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It’s A Time For Thanksgiving (Automotive Style)

It's that time of the year again…. Well, actually not. Let's be completely honest. It's that one day of the year again. The one day where everyone around the automotivesphere expresses their public thanks: letters from the manufacturers' chief/department executives to their staff, dealers/general managers to their staff, vendors to their staff and maybe, just maybe, expressions of thanks between companies and their staff.

What are you thankful for? The fact that 2012, for the most part, is better than 2011? That the last couple years beats the two before that (and who isn't)? Are we all in a state of fiscal thanks or personal thanks? Who went out to the lot to deeply thank the porter who always takes care of the customers, never takes even a penny from a floor board and smiles as he closes the door for a customer about to leave? A gift certificate for a complimentary 10 pound turkey is not the same as a hearty handshake or chest bump and looking them in the eye and saying "thank you".

Were all of your clients welcome at your store or office simply to talk, network and share a story? The website, CRM, mobile or search marketing vendor contact that always makes things right before the 11th hour…did you write a thank you letter or tell their boss in an email?

You all saw that manufacturer's ad that ran this morning thanking their customers for making the choice to buy their product, right?! Yeah, I just called hell and it hadn't frozen over yet…the ads I see still scream about Curesomethingian leather, diamond-encrusted door handles, and de-magnetized drive control. AS a matter of fact, when is the last time an OEM publicly thanked their customers?

Giving thanks should be a warm-inducing, blush-creating, pit-of-your-stomach humbling experience. At a minimum it should happen more than we all hear "sorry", which for most people has lost it's meaning. But "thank you" shouldn't. And rather than "thanks", make it "thank you" because it actually talks about the person in front of you, or on the phone or that receives the email. Make it about someone else.

So take a moment today (and the following days) to heartily thank the people who make a difference in your business, for your customers and in your life. Thanksgiving is a great day if the thank yous that are giving are complete.

 

OK, now go out and make Black Friday more important and spend all of the money that you're thankful for….

 

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

November 22, 2012 by Gary May 0
You Lost Me At Hello

Leads. Leads. Leads. Lead? Nope, the customer that should be
yours that will buy somewhere else. All the data (little data and it’s more
well-known brothers medium data and big data) says the same thing: people that
submit leads buy. And buy in a well-defined time frame. And buy from…….well,
it doesn’t matter. Most of the time it’s not you.

So what’s the deal? The deal is this: the more leads that
are typically generated deliver fewer customers. Why? Because we can’t change
an industry of salespeople, management, training and manuals before it wants to
shed its rich history of stuffing customers into cars, only going for the low-hanging
fruit and being “busy” which is a crock of bull. Between seemingly insurmountable
amounts of information and customers buying, there is a brick wall. Yes, the
one you keep hitting your heads against; the one that prevents us from being
great and gaining attitudes that push us outside of our comfort zones.

Internet leads are gold. Back in the 1800’s California Gold
Rush a lot of people went broke while a fair number made their riches. Fast
forward to the last fifteen years and, likely for many of the same reasons, a
few are making a killing while most are screaming “bad leads” rather than
actually looking at what the heck is happening in their stores.

Between a dealership’s website and third parties, the
average store can create enough business to sustain at least one person
dedicated to managing “leads” or a floor of great communicators (which everyone
says they are) sharing all of the business. The problem lies at the point where
a response is sent. For the most part, dealerships respond with crap, period.
Invite me into any dealership in the country, I’ll show you mediocre at best
responses within the 30 days period prior and many of them.

So what needs to be done to eliminate losing someone at
hello? Ready…here’s the rocket science: 

  • Read the lead, and most of the time the source
    lead, completely prior to sending a response. Then read it again. Then slow
    down and read it again.
  • The response should include answers to every question or comment provided by the customer and validation for the customer
  • The response should include a qualifying and/or
    a closing question every time. In
    every email. Every time. No matter what. Every time. And if you can’t think of
    one, write a couple and stick it to your monitor or keyboard (would you like assistance with anything else?
    or did you have any other questions right
    now?    )
  • Hit send after you’ve read the email thoroughly,
    ensuring that everything asked by the customer has been addressed, value or
    benefit has been identified, your complete contact information is included and
    that no significant amount of time has elapsed since receiving the
    information/email/response from the customer. Hold it!! Read it again and make
    sure it is understandable and completely
    addresses what the customer wants and needs     without being a Steinbeck.

The reason that most dealerships don’t receive equitable
responses from customers who submit online leads is….we send garbage! If it’s
easier and more rewarding to buy a $25 item from Amazon than a $30,000 car from
your store, shame on you!

