The conventional automotive advertising wisdom ... "The message on the street must match the message on the showroom floor." ... has never been more relevant than in today's Internet and Social Media driven marketplace.  Similar universal wisdoms like ... "Practice what you preach." ... and "Mean what you say and say what you mean." ... also provide additional meaning to this post.  (I would add ... "What are friends for."... but that might be too self serving.)

Many of my affiliated automotive advertising agencies are finally understanding my single minded focus to integrate real world sales and service processes with online processes that are no longer limted to conversion tools that provide just enough information to solicit a phone call, email or a showroom visit.  The customer's goal to get the information that they need to select a vehicle, a dealer and make a buying decision --- in that order -- are often subordinate to a dealer's desire to sell them something!  Fortunately, those seemingly contradictory objectives are not mutually exclusive if they are funneled through properly engineered social media messaging and accomplished with the help of some of today's more efficient technology based sales and service software applications and the real and virtual world processses that they power.

Relevancy and transparency provided by today's online showrooms and marketing channels using video based customer interaction platforms, online transaction tools, vehicle configurators, appraisal tools and customer driven referrals sourced from social networking communities and auto industry focused rating sites mirror the relationship based selling processes that professional sales people have been relying on for years to sell themselves and their dealership before the presume to sell a vehicle or service.

I have dozens of best practices that leverage the value of social media and customer centric online applications and processes to support my position that the customer now controls the sales process vs. the dealer.  That is not to say that the dealer and the sales consultant can't improve their odds in capturing more customers, (friends), by joining in on the conversation that is the market.  I am prepared to share as many best practices as you are willing to listen to, however, I would first like to make sure that we are on the same page. 

In other words, do you agree with my assertions in this post in principal and if so, what are some of the best practices that you apply to take advantage of integrating social media and related technology based solutions into your sales and service processes online and in the real world?

I will show you mine if you show me yours!  After all, what are friends for!