Stan Sher - Automotive and Marketing Executive

As the founder of Dealer eTraining, he continue to focus on creating dealerships more profitable nationwide using ideas that have been proven in the field. Stan is also the founder of Social Sher, a business and personalized Social Media consulting company. This company specializes in online reputation management and social media awareness. When not working Stan has a variety of hobbies including music and playing guitar. You can see business and personal posts on this blog.

Showing posts with label jim ziegler. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Stan Sher of Dealer eTraining to Speak at Internet Battle Plan 12 Atlanta GA

http://internetbattleplan.com/

Stan Sher of Dealer eTraining to Speak at Internet Battle Plan 12 along with some of top automotive industry experts in Atlanta GA.

Monday, December 31, 2012

Automotive Internet Sales and BDC Expert Stan Sher To Speak at Internet Battle Plan XII

http://www.prlog.org/12050998-automotive-internet-sales-and-bdc-expert-stan-sher-to-speak-at-internet-battle-plan-xii.html

Automotive Industry legend, Jim Ziegler returns with his highly successful Internet Battle Plan XII to the Crowne Plaza Ravinia in Atlanta on January 16th-17th, 2013 with a powerful line up of automotive industry experts.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRLog (Press Release) - Dec. 31, 2012 - Jim Ziegler also known as the “Alpha Dawg” will be bringing back his highly successful Internet Battle Plan XII (http://www.internetbattleplan.com/) to the Crowne Plaza Ravinia in Atlanta on January 16th-17th, 2013. A Certified Speaking Professional with the National Speakers Association and a recognized automotive industry leader, Ziegler has over 35 years experience and has continuously helped automotive dealerships move the needle. He has assembled a lineup of fourteen leading automotive executives that will be discussing strategies involving sales, digital marketing, and technology for attendees to bring back to their dealerships and implement right away. The all star line up of presenters includes experts that will break down step by step what the dealers need to be doing in order to continue growing in their digital sales and marketing success.

Jim Ziegler has selected this panel because of the recent success that these experts have been providing to automotive dealerships around the nation. The panel of experts are automotive industry leaders in their fields and will teach strategies that take dealerships to the next level. Ziegler says, "This event promises to deliver high quality information by some of the most respected automotive industry executives that I have had the pleasure of working with."

This Internet Battle Plan will be sponsored by DealerTrack, Car Woo!, Contact At Once!, Dealer e-Process, Mouthful Social Media, POTRATZ, and Stream Companies, This will be Ziegler's twelfth Internet Battle Plan seminar where he continues to bring together quality information from some of the most successful professionals in the automotive industry:

One of the presenters at Internet Battle Plan XII is Stan Sher, Internet Sales and Marketing expert, BDC expert, President of Dealer eTraining, a straight forward real deal automobile dealership consulting and training firm located in Voorhees, New Jersey. He is also the original Co-Creator and former editor of www.automotiveinternetsales.com. Sher is a regular speaker and trainer for the Greater New York Automobile Dealers Association and NJCar. Most recently, he helped Co-found the Internet Sales 20 Group where he was a subject matter expert on dealership Call Monitoring solutions. Stan Sher will be presenting a highly engaging session on BDC Management Strategies in order to evolve the dealership.

Additional Automotive Industry leading experts that will be speaking at Internet Battle Plan XII January 16th & 17th will include:

Rachel Haro , Partner & Social Media Strategist at Mouthful Social Media
Amit Maheshwari is Vice President and General Manager of Digital Retailing Solutions for Dealertrack Technologies
Cory Mosley , Founder and Principal of Mosley Automotive Training
Ryan Lucia is the Southeast Regional Sales Manager for Contact At Once.
Paul Potratz is an authority on Automotive Internet Advertising, sales and internet marketing, and he is COO of Potratz Advertising
Myril Shaw , COO of CarWoo!
Matt Redden VP of Sales and Marketing for DealerSocket
Jerry Thibeau is President of the Phone Ninjas
Andrew Myers of What's Next Media
Dave Page, Owner of Dealer e-Process
Bill Parlaman, Digital Marketing Director for Stream Companies

About Us:

Ziegler SuperSystems is an automotive training and consulting organization based in the Atlanta, GA area. President Jim Ziegler , CSP is an industry celebrity speaker, trainer and published author. He has been a keynote speaker at National and State Dealer conventions, and has trained over 100,000 Dealers, Managers, and Industry Manufacturer Executives. Besides producing this event, Jim will be presenting 'Guerilla marketing Strategies using Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

For more information about Jim Ziegler 's Internet Battle Plan, Speakers, Sponsors, Ziegler SuperSystems, or to request information on discounted group rates, please call Jim Ziegler at 1-800-726-0510 or visit InternetBattlePlan.com.

