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  1. Brendan Dolan

    Car salesman sells 1,582 cars breaking record of 1,425 in 1973

    Wow. My top month was 93 new. Averaging 130 is insane.
  2. Brendan Dolan

    Concerns with local digital marketing company...am I missing something?

    Inspect what you expect. Most vendors claim to be turnkey, but most play the dangerous balancing act of minimum amount of account maintenance vs staff. I did a stint at a digital marketing agency, and we did weekly or biweekly check in calls with stores, and looked at performance of all vendors...
  3. Brendan Dolan

    Email losers

    I like when a manual tally of the desk log gives you different metrics than the reporting does. Even better when a pay plan is tied to it. Thanks database engineers!
  4. Brendan Dolan

    Sales Person Reviews

    An old coworker of mine is trying to do this very thing right now at KarFarm. They're having a tough time scraping from Yelp and Google, but the goal is to soon have a spot where the salesperson has aggregated reviews and can tout themselves, along with some inventory and promotional offers.
  5. Brendan Dolan

    How much pricing information do shoppers need before coming in?

    At my dealer group, I had most of the CTA's on the VDP set to open a price discussion. My area was full of software engineers. I knew what conversation they wanted to have, so we made it easy. First emails? Reiterate the discounted price on the VDP, and review any additional ways to save them...
  7. Brendan Dolan

    Email losers

    Love the Judge Judy. :D CRM's tend to report on an email campaigns metrics, but most fall way short on daily use metrics. All brag that their reporting is great, but most are so full of holes. Don't even get me started with VinSolutions build it yourself solution that came out a year ago.
  8. Brendan Dolan

    Domain name / direct navigation strategy

    Exactly. I played with different domains back in 2009, and I didn't see much move. For me it's just keep it simple and memorable for offline marketing, but all in all it's not that big of a deal.
  9. Brendan Dolan

    How do you send a price quote?

    When I ran the internet teams, and in my store, I trained everyone to answer the customers question, and reinforce a reasonable why buy from us. When we'd give out info, it was plain text in the body of the email, with no attachments. Customers can't always figure those out. Keep it basic...
  10. Brendan Dolan

    Pay for Internet Sales Manager/Director

    I was an ISM back in 2006, back when an ISM desked, closed, etc. When I left the business in 2016 to join the vendor side most ISM's I came across were basically salesmen who could use the CRM better than the other guys. Still had to run to the desk for everything, no decision making, etc. As...
  11. Brendan Dolan

    Building Value in the Lane

    Transparency is freely giving information and letting the consumer decide. That's how it works in almost all industries we're used to, but we want to keep hammering a square peg into a round hole in the car biz. I can get a hotel, rental car, flights, etc on one spot by comparing options, but...
  13. Brendan Dolan

    Building Value in the Lane

    Good thread bump. I totally agree that this topic is under discussed online and in the dealership. Stores that want to be successful need to build a process that is transparent with pricing, what work is done, when the work will be completed, and what's due next time. If customers know what's...
  14. Brendan Dolan

    Marketing Agency Recommendations

    While I always recommend bench marking a few against each other, check out DealerCMO (I worked there, full disclosure), Force Marketing, C4 Analytics, and my old dealer group is having success with MSX, and of course PCG.
  15. Brendan Dolan

    Customer Retention

    Here's where I'm going to plug my company. :D To drive fixed ops retention at my old group, here is the system we built. It was built this way years ago, and I hear has since changed. But in 2011 to 2015 it was: -Onstation for email marketing -Demandforce for texting -Xtime for scheduling...
  16. Brendan Dolan

    Customer Retention

    Is this where it's appropriate to plug my company? :poke::rofl:
  17. Brendan Dolan

    The Future Of Cars (With Computers)

    I never should have sold it. Oh well. It gave me peace of mind to have the cash back when I burned out and quit from the retail side of the car biz. It's everything about driving that FLdealer was talking about in the first post.
  19. Brendan Dolan

    Customer Retention

    God this is right on. I'm currently with a Fixed Ops Software and Marketing company, and we do a ton to help dealers pick up these numbers. While I can go on and on about different campaigns, here's what I tell stores when I pitch them our services. TREAT YOUR CUSTOMERS RIGHT THE FIRST TIME...
  20. Brendan Dolan

    Job Posting Responses are less than stellar

    We had a really tough time hiring for these positions as well, especially when you factor in the cost of living in NorCal near our stores. We maintained relationships with some of the local high schools that still have an autoshop program, local community colleges, and job fairs with the major...
  21. Brendan Dolan

    The Future Of Cars (With Computers)

    This for me is why I enjoy a multiple car solution. My daily driver is a Chevrolet SS Sedan (with three pedals), and it's the perfect blend of fun, comfort and tech. I thought about leasing an M5 a few years back, but it was too isolated, too removed from the driving experience, even though it...
  22. Brendan Dolan

    Digital Marketing for Fleet / Commercial Departments

    Our Ford store had a rocking fleet department, and you're right on the relationship selling. I used to layer in some Geotargeted campaigns for the companies we wanted to target and we found some good success with that.
  23. Brendan Dolan

    Advice and Tips Appreciated...

    Adam was on point. Sell the products from your vendor partner; do not sell the lenders products. You want that profit in the dealers pocket, and your pocket. We used to sell VSC's with a 2x markup over cost, so it's an easy way to add some coin to your pocket. Diversifying lenders is great...
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