How much does your store(s) pay for photos? I am interested in price paid per car.

If you're pic takers are in-house, divide total cost by # of cars sold.

(if you're just shooting used cars, then divide cost by # of used cars sold)

I am curious to know how do you currently track your reconditioning process
What software/excel file do you use to do so
What do you like about it
What do you not like about it
What could it do better

Come join us December 4th from 1:00 PM EST - 2:00 PM EST explore FixingThe F&I Bottleneck facilitated by Rebecca Chernek. www.dealersedge.com

Is it realistic to expect a 30 minute delivery time from the minute the customer touches down in the F&I office- what policies and procedures would a dealer have to implement to establish a faster delivery time and why it would not only help to increase profits but customer satisfaction! Some veterans say that Gen Y have the highest percentage of slow pay history and have no business dictating how long it will take to put them into a new car- even if it takes all day! Will the online customer have to adapt to worn out practices of buying a car or will the dealer have to make changes to maintain market share?

I was on Elise Kephart's DealerOn webinar today.
I've also seen David Kain do live training.
Both are industry trainers who have a great deal of knowledge. But they disagree on one point & I'm curious what everyone's opinion in here is --

When calling an internet prospect who has submitted an inquiry (lead)

• Elise says with your second phone call - you should call from your cell phone & hang up without leaving a message.

• David says you should not hangup without leaving a voice mail.

Which school of thought do you follow?
Me, personally? I always leave a message - I don't want to be that person who calls & then hangs up.

First thanks to everyone on the forum here, and the leaders who started and continue supporting it. What a huge resource!

Over the years I've heard the term VDP start from the reporting end mostly associated with classified sites justifying the need for dealers to spend more or at minimum maintain, too now where it's the holy grail of overall dealership sales performance and closely monitored.

I'm currently working on trying to measure the level of effectiveness needed for several dealers using Autotrader and Cars, one path suggested is figuring out the cost per VDP for the given inventory of used cars only for now. I hit a roadblock though, I have a VDP cost range of .70 to $1.65 per view on a range of stores based on sales performance and inventory size. The stores package levels range from the lowest to highest per their markets. The stores with lower cost per VDP are using vAuto to price their inventory and have many views across the whole USA, I would like to separate the views per a GEO radius, like 100 miles, but can't with the current reporting in the either vendors system. The stores on the lowest package have much higher cost per VDP, surprisingly most do not have vAuto or any pricing system. All stores merchandise their inventory well, great photos, some with real videos, competitive market pricing, etc.

So how do I get a cost per VDP based on a given the GEO area?

I believe the VDP definition/meaning and performance is a result of many factors, most of those reflect how the inventory is merchandised, coupled with the level of exposure with shoppers in a given market area. However I believe more VDP views doesn't always mean you will sell more cars, but I'm up against the thinking majority here with the stores UCM's, mainly the ones using vAuto. My question to them has been so you're selling those people who are looking at your vehicles from 1,000 miles away? Blank stare. Granted stores do sell some cars each month from several hundred miles away, but it's nothing you could build your business around.

What are your thoughts on the term VDP? Is it overused and misunderstood? Or exactly as described?

Would you rather get more Internet Leads or more Floor Ups?

Alright folks, it's 2014, and I haven't seen this question asked in a while. Are you guys / gals using a lead bucket or a round robin system?

We have gone back and forth through the years, and are current using a lead bucket. It has warts, of course, and I am contemplating a switch back to round robin. We have a hybrid BDC of sorts - 4 appointment setters (who work more leads, naturally) and 2 salespeople (who work less leads.)

Since we added the salespeople, I haven't been comfortable with round robin - we all know the issue there. However, it seems like they get the short end of the stick when using a bucket as well.

Anyway, what are you using today, why, and how do you like it?

... I figure this is the perfect neutral ground to discuss them all.

Digital Dealer, DrivingSales, AutoCon, JD Power, and I think there is at least one more I'm forgetting too.

I get asked about the different conferences quite a bit as they approach and I'd like to offer more than just the exhibition hall experience.

Two discussion questions for the forum, Dealers and Vendors alike:

ShortTerm: Will you be attending/speaking/exhibiting at any of the Fall 2012 conferences? Are you choosing one over the rest and if so, why?

LongTerm: How many conferences can the industry support? As far as content is concerned, if you've attended one, have you attended them all? Is more choice better or is the end result just diluting one big conference by forcing dealers and sponsors to choose? Pure speculation, but since they all compete for the only thing more valuable than money, TIME, which ones do you think will rise to the top and which ones will cease to be?

