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DrivingSales Executive Summit: Learning Over Listening

One of the things we're most passionate about is education. Above anything else, education moves businesses forward. You can sell them all day long, and most vendors would given the chance, but until education (and support) is part of the equation there is no momentum.

The DrivingSales Executive Summit has set itself apart from other conferences since its inception in 2009 and continues to do so today. This year's lineup of keynotes is incredibly impressive and the team at DrivingSales has set the bar higher once again. However the magic is in the breakouts, along with the innovation sessions, where dealership staff in attendance get to break out their notebooks, tablets and other note-taking technology and build executable strategies.

Last year's DSES delivered some of the most creative and independent means for dealers to lead their markets with digital marketing strategies. One of those sessions was Gary Sanders of Stevinson Lexus of Lakewood (Denver, CO) talking about what he and his dealership did to better set the stage for customers looking at their inventory online and to direct how conversations and conversions would take place.

Simply put, businesses innovating trumps those who simply copy and in today's market it is essential to win. It all starts with the ideas and strategies. As simple as this sounds, most sessions I've attended at the breath of events around the industry center around "you need to be doing this" rather than "this is how you do this".

Come to the DrivingSales Executive Summit in three weeks with an open mind, it will change your business. Yes, you'll be able to learn more than simply listening…

 

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

You can participate (read: actually participate) in the DSES session that Joe Webb and I share on Tuesday, October 23 at 3:55-4:40p Click here for the DSES agenda 
Remember to use code IMACS12 when regsitering for DSES

It’s That Time Of The Year: A Legacy Or 2 Steps Forward, 20 Years Back

Confernce season! You're about to experience record-setting attendance, more technology than will choke a horse, speaker after speaker, keynote after keynote and talk about how 2012 should be your year to embrace it all. Oh, and the budgets! Take here, put there and add everywhere that starts with digital. Whew, welcome to the conference season.

This is the time of the year that makes the chasm between doers and don't doers greater, creates the delta between those who practice and those who pretend and allows those who want, a battle cry. But it's no guarantee of success. Recently IM@CS experienced its fifth pre-term cancellation in the past four plus years. What happened? One person leaving. One really good, very focused, and awake individual…but still one person. It was an experience that you might call two steps forward, 20 years back. There is no focus on the web there now.

Remember that staying on top of everything that's changing and relevant takes time, attention, questions, resources and commitment. When that one person, or in some cases few people, don't do the work for the many or depart the dealership, what happens? Where is the commitment that is required to truly be successful? It's not the ideas or initial execution that makes the difference, it is the promise to maintain for the long term. It may even include an expectation for excellence and signifiacnt cost. Every individual that has applied a successful strategy for web-based results in their dealership or group has been doing so for a while. In some cases, a very long while. These are experiences that you might call building a legacy.

So take heed. Commit to what comes after the events. Make a differnce starting with the decision to go. The cost of attending an event like the DrivingSales Executive Summit is one of the smallest you'll ever make. Most dealers spend more on coffee or shuttling customers to the local mall in a month. And those costs don't grow your business anywhere close to the amount that a digital investment will.

A legacy starts with a unbending determination to see things through, not giving up at the first sign of resistence or willing to settle for mediocre. And sitting down listening to someone telling you what you should do versus talking with someone about how to do it is a massive difference. Today it seems as though more dealers are willing to settle for second rate and not executing a plan over doing the work it takes to build to the point of success and making sure everyone is on board. Last time we checked, an engine doesn't run without fuel and a stuck cylinder means problems. Always move forward. Even fail forward. But move forward.

Yes, it's that time of the year again. But it's always that time of the year. The battles are won and the vision grows every day in the trenches. Press forward with a commitment to you, your business, your staff, your product and ultimately your customers. Remember that is why we do what we do. Refuse to take the backward steps that more businesses seem to do today. Don't compromise. Because you're better off doing it or quitting it. Are you in it to quit it?

And lastly, with a heavy heart for the loss we experienced today, consider some of the words that Steve Jobs has shared and how it relates to us:

“But it’s a disservice to constantly put things in this radical new light — that it’s going to change everything. Things don’t have to change the world to be important.”

“That’s been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

“Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.”

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

So are you ready for what needs to take place after conference season? We'd like to hear from those who are….

 

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

Are We Just Digital Lemmings?

(Cue the Madonna music) “You know that we are living in a digital world and I’m an automotive digital nerd…” Can you see it now? The musical hit of the automotive digital conference season! Or possibly one more thing that keeps a dealer from making the commitment he or she needs to make that will actually do something great for their business.