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Automotive Internet Sales and BDC Expert Stan Sher To Speak at Internet Battle Plan XII

http://www.prlog.org/12050998-automotive-internet-sales-and-bdc-expert-stan-sher-to-speak-at-internet-battle-plan-xii.html

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Additional Automotive Industry leading experts that will be speaking at Internet Battle Plan XII January 16th & 17th will include:

About Us:

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Friday, September 14, 2012

AutoCon 2012 Review - Stan Sher of Dealer eTraining

https://www.facebook.com/dealeretraining

http://dealeretraining.com/

http://automotivebdctraining.com

http://www.autocon2012.com/

http://www.businessrater.com/biz/autocon-las-vegas-883

AutoCon 2012! AutoCon 2012! AutoCon 2012! Phew...

By now I am sure that if you are reading this that you are aware that AutoCon 2012 is over. I am sure that you have been bombarded with emails, blogs, and social media posts promoting the ultimate Automotive Dealership Digital Conference. Well, AutoCon has been over for the past 5 days. Those of you that know me know that I like to write reviews after I attend a conference or convention.

Let me start out by saying that AutoCon 2012 has been a huge. Ralph Paglia, Chris Saraceno, Mike Myers, Brian Pasch, Carrie Hemphill (First Class Educators) have proven to be a real class act and true pioneers of putting on an automotive conference. The First Class Educators name fits exactly with how they operate and what they offer to the automotive industry. I am talking about the setup of the event, the quality of speakers, content, the food setup, the preparation, the venue, and many other aspects of event planning.

So how great was AutoCon? It was amazing! We kicked off the event with a powerful keynote session that included Jim Ziegler and Bill Lovejoy. As always Jim, was entertaining and fun to watch. It was an even bigger treat to see Jim get a lifetime achievement award. The event continued with the AWA awards. I had been really tired from a long day of travel so I cut out a little early just to relax. That first day I got to hang out with my friend and client, Eric Nichols of Apple Honda. He was there on a full ride scholarship on behalf of TrueCar (Thanks TrueCar for allowing Eric to further his education). I even hung out with my friend Jason Mitchell of Classic Chevrolet in Beaumont, TX. Eric and I played some slots and blackjack. We had a great dinner and relaxed. I got to hang out with Grant Cardone and his crew along with Richard Bustillo (Rick Case Honda) while these guys crushed it at Blackjack.

On Thursday, we went full force at attending workshops. It started out with my friend Sean Stapleton of VinSolutions where he had an amazing keynote session. As always, Eric and I visited a session that Ralph Paglia was giving on "The Evolution of Digital Marketing". Later on we saw Lon Safko
give an amazing keynote session. I had met Lon and even bought his books. They are worth every penny. I got to hang out with some awesome dealer people including Adam Barish (owner of Route 23 Honda) and Bear Goodman (eCommerce director of Holmes Auto Group). Later on we visited the workshop that April Rain (Digital Rain) had put on and it was very powerful. I had taken some time to relax and visit the exhibit hall. Later on I was hanging out with Dan Weik (BusinessRater) as we went to the VinSolutions party. There I met some people from Morrie's Auto Group and hung out with Megan Barto of (Ciocca Honda).

On Friday, my man Grant Cardone had a killer motivating keynote session. I then visited a session by my friend Marc McGurren (PCG Consulting). He had an awesome session on BDC and digital marketing. I like Marc because he is a knowledgeable and professional person. After that session, I went to see the undisputed king of prospecting himself, Fran Taylor who spoke about many ways of being a successful sales person. Even though his session had nothing to do with digital marketing, he was still able to discuss and show how the basics of 20 years ago still work today in dealerships across the country. Later on I saw my very good friend John Giamalvo of Edmunds.com talk about SEO and maximizing opportunity. After that session I met a dealer with their internet manager that had approached Eric Nichols because they read about his success story. I had them scope out VinSolutions for a CRM tool and they talked with Eric about what it took to make him successful at his dealership. I finished the day with seeing my very good friend Tracy Myers who is one of the top independent dealers in the country as well as a motivational speaker. He is just such a smart guy and I am so honored to have him as a friend. I laid low that evening because I was preparing to speak the following morning. I missed the awesome AutoBash party but there will be others.

