Transforming The Dealership Part 4 - The Final Straw Case Study (Dealer eTraining)

Welcome to Part 4 of a live dealership case study.  This is the final chapter of a 6 week project.  You can catch up by reading part 3 and previous chapters as well.  In this chapter we will discuss what the dealership is now doing and what they have accomplished in the 6 weeks that I have spent working with them.

CRM

The dealership is now up and running with eLead CRM.  The sales department is bought in and are all using the system effectively.  This was one of the best setups and transitions that a dealership has had.  In fact, the only challenges came from DMS integration.  The dealership uses Lightyear which has had updates that made integration more challenging.  However, the problem is being handled.  One thing that was an eye opener for me was setting up a perpetual workflow for a process to handle internet leads.  This is something that I remember doing when I was selling cars as an ISM back in the day at Courtesy Honda where the system was not setup to alert me when I had an action due but rather I had to follow a calendar.  Initially, I wanted hard tasks like emails and phone calls to be setup.  But I was convinced that with less man power and a smaller internet department it will cause the reps to get behind.  So we installed a perpetual workflow using my Dealer eTraining customized processes and guidelines.  It has been working fine and the dealership has not missed a beat.  I have been getting rave reviews and lots of appreciation for making the power move of getting the CRM in place.  This is one of the biggest accomplishments that we achieved.

Desking

The sales managers are using eLead to desk deals and appraise vehicles.  It is "a breath of fresh air" as they tell me because they are enjoying the ease.  They were doing all desking in Lightyear and thought it was easy until they experienced what this tool can do especially when you factor in appraisal tools.

Inventory Market Analysis

The dealership never had an appraisal tool or let along a market analysis tools which are evident by the 8-10 units per week that I would change on the website as specials because they were over 100 days old.  In fact the store averages 20-30 used cars per month with 40% of the inventory being over 50 days old.  It was a tossup of getting vAuto which I was suggesting.  I really believe that with the dealership being located on car dealer row and with such a nice lot they should be rolling 50 used cars per month.  Luckily, eLead has an appraisal and market analysis tool which will not allow the managers to do a better job working the used car inventory.  I see used car sales moving up within the next 6 months with better inventory turns.  Being that the finance manager does a great job at this dealership, I am confident that the dealership will see big improvements in gross profits.  The managers are happy about this piece.

Reputation Management

While we still did not get iPads as I recommended, we started to diversify how we get reviews.  I placed an emphasis on cars.com being the most important site because they offer a chance to get $100 for signing up to leave a review.  The process that I created involves contacting all customers that bought and serviced cars at the dealership and sending them individual templates based on who their email provider is and sometimes just based on the source that they came from.  For example, if you an email address are a yahoo address I ask for reviews to be written on yahoo or dealerrater.  Another example is a Gmail user; I send them to G+ or yelp.  Some customers will be referred to cars.com and others to other sites.  The whole idea is to diversify a portfolio of reviews so that they are scattered all over the web.  We also incorporated edmunds.com as well.

Social Media

The dealer has been impressed with what has been posted and the increasing engagement on facebook.  We have been actively involved in local community news and events.  We have been taking more pictures and videos and optimizing them to create quality content for the dealership.

What does the future bring?

The future brings me back into the dealership for 1-2 days per month to help with content creation.  In addition, I will be handling phone training because that is the next important aspect of what needs to be improved.  The dealership remains to be number one in the district and is ranked as a top 100 dealer for the OEM.  It comes down to management of the people and maintaining quality control.  I think that we accomplished a lot in such a short time and we will continue to focus on growth.

What can dealers do to get ahead in 2013?

Every single dealership needs to create a checklist of what is and what is not working for them and create a plan to fix or adjust their situation.  Examples of what needs to be fixed:

-Sales Process Training: Train the basics as well as modern day standards in order to help mold your people into modern day sales professionals.

-Internet/BDC Training: The CRM needs to be updated with newer email templates and best practices need to be reviewed for all members that are involved in internet sales and business development.

-Phone Training: Everyone needs to improve their skills on the phone and be able to properly handle outgoing and incoming calls with different sets of objections to overcome.  Every process in the dealership has it's own set of word tracks.

