2) In every single e-mail template or phone call, give customers a reason to visit you. Tell your brand story. Does your service department have a great reputation and good user reviews? Tell that story. Are your sales people friendly and honest? Tell that story. Is your dealership involved in your community and does it support local charities or the Little League team? Tell that story. Customers will drive out of their way to shop somewhere if they feel good about the people, the store, the reputation, or the product.

3) Consider an incentive marketing program. Have you ever received a gift card for a restaurant or retail outlet? Chances are you’ve redeemed it, even if you had to drive across town to a place you normally don’t frequent. Gift cards provide real incentive for customers, and they will drive right past a same-brand dealership in order to redeem them at your store. Yet the nominal amounts are not incentive enough to attract people who aren’t in the market for a vehicle. Incentive marketing programs are producing great results for many dealers, and may be worth trying.

Is location a challenge for your store? What other best practices or tips do you have for attracting customers?

# # #

In the U.S., 90 percent of mobile users have used a smartphone to search or look up local information, according to the study Global Mobile Research: The Smartphone User & The Mobile Marketer  conducted by Ipsos GmbH and TNS Infratest for Google. In addition, 87 percent of those searching took action after performing a local search.

Here are five tips to expand your profile to get the most out of search engine optimization and help your customers make an informed decision in their choice of dealership.

1. Service areas and location settings: Help potential customers learn about your business by defining the geographic areas that you serve. If you have more than one physical location, make sure to create a profile for each location.
2. Hours of operation: Select your hours of operation using the drop-down menus.
3. Payment options: Select the checkboxes next to the payment methods that the dealership accepts.
4. Photos: You can add up to 10 photos to your listing. Move beyond product photos and show potential customers the people and satisfied customers behind your dealership. Product photos can be found almost anywhere, but when you put a human touch to them, people will take notice.
5. Videos: Up to five videos can be added to your listing. To add a video, simply enter the URL of a video on YouTube. Use videos that showcase the people behind the dealership – give customers a feel for what they’ll experience at the dealership.

After you have all of the options filled out to their fullest extent, make it a habit to check on your account in regular intervals. Google Places provides some metrics, such as the top search queries that led to your listing and how many times viewers clicked through to your website.

With a few additions, you can have a robust Google Places profile that provides potential customers a feel for your business and enough information to entice them to find out more.

Your Internet sales manager takes a coffee break or signs off for the night and already the competition’s leapfrogged his or her efforts to grab eyeballs for your online inventory.

Heck, even during the day when live staff is in their brick and mortar seats, customers walk in and walk out of your digital showroom unnoticed.

Because no sales associates work your online inventory listings or dealer website, ups there never encounter a single soul to answer their questions. No one’s there to help prequalify them for financing or point out your dealership’s unique selling propositions.

What you need is a just one slaphappy sales associate who doesn’t care what time of day or night duty calls. Fortunately, in the digital world just such a loyal, hard-working employee is waiting for your call down at the virtual employment office.

With a silent sales rep on duty 24-hours a day, through every long night, over every holiday and whether you have the sniffles or not, no visitors to your online inventory will ever again wander your virtual lot alone.

We’re still working on the “may I get you a cup of coffee” functionality, but it’s coming!

Not only is this associate on hand to greet and guide, but this reliable employee automatically keeps your virtual showroom updated and fresh. Silent sales rep does so by adding vehicle images as instructed to each vehicle in your online inventory.

In other words, your online inventory is always fresh, attractive and competitively priced.

Go ahead, play another round. Come in late. No worry; silent sales rep is with your virtual ups. Silent sales rep is highlighting the benefits of your loyalty program, promoting this week’s specials, talking up your high customer satisfaction and reminding shoppers about your free rotation and tire inspection.

With silent sales rep on the job, so much can change for the good in a few hours in the digital showroom.

The reason that I bring this up is that Brad’s dad proudly paid more than $600 for their television set with remote – despite the fact that the screen measured less than 23 inches and the picture quality was still dependent on the set-top rabbit ears. Today, a 23″ LED HDTV can be yours for under $160. More than the difference in cost, today’s 23” TV is lighter, uses less energy, has a better picture, has the capability to display more channels, comes with stereo sound and has a multi-function remote. Plus, let’s not forget that $600 in 1978 would be equal to more than $2,000 today.

In short: technological advances in electronics have resulted in televisions that provide better performance and quality at a much lower price. The question for you is simple: is the same true for the technology-impacted products you buy for your dealership?

Let’s start with costs…

Has your overall technology spend per vehicle sold decreased over the past twenty years? How about what you spend on advertising?

The Internet brought with it the promise of lower overall marketing costs, yet according to NADA, dealers continue to spend several hundred dollars per vehicle on advertising. In fact, the marketing cost per new vehicle sold has increased by more than 70% since 2000 – despite the move from traditional to digital.

Email is cheaper than direct mail. Banner ads are cheaper than billboards. Websites are cheaper than real estate. Given all these digital means for marketing and the shift from traditional, why are dealers still spending so much more per car today? I think the answer to that is two-fold: first, many dealers didn’t fully shift all of their spending to digital – they added digital marketing to their overall spend; and second, dealers continue to overbuy marketing that doesn’t drive sales. The old adage of “fifty percent of my advertising is working; I just don’t know which half” still holds true today; though fifty percent now represents a much larger number.

What about your DMS costs? Have these decreased over the past twenty years? In 1992, a personal computer like the IBM PS/2 with 4 MB of RAM and a 160 MB hard drive sold for $5,995 (without a monitor, of course; for that you had to add $950 to get the 15” model). Today, you can get an all-in-one desktop computer with 1,000 times more RAM and 4,000 times more hard drive space for under $600.

