I think the Brand of vehicle you're selling comes into play as well.

My overall numbers are as follows:

* Lead to Appt ratio%
around 40+%
* Appointment Kept %
around 60%
* Appointment to sale ratio
around 50%
Overall about 8-9%

BUT I have a GM franchise and a Mazda franchise. When you break out Mazda everything changes because Mazda as a brand and their customers are more internet saavy.

This is after 2 months with me working my system.

My own feeling is that the salesperson who gets the customer when they arrive is a HUGE determining factor in whether or not you make a deal.

All these numbers can vary greatly depending on a lot of things-- lead source, your internet manager, time of the month/year; and remember you probably won't see these numbers the first 30 days, but here's some rough averages I've seen:

* Lead to Appt ratio%
around 25+% -- with the type of customers I have in my competitive market, people typically make an appointment they'll keep.
* Appointment Kept %
around 80%
* Appointment to sale ratio
around 80%

My lead to sale ratio is right at 17%, and some of these customers (like one I'm working now) have all but signed papers before even coming in. I don't count those as appointments per my CRM.

What an outstanding presentation! I've worked as a web developer since 1999, and my entire experience was summed up into that short video. Awesome find.

Very Cool! The rebuttal is also quite interesting.

Login to view embedded media View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAVmB5dKZZ8

Jeff,

Thanks for taking the time to stop by our booth and giving us the honorable mention. Good review of the show. You've got a great working knowledge of the Internet. The question you asked the "gentleman" from @utorevenue.com makes that very clear. Thanks again, and keep in touch.

-Blake

I agree about your comment on Clickmotive. Dry, Dry, Dry...

Jeff,
Always a good read! I especially liked your overview of NADA 2007. "It was like I was there"! ha,ha.

All this talk about Autotrader.com. I have been a big believer of "featured listings". About 1/2 the cost of premium listings. If you actually put search criteria that an actual car shopper would use (example Mercedes-Benz C230 in a 25 mile radius), Your featured listing will still show on the first page of listings. You can use the $1,000 you save monthly on Dealix or another lead provider. Just some thoughts from an old-school ISM.
-Pete

Out of all of the dealers we have, ive never heard anything but complaints about cars.com

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for the, ah, forthright review of Amy Auto. That’s the great thing about the internet.

I understand how you feel about avatars. I've seen some that were really creepy. However, we are creating a new kind of avatar to make the online process more human and humane.

And we had a tremendous response at NADA, receiving hundreds of business cards, and had hundreds of people who scanned their badge in our gizmo and said they love Amy and the whole concept.

Many dealers want something fresh in their business, a way to reach out to more potential customers, and differentiate their website. They literally want to present a new "face" to the world.

Dealers' first request is to make it easier for people to find the info they want, with a responsive, friendly, intelligent interface. Eventually, dealers want consumers to be able to take the online purchase process as far as the consumer likes: info > comparison > customization > price > tax > insur., without having to talk with a pushy salesperson. (This is coming from dealers, not us.)

Cheers,
Glenn Sanders
__________________
Offc: 650-964-4112
Cell: 650-996-9904
glenn@amyauto.com

Nice review Jeff and it was great getting a chance to hang out a bit. Go Bears!

There seemed to be a good number of new pricing features on the floor this year. Maybe that is because it was on my radar, but many of the inventory and F&I providers were highlighting some sort of pricing convenience feature in their systems. I didn't really take good notes of who, but I do recall seeing a good bit of this in many booths.

eBay has done a good job with the PR of their new Local product and an even more impressive job coordinating their pilot program with all their certified providers. I have every confidence that eBay's new program will succeed because of how it is being approached.

I had the chance to speak with a gentleman at Autobase CRM about Microsoft and it seems that MS could have a beta product as early as this summer. This is definitely something to keep an eye out for.

Ya, we've got the Partner listing too, and I just can't help but think it's money spent better elsewhere. For some reason I'm still hestitant to drop down a level, but I can't really figure out why.