-Hospitality Training:  Managers needs to improve the way their sales staff functions on the sales floor.  Stop tossing around a football or playing games and do something proactive to drive business when it is slow.  In addition, train mannerisms and create a 5 star customer experience so that they are welcome as guests of the dealership.

-Read Books:  Learn to brand yourself and your business.  Learn to motivate yourself and get fired up.  Do the things you need to do to be a success.

Do you need help?

Dealer eTraining has created a limited edition 2 day training program for managers, sales and BDC professionals to "Kick off 2013".  This program brings back the basics of "old school" and integrates "new school" business practices that will condition your staff to move to the next level and start to 2013 on the right track.  Dealers that want to get ahead need to contact me directly at stan@dealeretraining.com or visit me on social networks.

https://www.facebook.com/dealeretraining

https://twitter.com/dealeretraining

Castle Buick GMC IL - Best Practices - Dealer eTraining

http://www.facebook.com/dealeretraining
http://www.twitter.com/dealeretraining

A section with letters from happy customers, a value package proposition (value builders), a quality service department waiting lounge, and much more. Another best practice from Castle Buick GMC in IL.

Transforming The Dealership Part 3 - A Live Week By Week Case Study (Dealer eTraining)

Welcome to Part 3 of a live dealership case study in which I am working on.  It has been two weeks since Part 2 was published.  I was away in Chicago consulting another client and also handling the Internet Sales 20 Group.  I came home to a major hurricane which slowed things down considerably.  But here is what we were able to accomplish.

CRM:

We have been working on pre-installation processes with eLead by installing email headers, templates, and other important parts of the CRM.  It has been a simple process as the CRM company is accommodating.  eLead will be spending the week at the dealership training and installing the CRM at the dealership which means we will be live in a few days.

Website:

Once again, the major challenge is that it is OEM mandated and certain things are not able to be done while others are being developed as we speak.  As much as I respect what OEMs are doing to make all dealers in the same brand unified I feel that they make it difficult for a dealership to create a unique image to stand out from the competition.

We are in the process of updating employee pictures.  This is a tough task because the owner wants all pictures to be the same exact size.  The challenge is getting the pictures to show up on the website in the same size.  I am still trying to figure out with the vendor what is going on and this is the one time where I feel they are not helping me as they should.

We drastically improved the way the specials pages look with come great content and even more specials.  We started to add video testimonials to the website which was a challenge also because the videos did not want to upload from my end.  In addition, we made proper changes for the new month and any news pertaining to changes.

Social Media:

I have begun to focus on Facebook this past week.  I have been posting engaging content and getting people responding it.  In terms of twitter, I know we have followers but for some reason I am looking for the login which no one can seem to find.  I might have to setup a new account but I will give it a week before I do it.

I have continued to blog and syndicate content.  The content has been getting some views which tell me that people are reading it.  We had an announcement from the OEM that there is a hurricane relief discount available to people in certain areas that lost their vehicles to flood and hurricane damage.  I was quick to post it and promote it on facebook before any competing dealer can think of doing the same, if they normally do it.

Videos/Pictures:

It was disappointing to me that when I left for a whole week and asked sales people to start getting their own videos and pictures that not a single person took an action.  They got all excited about the fact that they can brand themselves but they took no action at all.  I addressed that with management because the process takes all of one minute and I am even here to get the content up.  All they need is to have a form filled out, snap a picture or capture a 30 second video and have me handle the rest.  I hope that they fix the situation and get to it.  However, one person did get a picture for me that is now posted.

I added more content to the Flickr account.

Traditional Advertising:

I have not had to be involved with this.

Online Reputation Management:

I discovered a challenge that I have never had before.  In all of my years doing this I was always able to grow a dealership’s online reputation without problem.  I sat in and listened to reasons why the service department has a hard time getting reviews and I am noticing from the sales department why they are not doing.

The sales department is not pushing for it at all.  The service department explains that whenever they ask for a review to get posted that customers do not want to post it.  The understanding that I am getting is that a lot of the customers here are generally in aged in the mid 40s and range as high as 70+.  They do not want to leave an email address and they prefer to leave a survey in pen and paper.  This raises a challenge to me, a social and digital warrior that believes that everyone and everything should be online.  I am thinking that we need an iPad in service and sales with a 4G connection and we should work closely with the customer to get what we need by guiding them or assisting them.  It is obvious that post cards with links to review sites do not work well for the customers as they do not pay attention to them.

