“Are You Aiming at the Right Target?” presented by Chris Reed of Cobalt, is named 2013’s Most Valuable Insight at Sold-Out DrivingSales Presidents Club

Salt Lake City, UT– April 29, 2013 – DrivingSales today announced that “Are You Aiming at the Right Target?”,  presented by Chris Reed, CMO of Cobalt, has been named the 2013 DrivingSales Most Valuable Insight. Reed received the award from DrivingSales CEO Jared Hamilton at the inaugural, and sold-out, Presidents Club event in New York City. The Most Valuable Insight competition, which was judged exclusively by dealer executives, was created by DrivingSales to foster the spirit of progress and thought leadership in the auto industry.

“The Most Valuable Insight competition was one of the most inspirational and exciting segments of our exclusive Presidents Club event and full of forward-thinking and practical insights that our attendees can put into action in their dealerships almost immediately,” said DrivingSales CEO Jared Hamilton.  “We are proud to congratulate our 2013 Most Valuable Insight award winner, Chris Reed of Cobalt, whose presentation on what dealers can learn through greater understanding of their Vehicle Detail Pages already has Presidents Club attendees reviewing their website data for new opportunities! I would also like to congratulate our runners-up - we have no doubt we will be hearing additional creative, profit-building insights from them in the future.”

Reed’s insight, based on an eight month Cobalt study of consumer engagement with online vehicle information including metrics, such as VDPs (Vehicle Detail Pages) and Time-on-VDP, revealed that vehicle engagement is the single best predictor of future sales, materially superior to other metrics commonly used by dealership marketing staff, such as visits and lead submissions.  His presentation showed that vehicle engagement metrics provide insight into the effectiveness of a dealer’s offline, as well as online, marketing and can be predictive of the timing of a sale down to the VIN level.  Reed also shared the pitfalls of relying on any single metric, including VDP views, to evaluate marketing performance, and the predictive power gained by evaluating the pattern of consumer interaction with content on dealer websites and online advertising in general. 

As the winner of the Most Valuable Insight competition, Reed will have the opportunity to present the Cobalt data in much greater detail at the 2013 DrivingSales Executive Summit in October in Las Vegas.

 Most Valuable Insight runners-up are (alphabetically by company) “Capitalizing on Changes in Online Shopping Behaviors,” presented by Scott Pechstein of Autobytel Inc.; “Do You Know Today’s Customer? New Findings Show Difference between Prices of Vehicles Shopped vs. Actual Prices Paid,” presented by Scott Hernalsteen of AutoTrader.com, and “Mobile: Your Key to Winning Shoppers when They’re Ready to Buy,” presented by Jack Simmons of Cars.com

For the DrivingSales Most Valuable Insight competition, industry professionals were asked to provide an insight derived from new research/data that would provide significant value to dealership executives.  A dealer board selected finalists from a competitive field of submissions, and the finalists presented their insight onstage, in nine minutes each, at the Presidents Club event, with the winner selected by a dealer panel.

The Most Valuable Insight competition was part of a high-level line-up at the sold out 2013 DrivingSales Presidents Club that included keynotes from best selling author Seth Godin and business leaders from in- and outside the auto industry. Designed to help dealers build the strategies they need to adapt to a changing automotive retail market – and to lead it – the event brought together an elite audience of dealership principals and general managers and focused on the three foundational elements of successful dealership operations: Capital, Brand, and People.

For more information about the DrivingSales Most Valuable Insight competition, go to http://DrivingSalesPresidentsClub.com/competition/.

For more blogs, video, and information about the 2013 DrivingSales Presidents Club, go to http://DrivingSalesPresidentsClub.com

About DrivingSales

Founded in 2008 and dedicated to the dealer community, DrivingSales is a business intelligence and performance improvement company that delivers unbiased*, profit-building information to make automobile dealers more successful through three distinct channels: DrivingSales Data, DrivingSales University and DrivingSales Media. DrivingSales Data houses the largest database of cross-vendor, dealership performance data in the North American auto industry and provides dealerships with the most statistically accurate performance benchmarks and metrics for their marketing and technology investments. DrivingSales University is a fully interactive online university that offers advanced profit-building strategies to automotive professionals through hundreds of classes taught by world-leading experts. DrivingSales Media connects dealers to peers and information through its global media assets, including DrivingSales.com, the world’s largest automotive social network; The Dealership Innovation Guide, an industry leading quarterly publication; DrivingSales Executive Summit, the top automotive conference for progressive dealers, and DrivingSalesTV, Web TV covering everything car-dealer related. Approximately one in every three dealerships in the United States has a registered member in the DrivingSales community.

*Vendor Neutral Policy: Dedicated solely to making dealerships more profitable, while also providing benefit to automakers and the industry as a whole, DrivingSales adheres to a strict vendor neutral policy through each of its channels. This means the company only provides unbiased information, not ‘pay-to-play’ follow up services -- and never accepts payment in exchange for media coverage or lets potential advertisers dictate messaging or create bias in any of its channels.

DrivingSales Media Relations:
Melanie Webber (melanie@mwebbcom.com), mWEBB Communications, 424.603.4340

Crystal Hartwell (crystal@mwebbcom.com), mWEBB Communications, 714.987.1016