The following morning, I woke up and got ready. I put on my pressed suit and walked out of my room feeling like a million bucks. I walked into the conference and ready to have the best session ever. It was unfortunate that a lot of people had either left Friday night, early that morning or slept in after partying the night before. However, it was still a good attendance. I have an attendance of 15 people and was speaking at the same time as Ralph Paglia, Jim Radogna, Brian Pasch , Jim Ziegler, Dave Page , Jack Simmons (cars.com) and Richard Bustillo . We all had our fair share of attendees. My session was "The Evolution of the BDC" and it went great. I was told by attendees that the information that they learned in my session was so strong that they had a plan when they get back to their stores. I was amazed that my Q&A session lasted 30 minutes too. For those of you that missed the session, I will present a similar session at future conferences that might include Internet Sales 20 Group and Digital Marketing Strategies Conference. As always, if you would like to personally be trained on this workshop and get your dealership going, feel free to contact me and we can get started.

I ended the conference by having lunch with Brian Pasch, Glenn Pasch, Carrie Hemphill, Ralph Paglia, Tracy Meyers, and Benjamin Freedman. It was a great way to finish the conference and have a celebration of the ending of a successful conference. My only regret is that I missed some sessions that I wanted to be at. However, I will catch up with them in the coming days as the content is available for attendees to view. I could not be everywhere at one time. I had enjoyed being a part of this conference and I look forward to being a part of future AutoCon conferences. I also want to thank the creators of AutoCon for giving me the opportunity to share and provide quality information to the automotive industry.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Scott Painter (CEO of TrueCar) speaks to Stan Sher (President of Dealer eTraining)

It was Monday December 12, 2011 and I had decided to take a nap at 4:00 PM as I had just spent an average of 14 hours per day working from my home office. I actually spent all weekend working on projects and creating more curriculums.

My nap was rather long and I slept until 8:00 PM. I woke up and looked at my cell phone only to find a voice message from a random phone number in California. I listened to the message and saw that it was one of Scott Painter's people trying to contact me because Scott Painter wanted to have a conversation with me.

My initial thought was, "WOW, the multi billionaire guru with a Wikipedia page wants to talk to me. I feel special."

I called the gentleman back and set the call up. I later learned that he was also speaking to Jim Ziegler. As far as I knew we were the only two people that Scott Painter was talking to. I had prepared my list of questions and was excited to talk to this person just to see what he has to say.

Fast forward to the next day. I started to think a few things. I was thinking that maybe I made Painter so angry that he was trying to get his attorney on the phone with a cease and desist message. On the other hand, I do think great things of myself and I know that I am a very abstract thinker so I was thinking that maybe Painter would be looking for my help to make his product better and stop hurting dealers. I had spoken to Jim Ziegler and knew that he had a call at 1:30 PM so I was anxious to find out what happened. So at 5:30 PM (30 minutes before my call I called Jim again). I learned from Jim that it was a regular Q&A session and that he was offered a trip to California to explore the TrueCar operations. Jim had spoken well of Scott Painter as he Scott was very professional and seemed to be an easy going person to talk to.

Moving on...

It is now 6:00 PM and we get on the call. It was a 55 minute call. We started the call and Scott had informed me that he might have to get off sooner because his wife was about to have a baby any minute now. "Congratulations Scott and family!” I had congratulated Scott. I also started the conversation by giving him my respect. I too am a college dropout and I too have visions of doing huge things in the future. I started the conversation with an upfront from the heart compliment. Anyone that knows me knows that I have a huge heart. If I am against what you represent it I will let you know that too. However, if you are brilliant enough to come up with a huge idea and get to the level that Scott has I have to give credit to where it is due.

I continued to explain who I was and what my background was. I had explained to him how I got in to the automotive industry and my experience in retail. In addition, I talked about my roles in dealerships and how I started Dealer eTraining. From there I moved onto explaining to him why I am completely against his product (TrueCar) and I gave him at least three real scenarios from when I worked in dealerships as a sales person and a manager.

He understood where I was coming from. Scott was also very professional and knowledgeable with his answers. He seemed to give me legitimate responses. I told him about my theory of how I believe he is pricing cars out of the market and how he is hurting the business. I even compared him to Edmunds where I said, "at least when Edmunds is advertising True Market Value (TMV), the vehicle is priced a few hundred over invoice". I added to that by saying, "if we were selling cars a few hundred over invoice and you had your pricing fairly structured like that no one would be hurt."