I have never been a fan of spiffing customers for reviews.  However, cars.com has a really neat format of how to generate reviews.  Cars.com offers to place customers into a contest where the customer has a potential of getting $100 for leaving a review.  There is an email template for it.  I am thinking of also creating a process strictly for cars.com to let customers know about the offer not just as delivery but also after delivery where they can be guided through.  I mean, “Who wouldn’t want a chance to get $100?”  It is also my goal to learn from cars.com if the review can somehow be syndicated just like the way DealerRater does it with google.

If anyone has suggestions of how to get reviews from customers that are more mature and not as computer savvy, I am open to some responses on here.

Dealership Process and Operations:

While walking around the dealership looking for things that needed improvement I noticed a binder with parts specials that looked sloppy.  I took it upon myself to let management know about this and created a new professional looking binder with better specials and more transparency.

I have been spending time watching how the sales department functions from how sales managers are managing their people to how they work deals.  I have to say that when it comes to working deals and selling cars they do a great job and they have decent grosses.  The managers get involved in deals and are aggressive to sell cars.  This dealership is generally number one in its district.  The other things that I have been observing are how the one internet coordinator functions throughout the day.  The GSM complains about the coordinator because he finds him playing on his cell phone a lot.  The fix to the problem was that I monitored CRM activities in the old CRM and read comments along with emails that were being sent to the customers.

I noticed something interesting and disturbing.  When an internet appointment comes in the internet coordinator sits with them and talks with them sometimes as long as 20-30 minutes.  When I approached management they agreed and said that it needs to be fixed.  I had the perfect fix for that.  At the Internet Sales 20 Group, Ralph Paglia introduced the “Showroom Appointment Reception Agenda”.  This form is a professional way for the coordinator to meet the customer that they communicated with.  What is amazing about this form is that it explains in a quick and transparent fashion what the customer will accomplish on this visit which is a 4-5 step process.  The coordinator turns over the customer to a sales consultant and moves on with their job.  This takes 1-2 minutes.  We are implementing this as of this week as the new CRM is installed.  There were major changes made to the document that Ralph provided which I will describe in the next section.

Call monitoring is not very strong in the dealership.  The dealership relies on cars.com and their website provider to have toll free numbers.  It is amazing that the newspaper always had a local number.  No one really ever listened to phone calls.  In fact, all sales calls are being handled by sales consultants and not the internet coordinator.  This is a whole other issue that I will be tackling soon if I get the chance to.  The way I monitor the calls is I stand in the showroom and listen to the sales consultants talk to phone ups.  I then log into to my limited tools and listen to the conversation.  My plans are to do the same with service and parts soon.  While taking many notes, I have discovered flaws in phone skills and will be planning on phone training sessions at this dealership after the CRM is installed. 

Ownership Challenges:

The only real challenges in the improvement and transformation of the dealership are dealing with ownership in this case.  The dealer principle is not hands on yet has very interesting opinions to how things should run.  As far as sales and service is concerned, she lets the managers do their thing and make money for the store.  But when a highly paid expert that has built numerous success stories is brought in a challenge is created.  Now, I am not saying that challenges are not fun.  This is a unique challenge where I am working with a personality that involves me trying to figure out how they think. 

Every best practice email installed needs to be edited because the writing does not work for them.  This stalled the processes of installing emails into the CRM by two weeks.  Take website content, wording of some serious best practices just never work and they need to be changed.  My challenge is that I need to change content and write it as if I was this other person.  Again, it is an interesting challenge.

The best practice implemented by Ralph Paglia was another example where 60% of the content was rewritten and another 20% was omitted just to satisfy their feelings.  Now I am not saying the document became a bad document but it had changed the TO process from internet coordinator to sales person in a way that I personally would have done differently.

I respect the challenge and although at some point it is frustrating it is what makes me better at my job and what ultimately brings more success to the dealership.

That is all for Part 3.  If anyone has questions, always feel free to contact me. 

http://dealeretraining.com/

https://www.facebook.com/dealeretraining

http://www.drivingsales.com/ratings/companies/dealer-etraining

Where did my Yelp Reviews go?