DISCLAIMER: I don't know that I will personally be attending any of the conferences in the fall and don't make that decision for my employer either, but I can't help but notice that there are several options where there used to be just one. As with any change in the industry, I look forward to seeing what the smart people of DealerRefresh think about a much more competitive landscape for conference promoters to court dealer attendees and vendor sponsors. I'm interested to see where this goes...

Just taking a tally to see which CRM platforms are the most used amongst the people on DealerRefresh. Yes, I know a lot of CRM and ILM solutions are missing from that list. If the other category is leaps and bounds ahead of the other categories I'll expand the poll options.

We're on the full iMagicLab platform: CRM, Inventory, Penciling, and we are looking to add more as they bring more elements online.

Cobalt has shown Map Views as part of the overall conversion metric to be just as important as leads and phone calls for years. Admittedly I have no idea what they're doing today as I haven't looked at one of their reports since leaving the dealership. However, I'll never forget the day I showed my boss our first VW Cobalt report years ago and how his response to the map views seemed to click for him. He understood that part better than the leads and calls section. It is one of a very small number of things I can thank Cobalt for in my early career.

In my younger days I believed this metric to be a gimmick for Cobalt to show an inflated conversion rate because this was never provable. Today I'm beginning to question whether we should all start looking at this metric as solidly as we look at lead counts and call volume. At the end of the day this is still a much more believable and viable metric than anything we ever looked at from traditional media sources.

What do you all think?

Has Cobalt been onto something for the last decade?

Everyday more and more of the people I followed or friended are doing less and less on twitter and Facebook. I've noticed that twitter has a strong following amongst a small minority of my friends and Facebook seems to be a draw mostly for events and groups. I have to hand it to Facebook - they're still doing things to improve the service for everyday users :thumbup:

I am noticing a trend that occurred with MySpace where friends' activities dwindled until very few were still messing with it. And I'm surprised twitter and Facebook have maintained the presence they have this long. Personally I still like them and will continue to use them, but I am noticing the trend that I saw years ago with MySpace.

One of my favorite bloggers has another take on it:

Bob Lefsetz said:

Twitter....

t's toast. Over. Done. History. Soon to be as behind the curve as Facebook, someday completely forgotten like Friendster.

Huh?

It's the cacophony.

You see there are too many people on the service. As a result, very few are heard. It's happened over the past six months, tweeting is like a stone in a waterfall, or more accurately, pissing in the wind. In other words, if you tweet and nobody reads it have you wasted your time?

Today Rick Warren tweeted something I wrote. He's got in excess of a million followers. The fact that I can reach him stuns me. But despite his only tweeting twice since then, the retweets have not gone nuclear. Oh, there are plenty, a double digit number, nineteen to be exact, but if it had been six months ago, I'd be a hero at the Saddleback Church.

But now...

Twitter is becoming just like the rest of the world, a haven of winners and losers. Either you're a star with an eight digit following and people are interested in what you have to say or...you're ignored.

Interestingly, those in demand, those followed, those who have their words eaten up are musicians, if they'd only realize their power and stop selling out to the man and focus on the music itself, unlike Jay-Z.

But musicians don't have to tweet to get their story across... Twitter is not the only platform that allows them to do this.

You see everybody wants to be a star and nobody's got time to follow a million people. Just can't be done. Furthermore, we don't even want to.

Everything you hear is wrong. All this hogwash about algorithms and recommendations. Have you experienced Spotify's new homepage? Right now, it says if I like Michael Bolton to check out Shania Twain. Isn't that like saying if you like Cliff Richard to check out Loretta Lynn?

Yes, Spotify's new service is laughable. Because Spotify doesn't care about music, but money.

And the founders of Twitter don't care about communication, but cash.

And the public is not beholden to any of these services. Which is why the story of the Internet is a few services that stick and a ton that disappear.

Why is this?

It turns out services are like bands. There are a few superstars and a ton of one hit wonders. And why no one else can see this is beyond me....truncated newsletter. Further reading will be available here: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/ under the title of "twitter"

Click to expand...

Here's something I have been trying to figure out and gauge vs the market. How much in $ are you spending per vehicle sold?

Add up your total advertising (digital, print, tv, radio, 3rd party leads etc) per month and divide by total number of new & used vehicles sold (exclude any as is/junk or wholesale units).

