Bank robber, Willie Sutton when asked why he robbed banks stated flatly,

“Because that’s where the money is.” Good answer. The car business has forever been changed by the Internet. The customer has the invoice, trim levels, and can even quote sales word tracks. On any new car the customer comes with a wealth of information and the strategy to sell and satisfy this customer has brought a revolution in how car dealers do business. Generally selling new cars is not so much about profit…

Work the service drive. That’s grist for the weekly sales meeting. The General Sales Manager wants his sales team talking to the service customers. This is smart for a number of reasons:

a) The service customer is familiar with service team and presumably comfortable with the dealership as a whole.

b) The service customer is statistically more likely to buy a car at the dealership where they service their car.

c) There is more information about the service customer and…

Technology has revolutionized the car business. The advent of cheaper computing power, more sophisticated software, and the accumulation of data has made it easier to describe customers, understand trends, and evaluate campaigns. 

Right now there are few companies that can evaluate buyer behavior; companies that are true solution vendors. Dataium is a true solution vendor. What Dataium does is track the buyer across websites defining the "path to purchase". Let's say that…

One of the big and expensive questions for all car dealers is advertising budget.  Tens or thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars drop per month without metrics that define their success. The buying argument is what advertising is all about. The effectiveness of this message determines whether a customer "votes" with his pocket book. 

Core Constituency:

Who is my dealership's customer? Let's say that your customer is a man\woman between 27-35 who lives…

In the movie Moneyball the General Manager of the Oakland Athletics was faced with a dilemma: His star players were leaving, going to other richer organizations that could pay them more money. Using the old ways of doing business his team was bound to lose--they couldn't compete dollar for dollar with the richer clubs. The old way wasn't going to work for a team with a lesser amount of money.

Even those teams with money were paying millions of dollars per win--as much as 3 million--an…

Sales Training:

Traditionally we train our salesmen to act on rather than act with the customer. Say the right lines, the the right word track, and the customer will buy. If the customer doesn't buy then we didn't say the

right thing. Right words, right outcome. I have been to numerous sales trainings over the years and usually it starts with loud music and a man yelling at the attendees trying to pump them up. Nothing wrong with building excitement and confidence, but the focus is…

Your dealership has been in business since the '60s and has always gotten a fair  amount of repeat business. Mostly customers who want to get out of lease because they are over miles or customers whose miles on the car makes getting a new car a good idea--that a new car payment would be less than they paid previously. The dealer estimates that if he could identify these customers and contact them through telemarketers or mailers that could produce up to ten new deals per…

SEO, Search Engine Optimization, is how websites alter their content to improve ranking on search engines; e.g., Google, Yahoo, Bing. The higher a website ranks on a search--ideally within the first five results--the more website traffic. This is often the difference between commercial success and failure. SEO alters a website's webpages by modifying HTML, Hyper Text Mark-up Language, external and internal links, and content to improve the website's search rank.

Crawlers:

To…

What is your reputation worth? What is your reputation? This is the essence of branding: What do people think when they think of your dealership. Branding is not etched in stone. It has to be maintained and enhanced or its value is lost.

Let's take a few mintues to understand Brand and how it can boost sales and visibility in your marketplace. Take for example a dealership that went out of business but is re-opening under new management. The old dealer was noted for high prices and…

One of the biggest challenges facing any Internet Sales Manager is the Low Ball Quote. Because there is no guaranteed answer to the Low-Ball. no turn-key, no magic bullet. Joe Girard, one of the great car salesmen of all time, said that the battle is not customer vs. salesman; the battle, as Mr. Girard states, is getting on the customer's side. The Low-Ball is what stands between you and a winning relationship with the customer. It is a big mountain to climb. 

Some…

When an Internet customer asks for a quote through Edmunds or Cars.com they get five to six new best friends. The Internet Sales Managers say the same stuff with the same quotes and whoever how the lowest price wins. Not really. The battle is won by how you, the ISM, distinguishes himself from the rest. This is the art of our job, this is the most fundamental selling there is: selling yourself.

Listen to Lead: This is about the first thirty seconds of a phone…

I worked at Oracle for a number of years and learned a great deal about Data Mining, Statistical Decistion Theory, Data Warehouses--all the components of Business Intelligence. I look around the Greater Los Angeles Area and where is a true BI--Business Intelligence Solution--at the dealer level? Dealers have, not years, but decades of data, and rather than using it to target specific demographics they still do the same ol' same ol' wasting millions of dollars on advertising, promotions, and…

Okay, we've figured out where the deals are; see "Follow Up, Follow Up, Follow Up" my previous blog entry. Here is the scouting reports on various Internet Sales models.

You, Me, and the BDC

Hire a bunch of students, telemarketers, and part-timers and let them call all your leads. Compensation is based on Shows and Shows Sold, etc. By the way BDC stands for Business Development Center. Give out weekend spiffs and realistically they can make another…

When a new Internet Sales Manager is hired there are usually too few leads in his queue. Mostly he gets a few "fresh" leads and then gets the last guy's old stuff--the dregs. But if he goes through the old leads a few might come to life. A few turn into deals--maybe 1-2%. How did that happen? It happened because the last guy "cherry picked" his leads; he concentrated on the few instead of the many. The last guy had a weekly strategy rather than a thirty to sixty day plan.  

Here's an…