Whether acknowledged or not, most of us in the automotive digital realm must have some kind of recessive gene or a predisposition for suffering. But are we the ones making it better or worse? Remember that what drives someone to change is either opportunity or fear. Fight or flight. Survival or death. Being as how we can’t make decisions for others, let alone many times for ourselves, a small percentage of the industry are lining up on a regular basis, strapping our brass cojones on and taking the plunge.

2011 has been an amazing voyage so far and the last four months appear to be no different. If anything, we may experience the dizzying effect of greater immersion. So are we just digital lemmings or do we have a definitive purpose supported by concrete goals? Is our purpose so clear that a dealer can understand both potential benefit and potential loss within 30 minutes?

Let’s ask ourselves just as wide ranging a question as we’d ask a vendor:

“How do we know what value we bring?” Especially since many of the tangibles are so obscure to start with that the ability to define a “good job” takes months or longer.

“How can we define, in lay terms, what we’re attempting to do so that our clients can take over the efforts?” Especially since many times we don’t even understand completely what we’re doing nor expecting.

“How does what we are doing provide the opportunity to create change?” Especially since setting expectations in a “what’s in it for me” environment is at best difficult.

It’s great to participate in an exciting and extremely dynamic part of our business. For many, it has proven immensely successful and profitable. We can all agree that the higher the risk, the higher the reward. At the same time there are days (or longer periods) that can easily qualify as a “loss”.

Being as how this will be read by the leading edge of the force in the automotive digital world, we don’t need to excuse ourselves. But maybe, just maybe, we need to explain ourselves. There is such a high level of blind trust that goes on with relatively significant investments, that defining what we do and don’t do along with what we’re attempting to do and attempting not to do is overdue. There is also a need to be more willing to call bullshit in an accountable, cooperative way.

Remember that if something sounds too good to be true, yes even at a 20 Group meeting, it likely is. It takes a lot to simply take a leap of faith. It’s something entirely different for a vendor to take a client over the edge. No buses or trains here…no company is perfect. Just try not to come off that way (free $100 advice).

So can we lead an industry that’s mostly in the dark collectively? Some of us surely hope so. What’s coming up with three amazing events in Las Vegas in October sure sounds like the right opportunity. Remember that the total amount of people in attendance will likely represent less than 0.001% of the retail industry, OEM and agency staff (less than 1% of just dealer staff). So we need to be incredible. We need to be prepared. We need to show and provide the best information. We need to listen to and respond to the questions and admit when we don’t have an answer. We need to show the way and not just talk about it.

So let’s kick the lemming routine and make the leap a big but manageable step. Let’s give everyone that wants it the secret sauce. Let’s make sure that nobody goes home with a nagging question. Let’s do what is right as if the entire automotive industry depended on it.

And by the way, the entire automotive industry does depend on it….

 

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

Gut Check: What Are We Doing? Oh Yeah, Measuring!

Overstated? Maybe….but likely not. What are we doing? If we go by the numbers, and they're estimated but well known, we've got the second largest employer in the Untied States behind our back. The automotive industry is massive, even if you don't consider the associated businesses it keeps thriving. So, let's say we have a few million directly employed in the car biz (which is likely conservative) and had less than 3,000 in Las Vegas recently for the most important events that actually can move the needle. Pitiful. This week's SEMA show will kill that in attendance. And within the first hour.

What are we doing? So add the OEM eCommerce summits, conferences and events (which represent vendors more typically than push owners and general managers into the uncomfortable zone) and you've got at best a few thousand more that are around the discussions of online marketing, online customers, online retention and online success.

Ignore it at your own willful demise. Attack it like people trying the 72 ounce steak at Big Texan, you might go crazy trying to figure out which end is up. So how do you go down the road somewhere in between the two extremes and still try to maintain that "blocking and tackling" BS mentality that makes ownership and management comfortable? Simple: a plan.

While they are in fact out there, the count of dealers who have a written-down, approved, executable monthly strategy for doing and increasing amount of activities to promote success is likely somewhere around the chance of us having a space program in 2011 that lands us back on the moon. It's on the radar, they're might even be some dollars against it but I will venture a strong guess that it won't happen. That's not quite as disappointing as a dealer that is a few months from increasing their results and market share significantly, and does nothing about it.

Folks, the information is out here. And don't be afraid to ask. Yes, you might have to do some digging through the typical crap: an article on one of the popular automotive communities that doesn't answer your question but does have the "expert's" contact information. Or one of our recent favorites: white papers that will confuse the &^@# out of dealers that also end with a signature block that looks more like a proclamation. (Hint: generally speaking, automotive communities are not the place for white papers. Link to your website from the community website. Better yet, if it's a white paper done in conjunction with a company OUTSIDE of the industry, definitely publish it but keep your post on the communities to the synopsis. Please. Tip: not only that, you get back-links!!!!!!)