So true about Autotrader... their prices are quickly spiraling out of control.. even with our 'dealer group discount'. And on top of it, my rep is leaving the area so I'm gonna get some new schmuck to deal with. Fantastic. Sometimes I wonder if Autotrader is really worth it.

While eBay is certainly a clearing house for unique or special items, especially reliable cash cars, there is seldom an opportunity to make gross on listed vehicles.

On listed vehicles.

What I have discovered is eBay is nothing more than a lead generator. When the new Avalon came out in 2005, we put a Limited edition on eBay (new) and sold 4 others to prospective buyers because we handled them like they were leads from Autotrader or Cars.com. One deal we grossed neaarly $10,000 because when we contacted the buyer, we concentrated on setting an appointment and getting them in to buy. After that, it was a payment issue, and we all know how that rolls.

Approach eBay like the lead provider it is and you will see more results. Too many dealers rely on eBay to sell their cars, and it just won't. This is part of the reason I feel companies like Liquid Motors have promising technology, but falling short of their potential. There is no subtitute for a good salesperson on the phone!

Gerald Hand
Internet Director
Toyota of Irving

Josh-
Here are a few preliminary steps I would suggest:
1. Review your website: Contact 3s, where they ring, are you tracking those calls, who is getting them; hours of operation, services available, links on your website, etc. Test EVERYTHING!

2. Where are your leads coming from? Who are your lead providers, how many leads have they given you and what is the cost. Get the URLs for their back-end tools and save the password/username in a secure document only you have access to.

3. What kind of Internet Department are you going to have? Cradle to grave where the ISM takes the up, works the deal and then delivers, or where someone receives the lead on the floor and works them with your supervision, or perhaps with BDC setting where people in a call center set the appointment and certain individuals show the vehicle and work the deal. Each has specific strengths and weaknesses, so determine which way your dealer wants to go.

4. What is your process? How long will you work leads, what types of templates will you use, etc.

5. Your CRM software can be as simple as Outlook for now, but there are many good vendors out there. An inexpensive one is Autojockey which has a lot of features and is not a lot of money.

6. Develop a spreadsheet to track your ROI! This is your lifeline. By tracking deals, profits, leads in, appts set, units sold and the profitability of the department is key to asking for more money and more leads!

7. Contact your lead providers like Cars, Autotrader, Dealix, AutoUSA, CDM Data, Dealer Specialties and ask for some time to meet, understand what they represent, any training opportunities they may have, and if they can come by and orient you ontheir back-end tools.

8. Ensure your merchandise is ready! Good quality, multiple photos will tell the story to a prospective customer that this is a vehicle worth looking at. Do not skimp, and if you are not satisified with the quality or number (I recommend at least 7-9) make changes!

Get with your Toyota Rep and see what help they have. There are some great resources out there, including this one! As you start to negotiate the course of an Internet Director, you will be exposed continually to more information and things to help make you better. Learn a little every day.

Good luck and stay in touch.

Gerald Hand
Internet Director
Toyota of Irving

Hi Josh, I've installed WebControl in every dealership I have helped develop. It's easy to use, has great customer support, provides separtate module for internet so you don't need to buy a complete showroom control system, and doesn't really cost you an arm and leg per month.

I have worked with a few dealers using dealeron and they seem to have a good product. Our toyota dealer uses Xi group and have been very pleased so far.

Thank you all ... I have decieded to go with iCarMagic. Now I need to work on our website. www.LeMieuxToyota.com Any feed back from anyone. I am looking at DealerSkin.

Part of my job has been to look at a number of lead management and CRM businesses. Adding to the comments above, I'd say look at NetTrak also as a lead management tool. They're the tool behind BZ. Chris Garver is the founder and seems like a good guy.

Josh,
I can recommend a couple of things to help you in you new position.
1) contact your local Toyota representative and ask him his thoughts
2) find a Toyota dealer outside of your territory and find out what they are doing to achieve success
3) give me a call because eSelleration Inc works with multiple vendors and is here to help you and the dealership achieve success.
Look forward to hearing from you but check our website esellerationinc.com for more information
Sincerely Yours
Stephen Douglass

Josh,

I am the director of internet marketing for KEA Advertising. One of our dealers with the largest internet presence asked us to research an ISM/ILM system and we decided upon getting them setup on AVV. From what Ive seen its great and not overly expensive. When you activate the system they also give you a complete training session via online meeting software which is very helpful to understanding how everything works. I would give them a try. if you have any questions feel free to email me.