As I write this article, I am in literally sitting at an Internet Sales 20 Group where my colleagues and I are sharing best practices with over 50 dealers.  It seems that auto dealers are concerned more about their online reputation now than ever before.  While it is great to see dealers place a focus on it there still needs to be a structure in place that will create a strong reputation for the dealership.  Once a structure is in place, managing an online reputation is actually a very simple process.

The big issue that dealers are having is that they are losing their Yelp review visibility.  They have been focusing so much on Yelp those they had a lot of reviews get posted and then taken down.  This is a similar problem to have been going on with Google.  Let me explain the problem.  We all know that our industry has been labeled in negative ways by consumers for many years now.  Well, just like the consumer put a label on us, the review sites have done something similar by being cautious with what gets put out there.  When dealers are getting a lot of reviews coming in within a short period of time, sites like Google and Yelp get weary of the situation and question the validity of the reviews.

Yelp has been archiving reviews and showing very few.  It has been really upsetting dealers and I have heard this numerous times in the last two days.  I am here to tell you that there is nothing to stress over.  There are many schools of thought of how to manage the dealership’s online reputation.  I believe that dealerships need to diversify their reputation.  What do I mean about “diversify”?  Just like when you’re building a financial portfolio to manage investments of stocks, equity, money markets, and your bank account.  You need to have a strategy for managing reviews.  While Yelp and Google are great; they are only a few key players.  Take a look at Edmunds.com, Yahoo local, Cars.com, AutoTrader, DealerRater (it still works), Edmunds.com, City Search, and Merchant Circle just for starters.

It sounds like a lot of sites to be on but hear me out.  Create a strategy where every week or two the dealership focuses on having reviews posted on a different site.  For example, week 1 reviews are to be put on Google, week 2 we focus on DealerRater, week 3 we focus on Yelp, week 4 is for Yelp, and so on.  Now that you diversified your reviews take it one step further, create numerous blogs using platforms like Posterous, Tumblr, WordPress, and Google’s BlogSpot.  Once they are created, you can tie them in with facebook and twitter.  Now you can copy over the reviews into the blog format and repost them.  These build a huge buzz online while spreading your content all over the internet and improving your search engine rankings.  Take it even one more step further be developing a strategy to get live video testimonials from customers who buy and services vehicles at the dealership.  That strategy is simple and will go a very long way.  These videos should also be syndicated on blogs after posting them on Youtube and other major video sharing sites.

http://dealeretraining.com/

https://www.facebook.com/dealeretraining

https://twitter.com/dealeretraining

Transforming The Dealership Part 2 - A Live Week By Week Case Study (Dealer eTraining)

Welcome to Part 2 of what is a major real live hands on case study.  Last week I wrote Part 1.  For those of you that missed it, click here to catch up on what you may have missed.

We ended last week with starting to get more social media plans installed.  We also started a picture and video policy.  However, The major thing was CRM and digital marketing this week. 

CRM:

I narrowed down three choices of CRM companies that integrate with the DMS that dealership is using.  It is not a common DMS like ADP, Reynolds, or Arkona even.  We learned that the DMS only works properly with only 3 CRM companies.  The CRM Companies are eLead, VinSolutions, and CAR-Research.  All three companies have something great to offer.  We made the decision to stop being the pilot for the DMS company that was using this dealership to develop their CRM.  They are light years away from where everyone else is in the marketplace.  I came to a conclusion that we have no accountability in the dealership and nothing can be measured.  I noticed that the sales desk does a great job and so do F&I.  Now with processes, accountability, and reporting I think that this store can sell and additional 10-20 units per month.

After numerous conversations and demos of CRM products we decided on eLead.  I have been a customer of eLead in the past and have great relationships.  I wanted VinSolutions because Vin had some cool features that no one else has.  However, the owner of the dealership liked the functions of eLead and felt that it was simpler for the showroom.  Their opinion was that Vin worked well for someone on a high level like me.  I liked CAR-Research too but we all agreed that for what we need eLead would be the right fit.  Also, eLead has agreed to do install in the beginning of November where no one else could accommodate the owner's quick need.