There have been fantastic pointers and forecasts about what will happen in the digital/online space for the past two years. Over 95% of the dealers missed or ignored them. Maybe it's time to have 2011 be "The Year Of Great Automotive Listening" (do that will your Movie-Guy voice). No matter what, this is the year of honest measurement, in our opinion.

So here's a few places to go to get your feet wet (or immersed) in measurement:

  1. Google.com (Analytics, Trends, Insights, Alerts, Webmaster tools, etc)
    A. If you've never used the above, start with going to Google and entering "links:www.YOURDEALERSHIPWEBSITE.com" or "site:www.YOURDEALERSHIPWEBSITE.com" and see what Google sees!
  2. Hubspot.com (Website grader, Facebook grader, Twitter grader, PR grader, etc)
    A. If you attended DrivingSales Executive Summit, you got more than you need!
  3. SEOmoz.org, Yahoo Site Explorer, etc (Linking and content tools)
  4. Twitalyzer, TwitterCounter, Untweeps, TwitterAnalyzer, etc (amazing tools if you're on Twitter)
  5. FourScore (found this recently for your FourSquare ranking/effectiveness)
  6. Compete, Alexa, etc (even though many dealership sites won't rank, be creative!)

There are so many other great FREE tools available for you to do more than just count on others, like your website company, and actually improve while holding people accountable but too many to list.

It's time for a gut check. How much further can you go down the road mostly (or absolutely) blind to what is essential to grow your business and be able to talk to the main points….without fudging it anymore.

Here's to doing things with more tools than just passion. Here's to knowing what we're doing!

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

What Have You Done For You Lately? (Ooh ooh ooh yeah…)

You're back but your bags (and head) may still be packed from your Las Vegas departure. The whirlwind of powerpoints, data, applications, widgets, speakers, vendors and pitches that opened October 12 with Digital Dealer and ran through DrivingSales Executive Summit at Encore, came to a close mid-day last Friday with the departure of over 1,000 from JD Power's Annual OEM and Ad Agency shindig called Internet Roundtable at Red Rock Resort (where more upfront talks than Internet dealings happen, but let's digress).

So your notebook, FlipCam, voice recorder and brain are packed with thoughts, visions, ideas and goals around everything you heard. But the "back to normal" is so gratifying that you may have not done a cotton-picking-thing since switching off the neon and turning on the flourecents. And besides, it was kind of touching to see that 88-day old unit turn 100 now that you're back (ooops!).

So if you're stuck with not knowing where to start, you didn't leave with goals. If you've got three or four places you want to start at, you may not know what your greatest weaknesses or opportunities are. And if you didn't gather enough information on how to get started and the first steps to take from that high-ranking speaker, call them for a freebie. And you may just want to "x" off that session or conference next year because the value didn't get delivered.

So, what have you done for you lately? (Sorry Janet, it's not about you). It's time to crank that Internet machine thing to the next level, right?! Do yourself a favor and start looking everywhere else but automotive and get your bearings. Why? Because there are Facebook pages selling more Snuggies than your website sells in service. There are blogs feeding more contacts to start-up S-E-O, K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E companies than you get leads from $199-a-month leases. And we have ourselves (and many vendors) to blame.

Start Thursday with a goal to add one task from your volume of Notes 'de Las Vegas and start it. Not Friday, not next week. October 28. Haven't secured your Google Places/Maps location? Do that or learn about it. Haven't secured your Foursquare venue? Have 60 domains you registered a bunch of years ago and one is perfect for a blog? Start it and who cares what it says as long as it says something about what your store is passionate about regarding your customers and the products you sell. But what have you done for you lately?

"Good thing I cook or else we'd starve to death…" How appropriate is that today? Automotive retailers must thank their customers for coming in year after year and driving off in new and pre-owned cars with little more than a smile. It was about the badge, the new product, the incentives and the advertisements. Now it's about you. Matter of fact it always was but the industry lucked out for more than a decade. So what have you done for you lately?

Yes there's half-cooked information all over. Yes, there's "experts" who haven fallen into something that, for obvious reasons, they can't quite explain in an hour on stage. Yes, there's going to be more consolidation in the indsutry which means your ____________ company may become part of another company you're not doing (or don't want to do) business with. But what have you done for you lately?

There are many really good, and some extremely good, tools and providers out there to settle for what someone in your Twenty Group has or what your read in an ad or study. Last week it was amazing to watch the Innovation Cup at the DrivingSales Executive Summit. The "let's never settle for me-too" juices were really flowing there. Put easily, if something can't be verified by a neurtal third party, don't necessarily run away, rather gain more information before making a decision. Chances are you're right that it wasn't a good choice in the first place.