I'll start. Our dealership is strictly Pre-Owned, so no new vehicles in there. (we are an independent AUTODOME, Selling Used Cars and Trucks in Mississauga, Toronto, Brampton| Used Cars Mississauga). We are 100% digital, no print, tv, radio for the last 2 years.

Taking an average for March, April, May

$456 per vehicle sold.

I would like to be down to $300 or lower of course.

I think this is a good indicator of how efficient our advertising dollars are being spent. Perhaps we can all help each other become more efficient and increase the number of sales for how much we spent.

If you could choose only one and ONLY one - which would you choose to add to your dealers marketing mix?

SEO or SOCIAL MEDIA?

Now, before you jump the gun and start commenting, allow me to define the two for the purpose of this thread...



When referring to SEO: traditional on page SEO content for your dealership website. This includes the optimization of individual content pages, inventory pages (VDP) with the addition of a strong blogging platform (preferably an extension of your dealers primary domain).

Your dealer website / blog can include social "share" buttons but remember, if you choose SEO you have none of your own (dealer) social pages/accounts. So only social share buttons would be permitted.

When referring to Social Media: the use of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and such. The sharing of self generated or outside content but used ONLY within your social pages.

If you choose Social - you're opting OUT of any onsite / on page SEO. This includes anything past generic tagging and content on your dealership website.

I know many of you will feel obligated to speak up and comment on the fact that SEO and Social go hand in hand and the fact that SEO has "changed". I believe most of us reading this are already in the know, BUT for the sake of this conversation, lets separate the two.

Consider - If you only have the bandwidth to seriously dedicate resources to one or the other which of the 2 are you going to choose?

Once you've voted and shared your answer here in the comments... share WHY.

WHY did you choose the one you did?

Which do you believe will deliver your dealership more opportunities and better results?

I know, from various discussions with various people from various locations, that leads in general appear to be on the decline. However, I'm looking for some specific metrics on just how bad this is.
Some of the stores I'm working with are down 60-80% from last year, but it's not all in one area.

Specifically I'm wondering about website leads - not so much third party leads, AutoTrader, etc

Hi friends.

Had a meeting w/ a dealer website provider recently and they said that they don't allow the customer to place any external scripts because it might "break the site". Out of curiosity, how many of you have the same level of restrictions?

I'm really referring to vendor sites here, not custom setups.

PS - Even Cobalt allows this, and we all know how most people feel about them

I don't even remember how I can across this post by Tim Martells over on JD Rucker's SOSHABLE blog but WOW!


Tim is going on a RANT and calling industry services OUT on their SEO reporting. Basically, sorta calling them liars and criminals.


The Shocking Truth Behind Reporting In The Automotive Community


I'm not sure of the validity behind his rant or if this is nothing more than an elaborate sales pitch on his end. Either way with words like some of the below quotes from the post, it's hard to ignore.


" For the record, I think this is a wonderful website provider. Their technology is awesome and the ease of use of their products is without peer. But… they are LYING to their customers and this is unacceptable."

"I found that nearly ALL of the keywords being tracked and touted as success had a whopping monthly search volume of… wait for it… ZERO"

"What a monumental task to take on 585 keywords and obtain page 1 rankings in a single month! But what did I find? 583 of those 585 keywords had NEVER been searched. ZERO MONTHLY SEARCH VOLUME. THIS IS CRIMINAL! You are taking a dealer’s money and returning NO VALUE! How can you do that!?"


Oh - and he called out the different industry awards as being full of BS.

"I mean, CarMercial is littered with awards on their website (most which I guess were bought from AutoSuccess) but to see a PCG Digital Marketing AWA award on there really turned my stomach."


Tim finishes his rant recommending that dealers require the following 3 criteria from their SEO company's monthly reporting..


• Keyword Positioning
• Search Volume for each ranking keyword
• Link to every page of content, press release, slideshare, and link that was built, etc.


Click here to read his full rant!


I'm note sure if all of this justifies as criminal behavioral. But I do agree that SEO is an oversold and under performed service on our industry and rarely reported as it should be.


Question and Poll for the DR Community.


On a scale of 1-5 - How much do you trust your SEO provider and their provided reports?


1 being I have NO trust
5 being I have Complete trust

We are thinking about adding a third option for our 24/7 fully staffed automotive live chat service. Below is what we are considering, and the other two choices currently available to our clients. I am looking for the forum members opinion. If you think this new third option would be a good idea or bad idea. Please let me know your thoughts.