Next --->

Website:

So we signed a contract for the CRM and that is in the works.  The next aspect that is important is to really make the dealership website great.  The challenge is that it is OEM mandated and certain things are not able to be done while others are being developed as we speak.

We have begun the process of changing and updating employee pictures and bios.  The way that we get employee bios is that we have a questionnaire in their employee packet that they need to fill out when they start employment here.  I revised the questions to make better bios.  The owner liked how another dealership on the West Coast had their staff page so we started to research how we can get a similar page built.  If I can get the owner to agree in the near future, I would like to add videos next to the employee picture and bio of each employee.

We are reconfiguring buttons on the website to make it easier to navigate and have better call to actions.  We want to stand out from competitors and really be unique.

Other best practices that I started working on are basically because I love the way that Checkered Flag in Virginia Beach has their website providing major transparency with things like a "women's page" or a page explaining "taxes and fees".  This dealership is active in the community so we are working on making these efforts stand out as well.  I have been working on content because I do not want to be a copycat but I love the ideas and would love to use them since very few (literally) dealers on this planet are that much outside the box.

I noticed that the dealership had no specials for pre-owned and service.  I got with the used car manager and we had 8 vehicles that are aged units that he wants to just sell and move on.  I created specials with comments.  The page got filled up nicely and now the site has more great content.  After that I got with service manager and went over some promotions that he gave me.  The site now has 7 service specials.  That's right I said "SEVEN".  Dealerships miss out on opportunities by not updating service specials or keeping 1 generic special.

Social Media:

I have not begun to focus on Facebook, twitter, and G+ but will add my focus when I get back from Internet Sales 20 Group next week.  However, I have created a blogging strategy that I love.  It includes content syndication and it spreads the content virally.  For those of you that would like to know how I do that, just take a look at how I have been marketing my own business (Dealer eTraining).  I believe that content needs to be visible and easy to find.  I have employed the same strategy to brand my own name and get known by industry people at conferences in the last 4 years.  The strategy is to connect multiple social networks and blogs together using one platform.  For blogs, I use posterous, blogspot, wordpress, and tumblr.  I will have the dealership outsourced graphic designer work on designing these blogs so they look amazing.  We have been adding content that includes videos, pictures, spy photos, community events, celebrity information, interesting news, dealership information, and just anything that will catch people's eyes and create engagement.  It has only been 1 week so I cannot report changes yet.  However, over time we should see a big increase.  Every blog is optimized with proper keywords, backlinks, and content.

I got the dealership signed up with Pinterest and read a lot on it.  I saw what Jim Ziegler has been teaching and saw how major Pinterest players operated to drive traffic.  I implemented the strategy and it took me all of 2 hours.  The Pinterest profile now has over 50 images and some were re-pinned while others were originally and strategically posted to drive traffic to the dealership website.  As time progresses we will continue to optimize the profile even further.

Videos/Pictures:

I got started on a basic cost effective VSEO strategy.  Last week we implemented a strategy to have sales people fill out a form.  We revised the form to have 8 questions with a waiver.  We have started gaining traction and filmed a few happy customers.  The testimonials got uploaded to not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 of the most power video search engines out there.  We took these testimonials and created blog content on our syndicated channels as well.  We used sites like youtube, vimeo, daily motion, and metacafe.

I did some research the other day to see which photo sharing sites are best for seo and everything else and as always Flickr was the choice.  I started a Flickr account and had 40 pictures optimized for starters.  I also connected Flickr with Pinterest as they work well together.  I discovered this by researching it and reading about it.  We take pictures of guests at delivery time.

Traditional Advertising:

The dealership advertises in the local newspaper on weekends.  Last week when I was given the advertisement I saw a few major things missing.  The dealership advertised their local number and there was no call tracking to see how many calls we get off the advertisement.  Well I noticed that our current call monitoring solution has 2 extra phone numbers not being used so I placed one of the numbers to start tracking those calls.  I also saw no QR codes (no surprise).  A lot of dealerships still do not know much about it.  I looked over the ads for all competing dealerships in the area and no one else had QR codes.  I created a QR code for new car inventory on the dealer website as well as a separate one for used inventory and placed them on the add next to new and pre-owned.