Never send an email or pick up the phone (recorded phone
calls demonstrate that we do just as s**tty of a job on the phone as emails)
when (1) you don’t know what you are going to say, (2) don’t address the
customer’s needs, (3) can’t properly invite them into the dealership and (4)
talk/write more than asking questions.

Expectations around online experiences leading to purchase
are increasing. So it doesn’t make sense to miss the mark, then defend yourself
to your GM or GSM with anything other than “you know what, I don’t deserve to
manage your leads”. And by the way, that’s not much of a defense, however at
least it’s honest.

Remember that there is no such thing as a bad lead, just a
crappy response. Yes, there are bogus leads but you’re old enough and smart
enough to sell 20+ cars a month on 100 leads. Yes, you are. Go get ‘em tiger!

Best Practices:
Professional Insight, Powerful Results

November 5, 2012 by Gary May 0
Gary May Participates in Automotive Digest Executive Discussion Round Table

Chuck Parker of Automotive Information Network (Automotive Digest) invited Gary May of IM@CS to join a "state of the indsutry" chat along with Allan Cooper of Cooper Media Group and Charlie Vogelheim of ResponseLogix on January 20, 2012 in Los Angeles. This is the first of a series of roundtables that Automotive Digest in planning on having with industry executives.

We appreicate the opportunity to join the discussion and thank Chuck and AIN for the inclusion!

Automotive Digest Executive Discussion Round Table from Automotive Digest on Vimeo.

February 16, 2012 by Gary May 0
Things That Pissed Us Off In 2010 (Yes, They Pissed You Off, Too!)

We know it, you know it, they know it. Almost everyone knows it. Because if everyone knew it we wouldn't have ben put through it. But we were, you were and they were. Disclaimers: These are not in order of importance. Many companies are being called out, not all. This is a singular perspective.

So here it goes:

1. Automotive marketing overall: Sucked, still sucks, will likely continue to suck.
2. Dealership websites: 1995 called and wants its sites back. Give us a break and some new suppliers!
3. OEMs that don't publish new inventory: Get over it. customers leaving your brand are.
4. Automotive trainers that re-branded as web consultants: A new suit can't cover 1982 style.
5. Reputation management companies: Fudge is brown. So is bull%^&*. Fake customers? Envelope stuffers? Hooters girls? Please leave…
6. Motivational speakers that re-branded as automotive trainers: See line 4.
7. Social media companies: Charging dealers $3,000-5,000 plus per month? Larceny is still a crime.
8. DMS companies: Still make clients sign in blood for 15 year old technology, for 15 years? Nice. FAIL.
9. Website company dashboards: No, use this thing called Google Analytics. Quit fudging numbers. Block dealers' and your IPs for starters!
10. Inventory marketing portals: The luster is long gone. Run or acquire some companies for revenue!
11. Sales reps: Stop selling and start helping. Don't know much so you can't help? Sell elsewhere.
12. Ad agencies (Tier 1): Quit the facade. Traditional doesn't sell. Experiential does. Learn to like social. Get help.
13. Ad agencies (Tier 3): Quit lying to yourselves and your clients…You don't get digital. Get help.
14. CRM companies: If you don't do that, say you don't do that. Otherwise add it for free. Pariahs.
15. Website companies using Flash: 2003 called and wants their websites back. It's called HTML or PHP.
16. Facebook Personal Profiles: Businesses, we've been yelling. Set up pages. Not "friend" profiles!!
17, Social media companies: Setting up APIs and RSS feeds from OEMs is not social. It's plagiarizing.
18. Social media companies: Setting up inventory feeds as posts? If that's social, I'm tall, rich and hot.
19. Traditional media/ad networks still selling to dealers "old school". Shame on you (and your bosses).

Dealers, you're not in the clear either:

1. Hiring any service, including social, as a "pay for it and leave it" service? No such thing. Period!
2. Hiring any company because you "liked the rep when they were at ________ before". Failure…
3. Not taking the time to get educated on new aspects of your business? Hand the keys back to the OEM
4. "Trying" new things?! Sample spoons are for ice cream. Business is for big boys and girls. Just Do It!
5. Cutting your nose to spite your face? Chances are you're too lean. Hire the right people, not resumes.
6. Leaving everything up to the factory (especially some luxury brands). Wake up! It's your business!
7. Believing the you can turn your store's reputation over to an outside company?!?! I've got a bridge…
8. Not flinching on a new $4,000+ service to a company you're already cutting a $15k check to? Dumb.
9. Spending $3,000 on a 3-day conference 3+ times when you can get a month for that?! And get more!!!
10. Spending any money on your business and not taking ownership of the new spend. Why, why, why?
11. Paying any amount of ad money to traditional media and it's not integrated and tracked?! Foolish.