Current Options

1. CarChat24 Complete support service: Software and highly trained Staff are provided 24/7. Dealers are billed for support, sales leads, and appointments set. Service and Parts leads are always free.

2. CarChat24 Backup support service: Dealers chat with site visitors using our software, and CarChat24 acts as a 24/7 Backup to take any chat not taken by the dealership agent(s). Dealers are billed for use of software, backup support, sales leads, and appointments set by CarChat24. Service and Parts leads are always free.

Not Yet Available

Option 3: CarChat24 Performance based support service: Software and highly trained Staff are provided 24/7. Dealers are only billed for sales leads, and appointments set. Service leads, Parts leads, and the 24/7 completely staffed live chat support would be free.

With the proposed third option dealers would only pay for sales leads and appointments, and they would get the 24/7 staffed support for free.

Note: We have already shown with our 2 month case study here on DealerRefresh that our Chat Leads come as an increase in conversion, see link below.

http://forum.dealerrefresh.com/f43/free-24-7-live-dealer-chat-support-staff-leads-case-study-2-months-505-12.html


I am strongly considering adding this third option and look forward to seeing the forum members opinions


.

Do you think TrueCar deserves a second chance after all that has been said and done?


AutoCon 2012 (conference) is right around the corner. Kudos to Ralph and the DealerElite team for breaking into the conference arena - going up against the Digital Dealer Conference and the dis-likes of Mike Roscoe. I hope the best for Ralph and everyone working hard to make AutoCon become a success. There's no doubt that our industry desperately needs continued education. The difficult task is getting the dealer principles and owners more involved, but thats another topic of conversation.

One of the big surprises IMO is the announcement that TrueCar has become a sponsor of AutoCon 2012 by offering a Full Ride Scholarship Program to 12 automotive professionals. Click here to read more about the sponsorship and or to sign-up.


"The TrueCar AutoCon Scholarship Program is further evidence of the remarkable transformation that has taken place at TrueCar since the beginning of 2012. After receiving a remarkable level of criticism within the auto industry during the second half of 2011, TrueCar has evolved and revised their automotive purchasing programs for consumers and affiliated corporations to be far more dealer friendly. TrueCar’s objectives supported by these changes have included raising dealer profit margins to levels that provide more room for dealers to cover facility costs and the staffing levels needed to properly service new vehicle buyers sent to them by TrueCar."


Has TrueCar really changed? ..or is this nothing more than another marketing stunt - trying to once again pull the covers over the dealers eyes. I'm not sure I personally have a full opinion on this move quite yet - but I do believe that it seems like a stretch, after all of this...

Dealers, wake up! Edmunds TMV and TrueCar Has Your Transactional Data
TrueCar Scam on Dealerships - Are You Being Scammed?
http://forum.dealerrefresh.com/f40/truecar-using-zag-dealer-data-create-value-743.html
California New Car Dealers Association TrueCar Alert
Colorado Department of Revenue Cities TrueCar Advertising Violations
http://forum.dealerrefresh.com/f43/...truecar-dms-scandal-i-cant-remember-2391.html
http://forum.dealerrefresh.com/f46/...te-truecar-thread-post-your-updates-2369.html

VatorNews - How TrueCar faced down the auto industry and rebounded

And let's not forget Jim Zieglers post/rant against TrueCar with 100's of comments from the industry (that happens to be on the same site that is now allowing them to sponsor) True Car and ZAG - Cyber Bandits or Good for the Business? - Automotive Digital Marketing Professional Community

I'm in not way using this thread to call out AutoCon and the AutoCon crew for allowing TrueCar to be a sponsor. Maybe they have good reasons for this (other than $). Maybe TrueCar has changed their stripes and are wanting to now side more with the dealership.

After all that has been said and done out of the TrueCar camp - do you believe this is nothing more than a marketing stunt and MORE importantly - does TrueCar deserve a second chance?

What do you think?

Customers’ satisfaction had been a loudly spoken mantra in the modern age which if done professionally will build your brand image as well as help you achieve manifold business growth.

We have seen in the recent decades that huge corporations have been investing in all the fancy call center facilities with extensive trainings, efficient standard operating procedures, multi-tier quality levels, and multimillion dollars CRM as well as expensive management team with Six Sigma and many other world class certifications.