Local Brochure:

The owner of the dealership was getting her nails done and saw a plain brochure at the salon.  She brought it to my attention and would like something similar but created.  I started working on ideas on how to digital enhance it with QR codes, social media, and an online reputation, all in a fold-able brochure.

Dealership Process and Operations:

Last night I was handed a book from the OEM that goes to the owner of the dealership.  It talks about performance of sales, internet lead management, and service.  It has national averages, store averages, and goals of what needs to be accomplished.  I even got to read the customer comments to gather an idea of what practices that I need to fix and train on in the store so that we can improve the customer experience in the store while creating better communication.  In the next few weeks I will be training various departments on CRM, communication, and best customer practices.

So far...that is all we have for the first 2 weeks.  I feel like we have already come a very long way.  It is exciting for me because I get back to my roots of not only digital marketing and managing Internet operations but I get to focus on store processes.  I really love what I do and I am passionate about it.  If anyone has questions, always feel free to contact me. 

http://dealeretraining.com/

https://www.facebook.com/dealeretraining

http://www.drivingsales.com/ratings/companies/dealer-etraining

Online Reputation Management Workshop - Dealer eTraining - Stan Sher - February 15, 2012

http://dealeretraining.com/

It's that time again.  The Greater New York Dealers Association is holding a workshop on Wednesday February 15, 2012 where I will be presenting on Online Reputation Management.  This is a hands on workshop where I will be discussing the importance of online reviews, how to get them, and how to leverage them to build value in the sales process.

I was just made aware that I have some of the most prestigious dealerships in the country coming to my workshop as well as OEM representatives.  I am honored to be a featured speaker for the Greater New York Dealers Association.  If you are a dealer in New York, you want to send your people to this class because the content is powerful and eye opening.  Let Stan Sher and Dealer eTraining help your dealership create initiatives that will enable your dealership to grow sales and service opportunities.

Please visit http://autoedcenter.com/education/seminars/12-02-15-online.php and http://autoedcenter.com/education/seminars/pdf/12-02-15-online.pdf to register and find out more information about this class.

As always, Dealer eTraining is available for in-store and virtual training for automotive dealers nationwide.  We are commited to helping your dealership be successful.  For more information, please visit http://dealeretraining.com/ or email Stan@dealeretraining.com

Automotive Training and Consulting - Dealer eTraining Promotion

http://www.dealerelite.net/profile/StanSher740

http://www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com/profile/StanSher101

http://www.facebook.com/dealeretraining

http://dealeretraining.com/

We have been very busy here at Dealer eTraining help dealerships grow and improve their internet sales and bdc operations.  We have been growing and making progress as our dealer clients start to see an improvement in their processes.  In an effort to continue growing and bringing more solutions we are looking to expand our footprint.

For a limited time, Dealer eTraining is hosting a promotion.

Dealer eTraining is offering a free internet department, bdc department, and/or sales department analysis.  Did we just say free?  We sure did.  Any dealership that contacts Dealer eTraining will get a free strategy session.  

What does a strategy session give the dealer?  

-Your dealership will get mystery shopped by email and phone.

-Your dealership marketing initiatives will be evaluated.  This includes websites, advertising, merchandising, and social media efforts.

-Your dealerships follow up progress will be recorded and reported back to you.

-A strategy call one on one directly with Stan Sher, president of Dealer eTraining.  This is a 30 minute call where dealers and management can discuss tactics on how to move forward to grow success in the dealership.  This will be in the areas of effective lead management, CRM/ILM, digital marketing, social media, an introduction to Lead Re-Generation (a Dealer eTraining exclusive).

This is easily a $2,000 value.  We are offering it at no cost to dealers, dealer groups, independent dealerships, and vendors that want to help their dealer clients improve their processes.

Why are we doing this?  Again, we want to help dealers be successful first and foremost.  Dealer eTraining was created with the goal of creating opportunities for automotive dealerships to drive more traffic to the showrooms and ultimatley sell more cars.  After spending many years in dealerships working in various roles, we have seen what works and what does not work.  We talk to automotive dealers every week and we know what they really need.  They need guidance to move ahead and dominate their competition.  They need ideas that will help propel them to the next level.  They need training that works.

Are you ready to take the next step to being successful?  Click here, email stan@dealeretraining.com or call (732)925-8362