New-age definitions when you don't understand the spend:

CPM: Can't Provide Much
CRM: Can't Remember Much
ILM: Incredibly Lousy Marketing
CSI: Coached Senseless Investment
SSI: Serving Senseless Initiatives
I/O: Incredibly overpriced
OEM: Overlord, Empire, Master
PDI: Petty detailed injustices
Social: Someone outside control incompetently and loosely
IMS: Inventory Means Something
DMS: Decades-old Money-draining (or Mediocre-Moduled) Systems

We could go down the path a long way but here's the simple version of the message: quit doing things old ways, with old thought processes, with old beliefs, with old defenses, with old intentions, with old management. If you want to run a dealership the old way, get stuck in 1964, 1974, 1984, 1994 or 2004. If you want to thrive in this and the coming markets, wake up to the reality that business will not be the same. Even if we sell 17 million new cars again, it'll never be the same.

Some may be able to, by all appearances, just skim along on the surface, mesmerized by everything going on around them and still put up the numbers. For most of the businessmen and businesswomen in the retail part of our industry, it's a deep dive kind of time. Your success depends on you and how you build your business's presence, results, growth and more. Less than 5% of your colleagues are engaged, firing on all cylinders and moving forward in today's market.

There are a lot of things that pissed us off in 2010. And we may never do a post like this again. But somebody needed to do it. This might motivate some, light a fire in others and have some in stitches. No matter what, it's time for moving some more metal. There's not too many ways to do that today.

Are you pissed off enough to do something? We've been helping those that want to do something for the past three years and three months. Are you next?

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

December 7, 2010 by Gary May 7
Don’t Let Social Media Get In The Way Of Your Success With It

We're bringing a petition to DrivingSales Executive Summit, JD Power Internet Roundtable, SEMA and NADA. But you can be first to sign it here and now. The law we're hoping to get passed in the retail automotive industry is "stop calling it social media and start calling it die without it". It's not something you try, experiment with, make efforts toward or the like. At least no more than you do with sales, service, F&I and your P&L. Do more. And stop thinking so much you can't do much.

Sick and tired of consumer communication and engagement, as well as fundamental business improvement, being hawked, pitched and sold by fly-by-night companies (as well as legitimate ones) with getcha-while-you're-looking tactics, it's time to discuss, use and improve platforms no differently than you would want a CRM or website technology used and improved.

Simple question: Do you want to stay in business? Your answer has to be all the way in yes or all of the way out no. There is no in between. Many (not all) companies that have tried to be somewhere in between over the past few years show up today as the many For Lease or Going Out Of Business signs on your daily drive. Don't think for a second that we're saying that had those businesses been in social media that they'd be vibrant and profitable today. Not at all.

But to sit and wait, guess and judge, delay and save or flat out refuse social media as part of your business strategy every day is the fastest path to demise today. Period. Remember that no one aspect of your business is a silver bullet. At the same time remember you can save yourself to death no differently than you can spend yourself to death. You're not "in" Twitter and Facebook. You're (hopefully) in business using a database/contact management system, a series of processes to sell, track and report, and a solid foundation of online media to showcase your business.

Saying "I'll try Facebook for 6 months and see if it works" is the same exact thing as saying "I'll try selling our services for 6 months and see if it works" or "I'll maintain my storefront for 6 months and see how that goes". If you want to see how things go, get committed or get out. If you truly aren't prepared for success in your own business, do it for someone else and leave the tools that professionals use to…a professional.

Blogs, Wikis, Display advertising/SEM, Review sites/reputation management, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google Places and more are tools to be a more effective, yes effective, business. Not a trend-setter, not a groupie, not one of the cool places to hang or any other way of minimizing your way to profit. Can your business survive without being on Facebook? Chances are yes if at least for a short time. Can you survive without the fundamentals that have social media thriving and being "buzz" in mainstream media? Not for one New York minute, to steal a great song title from Don Henley.

So please don't let social media get in the way of your success with it, knowing you'll not experience success without it. Even if you don't set up that Twitter page you've been hemming and hawing about for a year… Oh, and one more thing. If you're a car dealership, don't pay $4,000 plus a month for social media services. That is unless you're getting a cut of the profit.

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

October 17, 2010 by Gary May 1
Branding, Communication and Process For Dummies (AKA All Of Us) In Time For NADA

If education, reinforcement, results and transparency are the benchmarks of success why are we all not more successful than we are right now? More often than not, in our beloved industry, what has been around for a long time is considered as accepted or the norm and what is new is rejected with rare exception. At the end of the day we're branders and communicators entirely and inextricably linked to the success or failure of process. Well, we need a wake up call.

