Which best describes you?

Dealership

What company do you work for (or own)?

Grubbs Infiniti

What is your current position within your organization?

Dir. of Technical Operations

What is your company website?

http://www.grubbsinfiniti.com

What is your Facebook page/URL?

http://Autotrader,Cars

What is your LinkedIn page/URL?

http://email

How did you specifically hear about DealerELITE? If referred, who?

email

Not everyone gets approved for DealerELITE. To maintain the integrity of DealerELITE, tell us what you will have to offer once a dealerELITE member?

I have been with the Grubbs Family for 7 years now. During my time here at Grubbs I have familiarized myself with every department in the store. With a common goal of always trying to evolve, trying new things to increase our ROI though out every department. Currently I serve as the Technical Operations Director in a nut shell I am the “Go to Guy”.

I started out in the car business in 1998 as a salesman on the floor for one of the largest Toyota dealers in the DFW area. Having knowledge of computers and technology proved to be a valuable asset. As the internet started to gain popularity I saw this as an opportunity and I was instrumental in the creation of the internet department. I became the Internet Manager over seeing a staff of 4 and helped create many of the processes that helped performance. During my time with TOP I desked deals, helped in F&I and even assisted the used car manager in auction purchases and sales. In addition I worked with many lead providers some are still in the market place today, Cars.com, Autotrader.com, Autobytel.com are some of the top performers. I spent 4 years with TOP and saw the auto industry change greatly during this time.

Over the next couple of years I spent time with D&M Leasing which helped me greatly with desking deals and my phone skills. After 6 months however I was approached by Autotrader.com to work in a new inside sales project and I accepted. Unfortunately I quickly realized this was not a position that was a good fit for me. During this time I had met many dealers and became familiar with Ebay marketing and a company that was providing a “full service” solution to dealers including pictures, html, verbage and launch to Ebay. I went to work with what is now AutoRevo one of the preferred vendors for Ebay automotive solutions. Grubbs Infiniti was one of my clients and eventually I became a full time employee of Grubbs Infiniti with the focus of increasing web presence and maintaining our IT infrastructure.

I am always researching ways to increase business and the services that we provide for our customers. I have to admit I am a “geek” at heart and I love to bring technology in place when ever and where ever I can. So many of the things that I have implemented at the dealership have a techie edge to them. This really works well with demographics of our customer base.

I started to see the need for a Social media campaign early on, I noticed an increasing number of engagement was now being started by the consumer and not by us. With this in mind we have implemented a full social campaign that we are continually re inventing. Of course we are using the top platforms that people are frequenting currently, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and last but surly not least Youtube. Youtube has grown to become one of the largest online communication tools in the world and I believe we have only seen the beginning as broadband subscriptions increase. Facebook is currently seen today as our most used social environment, we use it to not only to add to our branding but we use it as a tool to “engage” with our customer base.

One of our newest components of this social campaign is the implementation of “chat” on our website. Our customers rave about this new on demand form of communication. This has proven to be a very useful tool for service and parts as giving customers quick access to answers and the services we provide. Micro sites are another area that we have ventured into, sites that are very specific in the information or services they provide with end goal of engagement with the consumer.

In my opinion we are really just scratching the surface of what I believe we become true social integration. Facebook touts 400 million with half of those checking in every day. Ultimately building relationships with our customers in these “spaces” is going to separate us from dealerships who just try and force traditional advertising in to this new medium.