Brandon
xBMANx

I use Webcontrol currently, and am pretty happy with it. It's a good system overall, and the few times I've had issues the support was great. You do have to pay extra to get additional features, such as automated emails... which seems a little odd, but I don't know. I haven't used any other ISM tools to date, so they may all be that way.

Looks like izmocars is giving a good competition to the top players in SEO!
Sorgenfrei LLC 's "Website builder ranking Report " mentions "izmocars is the most proficient at getting the highest percentage of their client placements in the most effective spot" and
"Izmocars has the highest percentage of their overall placements in the top spot followed by Dealer.com, the Cobalt group, BZ Results, Dealerskins and Reynolds Web solutions"

See the reports in dealer.com website.

11 Ways to Recognize a Bad SEO Firm

There are lots of different people out there calling themselves SEOs. Some of them are actually really good. But, for today, let’s take a look at 11 sure fire signs that your dealing with a bad one:

1.Focuses a lot of energy on meta keywords. Yes, they are still out there – SEOs that think that meta keywords are the best thing going.

2.Offers to do a lot of search engine submissions for you. These will do absolutely nothing for you. Nada. Zip. Let the search engines discover you through links.

3.Recommends 302 redirects. I saw this just this past week. A major SEO firm that was helping a client with a move from domain to another, and they recommended 302 redirects. No faster way to destroy all the historical trust built up in a domain.

4.Focuses on link swapping. This is OK, up to a point, but it is not the fundamental building block of a long term link building strategy.

5.Uses the same link building methods on all clients. If it sounds like the link building strategy is the same for all their clients, you need someone else to oversee your overall link building strategy. Note that working with specialists is an OK thing to do (e.g. someone that focuses on social media), just don’t let that be the only thing you do.

6.Recommends micro sites as a way to rank for more terms. Unless you have been penalized, you are almost always better off putting new content on the existing domain. Every time you create a new site, you have created a new thing that you have to go market to get links for. Much easier to keep it all in one place.

7.Recommends that you run your content across multiple domains. I saw this recently. A company was doing a site move, and their SEO firm recommended that they keep the old domain running, then create the new domain, and leave them both running for 6 months. Not going to work.

8.Talks about hidden text (or other tricks such as cloaking) as a strategy. If it feels like a trick, then it’s probably a bad idea.

9.Says they know the Google algorithm. Hell, Matt Cutts doesn’t know the (entire) Google algorithm. Sure, he knows more about it than anyone outside of Google does, but the Google algorithm is really a large morass of different algorithms, and no one person knows all of them in intimate detail. In any event, even if a single individual inside Google knew the entire set of algorithms, they won’t be sharing that information with an outside SEO firm.

10.Promises #1 rankings. An old favorite. No one can guarantee #1 rankings, unless you are talking about “left handed oil based bottle washer”. Face it. Your space is probably competitive, and there are lots of people who want to rank #1 for the most important terms, and they are all trying to do it. Good SEO firms will bring you good results, and help you grow your business. Basically, it’s the wrong metric. How big is your web based business today, and how much can the SEO firm help you grow it? That should be the focus.

11.Don’t want to let you know what they are doing. If you get one of these, it means one of two things are happening: (1) they are doing nothing, or: (2) they are doing something bad.

So as I said before, there are good SEOs out there, in fact, there are lots of them. They can really help you. Unfortunately, a bad SEO firm can really, really hurt your web site and it’s traffic from search engines. Learn what to avoid. In addition, learn what to look for on the positive side. A good start on that task is to find SEO firms that will start be educating you on the challenges you face, and then focuses on the nuts and bolts about how you meet those challenges

What a complete JOKE of a company. Isn't their training program the same one Autobytel was giving for free?