Recently there has been a barrage of articles on everything from social media must do's for car dealers to self-indulgent bantering among dealership consultants, from incessantly republishing authoritative sources to fill pages and drive traffic to kicking dead horses and old ghosts. And who are we kidding? The whole industry has to wake up to new ways of doing business, engaging consumers that control content, delivering more value than flash to dealerships, learning more than preaching and finally…wait for it…stop talking about what you don't understand.

So what's the difference between ignoring technology because management says "you can sell without it", the Barracuda firewall encasing your dealership is controlled by a corporate yes man who thinks that every 10 minutes on Facebook is one unit lost and your so-called vendors swear they're "all over it" and getting passed by like a 911 GT3 in 6th gear? Not much unless you truly desire to be in business and profitable over the next 24 months.

Every piece of real data out there shows the same thing: brand, communication and process control your path. Not advertising. Not high-pressure salesmanship. Not displacing your cranium under the warm sand. Brand is shared. Communication is shared. Process doesn't need to be shared but without it you won't remember where the brand and communication go (even if you've got really good hair, a tan and bling to win over GMs and dealer principals with).

So, when's the last time you went through your website (and saw keyword stuffing and out-of-date optimization)? Checked out your templates (and saw that they didn't have links in your signature block)? Really customized your 'newsletter' (that is the same as everyone else's)? Checked, double-checked and then triple-checked your third-party lead sources (unless you have no issue with them showing 80 leads and 315 phone calls when you're positive that the real number is half that)? Do you truly know what your site analytics show? How are those inbound links working for you? And your press releases? When was the last blog post you did?

Today I overheard a salesperson getting educated at a dealership. Rather than say trained, we'll go with that. He was asked not to say "welcome to (name of dealership), my name is (his name), how can I help you?". It was explained that by putting the showroom guest in the position of being 'helped' that they will feel put off or less empowered and it was better to offer assistance by saying "how can I assist you?".

Let's not kid ourselves any more. Many in automotive retail need HELP and those that ask will get it from the best sources the industry has to offer, as long as they're willing to go with the new. As you check out all that has to be offered in Orlando this weekend, where is your help going to come from?

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

February 10, 2010 by Gary May 0
Powered Webinar: “Influence the Influencer: Creating Brand Advocates with Social Marketing”

Featuring Jill Griffin and Allen Silkin

Date: Thursday, November 12th

Time: 2pm Central / 1pm Mountain / 12pm Pacific / 3 pm Eastern
Duration: 1 Hour

Get the details and register to attend

Consumers are more demanding than ever and earning their loyalty gets more
difficult every day.  Turning them into brand advocates is the holy grail of
marketing and the best source of advertising.  But many companies rely solely
on traditional marketing tactics to facilitate customer loyalty.  This
approach will fall short of the mark unless social marketing is
integrated into the mix. 

Join Jill Griffin, The Loyalty Maker, and Allen Silkin of Atkins
Nutritionals as they help you learn how to "Influence the Influencer:
Creating Brand Advocates with Social Marketing". To attend, please
complete the form to the right.

Social marketing helps companies reach audiences in new and more meaningful
ways and opens up incredible possibilities for building lasting relationships
with consumers.  Not only does social marketing provide a way to communicate
with consumers on a personal level, it also provides consumers a voice they
have not had in decades: they blog and tweet their brand opinions, they rate
and review products, they participate in online discussions and
they recommend brands based on their experiences.  If your company is looking
for ways to tap into social marketing to create brand advocates, then you
need to attend this Webcast.

Jill and Allen will discuss:

  • Four ways to tell if a customer in your advocate
  • How to climb Advocacy Hierarchy
  • Why complainers must be managed and how to do it
  • 9 ways to minimize detractors and maximize advocates
  • How to get online communities spreading your good name

About our Panelists:

Jill Griffin Headshot

Jill Griffin, The Loyalty Maker

Jill Griffin
empowers firms to attract, keep, grow and win-back high value customers.
Clients served include Microsoft, Dell, Toyota, Marriott, Hewlett-Packard,
Wells Fargo, Western Union, and Sprint. Jill's book
Customer
Loyalty: How to Earn It, How to Keep It
 was named to Harvard
Business School's Working Knowledge list and has been published in six
languages. Her coauthored book,
Customer Winback
,
earned Soundview Executive Book Summaries' Best Books Award. Jill newest book
is
Taming the Search-and-Switch Customer: Earning Customer
Loyalty in a Compulsion-to-Compare World
 (Jossey-Bass/Wiley,
2009).