When asking him about where pricing data comes in he started to tell me about how when a car gets sold the data is available to multiple sources and how many of them are partners are TrueCar. When I asked him where he gets these ridiculous low prices to put on the bell curve under "Best Deal" he told that consumers actually provide them with pdf files of their purchase. This is where I am still puzzled after everything he said to me. Something here did not seem to sound right. Why would a consumer give you a copy of their retail agreement? It is one thing when you survey the customer and they tell you what they paid for the car (which cannot be a fact sometimes). It is another to have someone takes the time to send you this information. I had not asked more questions on this because this was the one thing that made me actually want to go and see the TrueCar operations for myself.

The majority of the discussion was exactly like the one that Jerry Thibeau had with Scott. The only difference is that I literally have 30 ideas that can turnaround TrueCar for the better if in fact this beast cannot be defeated. I had mentioned two ideas right off the bat. Here they are:

1. Ok if you are going to advertise on the bell curve, "Best Deal". Can you at least have the decency to omit the sales prices from customers that stole the vehicle? I mean there comes a moment when a sales manager makes a mistake and we roll a car and lose $2,000 on it and the customer makes out like a lucky bandit. This is where I assume these figures are coming from. So I said, "I know Honda does not allow advertising under invoice so why not keep the sales figure legitimate and have some profit in it to keep all things fair".

-Scott told me that his AutoNation people have brought a similar idea to them.

2. I had mentioned that if they incorporated reviews and partnered up with a review site. Take the reviews and incorporate them underneath the prices in the bell curve that they can now offer a lot more than just pricing. I am talking about value added benefits. Now the customer has a choice if they want to pay more for a better experience or pay less for a worse experience. Now that is real transparency in my opinion.

-Scott told me that his brother in law is a GM of a Mazda dealer and he was mentioning something similar.

What are my thoughts?

My thoughts are that Scott has opened up as much as he is willing to open up. I still disagree with what is being done with TrueCar and why TrueCar is partnered with some of the current partners. I also believe that there are a lot of ways that the TrueCar model needs to be reworked. TrueCar has a lot invested and the commercials are there like AutoTrader. If they are going to grow and advertise to the public they need to fix the problems that they are creating. TrueCar needs to follow all state regulations and all OEM regulations. They should also make it so that whatever is being advertised allows for dealers to remain profitable and actually makes automotive dealers look good instead of bad. If they want to make innovations to the industry they need to help get consumers respecting dealers instead of plotting against them. I believe that incorporating other transparent strategies and not basing things solely on price can make a difference.

Now the reality is that these things are probably not going to happen if Scott's intentions are really what he made public when he did the videos and presentations. Perhaps Scott was looking for a way to win me over because I have a lot of influence. Perhaps Scott did not think before he spoke when he was quoted in the past. No one will ever really know the truth. One thing that I do know is that Scott handled the call with me professionally and very humbly and he was great to speak with. Scott invited me to visit their operations so that he can show me what they do and how they do it. I know other people have declined. I am going to accept it. The reason why I am going to accept it is because I want to see it for myself. It is an educational experience and it will allow for me to bring back even more thoughts to the industry.

Look we all want to see this fail (including myself). We need to consider how big it has become. I mean over 5,000 dealers need to cancel. If we can get them all to cancel then great. Otherwise, there is a chance this will continue to grow since the marketing tactics and investments have pushed for the massive growth to happen. If we cannot defeat this gorilla then we need to help create ways to make this gorilla work for dealers without hurting them. I am proposing to have an open mind here and have a strategy for what happens is we defeat this as well as a strategy for what happens if we have to live with it. If we have to live with it let's at least consider the options of making TrueCar make changes that benefit the dealers.

I am not going soft on your guys. The negative experiences that I had with them at the dealer level will never change what I think of them. But it is my mission as a member of the industry to give back to the industry that has provided me with skills, opportunity, knowledge, and training to be a better human being. This is what Dealer eTraining (my company stands for). Go to my website www.dealeretraining.com and look on the home page. I have a section there where the last sentence states, "Dealer eTraining is about the dealership’s success first and foremost.” This is my signature motto. Anyone that has worked with me, been trained by me, or has met me knows that I mean well.

I welcome thoughts and comments. When you respond I want you to do it with an open mind. I have done everything with an open mind and you should too. Thank you.

Stan Sher