Now, while I don’t expect that your overall DMS costs should have decreased by the 91% that this PC example shows, I certainly expect that what you pay for the hardware itself should reflect this. Additionally, while your DMS software can and should provide more utility today that it provided in 1992, those costs should have decreased relative to everything else you buy. This, of course, begs the question: have these expenses decreased? If they haven’t, then your dealership is not gaining the cost benefits that technological advances bring to every other business.

What about utilization?

Having technologically advanced products is one thing; actually using them is another. One of the hardest ideas for me to wrap my head around (especially given the current recession) is why any business would pay for something and then never use it. With underutilization, you not only fail to reap any of the benefits that new technologies bring, you really are just wasting money.

What do I mean by underutilization? Well, if you’re an average dealer, then probably some of what you’re paying for from your DMS or CRM provider(s) is going unused in your store. For many dealers, this might specifically mean that you’re paying for a DMS shop capacity planning module that’s intended to help you maximize your billable hours, but your service advisors are still using a pen and paper to schedule customer repairs. Additionally, underutilization might be something as common as buying an expensive CRM tool that can help you manage customer relationships across the entire store, though using it solely for your Internet team to manage inbound email leads. In either scenario you are wasting money and losing revenue since the unused tools were created to help you maximize revenue with minimal effort.

Of course, underutilization issues don’t just affect DMS and CRM installations, but also simple and often overlooked technology-driven marketing like your website’s specials pages, vehicle comments on AutoTrader.com, or the number of images you display of your used inventory. When your team fails to exploit every possible digital advertising medium, you’re missing great opportunities to stand out, drive leads and increase sales.

Are you overbuying?

I discovered the other day that there are plenty of dealers who (believe it or not) are still overbuying. That is, they are paying multiple vendors for the same or similar product. I was training a large group of dealers, and during a break a dealer principal approached me to let me know she had just completed a technology audit on her dealership and found four CRM tools that all did essentially the same thing. The monthly costs for these four ranged from about $500 to over $2,000; yet as this dealer discovered, there was no correlation between price and quality (or features or ease of use).

If this is happening at your dealership, you’re in luck: this is an easy one to fix, though it probably should have been addressed a couple of years ago (during the height of the recession).

The dealer principal’s technology audit showed that she could drop three of the four CRM tools, buy a modestly-priced upgrade for the one she was keeping, and save over $3,500 a month. After the audit, she conducted a post mortem that uncovered four different managers had championed the four different tools for four very different reasons. Ultimately, had someone in the dealership been responsible for all technology purchases, I doubt they would have found themselves with four CRM tools that created this much redundancy.

What does accountability look like?

Not too many years ago, a smart general manager just had to mosey over to the desk and peer at the log for a couple of seconds to see how the day was going. With just a quick glance, he could get an overall sense of whether or not the dealership was maximizing its opportunities with floor ups so far that day. By spending just a couple more minutes studying the desk log, the GM would know exactly which salespeople were successfully following the road to the sale and which ones were not. For those salespeople who were falling short, the good GMs would provide coaching and/or ensure that their desk managers were holding everyone accountable.

Today, because of technological advances, the desk log should be electronic and can include information on floor ups, phone ups, Internet ups, be-backs, appointments and even current and future activities due for all of the above. With all of this additional information at their fingertips, this must mean that managers are experts at providing coaching and holding folks accountable today… If only.

Even more maddening to me than the thought of a dealership purchasing redundant technologies, is the concept that there are managers out there who cannot hold their teams accountable because they steadfastly refuse to fully use the tools and reporting that is literally at their fingertips. This is not the same as underutilization, where you forgo an opportunity to use something that you’re paying for (like shop capacity planning). This, you see, goes to the heart of accountability and execution – and your managers are giving it lip service (at best).

One of the biggest areas of opportunity I see again and again in dealerships today concerns managing activities and results more efficiently using technology. From simply using the reporting that you already have available, to making informed and meaningful decisions based on the data in your CRM and DMS; general managers can instantly go from being clueless about what happens in their stores to seeing and knowing all. If there was one thing that every successful general manager whom I’ve ever met has in common, it is that they know everything that is going on in their stores at any given moment. In the past, this meant lots of walking around and engaging everyone; today it might mean just pulling up the electronic desk log on their iPad.

Brad’s dad’s TV…

Part of the reason we don’t take full advantage of technology in our stores today likely comes from a combination of a fear of technology and a simple lack of understanding of how these tools can help us make more money. The reason that a GM studied the paper desk log years ago is because the generation before him did the same thing. Your service advisors are more comfortable writing down their appointments than they are using a shop capacity planning module because it’s the way they’ve always done it (and the way it was done by the generation who preceded them).

While I expect the next generation of leaders in our industry to fully embrace technological advances as a way to more efficiently drive down costs and increases revenues; the need is already upon us, and your current managers need to ensure everyone (especially themselves) is taking full advantage of all that you’re currently buying. Advances in technology are great, but if your team is spending more money to be less efficient and sell fewer cars, then they’re missing the advantages that technology brings to all other industries.

Brad’s dad wasn’t a jetsetter or even a first-adopter, but he enjoyed sitting in his recliner and he didn’t like getting up from it “to change the damn channel,” as he put it. He spent his money wisely and brought efficiencies into his life by fully utilizing the technological advances of the day. Interestingly, Brad’s living room TV would never have been updated to the fancy remote model if not for the fact that Brad’s younger sister became a cheerleader in high school. It seemed she was beginning to spend so much time away from home that Brad’s dad no longer had anyone around to get up and change the channel for him.

In other words, there was something in it for Brad’s dad to upgrade his television. Until your team finds something in it for them to become proficient with your technologies, they’ll continue to have their daughters changing channels for them.

Good selling!