Do you know what kind of population is in your area?

What is the crime rate where your dealership is located?

What is the percentage of households with college grads?

What areas have a high average household income and what areas have a low average income?

Right now, as you are reading this you are asking yourself “what the point to these questions is”.

Before we go any further, let me start out by saying that this is in no way meant to teach you to prejudge your customers.  Please do not judge a book by its cover.  However, consider using data to help you improve your field intelligence in terms of investing money in your adverting.

I have been spending some time working with a small dealer group over the last two months.  This dealership is located in an interesting part of the state.  On one hand you have a high crime rate area which is also the state capital while other parts of the county have towns with upper class households in some of the most prestigious areas in the country.  While working with the OEM to consider lead quality and quantity we had discovered this interesting website called ZipSkinny.com.  I had a chance to play around with it and compare zip codes.  Based on the brands that this store sells and on the fact that there is a special finance department I was able to pinpoint where I want to put a heavy focus on special finance opportunities and where I wanted to place a heavy focus on customers with great credit who can buy the products that the store is selling.

This site is great for me as a consultant because when I start to build out a plan for every dealership that I consult I like to examine all data and analytics from closing ratios (OEM leads, third party, websites, etc) as well as how many leads come in.  I also examine the quality of the sales staff and management to measure why deals are being missed in the dealership.  A resource like zipskinny.com can help a dealer strategically plan out their spending to either cut or increase their budget strategically.  This will also help to create customized processes for lead management.  A customized book of word tracks, phone scripts, and business practices needs to be created to handle all of the situations that can be encountered in the dealership.  This will upgrade the way your team performs and ultimately increase business opportunities.

Dealers and managers that are looking to learn about these and other similar strategies for managing and evolving their business development operations need to attend my workshop next week at the upcoming Digital Marketing Strategies Conference in Orlando, FL on January 5-7, 2013.   

http://dealeretraining.com

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