Jill serves on the board of directors for restaurant chain Luby's
Incorporated, a New York Stock Exchange company with 95 locations and roughly
six thousand employees. In addition, Jill serves on the board of the Austin
Convention and Visitors Bureau as well as the Tri-Cities Chapter of the
National Association of Corporate Board Directors. Jill has served on the
marketing faculty at the University of Texas (UT) McCombs School of Business.
Her books have been adopted as textbooks for MBA and undergraduate customer
management courses taught at UT, Northwestern, and other universities. She is
a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of South Carolina Moore
School of Business from which she graduated, magna cum laude, with Bachelor
of Science and MBA degrees. In 2003, Jill received the Moore School's
Distinguished Alumna award. An in-demand speaker, Jill keynotes conferences
worldwide.

Allen Silkin Headshot

Allen Silkin, Atkins Nutritionals

Allen is a seasoned internet veteran who specializes in monetizing traffic
and content to generate revenue via advertising sales, ecommerce and
subscription sales. He experience includes managing internet operations at
CBS SportsLine.com, eDiets.com and HealthGrades, Inc. His knowledge includes
help companies improve their marketing efforts of social media, ad serving,
media planning, sales funnel optimization (A/B and Multi Variable testing),
search engine optimization and marketing.

Get the details and register to attend

November 11, 2009 by Gary May 0
Moving The Needle: From A Get Together To A Ground Swell

It is going to take lots more than talk, snake oil and rain dances to turn our hobby back into an industry with integrity, consistency and accountability (if we even had those in the first place).  It is more than about time to make change rather than simply talk about it.

Somewhere between the low-ball numbers form some industry experts and the pipe-dream estimates provided by others, there is a more accurate one and that's where we'll ultimately end the year.  Fact is the number is still going be a boatload below what it was just a couple years ago.  Now we can do our best to get to some better 'state of the industry' but the last time I checked, it still happens through selling and servicing cars the right way: one at a time.

Let's face it: consumers control content, the banks are controlling most of the consumers' spending (or at least for now), and there's no love lost for the venerable car dealer.

A couple weeks ago there was a Automotive LA Dinner, put together by Philip Inghelbrecht of TrueCar, and it was a great example of trying to get together to move the needle.  Eleven industry colleagues, most meeting for the first time, came from as far as 150 miles apart to meet in the Long Beach area and share insight, expertise, information, backgrounds and opportunities.  Our next meeting is supposed to be around the New Year, I hope sooner.

Next month's DrivingSales Executive Summit is going to be different.  charlie Vogelheim and Jared Hamilton wanted to put the dealers' future and opportunities in the spotlight, rather than the typical highest-paying sponsor or best-known industry speaker or colleague spearheading an event.  I hope this becomes a series of events with unprecedented support for the attendees, instead of greasing the skids for someone else.

The list of companies hosting webinars to get information out there for free is compelling: Cars.com, Powered.com, Automotive News, Ward's, Dealer.com and more are spending time, money and attention on where the water level really is: retail.

When the needle really starts moving in the right direction is when most of the events and support are the rule, not the exception.  It's a matter of finding the folks who weren't particularly impressed with an event, sitting down with them and finding out how to improve things.  Video after video, post after testimonial about how great an event or speaker or consultant was when half of the people in attendance leave a room is not going to benefit anyone.

Our responsibility is to improve, educate, compel, engage, support, enlist and activate.  Simply going through the motions and putting a new cover on old tricks (like reusing a one- or two-year old article and calling it fresh) , saying the you can deliver on something and then not or simply doing nothing at all – i.e. 'waiting' like so many dealers like to play it – is a move in the way wrong direction.  Don't get the wrong assumption: getting back to basics is great. Great for teaching someone how to close that doesn't.

You can't get a newspaper person to get the web, so don't try to.  You can't get a person who's never used a cell phone to text a message, so don't try to. But if we act like a village (no laughter, please) and raise the collective water level, we can do amazing things.  The needle can move much quicker in the direction we want and need if we eliminate the roadblocks, maintain above the status quo and help one more person each day achieve something more.

And maybe, just maybe, we might get someone who's never turned on a computer to end up taking 70 leads a month and closing at the third or fourth highest rate in a dealership.  We might see more dealerships starting to implement true customer satisfaction tools, employ true SEO practices, get advanced training on their CRMs, get a higher ROI from truly targeted service marketing and even utilize mobile web (I don't care if it's 0.005% of online users now, it won't be next week, next month or next year so quit using ridiculous excuses!!!).

Remember: it's our job to help move the needle, not someone else's.  Let's get the needle movers together.  Unite!…and stay thirsty my friends…

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

September 18, 2009 by Gary May 0