Let me revisit the situation as aforesaid, has this made customers’ life easy? I would like to answer this as well, NO, customers have to go through tedious menu, need to navigate through in order to reach the department that they need to get in touch with – which is at the expensive of the customers time and efforts. In the recent times when normal working hours are becoming round-the-clock and even more…… people do not like to hang on the phone and navigate through the monotonous menu, reach to the concerned person, who can do nothing but take their message. We do not like to reach to a company while we are relaxing at home or enjoying our weekends with friends and family. So, the call center really helps us achieve customers’ satisfaction and gives dividend to our customers. My answer is not really…..

Let’s talk about the other efficient and cost effective solution available…. yes, I am talking about Live Chat. Thanks to the easy accessibility of the Internet, it is now possible for small, medium and large-scale entrepreneurs to take advantage of the live chat system and live chat support for:

• mail-in service
• carry-in service
• hot lines
• lead generation
• pre-sale, and
• sale

I was asked who should use live chat. I replied all the companies which are in the virtual world (website) must add live chat function but with professional support. No matter which industry it is that you are dealing with, you will definitely enjoy numerous benefits when you see website with live chat.
The list of benefits is never ending… but to mention few include but not limited to:

• your operational costs will be reduced because a live chat system is less costly to maintain than even the smallest call center facility.
• your customer’s trust, satisfaction and loyalty will be built once they see the “live chat” option on your website. This means that they can get in touch with a live representative from your company anytime they need to.
• you can watch your sales increase as the level of customer satisfaction gets higher – and the sales potential of your website gets optimized.
• in a nut-shell, you will see a true interactive website which everyone desires to have.

See, a lot of people do online shopping from work or after hours when they cannot talk on the phone. This is where live chat shows its real value because the visitors can be engaged with you on a chat as long as they wish to be without disturbing their task in hand. You can hit them with your sales pitch since they are in the shopping mood. There is no engaging on the phone yet looking other things in front of the prospective customer which has a potential of distracting them.


The bottom-line is that the live chat is an inbound text call center which all the online businesses must consider seriously.

What are you tracking for month-end reporting?

How many companies do you buy leads from? This isn't how many companies do you get leads from this is about how many sell you a package of leads or charge per lead?


If you want to publically post your number, feel free to do so! Could be a good conversation. We buy from 1 company: AutoUSA.

Not including emailed reports - how many times did you talk with your search marketing vendor last month?

I'm just curious -

How many people actually have a domain setup in their dealership? The phrases:

"Active Directory"
"DHCP"
"File Server"

All goes in one ear out the other. Then when you talk about price it will def. get ignored. I don't think I need to give the reasons why it would be an obvious advantage to us to move to a domain. I'm more or less just interested how many people have a system setup they can actually brag to their IT buddies about.

For the record we have 100+ systems that really are only run to applications Remote Desktop (Autobase) and Reynolds. For e-mail and file sharing we use google apps (for business obv.). For content filtering - We have a Sonicwall in place. Other than that we are pretty basic. If it was up to me we would have been on a domain a year ago with group policies and mandatory profiles setup. Though maybe that's just the network nazi that comes in.

Fill out the poll, please!

Ben Anderson with AutomotionTV posted an article over on the blog - http://www.dealerrefresh.com/mobile-reshaping-dealers-marketing-plan

The post highlights 3 key findings around Mobile.

1. The younger generation considers a smartphone a necessity, including those just above the poverty level.
2. When they can afford it, the older generation is adopting to new smartphone technology.
3. Younger subscribers, new within the last 3 months, are choosing smartphones 8 out of 10 times.


Compare this number with current subscribers of which less than 50% are smartphone owners. Those are some hard facts we shouldn't ignore. Would you agree?


What I'm curious about are your mobile numbers. Let's all contribute by posting our current numbers for our mobile website(s) right in on DealerRefresh.

While you're at it - take the survey and post your prediction of mobile website traffic to your dealership website end of 2013 below your current numbers.

This could be an interesting read 2 years from now.

I'll get us started.

Frederick Nissan Mobile stats (30 day average as of today)

% of Mobile Visits = 16.56% (of overall traffic)
Average of mobile page views = 7.32
Average time on Mobile website = 4:22

#1 Mobile Device/Browser - Andriod
#2 Mobile Device/Browser - iPhone
#3 Mobile Device/Browser - iPad

By the end of 2012 I predict an increase of 15% in mobile traffic.

We're currently using DealerOn for our mobile websites.

What are your current Stats?