Today you have to be prepared to do something for yourself and stick with it. Even though it's so easy to quit and go back to what you knew. It's also more costly than ever. If you invested the time and money to be around that much addictive behavior for a week or two in Las Vegas, everything you brought back deserves to come to life in your store. That is if you can find your notes among the free schwag of flying monkeys, free model cars, light-up bounding balls, mints, pens, flash drives, logo hats, t-shirts, notepads, shopping bags and fliers for products that are pay-for-it-now-cuase-it's-almost-to-market-so-you-can-be-first (wink, wink).

So what have you done for you lately? Come on, we've got to …….uh, wait….come on…..wait for it…..wait for it……you know you want it…..SELL MORE CARS!

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

DrivingSales Executive Summit…In A Nutshell

 DrivingSales Executive Summit V2.0 hit Encore (Wynn) in Las Vegas last Monday through Wednesday. A few things: attendance doubled last year’s, the start was absolutely electric and the event finished on such a high it left many attendees literally longing for more and feeling like they needed another day. The DSES crew flat out delivered.

Upon walking into the main Encore conference room at 4:00p, it was packed. Charlie Vogelheim emceed once again with his typical style. Jared Hamilton, founder of DrivingSales.com, did a more-than-typically -fast-paced tirade on where the industry is from both his and an opportunity perspective. It was mesmerizing and for more reasons than the picture of the donkey suspended in mid-air. The foundation was set.

Brian Benstock and Sean Wolfington talked about what Paragon Honda and Tier 10 did together to achieve massive results from integrated marketing. Not “let’s do this offline and see if it works on the web” so-called integration but a rarely-executed integration. The cost would strike most dealers, especially Honda dealers, as a shock today but it was a massive undertaking, shaved Paragon’s costs in what would rank as the “wow that’s great” territory and put them solidly on the map as #1. It was impressive.

Then it was time for Scott Monty of Ford (http://www.twitter.com/ScottMonty). As I’ve had the benefit of seeing a good part of the opening of his presentation before, it was crowd watching time. Simply put, Scott had the room wrapped around his finger. It’s amazing to hear about just part of what he, backed by a rare CEO in Alan Mulally, and the social media and marketing teams do at Ford. Day one’s reception at Piero’s was fantastic, the buzz consistent well into the evening.

Day two kicked off with great anticipation and didn’t disappoint. Jeremiah Owyang (http://www.web-strategist.com/blog) piqued the interest of many in the room with volumes of data as well as practical application. Brian Pasch and Erich Miltsch both hit their separate sessions, SEO and location-based services, with great engagement. Eric unveiled his CarZar application (http://www.thecarzar.com) which was definitely the talk over the rest of the conference. Grant Cardone followed with one of his rousing, impassioned pleased from stage about businesses maintaining an “eat or be eaten” mentality.

Three sessions of breakouts, then lunch, and three more rounds covered the rest of day two’s learning. The Facebook session (Albrecht AG and Lebanon FLM) was insightful but seemed to lack engagement with the audience and didn’t answer the “tough questions”. Rafi Hamid’s Enterprise Management presentation may have been a little much for some of the attendees. Fact is all could have, somewhat to completely, restructured their dealerships just from his insight.

Then it was time for the Dealer and Vendor Innovation Cup. What a great way for dealers to participate in what may change the industry next! These are some of the most innovative folks around, not hampered by other company’s offerings or what vendors don’t provide. Some of the substance was leading edge, others more common place. But the desire to execute, and what it took to continue to push the envelope, that was the compelling “meat and potatoes”. eCarList (http://www.ecarlist.com) and Marc McGurren from Jerry Durant Toyota won. Congratulations.

The one thing that continues to strike me after attending eight years of automotive conferences is this: why do we not connect the dots at the event rather than making the attendees do so themselves after the events. DrivingSales Executive Summit would have been the right place to have a Q&A session that allowed those that wanted the extra insight to get going when they returned to their dealerships later in the week. Note to promoters: breakouts, lunch sessions and other quick after-session times plus post-event webinars and curriculum are perfect for that and the speakers should be required to do their part.

Tuesday closed with another packed reception but I’d say the buzz was higher. Yes, there was even a Ralph Paglia sighting! Lots of connecting, introductions and big conversations (small chat was non-existent). It was fun to have a number of Canadians in the room as things change north of the border. The industry there is also changing rapidly and not having felt as steep of an economic decline as the US did, many retailers there are waking up to incredible opportunities for their dealerships. After hours, Sean Wolfington and Brian Pasch greeted some forty plus to their own reception which went on for another four hours plus.

Wednesday saw Dan Zarrella (http://danzarrella.com) put many on their ears and some looking inquisitively with a wide-ranging but hard-hitting session of insight all relevant to search, social, engagement, measurement and more. The accountability and opportunities dealers can create just from his time on stage would be more than a year of gains. Joel Ristuccia of Babson College brought incredible amounts of insight to the subject of change management in the industry, Dale Pollak did one of always rousing, but very up-to-date, admonitions about how dealers must change now and Jared Hamilton closed the event with John Holt of Cobalt Group on stage. Admittedly I missed that session while in the adjoining hall on phone calls and no tweets.

In closing, with definite room to grow and improve (and some more microphones around the audience for the Q&A session after each keynote), DrivingSales Exeuctive Summit was spot on in only its second generation. There was enough positive feedback to likely venture a guess as to how much the third edition would grow. And maybe room for…….

Congratulations to Jared and the entire DSES team for an impressive event!

The Disappointment Your Customers Experience Comes From Within

Let's face it, we're all consumers. Even the highest-paid CEOs in the world have to do it: shop and buy. They will engage a brand, a retailer, a transaction with one expectation in mind: satisfaction. Whether a $4 latte or a $4,000,000 property, there is a process we go through to self-determine the investment of time, research and transaction as well as intended outcome. So if your only measurement is analytics or items sold, you're sorely missing a huge part of what is needed.

Go to the majority of automotive websites, mobile sites, social media and advertising. Ask the average consumer, let alone highly-compensated executive, and you are likely to get an answer you don't like. Why is that? For the most part, we've been buying solutions while being complacent in our happy place: doing what we know and not changing that one bit.

The first layer of measurement was the showroom floor and service drive. Sentiment was shared, while not always freely, in a controlled environment where the impact was mitigated to the most part. That gauge has moved, for the most part, into the most transparent of places: the Internet.

And that is a double-dose of pain. So how do we change what is commonly referred to as one of the least-desired activities (going to a car dealership) that is connected with one of the most accessible of engagements (going to the web)? For starters, do it yourself. Go through your website. As a consumer. Hard as it may be, do it. Take off the dealer hat and pretend you actually need to find something you want. Easily. Quickly. The same way you'd buy an airline ticket on www.yourfavoriteairlinewebsite.com.

Then visit your website on your mobile device. If you are one of more than half the car dealerships in the country, you'll likely see a thumb-sized version of your full website. Disappointed yet? Now hop over to your Blog, if you have one of the best places to build your brand and capture eyeballs online. Because based on your website response, you likely don't offer the image, message, layout and experience you'd like yourself.

Have Facebook and Twitter pages? If not, don't necessarily jump in but if you do, look. What are you saying? Are you just displaying inventory, a feed of random content from somewhere else? Is it representative of what you do your store? Is it, like your CRM, automated? Or is it genuine?

And what about reputation management? While some have embraced it for more than a year or two, the neccessary processes and engagement still don't exist for the most part. And don't get disappointed yourself when you don't have a strategy and are ticked off with what gets displayed online.

Some dealers are starting the next generation of their dealership with consumer engagement. And guess what?! That's perfect. What better input than the people dropping thousands of dollars at your business? Customer advisory boards. Meet the dealership events. Club meets and other non-transactional ways to engage and ask your customers.

The disappointment your customers experience comes from within. And if you don't have a plan to assess, measure, change and improve consistently, the numbers that matter most will go in the least desireable direction.

If you are one of the dealers heading to Las Vegas for Digital Dealer, DrivingSales Executive Summit and JD Power Internet Roundtable, take advantage of the wealth of knowledge. But don't do it simply to compare and buy yourself. Stop. Sit down with other dealers, consultants and outsiders. Take a deep look at what consumers see. Ask the tough questions. Then engage the reps and vendors.

Start delivering online what you say you do in your brick and mortar existence. It's your greatest opportunity.

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

Getting Ready For Digital Dealer And DrivingSales Executive Summit? Here’s Some Tips

Tickets? Check. Hotel? Check. Registration? Check. FlipCam? Check. SmartPhone? Check. A plan to make what you take back with you work? Ummmm. Not checked!

Digital Dealer 9, DrivingSales Excecutive Summit and JD Power Internet Roundtable are right around the corner. Have you mapped out your sessions? Have you made a commitment to have executable items upon your return? Some alerady have planned for success.

So, here some ideas to get ready before you head to Las Vegas in a couple weeks. It might make the investment worth it!